A New Global Cultural Revolution

Brink Lindsey in CSMonitor:

As poverty recedes, a new global middle class is emerging. Twenty years ago, the middle class – those who make between $10 and $100 a day – made up one-third of the world population. By 2006, it was closer to three-fifths, estimates economist Surjit Bhalla. That increase represents the crossing of a crucially important threshold: Disposable income has gone from the exception to the rule. For the first time ever, most people around the world can now make meaningful choices about their material surroundings.
Filling bellies, fulfilling egos
The rise of the global middle class will have a profound impact on the center of economic and political gravity, shifting it eastward and southward, from North America and Europe toward Africa, Latin America, and Asia. But just as important is the global cultural revolution that is now under way.

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Centres of Excellence and the Brain Drain

Sophie Rivière of the International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering writes in SciDev:

Centres of excellence offer internationally recognized curricula and state-of-the-art research facilities, providing a more affordable alternative in a better suited environment where teaching is in tune with the local context.These centres are investing heavily in the quality of education they are providing, gradually reducing the gap between institutions in the North and those in the South. They are also increasing their capacity to admit more students.

More here

Related articles

• Brain drain: Understanding the root causes (drkokogyi.wordpress.com)

Chasing Riches Finding Only Squalor

More on the "Home might be a better option theme" in the NYTimes:

Marta Ramoneda for The New York Time

In his West African homeland, Mr. Jallow’s salary was the equivalent of just 50 euros a month, barely enough for the necessities, he said. And everywhere in his neighborhood in Serekunda, Gambia’s largest city, there was talk of easy money to be made in Europe.
Now he laughs bitterly about all that talk. He lives in a patch of woods here in southern Spain, just outside the village of Palos de la Frontera, with hundreds of other immigrants. They have built their homes out of plastic sheeting and cardboard, unsure if the water they drink from an open pipe is safe. After six years on the continent, Mr. Jallow is rail thin, and his eyes have a yellow tinge.“We are not bush people,” he said recently as he gathered twigs to start a fire. “You think you are civilized. But this is how we live here. We suffer here.”

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Universities and a “corrosive culture of consultancy.”

Aidwatch highlights a speech by Mahmood Mamdani where he states that:

...intellectual life in universities has been reduced to bare-bones classroom activity. Extra-curricular seminars and workshops have migrated to hotels. Workshop attendance goes with transport allowances and per diem. All this is part of a larger process, the NGO-ization of the university. Academic papers have turned into corporate-style power point presentations. Academics read less and less. A chorus of buzz words have taken the place of lively debates…

Promise Unfulfilled in Nigeria

In Techrunch Sarah Lacy writes about unfulfilled promise in Nigeria:

Image courtesy of Techcrunch

Ever since he could remember, Ibrahim Boakye had a knack for understanding how things worked. There were things he could just do that no other kids– let alone adults– could understand. By the time he was five-years-old everyone had stopped questioning it, and neighbors were calling on him to fix their broken toasters, irons, or anything that was the least bit mechanical.
By his early teens, he was getting things out of the dump and fixing them for fun. Soon after that, he was teaching himself to code. He’s made an outsized living no one in his family could have anticipated by outsmarting other people on computers ever since. It’s never been about money or even in those early days about doing good deeds around the neighborhood. He gets an intoxicating rush from solving the hardest technical problem he can find and from knowing that he’s the best...[continue reading]

Another reason for setting up hackerspaces across the continent

Congo: Rape, Savagery, and Stereotypes, the Heart of Darkness

From Crisis in Congo, Howard French on depictions of rape and the DRC:

Vast numbers of Western observers have descended on the Congo, not to analyse or understand, but to search for the germ of human wickedness: to uncover African barbarism, and the essentially evil nature of humanity itself. In place of any analysis of the immense political complexities and the international dimension to the conflict in a country the size of Western Europe, we have borderline pornographic descriptions of instances of brutality and hysterical comparisons with the Holocaust.

via Friends of the Congo

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Growth? Its about Agriculture and Manufacturing

Claire Melamed in the Guardian:

A worker moves brass tubes at a factory in Zhuji, Zhejiang province. In China, it was agricultural growth that started to reduce poverty; manufacturing jobs actually contributed less. Image: AP

There's a not-unreasonable assumption, based mainly on the experience of east Asia, that building up low-skilled manufacturing industries, such as clothing or electronics, would create jobs that reduce poverty. And the creation of export-processing zones have often been recommended by donors to attract investors to these sectors. But, to reduce poverty, jobs in agriculture or services are just as important. In China, it was agricultural growth that really kick-started poverty reduction; manufacturing jobs actually contributed less. In many countries it's the services sector – providing haircuts, selling food, cleaning houses – that is the real growth area for jobs. The potential for expansion in any sector is finite, and too much focus on any one sector is almost certain to reach a dead end before too long. The key is a mix of sectors and the ability to move people and money easily between them.

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The Internet Education Revolution

NextWeb on how the web is changing education:

As connection speeds increase and the ubiquity of the Internet pervades, digital content reigns. And in this era, free education has never been so accessible. The Web gives lifelong learners the tools to become autodidacts, eschewing exorbitant tuition and joining the ranks of other self-taught great thinkers in history such as Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Paul Allen and Ernest Hemingway...[continue reading]

Learn more about one of these tools P2Pu here:

Peer 2 Peer University 2010 from P2P University on Vimeo.

An Inflexion Point for African Growth?

In The FT:

“The question for executives at consumer packaged goods companies is no longer whether their firms should enter the region, but where and how,” A.T. Kearney, the management consultancy, wrote in recent research that found west African subsidiaries achieving nearly twice the profit margins of their parent groups. Other research amassing at investment banks and international financial institutions highlights the potential for Africa – or at least parts of it – to become a significant driver of global economic expansion in coming years.
No one sensible believes that the road will be smooth for all of sub-Saharan Africa. But in almost every sector demand outstrips supply. “The reality is Africa is probably 30 years behind China and 20 years behind India on the developmental curve in that regard, so I think the Chinese and Indians will start to look at parts of Africa as potential sites for low-cost manufacturing and outsourcing and things like that,” says Michael Lalor of Ernst & Young.

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Jacobs Cross-A Drama Series

In Shadow and Act:

Have a brief look at this South African TV drama series titled Jacob’s Cross, which centers on powerful oil magnates fighting control over Africa’s vast off-shore oil resources. At the heart of the narrative is businessman Jacob Makhubu (played by Hlomla Dandala) and his quest to build the “next great African empire.”...The series, now in its 4th season, set in both South Africa and Nigeria, and is broadcast weekly, on channels throughout the African continent.
The series has won some international acclaim, including star, Hlomla Dandala, who recently received a Creative Achievement Award, on behalf of the show, at the Los Angeles-based The Pan African Film Festival in mid-February; and it’s received 3 nominations in the upcoming Monte-Carlo Television Festival which takes place in June.

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Nomfusi Gotyana-Singer

Think Africa interviews Nomfusi Gotyana:

Have you found it hard to break into the South African music industry?

South Africa is a cool place to be a singer. It’s such a diverse country - there are so many different people, so many different languages. This means that you learn new things in every town. Our music industry is growing really fast, so there are new challenges every day. But yeah, it’s a cool place to be. I’ve made it thanks to the great artists that we have in South Africa; people like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela - they’ve paved the road for me. It’s easier for us young artists to do our thing at home now, and we also have the confidence to then move on to international tours.

'Chocolate Country' into Co-Op Country

Lessons for Africa's chocolate producers from a Dominican co-op :

In the backcountry of the Dominican Republic, poor cacao farmers have been fighting a losing battle with the global economy for as long as anyone can remember. But the thriving Loma Guaconejo cooperative has found a way to turn the system on its head. "For us, the cooperative was like electricity...[continue reading]

via Next Billion

Malawi's Radio Farming Forum

In the New Agriculturist:

courtesy of Story Workshop

"Knowledge is like fire; you get it from your neighbour," explains Malawian radio producer Gladson Makowa, based in Blantyre. He should know; his radio programme, Mwana Alirenji, is the only media programme in the country to provide a national forum for dialogue amongst ordinary smallscale farmers, encouraging thousands to become food secure by listening to each other.

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Production Trumps Consumption

Rob Davies, SA Minister for Trade and Industry argues:

...that African economies need to move up the value chain of production and diversify their economies away from extraction, and, in the South African case, the consumption-driven sectors.

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Godfrey Mwampembwa-Cartoonist

Recently announced Ford Foundation Visionary Godfrey Mwampembwa, founder of the XYZshow:

Image courtesy of Ford Foundation

...has increased awareness of social and political issues, encouraged public participation in discussions about governance and reminded elected officials of their responsibility to the public...

In related video Gado discusses his work in relation to the 2009 Kenyan crisis

The Potential of Cameroon’s Diaspora-driven Cyberspace

Dibussi Tande writing in Scribbles from the Den:

It is no surprise that the internet, which is the primary tool of communication among Cameroonian communities in the Diaspora and between Cameroonians in the Diaspora and Cameroonians at home, would become an area of focal concern for the government of Cameroon. Simply put, the Biya regime has never viewed Cameroonian cyberspace as a viable space for civic engagement and public discourse, instead, it sees it as a threat to the regime – a space that must be controlled, co-opted, contained, or simply coerced into submission.

More here
via Up Station Mountain Club

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"Robot Artists" from Zimbabwe

A short documentary on Zimbabwean émigrés and creatives eking out a living in Cape Town:

Robot Artists from African Cartel on Vimeo.
via Afropolitan Network

"How I Came to Study Nuclear Physics at AIM's"-Buthaina Abdall Sulemian

From Next Einstein:

Born in Darfur and raised in Khartoum, Butheina's father wanted his only daughter to be an educated person. She went on to graduate from university with a degree in chemistry. At AIMS, she overcame several obstacles, and completed the year with a project in nuclear physics and now is getting her Masters in the same field.

Growth but no Jobs

In Think Africa amidst all the hoopla around "African growth". James Schneider writing from the recently concluded WEF conference states:

Photo courtesy of Think Africa

Governments across the continent need to do more than formulate policies towards labour absorption. African economies face a much greater difficulty, which from time to time emerged during WEF. As Charles Dan (Africa Director of the International Labour Organisation) stated, “growth is not creating jobs or reducing poverty”. This is because African economies are, in general, too focused on extractive industries. Their prosperity is often tied to demand from China and elsewhere. If these patterns of investment shift, economic growth will slide backwards without much of a firm, endogenous and sustainable footing to support it. Governments will be accused of not fixing the roof when the sun was shinning. Then real instability will reign.

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"How We Can Build Civil Institutions"-Patrick Awuah

Patrick Awuah on how to break the cycle of civil disorder al la Cote d' Voire:

The real question for the international community to consider is this: What steps are being taken in Africa, right now, to lay the groundwork for stronger civil institutions and lasting economic progress, thus mitigating future conflict? In my mind there are three foundational opportunities

• First, build better social cohesion through education 
• Second, fight corruption from the bottom up.
• Third, foster a robust, diversified economy, where initiative and entrepreneurship are rewarded.

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"We Have to Sink or Swim Ourselves"-Henri Chinery Hesse

In Poverty Cure
Henri Chinery-Hesse "I don't know of any country in the world where a bunch of foreigners came and developed the country..."

Why the Book is still King in Africa

From the Cassava Republic Blog:

Cover via Amazon

While the West is fretting about the e-book revolution, in Africa, it’s not even a factor for the majority of people. Although changing slowly, there is still a large technological gap on the continent. Much has been made about the growing “Facebook generation,” but the truth is that only a small percentage of people have access to the internet and fewer still have access to e-readers; millions of people will live their lives without ever seeing a computer, let alone a Kindle. In countries where constant electricity is considered as a luxury, there is still an enormous need for the physical book. In tiny villages across Nigeria, families can still point to their palm-oil stained copies of classic books. And the fact that copies of our books have been sighted in the remotest of villages in Nigeria shows that the physical book is still very much important here.

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Dilomprizulike's Junkmania

A look at the work of Dil Humphrey-Umezulike, in Utne Reader:

Dilomprizulike, the self-proclaimed 'junk man of Africa,' is among the most enigmatic of artists. He creates sculptures and performances that are tied deeply to traditional African masquerade yet informed by postmodern awareness. He lives in what seems to be a junkyard in a permanent performance, recycling the detritus of Lagos into artwork, clothes, a home, and a way of life that questions much of what we take for granted.

While a Mostyn Gallery profile stated:

Presenting the un-presentable; valuing the worthless; appreciating the depreciated; taking the outcasts inside; embracing the untouchable: this is the Junkyard Museum of Awkward Things as described by its creator, the self-styled ‘Junkman From Afrika’. As Dilomprizulike, he was named by the Independent newspaper as one of the fifty greatest cultural figures shaping his native continent.-

Where is Africa's Catalytic Class?

Responding to a report that 1 in 3 Africans are in the middle class Andy Sumner and Nancy Birdsall write in the Guardian:

...is someone living on just over $2 a day "middle class"? Two dollars is the average poverty line for developing countries, meaning you're poor or middle class – but what about in between?

On definitions:

Courtesy of SACCA

There are various definitions of middle class in what is a burgeoning area of interest for poverty reduction research – stimulated perhaps by ideas about the middle classes as change-makers or catalysts.

Or should we be looking at those with a 'A Culture of Production'

Courtesy of travelpod

What about the idea of a catalytic class? This is the idea: the catalytic class is a group, whose expansion triggers internally driven, self-sustaining, political and economic change, a group whose exertion of pressure for better governance and economic reform leads to change when the class hits a certain size (in population or economic or tax revenue size). The interests of this class coincide with the interests of the poor.

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Africa's Consumers on Par With China's and India's

In the WSJ:

Sustained economic growth in Africa has produced for the first time a broad middle class, one that cuts across the continent and is on par with the size of the middle classes in the billion-person emerging markets of China and India.The rise of a middle class in the world's poorest continent is a dramatic marker for the global economy. At a time when the U.S., Europe and Japan are struggling to grow, Africa is beginning to beckon as a consumer of what other nations produce, thanks in part to a young population more upwardly mobile than ever before...[continue reading]

What the World Got Wrong in Côte D'Ivoire

Thabo Mbeki writing in the FP:

...the international community insisted that what Côte d'Ivoire required to end its crisis was to hold democratic elections, even though the conditions did not exist to conduct such elections. Though they knew that this proposition was fundamentally wrong, the Ivorians could not withstand the international pressure to hold the elections.However, the objective reality is that the Ivorian presidential elections should not have been held when they were held. It was perfectly foreseeable that they would further entrench the very conflict it was suggested they would end.

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'Wrust'-Rockers from Botswana

Africa's music scene continues to evolve. Watch Botswana's, Wrust.

Read related Vice piece on Botswana's Metalheads

courtesy of Vice

Quick Hits

SOS Malabo intends to, effectively, mobilise people all over the world in favor of the oppressed people of Equatorial Guinea.
Unrest in Algeria: The window is closing fast
'Guangzhou's Great Multi-Modal Transit System' a model for Lagos,Cairo,Nairobi?
Temperatures rise around the Nile Waters
Wonda Wendy a Gabonese hip-hop artist
Nigeria's Mad Men

The Salt of the Earth-A portrait of an ordinary Nigerian

Tolu Ogunlesi in 3QuarksDaily:

courtesy of Tolu Ogunlesi

Lagos is the Land where the Sun Never Sets on the Hungry Human Stomach. Every vacant spot in every business district cries out (successfully) for occupation by a woman – or band of women – armed with firewood, giant steel pots, and a talent for kidnapping the affections of human stomachs.Iya Seun ("Seun's mother") is one of them. She makes a living selling fried yam, fish and bean-cakes (akara) next to a wall at one end of Olosa Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. I imagine that the smoke from her “kitchen” mingles happily with that emerging from the luxurious kitchens of the nearby 5-star Eko Hotels – evidence perhaps of the classlessness that distinguishes smoke from the human existence.

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Western Business School Curricula's are Inappropriate for Africa

In How we made it ,Walter Baets on the mis-match between Western Business School training and African economies:

Walter Baets

...most of the classical business schools’ models are designed for stable economies where everything is foreseeable. Executives operating in complex emerging markets with high uncertainty and inequality, however, need unique qualities to succeed.“Emerging market thinking goes beyond the geographical emerging markets. For me it is all about thinking how are you as a leader able to take responsibility in an economy that is changing every day. That is something you would rather learn in an emerging market business school, than in a stable (western) business school,”...[continue reading]

Original FT article here

Viva Riva! "Riva Arrives"

Another sign of Congo's rising, bountiful but unrecognized creativity.Hollywood Reporter reviews Viva Riva!:

A crime thriller about a nasty gang war ignited by a fuel crisis in Congo, Viva Riva! never runs out of gas. Driven by its charismatic upstart gangster protagonist Riva, the film is one joyride that knows it will careen into a spectacular crash. Djo Tunda wa Munga captures the particular vibe released by this mixture of carpe diem and self-destructive instinct...[continue reading]

Watch clip after the jump

Anas Aremeyaw Anas-Investigative Journalist

The Atlantic profiles Anas Aremeyaw Anas founder of Name and Shame Ghana:

Image courtesy of Steve Voss

The Accra Psychiatric Hospital occupies a sprawling block in the heart of Ghana’s capital. Walls the color of aged parchment rim the compound, with coils of concertina wire balanced on top, making the hospital within appear more labor camp than home for the sick. Anas Aremeyaw Anas spent seven months last year casing it, posing first as a taxi driver and then as a baker. On the morning of November 20, 2009, Anas adopted yet another disguise, matting his hair into dreadlocks and pulling on a black button-up top. Three of his shirt buttons, along with his watch, contained hidden cameras. Escorted by a friend pretending to be his uncle, Anas shuffled through the black metal entrance gate and, feigning madness, into the mental hospital.
None of the doctors or nurses had any idea that this new patient, who called himself Musa Akolgo, was in fact Ghana’s most celebrated investigative journalist. Over the past 10 years, Anas has gone undercover dozens of times, playing everything from an imam to a crooked cop. Hardly anyone in the country knows his face. Photos of him on the Internet are either masked or digitally doctored. (He claims to own more than 30 wigs.)...[continue reading]

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