The Awkward Return of Democracy

In the FT:

It has taken just six weeks for the arrest of a fruit-and-vegetable seller in Tunisia to spark a chain of events that now threatens to topple the government of Egypt. Watching the revolt against autocracy spread across the Arab world is exciting, uplifting – and also deeply alarming for the world’s major powers, all of which are, in different ways, fond of the status quo.

The pendulum swings back:

It is ironic that the democratic movements in the Arab world broke out just as autocracy seemed to be coming back into fashion. Francis Fukuyama, whose “end of history” thesis epitomised the democratic triumphalism of 1989, recently wrote an article for this newspaper that lauded China’s ability to “make large complex decisions quickly, and to make them relatively well”, while lamenting that American democracy “will not be much of a model to anyone if the government is divided against itself and cannot govern”. This month has also seen the publication of Dambisa Moyo’s much-discussed How The West Was Lost, which laments the “economic folly” of western democracies and lauds the dynamism of China.

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Overcoming Tyranny

In Koranteng's Toli:

As the Tunisians, and now Egyptians, are currently demonstrating, this quality of "rapid, communal self-expression" is certainly not a Francophone singularity. History, contra Belloc, has forever shown that crowds can turn from inchoate to determined in mere hours. All tyrants and their Lady Macbeths are on notice. Still, a little sweat on their part, and the dismayed sensitivities of onlookers at the sight of turmoil in their marriages of convenience, are, all things considered, a small price to pay.

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Gratis Foundation & Industrialization

rack and pinion gears

"...The Gratis Foundation exists to promote industrialization by developing and disseminating technology to industry,particularly small and medium-scale enterprises...it evolved out of the Ghana Regional Appropriate Technology Industrial Service...To accomplish this mandate, GRATIS established Intermediate Technology Transfer Units (ITTUs) now designated Regional Technology Transfer Centres (RTTCs) in nine regions of Ghana to transfer appropriate technologies to small-scale industrialists through training, manufacturing and the supply of machine tools, plants and equipment..."-website

Democratization and its Discontents

In the Economist:

Every year the electoral calendar in Sub-Saharan Africa becomes more crowded, and every year most posts, from the presidency to seats in the National Assembly and town mayorships, are competed for rather than seized or bestowed. The number of elections held annually in recent years has increased; since 2000 between 15 and 20 elections have been held each year. African democracy appears to have flourished and the holding of elections has become commonplace, but not all ballots pass the test of being "free and fair" and many have been charades held by regimes clinging on to power. Similarly, coups d'état have become more infrequent, although conflict, failed governments and human-rights abuses remain widespread. For every two steps forward over the past 20 years there has been at least one step back, but the overall trend appears to be in the right direction.

Related articles

• An African half-century | Ali Mazrui (guardian.co.uk)
• Africa is democratising; here is how (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

South-South Trade and The twilight of the Post Colonial Era

Doug Saunders contends that the post colonial era is ending. Citing recent trade deals between  BRIC countries he concludes that:

Image via Wikipedia 

...What these deals have in common is that they involve “developing” countries striking deals, and entering political arrangements, that have nothing to do with either supplying the Western world with cheap goods and raw materials, asking wealthy neighbours for investment and support, or resisting economic and political overtures from the West. Until very, very recently, those sorts of transactions dominated the world.I believe we are witnessing the end of the post-colonial era in politics and economics. In China, Brazil and a dozen other countries, the type of thinking known as “post-colonial” – defined as a stark choice between angry resistance or humiliating subservience – has simply ceased to matter in political and business relations.

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The Bogey of African-French Solidarity

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe writing in Africa Resource:

Africa has been the quintessential target of French military interventionism during this period because immanent in the worldview of the French political establishment, irrespective of ideological/political colouration, none of the former French-conquered and occupied African states is really independent or sovereign by any breadth or shade of either of these definitions. Instead, according to this conception, these are francophonie backwoods, which, at best, have some measure of local administrative autonomy (hence, “francophone Africa”!), with ultimate sovereign power lodged at the metropolitan centre in Paris

More here

Related articles

• Ivory Coast's real battle (guardian.co.uk)
• Africa Needs Air Routes (nomadlaw.com)
• African in America or African American? | Mukoma Wa Ngugi (guardian.co.uk)

‘Religion is Politics’

Over at NigeriansTalk Benson Eluma on the reasons behind the religious crisis within northern Nigeria:

With its current culture of violent power relations, I don’t think that things would be different in the north (of Nigeria) if everybody was a Muslim or a Christian or an Animist, Pantheist or Atheist. People who want a fight will create one, no matter what they share in religion and ethnicity and language. If things continue this way in the north, very soon the certainties of identification, to paraphrase Farah, will be eroded and deleted. In these crises in northern Nigeria the variables of religion and ethnicity are interpenetrating and cancelling out one another. Soon, all that will be left as social residuum is the commitment to do battle on one side against all others.

More here

Related articles

• Nigeria: Life and death in a city fearful of Islamist gunmen (guardian.co.uk)
• Islamists Murder 5 Nigerian Policemen (waronterrornews.typepad.com)
• Nigerian Authorities Escalate Fight with Boko Haram (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• Boko Haram Battles Police in Maiduguri (sahelblog.wordpress.com)
• "Boko Haram Kills Three in Fresh Maiduguri Attack" and related posts (lindaikeji.blogspot.com)
• Religious clashes flare in central Nigeria (reuters.com)

Quick Hits

Why Haiti Remains Poor-The Root
Cote D’Ivoire: From grandiose lifestyle to Gbagbo’s madness-Ghana's Trash Basket
Learn about the mechanics of business and more, take a peek IFC's "SME Toolkit"
An indictment of a diminished culture-Zambian Economist
Africa needs more air routes
Venture funding for science-based African health innovation-BMC
Paul Collier reviews Dambisa Moyo's new book "How the West Was Lost".

The Economy of Africa’s Cities

Keith Hart writing in Memory Bank:

When I graduated to the field of development studies, the picture of West Africa’s cities was just as distorted as one you might get from boorowing a Manchester school perspective. Here the emphasis of the economists was on the new states’ ability to pursue a neo-Keynesian development program. How could ‘we’ (the politicians, bureaucrats and their academic advisers) provide the jobs and other needs of the hordes flocking into the cities at the time? It was assumed that such provision had to come through the bureaucracy and conform to state-made laws. My paper on ‘informal income opportunities and urban employment’ pointed to the wide range of economic activities that were invisible to bureacracy. But even I saw them through a statist lens (“seeing like a state”), hence the term ‘informal’, not regulated by the bureaucracy. At that time I assumed that the bulk of economic progress must come though public and private sector enterprise of a corporate type.
The informal economy was never adequately described or defined, but these days it is commonplace to read assertions that African economies are 70-90% ‘informal’. Certainly the deregulation undertaken over the last three decades of neoliberal economic policies have led to a radical informalization of the world economy, not least in Africa. But to label these activities ‘informal’ is to avoid identifying what they are positively for or how they are organized, by which social principles.
I would say that the last half-century has seen a massive transfer of population to the cities, where most people have been left to generate their own forms of commerce. The informal economy in this sense has been a holding operation allowing many people to survive in the city and some to flourish. Whatever is coming up next will draw to some extent on this sprawling self-organized economic activity. Our task is to find out more about the promising sectors spawned by such a development.

More here

Related articles

• Building up the Informal Economies and the role of Remittances (africaunchained.blogspot.com)
• Africa is democratising; here is how (africaunchained.blogspot.com)
• Africa and Justice: The Key to Prosperity (thedailybeast.com)

Spotlighting Women behind the Camera

Over at Africa Report:

Wanuri Kahiu

Female directors are achieving increasing success in the African film industry 
but those at the forefront want to be recognised for their skills, not their gender...Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu becomes very animated when she talks about Kathryn Bigelow’s best director Oscar this year for Hurt Locker – the first time a woman has won that award. “It’s ridiculous we had to wait this long. But even Kathryn Bigelow herself said she’d much rather be appreciated as a filmmaker than as a woman filmmaker.”

More here

Nigeria: In search of a Lula

Image via WikipediaSalisu Suleiman writes:

When Nigeria’s former military president Ibrahim Babangida was forced to ‘step aside’ in 1993 after eight years in office, he retired to his palatial hilltop mansion in Minna. He left office as one of the most unpopular personalities in the country. Similarly, when former president Olusegun Obasanjo left office after eight years in 2007, he retired to another hilltop palace in Abeokuta, also highly unpopular. By contrast, when Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva or “Lula” left office after eight years with approval ratings of 80 percent, he retired to a nondescript apartment...[continue reading]

Related articles

• Ending on a high (bbc.co.uk)
• Brazil's Lula says he might seek office again-report (reuters.com)

Law of Unintended Consequences,The Banning of refurbished Computers in Uganda

From Balancing Act:

This is story without heroes and villains but a classic case where legislation has created unintended consequences. The Government has put itself in the position where it is cutting off a supply of cheap, working computers and will need to take on the task of supplying computers to schools (Which part of the budget will that come out of?). It is seeking to deal with a small amount of the refurbished waste stream without anticipating the huge increase in e-waste that the successful adoption of new computers will bring about. Creating recycling capacity has to be the way to go and is probably cheaper than the current legal corner that the politicians have backed themselves into.

More here

South-South investment boom contd

In BeyondBrics

The sharp rebound in emerging economies since the global financial crisis owes much to the recovery in international capital flows. What is less obvious, however, is that a big chunk of new investment is coming from the emerging world itself.

According to a recent report:

FDI outflows from developing countries rose to an estimated $195bn – or 1.1 per cent of their gross domestic product – in 2010. This is only a fraction below the previous record of $207bn in 2008, which they are predicted to smash over the next two years , soaring to $250bn in 2011 and $275bn in 2012.

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We can't engineer the result we want in Ivory Coast

William Easterly writes in the Guardian:

Image via Wikipedia

A popular topic in the aid blogosphere this week was not about Haiti or Ivory Coast or south Sudan but about complex systems, ie systems that cannot be reduced to a simple mathematical or statistical model, where actions often have unintended effects. Yet this seemingly abstruse topic has surprising relevance to the Ivory Coast debate (and perhaps the others as well). One would want to be very careful making aggressive recommendations in a complex system whose principles are not very well understood.
Civil conflict is a great candidate for such an irreducibly unpredictable system. Civil conflict features political and military leaders on both sides, the general population is divided, and each side of the population contains an array of different interest groups. For every move by one player, there will be counter-moves by the other players, then counter-moves to the counter-moves, and so on...[continue reading]

Related articles

• UN vehicles attacked in Ivory Coast (cbc.ca)
• Russia faces pressure on Ivory coast - Financial Times (news.google.com)
• The financial war in Ivory Coast: Five key questions answered - Christian Science Monitor (news.google.com)

A Global Conversation on Conflict-Conflict Convo

A global conversation on conflict at ConflictConvo:

Sightlines and African Urbanism

Dwell speaks with Erika Gee about the upcoming "Sightlines" lecture series. One of the questions was:

courtesy of Dwell

"The talks range in location from South Africa to quite literally Timbuktu. Tell me about that Timbuktu lecture and what it hopes to say about architectural cross-pollination across the continent.
That lecture looks at West African architecture and how often times academics are quick to treat it as something apart from the rest of Africa and particularly North Africa. But curator Labelle Prussin looks at the Jewish influence in Timbuktu and tries to make connections between West Africa and North Africa. She sees an influence in architecture, art, and commerce, and makes the point that West Africa is really an area with a number of different styles.

More here

Related articles

• Timbuktu: A journey to Africa's lost city of gold (thegrio.com)
• Journey to Timbuktu: the lost city of gold (msnbc.msn.com)
• Senegalese artist Viyé Diba At Columbia (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• On Négrologie (loomnie.com)

Committee for Relevant Art

The committee for relevant art characterises itself as "...Cultural 'Landscapists'. The MISSION is to create an enabling environment for the flourishing of the contemporary arts of Nigeria and to increase human capacity of the continent. VISION is to make Culture the Prime Investment Destination for the Country and the Continent by 2018..."

A New Gold Rush?

More hype about Africa's consumers in the WSJ no talk about the continent's lack of a manufacturing base:

"Africa’s Hope" or "Old School Nationalism" ?

Keith Hart in response to Chinua Achebe's recent piece on  Nigeria’s promise, Africa’s Hope writes:

"This is old school nationalist history of the sort that misled Africans at the time of independence; Achebe’s vision of world history is narrow and backward-looking; the programme advocated, such as it is, takes no account of contemporary world society or of the forces within it that might support African emancipation at whatever level of association; he repeats the mistake of focusing exclusively on politics and law (“seek ye first the political kingdom”); and deals with the economic conditions of democracy only through their negation as excessive ill-begotten wealth. The thinking behind this piece, in other words, has not moved on since the mid-twentieth century."

More here
For further discussion read Loomnie's analysis

How Syria nurtures Innovation

Zeky Al Drobe writing SciDev:

Syrian academics are hailing a scheme to nurture inventors a success following a string of patent applications and international prizes for their students' work.The Science of Invention and Development (SID) Team in Syrian Universities has been running for more than a decade and aims to train Master's students and graduates on how to be inventors in their chosen fields...Osama Alchiekh, one of the team's main trainers, said that the 2010 course was the eighth since the initiative began in 1997. He said that SID is a mentoring programme rather than just a training course. "The trainers work hand-in-hand with the trainees to develop their inventions, as we are all science researchers."Fikrat Almahdi, manager of the invention office in Albaath University, said the SID team focuses on breaking the students' stereotypical thinking, which builds up from accumulating information but not using it...[continue reading]

Low Life Expectancies

The BetumiBlog asks:

Why is the life expectancy of Ghanaians (replace with most of Africa) less than 57 years? What are the links among African cuisines, diets, health, popular cultures, and quality of life? These are all questions that interest me. As a writer, blogger, and editor, I'm particularly interested in ways folks communicate about these topics--topics I believe are sadly neglected by development experts...[continue reading]

Nigeria’s Promise, Africa’s Hope

Chinua Achebe writing in the NYTimes:

What can Nigeria do to live up the promise of its postcolonial dream? First, we will have to find a way to do away with the present system of political godfatherism. This archaic practice allows a relative handful of wealthy men — many of them half-baked, poorly educated thugs — to sponsor their chosen candidates and push them right through to the desired political position, bribing, threatening and, on occasion, murdering any opposition in the process. We will have to make sure that the electoral body overseeing elections is run by widely respected and competent officials, chosen by a nonpartisan group free of governmental influence or interference.
And we have to find a way to open up the political process to every Nigerian. Today, we have a system where only those individuals who can pay an exorbitant application fee and finance a political campaign can vie for the presidency. It would not surprise any close observer to discover that in this inane system, the same unsavory characters who have destroyed the country and looted the treasury are the ones able to run for the presidency.

Concluding:

In the end, I foresee that the Nigerian solution will come in stages. First we have to nurture and strengthen our democratic institutions — and strive for the freest and fairest elections possible. That will place the true candidates of the people in office. Within the fabric of a democracy, a free press can thrive and a strong justice system can flourish. The checks and balances we have spoken about and the laws needed to curb corruption will then naturally find a footing.

More here

Related articles

• Chinua Achebe: A life in writing (guardian.co.uk)
• Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Musician-turned-Musical (3quarksdaily.com)

Young thinkers connect with Cogito

"...On Cogito, you can learn about amazing scientists your own age, what they're doing and how they managed to do it. You can read news and features on topics ranging from global warming to bioethics to nanotechnology. You can explore the intersection of science and the arts, from computer animation to science fiction. You can find great resources including recommended web sites and webcasts, and searchable listings of summer and distance-education programs, internships, and academic competitions. And if you are a member, you can participate in online interviews with experts in various fields and in discussion forums with other members like you..."-website

How Federalism bolsters Ethiopia's Unity

In light of Sudan's impending partition we take a look Ethiopia's ability to maintain its unity. Aaron Maasho reporting in Reuters:

When Meles Zenawi's rebels closed in on Addis Ababa in the early months of 1991, their biggest threat did not come from Mengistu Haile Mariam's army but from a potential breakup of Ethiopia.The group was about to end centuries of Amhara domination over the country's 70 ethnic groups, but some feared Ethiopia's long marginalised regions might seek to cut loose, as Eritrea eventually did later.Two decades on, Ethiopia remains one nation. Meles, now prime minister, says the country's "balkanisation" was only averted by an ethnicity-based federal system...In a continent where colonial powers arbitrarily drew frontiers indifferent to ethnic divisions, Meles said last month that Ethiopia only survived as a nation by granting autonomy to its provinces -- as well as the right to secede."The successful management of our diversity has become one of the pillars of the ongoing Ethiopian renaissance," he said,

More here

Related articles

• Egypt rejects Meles rebel claims (bbc.co.uk)

Africa’s urban revolution in the 20th century

In Memory Bank:

...Africa’s new leaders thought they were generating modern economies, with ambitions for public expenditure to match, but in reality they were erecting fragile states whose economic base was the same backward agriculture as before. As Frantz Fanon predicted, this weakness inexorably led them to exchange the democratic legitimacy of the independence struggle for dependence on foreign powers. These ruling elites first relied on revenues from agricultural exports, then on loans contracted under dubious circumstances, finally on the financial monopoly that came from being licensed to supervise their country’s relations with global capitalism. But this bonanza was switched off in the 1980s, when foreign capital felt that it could dispense with the mediation of local state powers and concentrated on collecting debts from them. Many governments were made bankrupt and some simply collapsed into civil war.

More here

Sudan is a warning to all of Africa

Mo Ibrahim writes:

Sudan has been an experiment that resonated across Africa: if we, the largest country on the continent, reaching from the Sahara to the Congo, bridging religions, cultures and a multitude of ethnicities, were able to construct a prosperous and peaceful state from our diverse citizenry, so too could the rest of Africa.That we have failed should sound a warning to all Africans. Sudan, at one million square miles, is the continent’s largest country, sharing borders with nine other states. The fault lines that have divided us as a people extend from Eritrea to Nigeria. If Sudan starts to crumble, the shock waves will spread.Khartoum today projects a sense of normality, modernity and relative affluence. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the country. Lack of investment, underdevelopment and the exclusion of populations on the periphery from the political process has resulted in alienation. It has strengthened local identities.We have not nurtured that sense of brotherhood and unity. Rather, since independence the way Sudan has been governed has undermined any potential for a common Sudanese purpose.

More here

Has the Church Failed Us?

The problem with pervasive religiosity,Wana Udobang writing in Bella Naija:

We don’t need more canopies, cordless microphones, megaphones and another architectural edifice in an already over-crowded metropolis. We need responsible people using the skills and gifts that God has put inside of them. With all said, the church is a community, and though communities have leaders, we as individuals make that community. So maybe the new question we should ask is: Have ‘we’ failed ‘us’?

More here

Go South Young Man

In the Economist:

MUCH has been written about the rise of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and the shift in economic power eastward as Asia outruns the rest of the world. But the surprising success story of the past decade lies elsewhere. An analysis by The Economist finds that over the ten years to 2010, no fewer than six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies were in sub-Saharan Africa...[continue reading]

Related articles

• Emerging Countries after Brazil, India and China (nextbigfuture.com)
• South Africa to Join BRIC to Boost Emerging Markets (businessweek.com)

Redraw the Borders?

Revisiting the borders,Jeffery Gettleman writes in the NYTimes:

More than any other continent, Africa is wracked by separatists. There are rebels on the Atlantic and on the Red Sea. There are clearly defined liberation movements and rudderless, murderous groups known principally for their cruelty or greed. But these rebels share at least one thing: they direct their fire against weak states struggling to hold together disparate populations within boundaries drawn by 19th-century white colonialists...[continue reading]

Related articles

• Analysis: Sudan vote unlikely to be embraced as a precedent (reuters.com)

Award winning Okapi Radio

In Global Voices:

...the International Press Institute (IPI) granted the “Free Media Pioneer” to Okapi Radio, the UN radio in the Democratic Republic of Congo, created by the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the D.R. of Congo MONUSCO and the Swiss NGO Fondation Hirondelle. The radio has been broadcasting since 2002 in an effort to contribute to the peace building process in the country...[continue reading]

Quick Hits

Cameroon becomes a tourism destination-Global Voices
"Copycat Dictators and Cartoon Democracies..." Alemayehu G. Mariam in Ethiopian Review
"Formal education is not advancing Africa"-Nana Yaw Asiedu
Ivory Coast's descent into madness-Richard Dowden
Taking a look at Land 'Grabs' in Africa-African Arguments
African Export Successes by William Easterly & Ariell Reshef

Transforming Africa through ideas

Tolu Ogunlesi at TEDxEuston:

If there’s one thing TED makes clear, it is the absurdity of trying to fit high-achieving individuals into neat boxes. Listening to all these people speak, one would inevitably realise that if their lives could be captured by one word it would not be a job or profession, or even a singular achievement or series of achievements, but by a “quest” - to defy convention, conquer uncharted territory, and help in bringing transformation to their societies.

On the need for an ethical revolution:

For this to be Africa’s decade, massive investments in infrastructure are needed, alongside legal and policy reforms to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. But, perhaps, most crucial will be the fight against corruption...Undoubtedly, the efficacy of the revolutionary ideas that will solve Africa’s many problems will depend on the success of an accompanying ethical revolution.

more here

Related articles

• Mo Ibrahim: "A good African boy who did not forget his people" (leaderswedeserve.wordpress.com)

Changing Education Paradigms-Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert on changing paradigms:

The Economic Stakes Behind “Africa’s World War”

From the Achebe Colloquium On Africa. An overview of a devastating prototypical resource based world war in the Congo.Watch the video here

Njawara Agricultural Training Centre (NATC)

Badara Jobe,Ashoka Fellow and founder of Njawara Agricultural Training Centre

...has developed an approach that cultivates and strengthens farmers’ abilities to produce successful crop yields despite climate changes.His core insight is that fluctuations in an already short rainy season introduce a new and complicating set of variables for farmers. Even a missed day of rain or slight decreases in rainfall intensity over a few days can jeopardize certain crops in ways that were not previously understood. What is needed is not simply agricultural diversification, but hedging strategies that involve cultivation in precisely calibrated but small areas for a range of different crops tied to particular seed varieties

AfricaLab

Founded by Zina Saro Wiwa:

AfricaLab is a production company dedicated to re-imagining Africa through visual media, principally film and art. We produce films, contemporary art projects and other live events that we hope inspire people to look at the continent and her peoples with fresh eyes.

Formalization Challenges for the Informal

Lauren Citrome in CIPE:

When businesses are informal, they do not have recourse to legal protection. When a corrupt official comes to collect a bribe, they do not have any formal means to contest. An informal business owner cannot easily grow his or her operations because without formal registration papers, there is less access to capital. If a business cannot use legal dispute-resolution mechanisms, there is increased risk for hiring employees outside of one’s family.
In many countries, however, prohibitive barriers to formalization keep entrepreneurs in the informal sector. For example, business registration offices may be located only in major cities and rural entrepreneurs cannot access them. Formalization may also entail an overly burdensome tax responsibility. In some cases, business owners lack the information and know-how to register their businesses, even if they wanted to do so.

More here

Related articles

• How Small Businesses Can Fight Corruption (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Tanzania's Anti Corruption Tracker System

In Tanzania:

"...The purpose of the Anti Corruption Tracker System (CTS) is to keep track record of publicly available information on presumed or confirmed cases of corruption in order to increase accountability and responsiveness in the fight against corruption..."

Its aims are:

• To building a data bank of cases on presumed and confirmed cases on corruption
• Increasing transparency and accountability of cases
• Increasing citizen engagement in the fight against corruption
• Establishing an electronic quick archive that can be accessed to monitor cases on corruption
• Establishing a mechanism that can used as an instrument to assist state institutions to take action in response against corruption behaviours
• To provide an electronic medium between the state institutions and public on issues related to corruption.

Related articles

• Anti-corruption activists honored as patriots (lookatvietnam.com)
• BAE is linked to Tanzania 'bribe' (bbc.co.uk)
• BAE pays fine to settle Tanzania corruption probe (telegraph.co.uk)