Scientists as Knowledge Generators

Christopher Chetsanga writing in Scidev:

courtesy of IDP

It is those who generate new knowledge, who can patent it and convert it to wealth that will make a difference in a community. Such S&T capabilities will enable a nation to overcome technology barriers. That way young scientists can learn to swim with the technology current rather than watching from the shoreline. But our universities are in danger of functioning as diploma factories rather than knowledge repositories.

More here

Backless Seats-The Bench in Africa

Over at Diane's Journals:

The most important piece of furniture in an African household is the seat, most often a stool or bench, as it is called in French: le banc.
The Duala of the area now known as Cameroon, for example, believed that the owner’s mystical strength lay in his seat; it was therefore dangerous for another person to sit on it. This person could be hit by lightning if he did not possess a similar mystical force. To sit on another person’s seat was to openly defy him, and nobody was surprised to find the transgressor dead the next day...[continue reading]

Ancient Nubian Antibiotics

MSNBC reports:

While the modern age of antibiotics began in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin, the new findings suggest that people knew how to fight infections much earlier than that — even if they didn't actually know what bacteria were.
Some of the first people to use antibiotics, according to the research, may have lived along the shores of the Nile in Sudanese Nubia, which spans the border of modern Egypt and Sudan.
"Given the amount of tetracycline there, they had to know what they were doing," said lead author George Armelagos, a biological anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta. "They may not have known what tetracycline was, but they certainly knew something was making them feel better."

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Rejuvenating the Mozambican knowledge factory

Luca Bussotti writing over at Pambazuka:

CC Afronie

Firing up the local production of knowledge is crucial to escaping the ‘industry of development’

He goes on to say:

...it appears rather obvious that few people have an interest in promoting local knowledge and knowledge in general as a key to exiting structural dependence. Rather, as Mozambican sociologist Elísio Macamo wrote, the ‘industry of development’ continues to work, and it doesn't seem to be in the interest of the leading classes to get rid of it.

More here

Building Plant Clinics

Innovation Africa reports:

Timely access to information and advice about how to manage plant health problems can make the difference between success and failure. Since 2003, 12 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, have introduced community-based plant health clinics as a way of providing this advice to small-scale farmers.
Plant clinics have spread rapidly because they offer a cheap and practical alternative to more conventional approaches that can help only limited numbers of farmers. They operate in easily accessible public places and are widely used to identify the causes of plant health problems and to find solutions.

Continuing:

Community-based plant clinics have the potential to help farmers and contribute to making agriculture a successful business, especially in resource-poor countries where advisory services are often scarce, underfunded and beyond the reach of millions of smallholders. Plant clinics provide an opportunity to coordinate the efforts of extension, research, government regulation and input supply, to reach more people and to use existing resources more efficiently.

More here

Biotechnology-Patent Grab Alert

Hope Shand writing in Pambazuka:

Under the guise of developing ‘climate-ready’ crops, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are pressuring governments to allow what could become the broadest and most dangerous patent claims in intellectual property history. A new report by ETC Group[1] reveals a dramatic upsurge in the number of patent claims on ‘climate-ready’ genes, plants and technologies that will supposedly allow biotech crops to tolerate drought and other environmental stresses (i.e. abiotic stresses) associated with climate change. The patent grab threatens to put a monopoly choke-hold on the world’s biomass and our future food supply, warns ETC Group.

More here

Related articles

• Hundreds of sweeping, multi-genome patents in a bid to control the world's plant biomass (Food Freedom) (desertification.wordpress.com)
• Biotechnology, biopiracy and intellectual property: an analysis (sciafrique.wordpress.com)

Kibera Film School

Founded by the Hot Sun foundation the Kibera Film School is an institution:

...where trainees learn all aspects of filmmaking from script, acting, casting, camera, production, editing, and distribution. Professionals from the Kenyan film and TV industry work as instructors in the KIBERA FILM SCHOOL.

Kibera Film School

Related articles

• How Online Video is Fostering Global Innovation (blogs.cisco.com)

France to prosecute Kleptocrats

Is France's policy of coddling African kleptocrats changing? The BBC reports:

The New Public Sphere?

Scribbles From the Den on the Blogosphere:

View more presentations from Dibussi Tande.

Who Will Bear this Burden?

Salisu Suleiman laments:

I was a land of tall trees and vast veldts, of raging rivers and soaking springs, of proud women and courageous men. I was the bastion that bared my back to bear the baton of my race in the race of sovereignties. But once on my back, the baton became a burden. Who will bear the burden?>
From a lighthouse of hope, I am now a landscape of iniquity. My people, all 150 million, bear burdens that have left them bent and beggarly, bereft of hope, bogged by visions they bought-in and believed in. That burden is the greatest burden in the world. It is the burden of leadership. Where are the ones to bear this burden?...[continue reading]

Unable to pay bribes...Languishing in Detention

Kersty McCourt writing in Pambazuka:

Corruption and excessive pretrial detention are mutually reinforcing: A criminal justice system that overuses pretrial detention is susceptible to corruption, and an environment marked by corruption will likely lead to over-reliance on pretrial detention. Both corruption and excessive pretrial detention flourish under the same circumstances. The two form a vicious cycle: A dysfunctional justice system leads to corruption, and that corruption further twists the justice system.

Continuing:

All over the world, poor people are arrested because they cannot pay a bribe to the corrupt police officer, then denied access to counsel or family because they cannot bribe the corrupt guard or prosecutor, then held indefinitely – or found guilty – because they cannot bribe the corrupt judge. The ability to put cash in the right hands often makes the difference between freedom and detention. Pretrial detention centres are populated almost entirely by poor people.

More here

Saki Mafundikwa-Educationist and Author

Saki Mafundikwa is the founder of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts:

“Vigital,” a word of his own creation, refers to visual arts taught using digital tools. Ziva means “knowledge” in Mafundikwa’s native Shona language.Through the school, Mafundikwa tries to illuminate graphic arts as a viable career path for Zimbabwe’s young people. He says, “It was the most natural thing for me to come home and start a school of design. Because I figured, my god, how many hundreds of young people in Zimbabwe would never know there is a field called graphic design. It was the right thing for me to do, because I felt so fortunate that I was able to figure it out.”

In addition he is the author of Afrikan Alphabets described as "a comprehensive review of African writing systems"

Amsatou Sow Sidibe- Peacemaker

Malena Amusa over at WomensEnews:

Fifteen years ago Amsatou Sow Sidibe, a lawyer and one of Africa's most vocal human rights activists, co-founded the African Network for the Promotion of Women Workers, based in Senegal's capital Dakar.The group, with branches throughout French-speaking Africa, focuses on training women in job skills and the law. In Wolof, the dominant language of Senegal, the group is called Rafet, which means beautiful

On her ability to handle prickly subjects:

Part of Sidibe's success is her flexible way of handling tough situations. When talking about the Muslim practice of marrying multiple wives, for example, many women's rights activists take a strong stand against polygamy. They see it as destroying a woman's self-esteem and causing financial dependence.However, instead of trying to ban polygamy, which is controversial but legal in Senegal, Sidibe tries to make peace with the practice. In a national magazine interview she suggested that polygamy be promoted in cases when a man takes up a mistress. At least that way, she reasoned, a man could keep the relationship out of the shadows and help the woman secure authority over property, children and finances.

More here

Every Child is a Genius-The Imafidons

"...The Imafidon Family. Described by the world media and leading Professors as five ordinary children attempting extraordinary feats. They were raised in inner city with the inner conviction that there is no limit to human achievement in any sphere..."-website More videos on the family after the jump:

Somalia's Qat Business

Mogadishu Man reports:

courtesy of Mogadishu Man

The KM 50 airport was, until now, the largest Qat depot in Somalia. Located in the Lower Shabeelle region, near Afgooye, the airport received an average of 7 plane loads of Qat a day, adding an estimated $1,500,000 a day to the Kenyan economy. The cargo would then distributed to all the cities in Southern/Central Somalia and to individual sellers. The Islamists’ decision to forbid the landing of Qat planes at the airport is by far the toughest verdict, in their long list of punitive measures against the stimulant, to be meted out to the Qat merchants in Somalia, and consumers alike. But how will this decision affect the people of Southern Somalia?

More here
I wonder is Qat any worse a stimulant than coffee?

Related articles

• Yemen's bad habit: You can't easily qat it out (economist.com)
• Drugs advisers to consider qat ban (guardian.co.uk)
• In Somalia, a Housing Market Is Born (online.wsj.com)

How Entrepreneurs Break Oligarchies

In CIPE Robert Litan on capitalism:

When oligarchs dominate, they keep entrepreneurs from building new industries that might threaten their hold on power. When state-guidance dominates, bureaucrats can import ideas to jump-start development but aren’t equipped to develop new ideas. When big firms dominate, innovation becomes routinized and incremental rather than radical and transformational. The oil-rich countries of the Middle East and North Africa have long been more or less oligarchic thanks to revenues from oil and the patronage they support.
When entrepreneurs have a strong presence, they help break down oligarchies through creative destruction from new industries, generate new ideas to sustain development, and, in tandem with the dispersive commercial capacity of big firms, they radically transform every day lives for the better.

More here

The Opposition's Chance? - Nigeria

In Project Syndicate Ike Okonta on divisions within Nigeria's ruling party and the opportunity it may present for the opposition:

...The PDP, in power since military rule ended in 1999, is widely disliked. Corruption is widespread, and PDP politicians have been unable to deliver the prosperity and improved social services that Nigerians looked forward to following the return of democracy. Indeed, the PDP has been able to retain power only by rigging successive elections, most spectacularly in 2007, when the outgoing Obasanjo foisted Yar’Adua on the party hierarchy.
The poorly resourced opposition could benefit if the expected northern backlash divides the PDP. Nuhu Ribadu, the respected former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, has announced his intention to contest the presidency as the candidate of one of the opposition parties.
A Muslim northerner, Ribadu enjoys the support of youth and democrats nationwide. The latter are regaining confidence in the political process, following the recent appointment of a no-nonsense academic as head of the election commission. Muhammadu Buhari, whom Babangida replaced as military head of state in 1985, is also expected to run, as the nominee of the Congress of Progressive Change.

More here

Related articles

• Nigeria's doughty presidential candidate: Mr Anti-Corruption joins the fray (economist.com)
• Ribadu warning for Nigeria elite (bbc.co.uk)
• 2011: Jega should watch his back - Prof Oyebode (vanguardngr.com)

Why Bad Guys Matter

Paul Collier in Foreign Policy writes:

Sure, some of Asia's "benign" autocrats have turned their ambitions to building strong national economies. But not in Africa and many of the other countries that I call the bottom billion -- quite a number of which crowd the upper reaches of the Failed States Index. There, the most common form of autocracy is anything but benign. These leaders not only neglect to build the economy, they actively avoid doing so.

He contends that:

Bad guys matter, and when they rule, they make weak states weaker. And the countless anecdotes are backed up by numbers: In a celebrated study, economists Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken looked at whether the death of a country's leader altered economic growth. It did, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Recently, an Oxford colleague, Anke Hoeffler, and I sifted through their results again, distinguishing this time between democrats and autocrats. We found that in democracies, changing the leader does not change growth -- all leaders are disciplined to perform tolerably. But in autocracies, the growth rates are as unpredictably varied as the leaders' personalities. Here lies the difference between good leaders and great ones: Good leaders put right the policy catastrophes of bad leaders; great leaders, like the men who shaped the U.S. Constitution, build the democratic checks and balances that make good leaders redundant.

More here

Related articles

• Democracy or Autocracy: Which is Better for Economic Growth? Becker (becker-posner-blog.com)
• African progress threatened by 'democratic recession' (theglobeandmail.com)

A Beatmaker from Gabon

Third Rate in the Tropics presents Micky Badinga an aspiring music mogul

Photographing The Middle Class

Africa's Middle Class-A Photographic essay, Maggie Koerth-Baker reporting in Boing Boing

Do the middle classes really exist in Abidjan? With between 1 and 7€ per person [about $1.30 to $9.75] per day, their income could seem pathetic to the occidental standards. However, they live far better than the poor (1€ or less a day) and can not be compared to the rich minority. Often coming from numerous and rural families, their education brought them in town and allowed them to emerge. For most of them, they have a steady job allowing them to build up their future, live in a flat with electricity, TV, fridge .... and invest in their children's education, sending them to private school if they feel it is necessary. Upon this definition, they represent 30% of the country's population and hold 40% of its wealth.
[Pictured] Charles Kapié with his partner in the street close to their office. At 30 years old he has created and runs a consulting firm in agronomy and a cyber café. He used to be a civil servant and he invested his "rappel" (first year of salary paid at once) in his activity and resigned after one year. He was paid $400/month. He situates himself in the middle of the Middle Classes.

Bombastic Element provides further context

Unpacking 419

In Fanzine, Louis Chude-Sokei's fascinating insights on Nigeria's interwoven fabric of corruption, culture,innovation,soft-power and new found generational confidence:

Louis Chude-Sokei

...despite the considerable merits of their nation and their diaspora, Nigerians will always be linked in some way to the 419. The younger generation in particular: they now controversially define themselves as “Naija,” signaling a departure from an older generation stuck between Western charity and local authoritarians. This younger generation rolls with a swagger disdainful of global pity and deeply suspicious of “big man” politics. However, the very term “Nigerian” has come under fire by nations for whom that swagger is seen as criminal despite the overwhelming number of Nigerians contributing healthily to their cultures and economies. It is not uncommon for Nigerian hustlers in South Africa to pass as Ghanaian, or for legitimate and law-abiding migrants to cringe when asked for their passports.

More here

Nigeria's Soft Power

The BBC on Nigeria's influence across Africa,In Ghana:

There is no mistaking the ancient cultural and linguistic ties between the neighbours. However, the post-colonial relationship has been characterised by a kind of sibling rivalry. Nigeria is highly respected for leading effective peacekeeping in the region, and at the same time mocked for failing to ensure peace in Nigeria. While Ghana takes pride in leading the continental way in independence, democratisation, and more recently, in sporting achievements.

For Kenyans:

What changed it all for us in Kenya was Nollywood. Nigeria became real and we were exposed to Nigerians telling their stories and not us being told stories about Nigerians. All of a sudden there were VCDs and DVDs being sold of Nollywood blockbusters. I have an uncle who has a mammoth collection of Nigerian movies and a few other relatives who swear on the integrity of Nigerian pastors.

Continue reading here

South Africa’s media: the Zimbabwe precedent

Roger Southall writing in OpenDemocracy:

The echoes of Zimbabwe are too close to ignore, says Roger Southall. Repressive media laws; wide-ranging censorship of the print media; sweeping definitions of “national security”; tame reporting by intimidated newspapers; tight government control of broadcasting and reduction of state broadcasting entities into organs of propaganda; raids on troublesome newspapers, arrests and assassination of reporters, clampdowns on news organs with the temerity to expose corruption and inconvenient truths; states of emergency; and bans on all but hostile reporting regarding the liberation movements. All these, and many other devices, were the routine mechanisms of former white minority governments in southern Africa...[continue reading]

Quick Hits

Still Mourning a Murder "The father I didn’t know"-Ayodele Dele-Giwa
Tanzanian's "Let's Be Self-Reliant"-The Citizen
Still Releveant "Open Content for Education in Africa"-Open Access News
The socio-political ills of Nigeria actually started long ago, in those ‘good old days’.Anthonia Yakubu reviews Kinsman and Foremam By T. M. Aluko
Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism-Peter Klein
Electricity: Let there be Light in Nigeria - Economist
How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge By Binyavanga Wainaina
Ethiopian recycler has a problem with the country's intellectuals
How mobile phones are at the root of Saharan music-Guardian

NKA Foundation

"...Nka is an Igbo (African) word for artistry, its literary translation is “…of art”. It is also an Akan word that implies “may be” but in Akan, nká means “ancient”. We reckon the arts are the most ancient of human activities.Along these lines, Nka Foundation has a focus on human capital development through use of the arts, broadly defined to include visual arts, literary arts, performing arts, design, new media/film production, arts history, arts criticism, arts education, arts administration and curatorship, and emerging others..."-website
One of their projects is the "DESIGN+BUILD-AND-LIVE-IN PROJECT":

Mbacké NIANG(Architect, Researcher and Consultant in Dakar, Senegal)

... which welcomes artistic persons in the fields of architecture, engineering and the arts that include visual arts, literary arts, performing arts, design, new media/ film production, arts history, arts criticism, arts education, arts administration and curatorship, and emerging others to apply for residence. Length of residencies is usually from 1 month to 12 months. The applicant’s project plan may be to design and build dwellings or non-dwellings out of earth and other materials from the environment.

The Bane of Decrepit Seaports in Africa

In Foreign Affairs:

Africa has the least efficient ports in the world. Dwell times -- the amount of time a ship must stay in port -- for the loading and unloading of cargo exceed global averages by several days and are nearly quadruple those of Asian ports, thus driving up shipping costs through delays. No African port can be found on the list of the top 70 most productive in the world. As a result, shipping companies send smaller, older, and cheaper ships to Africa in an effort to reduce their losses.

Consequently:

...many African ports cannot handle ships of median size due to infrastructure limitations. Meanwhile, the global shipping industry has been modernizing its fleets, scrapping obsolete vessels for newer mega-carriers. This means that shipping companies will continue deploying their remaining smaller and slower ships for transport to and from Africa, increasing the number of easy targets for pirates and further impeding Africa’s ability to export products efficiently. In this environment, companies producing goods in Africa cannot reliably or efficiently get their wares to market. This plays a large role in explaining why Africa garners only 2.7 percent of global trade despite its cheap labor force, cheap commodities, and proximity to major markets.

More here

Power and the Illusions of Omnipotence

Franklyne Ogbunwezeh writes:

For our democracy to shed its pretences, and sustain a vibrant dynamic, which would uphold democratic principles, Africa must groom an enlightened followership. Without this, African leaders will always fall for the temptation to omnipotence. Without an enlightened followership, there would be no credible critical mass of opposition to challenge the excesses of an incompetent government. In fact, “a responsible leadership can be nourished and sustained only by an enlightened and responsible followership, which will constitute an effective check on its exercise and excesses. This holds true because an enlightened followership would be vigilant on things that concern their welfare. This eternal vigilance, which is the price of liberty, is the basis for an effective foreclosure of despotism, abuse of office and trust, rise of tyranny and kleptocratic governance, et cetera

More here

Selections from the New Book Making Do

In The Atlantic excerpts from the Steve Daniels book Making Do:

Images by Steve Daniels

Leonard is one of millions of entrepreneurs who rely on informal mechanisms in Kenya, where the informal sector comprises a full three quarters of the non-agricultural economy and produces over 90 percent of new jobs annually. Under severe material constraints, they are forced to improvise solutions to everyday problems that, from time to time, result in game-changing innovations that better address local needs. Informal artisans who engage in the production of goods are known as jua kali (Swahili for "hot sun") and have established entire ecosystems of production, from scrap sourcing to repair. The most advanced jua kali like Leonard have designed and built capital goods, such as lathes, that propel indigenous production forward. The jua kali have been largely ignored by formal institutions, regarded as a second-rate economy. Yet their drive for innovation, understanding of indigenous networks, and ability to work under extreme constraints make them ideal agents of industrialization.

More here

Related articles

• Africa's Informal Economy Revealed (fastcompany.com)
• What's in your Makers Notebook? (makezine.com)

Change has to come from Within

Greg Mills of the Brenthurst Foundation on CNN:

via CP-Africa

Related articles

• 'Africa's future prosperity depends on harnessing our potential for the benefit of all' | Mo Ibrahim (guardian.co.uk)

Elevating Traditional Medicine

Bright Simmons on adopting policies supportive of herbal medicine a key component of "indigenous industrial systems":

The policy in many African nowadays is to deemphasise brands and wherever possible to promote generics in order to rationalise costs and improve access (see an interesting take on the matter from Australia). For herbal medicines to attain the status of admission into national treatment regimes will require an unprecedented effort at standardization (see a common view from India).Ghana, for instance, has developed a basic herbal “pharmacopoeia”, which is in essence an inventory of plants and their well-tested medicinal properties. Such efforts would need to be intensified. Because until there is a clear record of carefully and systematically collated body of evidence tying some properly defined plant compound to medicinal outcomes, the integration of herbal medicines into the orthodox healthcare system would not be possible.

More here

Africa First Film Program Prizes

From the Africa First website:

Focus Features’ Africa First Program for short films, the worldwide film company’s initiative earmarked exclusively for emerging filmmakers of African nationality and residence, has for a third consecutive year awarded five filmmakers $10,000 apiece...The uniquely conceived initiative offers eligible and participating filmmakers the chance to be awarded the $10,000 in financing for pre-production, production, and/or post-production on their narrative short film made in continental Africa and tapping into the resources of the film industry there. Of equal importance, the program brings the filmmakers together with each other and with a renowned group of advisors, major figures in the African film world, for support and mentorship...[continue reading]

Related articles

• At VIFF, new perspectives on Africa (theglobeandmail.com)
• Fellows Friday with Peace Anyiam-Osigwe (ted.com)

"Corruption is the No. 1 manufacturer of Poverty"- John Githongo

John Githongo on corruption and the poverty equation:

There's a sense in which corruption is the No. 1 manufacturer of poverty. In particular, it is the No. 1 engine of creating inequalities in developing societies -- which is worse than poverty in and of itself. It's one thing having high levels of poverty, but it's a completely different thing to have stark inequalities caused by corruption and the conspicuous consumption that comes with it. [The latter] leads to political contradictions that can destabilize a nation or at the very least undermine democratic progress.

More here

Related articles

• Governance Reform From the Grassroots-John Githongo (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Mistaken Perceptions

Barrons on unseen investment opportunities:

via Tashanda

“Kinyarwanda”

In Shadow and Act:

During the Rwandan genocide, when neighbors killed neighbors and friends betrayed friends, some crossed lines of hatred to protect each other. At the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Mufti of Rwanda, the most respected Muslim leader in the country, issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims from participating in the killing of the Tutsi. As the country became a slaughterhouse, mosques became places of refuge where Muslims and Christians, Hutus and Tutsis came together to protect each other. KINYARWANDA is based on true accounts from survivors who took refuge at the Grand Mosque of Kigali and the madrassa of Nyanza...[continue reading]

Quick Hits

Shoshana Zuboff tries to explain Distributed Capitalism
African writers and marginalization-Daily Nation
Tribalism: A Personal Love Story-Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Africa's Slave Ethos?-Zambian Economist
London Film Festival ‘10 S&A Highlights “New African Cinema”-Shadow & Act