Quick Hits

"Pastor Adeboye's private jet"- Ebenezer Obadare 
Africa's False Prophets 
Welcoming the Goodluck generation
A peek at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung media programme
Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo on what they think drives the poor
Africa needs its own indicators of scientific innovation

Mohammed Yusuf's Madina Hospital

In Al Jazeera, 'If I was sane, I would have fled!'- Dr Mohammed Yusuf founder of Madina Hospital Mogadishu recounts his work:

Image Dr Mohammed Yusuf Photo: Abdi Hassan/IRIN

"The difference between a robot and a human being are feelings," he observes. "I have grown numb to almost everything that goes on around me. Very few things move me," he told me as he did his early morning rounds."If I was normal and had my feelings intact, I would have fled like the thousands fleeing my country every month," he says. The only thing that keeps him going, he says, is the knowledge that he is saving lives.

More here
BBC Slideshow of the hospital

Denis Mukwege | Activist Doctor

CS Monitor reports on the work of physician Denis Mukwege:

Image of Denis Mukwege courtesy of King Baudouin Foundation

“Everyday I operate on 10 women,” says Mukwege. “And there are hundreds more who are waiting.”Mukwege and his staff at Panzi have treated more than 30,000 women, most of them survivors of sexual assault, since he opened the hospital in 1999. Since then, a vicious war that has displaced and killed millions of Congolese has officially ended – yet, every day, Mukwege meets more women with lives and bodies ravaged by violence...[continue reading]

Women of the Arab Spring

Bombastic Elements highlights a documentary about:

4 Egyptian women - a student, a cancer researcher, an art curator and a journalist advocate - in the trenches of the revolution

Four Women, One Revolution from Granta magazine on Vimeo.

A Letter to the Congolese People

Kambale Musavuli asks the people of Congo a series of questions:

What sacrifices are we willing to make so that our brothers and sisters in Congo can live peacefully as we do in America? What kind of sacrifices are we making so that our Congolese children can go to school as they do here, so that our young mothers are not widowed, so that our sisters are not raped, so that our brothers are not joining militias because there is no better option, so that people do not go hungry in the most fertile land in Africa? What sacrifices are we willing to make so that our Congolese families can live in dignity, as we do here? WHAT SACRIFICE ARE WE MAKING!
We are the ones who will rebuild our beautiful country. We need you in every sector of life. The world will help us, but they won’t fight for our country. The world would put pressure on their governments but will not elect our leaders in 2011. The world will advocate for us but will not reform our political system for us.

More here

Africa's Imaginary Gay Crisis

Ebenezer Obadare writing in the New Humanist:

The situation in both Zimbabwe and Nigeria seems to validate the link between material privation and political suggestibility. Where people are poor and poorly educated (or not at all), they are more susceptible to political manipulation by demagogues who parrot easy explanations for complex and fundamentally rational economic problems. In most of Africa today, the insidious fiction that the “gay next door” bars the way to economic progress has been the cue for a massive pink-hunt.

On the influence of Pentecostals:

As a social phenomenon, one with key transnational connections, Pentecostal Christianity in Africa has carried a moralist and doggedly anti-intellectual banner. On the one hand, Pentecostalism manifests as a moralising force that narrates Africa’s economic and political crises as an inevitable outcome of public immorality (and what can be more immoral than two men or two women going at it in their bedroom?), a situation, it would seem, that can only be rectified by a collective return to the straight and narrow. As an anti-intellectual force, Pentecostalism in Africa is profoundly ahistorical in that it eschews human, especially political, agency in favor of pseudo-spiritual “explanations”.

More here

Toumani Diabate

Toumani Diabate appears on Al Jazeera's One on One

Image courtesy of eye for talent

Malian musician Toumani Diabate's family history includes 71 generations of kora players preceding him. His father, Sidiki Diabate, recorded the first kora album in the 1970s, which became a platform for Toumani's growing success at a young age. His own recording career began in England in the 1980s with his solo album Kaira. In addition to performing traditional Malian music, he collaborates across cultures to introduce a wide range of global blends, including flamenco, American jazz, blues and classical instrumentation...[continue reading]

Quick Hits

Sudan turns to farms as income from oil wanes
What Next For Egypt's Forgotten Minority?
Togo: Fragile Truce Emerges After Five Weeks of Student Protests ·
How did ignorance become history?

Mental Enslavement and More

Jenerali Ulimwengu in The East African:

If there is something that has done greater damage to the African than even the most brutal forms of physical and material abuse, it is the mental enslavement, the utter psychological annihilation, the cultural strangulation and the spiritual emasculation that foreign invaders visited on us, and which we have apparently agreed to perpetuate.

On Slavery:

the fact is we weren’t the first victims, although we seem determined to remain the only ones still around.

and the peril of Aid:

The shedding of our names and the adoption of strange names goes with other attitudes, such as the feeling that we cannot do anything to better our lot without foreign assistance; the belief that even our resources can only have value if we hand them to the foreigner, who will then give us whatever he thinks we deserve

Continue reading

The Bandying of Cliche's

Nicholas Kristof's Africa, Andrea Bohnstedt writes in the Star

Kristof tells a story of ‘Africa’ firmly through the lense of a humanitarian NGO fundraiser – there is little notion of a continent turning itself around in this succession of people whose condition improves from wretchedness to bare survival thanks to Western-funded charities. He could have come to Kenya: there’s a good bit of wretchedness here, too, what with the famine in the Horn, and Kibera is a tried and tested (in fact, internationally famous) showcase for urban poverty. But Kristof and his travel mates could have also met up with Martin Oduor Otieno to hear a bit more about KCB’s regional expansion, with Airtel’s team to hear about their pan-African plans, with Vimal Shah to learn about a regional agricultural and agroprocessing firm. Maybe visited the NSE? Chatted to Stella Kilonzo about regional capital market integration, or asked Suzanne Kilolo Kedenge about digital investor relations management, or perhaps listened to Isis Nyong’o talk about mobile advertising? Kenya has some kickingly capable women and no, they don’t all excel at grinding millet. As it stands, the article is one neatly executed piece of pan-continental character assassination.

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But is it “African”?

Rudo Botha writing in Design Indaba:

courtesy of Design Indaba

You’d think that, as a designer based in Africa, it would be easy to answer the question “What constitutes African design?” But you’d be wrong. It’s a question that keeps getting asked, particularly as Africa seeks to shake off the externally-imposed definitions of the developed world and redefine herself on her own terms. But picking apart the finer nuances of how the West perceives Africa and how Africa would like to portray itself – and what role design plays in such a portrayal – is not an easy task.For years people have been pointing to ethnic prints, earthy colours and grungy textures and calling it African design. The implication is that for brands to be “authentically African” they too need to contain these elements. It’s a patronising, narrow view and one that designers living in Africa, not to mention African brands, are understandably keen to rid themselves of

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‘What Is Right with Akpeteshie?" and other Local Spirits

In Ameyaw Debrah, Kofi Akpabli  on 'Ghana's Rum'- Akpeteshie:

He looks at the role of the protectionist British colonialist's who protected their own distillers

courtesy of Joy Online

In the days of yore when Britannia ruled the shore of the Gold Coast they found Apio abominable. The open secret was that Akpeteshie was too competitive for their imported beverages. They knew that leaving the drink all alone would be a marketing disaster for their Jack Daniels and Old Toms. They therefore banned it. Oh yes, they did. So, when in March 1957 Ghana, our beloved country gained independence, Akpeteshie also became free forever.

To its potential for branding a la Russian vodka:

Akpeteshie also has a very serious value proposition- that of faithfully serving Ghanaian traditional culture. From birth through marriage to death, the drink is required for a number of customary rites. It is used to pour libation and at the traditional level, it is part of the fine imposed at arbitrations. If one thinks of what Schnapps (in all it’s glory) is used for today, one should know that Akpeteshie ‘has been there and done that.’

More here
The Scots have their whiskey, the Spanish flaunt their Sherry,Africans should be doing the same.

Daraja Academy

Daraja Academy is a boarding secondary school for Kenyan girls with top academic scores and exceptional leadership skills but no means to continue their education. The academy provides shelter, food, healthcare and counseling services which allows students to focus on their academic and personal potential, without being hindered by the everyday barriers of poverty.-website

Nigeria Lace and the Informal Economy

Will Connors writing in the WSJ:

Tiffany Amber design  Jane Hahn/Getty Image for the WSJ

The Nigerian lace industry also opens a window on broader change in Africa as a whole: As the consumer class expands, so, too, has the underground, informal economy...While the informal sector, from street-side welders in Kenya to sign makers in Senegal, has created jobs and lifted incomes, it also has strained urban infrastructure. As many as 90% of African city dwellers work in the informal economy, untaxed and unaccounted for, according to the Geneva-based U.N. International Labour Organization.Economists estimate that Nigeria's informal economy is at least as big as the country's roughly $200 billion formal one.

More here

Related articles

• Where are Nigeria's Tech-hubs? (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)
• Walmart Coming to Nigeria (realissuesng.wordpress.com)

Forget Lectures And Let The Students Lead

Trung Le in Fast Company Design:

Nearly all emerging patterns for learning involve having students attempt to solve real-world problems. John Dewey, the constructivist, stated that "education is not a preparation for life but is life itself.” So as we enter the second decade of a new millennium, students around the world at all age levels are finally realizing Dewey's philosophy. These young global citizens reveal not only the reality of our interconnected world but also the need for passion and results to drive learning. Knowledge acquisition will no longer be confined to large lecture halls and assigned papers. It will happen through peers and friends as much as through elders, globally and locally, and will result in actions that tackle problems facing the global economy and our planet.

More here

Related articles

• It's in Science: Interaction beats Lecture (computinged.wordpress.com)

Driving Scientific Progress and Innovation with a Free Press

In WIRED Alan I. Leshner and Mohamed H.A. Hassan write:

The ongoing “Arab Spring”–courageously propelled by youth and individuals determined to have their voices heard and their human rights respected–is writing a new chapter in the region’s storied history. Recent changes pose many challenges but also an opportunity to reclaim the Golden Age of Arab and Islamic science, which took place from the 7th to the 13th century.

On the need for press independence:

Freedom of the press inevitably helps drive scientific progress, which in turn propels innovation and economic prosperity. Moreover, science and the accurate communication of science go hand-in-hand: Good journalism, like good science, thrives on openness and a respect for truth based on evidence.

Continuing:

Arab investment in science and technology cannot fully benefit society without the work of editorially independent science journalists. As many Arab nations emerge with new vigor and focus, they will benefit from building a well-functioning science and technology community that can contribute to innovation and economic growth as well as science-based challenges in sustainability and the environment.

Now AfriCAN Congo

Founded by Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda and Camille Ntoto "...Now AfriCAN is a non-profit organization whose mission is to professionally and socially empower African youth living in post-conflict zones through microfinance, education and the media..."read about their entrepreneur hero's here

Laird Scranton on the Dogon

In Boing Boing Avi Solomon interviews Laird Scranton who studies Dogon mythology and symbolism. He highlights a number of Dogon-Egyptian correlations:

Dogon granaries in North Africa. Photo: Robin Taylor

Avi: Can you give some significant examples of connection between Dogon and Egyptian words?
Laird: Each key term of Dogon cosmology comes packaged as a kind of bundle that includes: 1) Its pronunciation. 2) At least two logically-disconnected meanings, such that you cannot reasonably guess the secondary meanings simply by knowing the first. 3) An associated cosmological drawing. 4) A relationship to a stage of creation and/or mythogical character within the cosmology.
When proposing correlations between Dogon and Egyptian words, my intent is to demonstrate likely correlations between each of the bundle's elements.
While developing these matching sets of elements, I came to realize that the most consistent matches were to the Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary of Wallis Budge, not to the German Worterbuch that is preferred by many modern Egyptologists. The consensus is that Budge's dictionary is outdated and often unreliable — some Egyptologists go so far as to say that Budge could barely read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Nonetheless, I realize that it would be unreasonable to suggest that Budge could have been grossly wrong about Egyptian words and yet still somehow in predictable agreement with the Dogon. And so I offer the body of interrelated Dogon words as new evidence to show that Budge must have been substantially correct in his understanding of Egyptian words of cosmology.

And possible connections to the birth of Buddhism:

Avi: How is the Dogon granary related to the Buddhist Stupa?

Laird: Each represents the Grand Mnemonic of their associated cosmologies — a structure whose plan recreates key shapes that relate both to the processes of creation and to the acquisition of civilizing skills. Both are based on the same basic plan, evoke the same series of geometric shapes in the same sequence and assign the same symbolism to those shapes. Both are tied to detailed cosmologies that define the processes of biological and cosmological creation, defined by matching symbols and concepts.

More here
Join the spirited discussion in the Boing Boing comments section

Nelson Akafuah's Fire Art

An enthralling image of manipulated fire. From the New Scientist's coverage of the Combustion Art Competition Awards:

Earning Nelson Akafuah and Kozo Saito of the University of Kentucky in Lexington joint third place, this fire whirl was created by igniting benzene, a simple petrochemical, then mirroring and rotating the resultant image to produce a distinctive "S" shape.

via Make

About the AIMS ladies

From the Next Einstein Blog the AIMS Ladies:

AIMS NEI video for Project Inspire from aayivor.nei on Vimeo.

The Future of Africa | A Multi Book Project

Co-Founded by Diaby Mohamed of Kamos Limited, the The Future of Africa Project states the following:

Desperate efforts by governments to widen the socio-economic factors in Africa are likely to become a fiasco if adequate attention is not given to creative successful entrepreneurs. Building the future of Africa is a multi-book project being implemented in 53 countries in Africa. Contributing to education of young entrepreneurs through vision shapers sharing experiences and expectations in building a bright future is one of the challenges Africa is facing for its development.
Entrepreneurs in Africa are facing the challenge of leveraging necessary connections and accessing quality education to implement their ideas and projects. Building a unique and powerful ecosystem for sharing connections, ideas and motivating a new generation of entrepreneurs in Africa is what the project seeks to achieve. Bringing to light inspirational stories, adventures, success stories, bright minded entrepreneurs made in Africa could help create the necessary tribe working with joining hands to challenge the world.

Related articles

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Ayittey on African Borders-We don't need 2000 little Djiboutis

George Ayittey on the issue of African borders via G. Paschal Zachary's Africa Works

"...the issue or artificial borders and the potential for break-ups are real but the issue is not being handled properly. I opposed the split of Ethiopia into Ethiopia and Eritrea, just as I oppose the secession of South Sudan because if we take self-determination of a people to its logical limit, we may end up with over 2,000 little Djiboutis all over the continent — each with a Swiss bank account for the president, a one-plane fleet and a state-controlled television station. Nigeria alone has 250 ethnic groups. The source of the problem is not artificial borders but rather strong centralized rule that is produced by the unitary state system — a colonial relic. Remember, in pre-colonial Africa, Africans of different ethnicity have lived peacefully together in large polities — the Ghana Empire, Songhai, Mali Empire, and Great Zimbabwe. All these were confederacies which were characterized by a great deal of decentralization of power and devolution of authority. They allowed local autonomy to maintain their own distinctive ethnic identities. The solution, to me, is a confederation of African states, not secession.”

More here

'Still Life' by Qudus

Qudus Onikeku's 'Still Life'

Tamikrest

Think Africa speaks with Ousmane Ag Mossa, lead singer of Tamikrest.On their identity:

“We prefer to call ourselves Kel Tamashek, which means the people who speak the Tamashek language,” says Ousmane in softly spoken French. “The name Touareg was given to us by foreigners; we would never call ourselves this.”

On how Tamikrest was founded

"In 2005 and 2006 the Malian government got into a lot of trouble with Kel Tamashek. We wanted to finish our studies, but we found a situation in which we had to face the same problems that our parents had to face. We wanted to finish school and go for a diploma, but the situation wouldn’t allow us to do that. In 2006 Kel Tamashek rebelled against the government, and because of the resulting difficulty in studying we decided to form Tamikrest.”

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N’Dama: Ancient West African Cattle

In Worldwatch

Image courtesy of  ILRI

For millennia, pastoralists have bred livestock that are well-adapted to local conditions. Understanding and preserving these breeds could be useful in helping communities adapt as their climates and environments change in the coming decades.N’Dama is a hardy breed of cattle indigenous to the Fouta-Djallon highlands in the West African country of Guinea. N’Dama cows were domesticated around 8,000 years ago in the region and they have evolved to be resistant to local diseases and parasites. The breed is common throughout West and Central Africa, especially in areas infested by the tsetse fly—an insect known to transmit disease to both humans and livestock. According to the FAO, there are approximately 7 million head of N’Dama cattle.

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The Power of Open

Image via CrunchBase"...Creative Commons began providing licenses for the open sharing of content only a decade ago. Now more than 400 million CC-licensed works are available on the Internet, from music and photos, to research findings and entire college courses. Creative Commons created the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. More importantly, millions of creators took advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity.
The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators. Some are like ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative news organization that uses CC while partnering with the world’s largest media companies. Others like nomadic filmmaker Vincent Moon use CC licensing as an essential element of a lifestyle of openness in pursuit of creativity. The breadth of uses is as great as the creativity of the individuals and organizations choosing to open their content, art and ideas to the rest of the world..."-website

Akilah Institute for Women

Next Billion profiles the Akilah Institute which "... prepares students to find meaningful employment and launch ventures in the fastest growing sector of the Rwandan economy..."On their methods Bryan Farris noted:

Particularly fascinating was the critical thinking debate the girls had. In non-western education, critical problem solving is very a-typical. And yet we had a lively back and forth about how to handle an over-booking conflict between the hotel's most loyal customer and a corporation with 40 rooms trying to extend their stay. There is of course no right answer, but Asli emphasized that actions should be informed by "Ethics, discipline, principles and most of all, honesty."

South Africa's Powder Keg

In BusinessDay the inimitable Moeletsi Mbeki writes:

Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in SA but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates.
The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage. So you are not adding value. You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them. BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos.
My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in SA — not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground.
But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates.

He concludes:

if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors.

More here

Anzisha Prize for Young Entrepreneurs

Am initiative of the African Leadership Academy "...The Anzisha Prize is the premier award for African leaders aged 15-20 who have developed and implemented innovative solutions to challenges facing their communities.The Prize recognizes young people whose passion for Africa drives them to design and develop projects that transform their communities and the continent. The Anzisha Prize is an initiative of the African Leadership Academy in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation..."-website

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Gacaca Films|Documenting Indigenous Institutions

Representing indigenous institutions:

"Gacaca (Ga-CHA-cha), which literally means "justice on the grass," is a form of citizen-based justice which Rwandans decided to put into place in an attempt to deal with the crimes of the 1994 genocide...Filming for over a decade in a tiny rural hamlet, director Anne Aghion has charted the impact this experiment in transitional justice has had on survivors and perpetrators alike.Through their fear and anger, accusations and defenses, blurry truths, inconsolable sadness, and hope for life renewed, she captures the emotional journey to coexistence..."
My Neighbor My Killer: Official Trailer from Gacaca Films on Vimeo.

More here

Shimon Peres on Foreign Aid

via Marginal Revolution:

Look, the West can’t help everyone and the regimes would be insulted if we tried. But they don’t need our help. The greatest poverty in our time has been in China and India. Did these countries reduce poverty because of our help? No. They did it themselves.

Giving is problematic. We take money from poor people in rich countries and give it to rich people in poor countries. Aid sometimes creates corruption.

And suppose we gave people computers. Would computers help? No. There is no technology without civilization, civilization is the carriage of technology. It is a matter of institutions. If a country discriminates against women, for example, no computers will help. Do you know who are the greatest opponents of democracy in the Middle East? The husbands. As long as husbands discriminate against their wives the husbands will support the dictators.

Now, however, there is a young generation who are realizing that the glory is within. The glory [of civilization] it is within their power to grasp.