We – the ‘Sudanese’ – have not been Liberated Yet

Abdullahi Gallab writing in African Arguments:

The Sudanese, who are experienced in leading successful uprisings and civil disobedience movements against dictatorial rule (which they did in 1964 and again in 1985), are certainly able to do it for a third time to finally liberate themselves from the tyranny and totalitarianism of the inherited state and its current and similar regimes. Then, perhaps, there would be a new opportunity for building a new Sudan out of the Sudanese collective order and its emerging good society. By that time, surely, the Sudanese “habits of the heart” that ameliorated and molded the Sudanese character and its deeper sense of civility (not the state or its regimes) would help them examine themselves, create new political communities, produce a new social contract and thus ultimately support and maintain conditions of democracy, freedom, equality and human dignity. Then, the gentler side of the Sudanese life, and the people’s propensity for it, would, should and maybe will, as Alexis de Tocqueville describes, “spontaneously [help create] the bonds of friendship, trust and cooperation that lie at the heart of civil society.” The dominant impulse by that time, I would say, will be that a change for the State of South Sudan will also be a change for the new Sudanese Sudan.

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Examining Other Genocides

The NYTimes reports on the Shoah Foundation and a broadening of its role:

...in a dramatic expansion of its mission, the foundation is now incorporating testimonies from mass atrocities other than the Holocaust into its archives. Five survivors of the Rwandan genocide are learning the organization’s archiving methods at the Shoah Foundation Institute here, part of an effort to add at least 1,000 interviews with Rwandans to the foundation’s archives. Ten testimonies from Rwanda have been recorded already, with at least 50 more expected next year

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DR Congo: Africa's sleeping giant?

Insights on DRC's potential at Al Jazeera:

The Magic of Diasporas

The Economist on Diaspora's:

These networks of kinship and language make it easier to do business across borders (see article). They speed the flow of information: a Chinese trader in Indonesia who spots a gap in the market for cheap umbrellas will alert his cousin in Shenzhen who knows someone who runs an umbrella factory. Kinship ties foster trust, so they can seal the deal and get the umbrellas to Jakarta before the rainy season ends. Trust matters, especially in emerging markets where the rule of law is weak. So does a knowledge of the local culture. That is why so much foreign direct investment in China still passes through the Chinese diaspora. And modern communications make these networks an even more powerful tool of business.
Diasporas also help spread ideas. Many of the emerging world’s brightest minds are educated at Western universities. An increasing number go home, taking with them both knowledge and contacts. Indian computer scientists in Bangalore bounce ideas constantly off their Indian friends in Silicon Valley. China’s technology industry is dominated by “sea turtles” (Chinese who have lived abroad and returned).

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Razia Said, Musician and Activist

Away from Africa reports:

Razia Said's CD, Zebu Nation was created to raise awareness and benefit the preservation of the rainforest in her native Madagascar, specifically the region to the northeast known as MaMaBay (area comprised of the Masaola and Makira forests, and the Antogil Bay)...Her first recorded songs were in an R&B/Jazz/Pop style, in English. During a family visit to her family in Madagascar, in the MaMaBay region, she met with members of Njava, a locally renowned band, and embarked on the path of using her native rhythms and instruments, and singing in her native language.

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Spoken Word Artists go from Page to Podcast

CNN reports on Badilisha Poetry Radio covered earlier:

It began as an annual festival to host local poets in and around Cape Town but thanks to the power of technology the ancient art of African story-telling is spreading around the world. A poetry collective decided to set up Badilisha Poetry Radio, which in Swahili means change. Its aim is to celebrate the spoken and written word through online radio and live performance. Broadcasting from South Africa, poet Malika Ndlovu and her colleagues are spreading their reach far beyond this corner of the continent...[more]

The 'Agro Mindset' Organization

In Ghana:

The Agro Mindset organisation was founded with a clear mission to advocate the youth in the diaspora to pursue agriculture and related sciences, its entrepreneurial excellence and rural development. One component of this work is to train new interdisciplinary generation of agriculturist who think innovatively about the challenges that lie ahead in this field…
The future of agriculture relies on the younger generation coming through to provide succession, add enthusiasm, bring fresh ideas and drive innovation. To us, as long as agricultural growth in Sub-Saharan Africa remains below 3% annually, Food Security is wishful thinking.
The vision of the Agro Mindset Organisation is to build the green revolution where the youth having attained academic skill and knowledge relating to agribusiness can develop the knowledge and skill towards career requirements and industry expectation, apply and transfer the knowledge, skill and technology in a variety of settings.

Mahamoud Nur - The Mayor of Mogadishu

In Al Jazeera:

Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is considered one of the most dangerous places on earth. Its two million inhabitants have endured more than two decades of conflict and today a battle rages between the armed al-Shabab group and Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Amidst the chaos of this war-torn city, Mahamoud Nur, the mayor of Mogadishu, is trying to make a difference, in part by "altering the mindset of the people"...[continue reading]

'Disruption' by Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen author of the seminal book the 'The Innovators Dilemma' presents his ideas on disruption:

via Adafruit

Creating their own Economic Miracles-The Informal Entrepreneurs of China

Reason profiles Wenzhou China, a commercial powerhouse propelled by informal entrepreneurs:

Private citizens were the first to connect Wenzhou to neighboring regions by building roads, bridges, and highways, as well as the city’s airports and substantial portions of the dock. Even today the city is scattered with infrastructure investment firms through which groups of businessmen pool money to build the transport routes they all need to get their goods from factory to the point of sale. The result is not pretty. Aside from the confusion faced even by residents driving into the city, it is not uncommon to see sidewalks torn up to insert piping, with seemingly no intention of replacing the concrete. Nevertheless, the system is crudely efficient, merchants can all easily access factories, and the factories in this geographically isolated city now have sales networks that span the globe. ...

Images courtesy of Reason

The streets around the railway station are covered in stalls selling $3 blue jeans and $5 boots. There’s a city block dedicated to baby clothes next to a street that sells plastic signs for bathroom doors. In one run-down alleyway you’ll see people repairing televisions, making blankets, and selling fruits, vegetables, and poultry (live or dead). Further outside the center, you can find small shops dedicated to aluminum rods, sheet metal, tire rims, and tires. ... Pool halls are set up wherever there’s open space that you can set a tarp over. Gambling dens are openly advertised. Taxi drivers often drive off the meter. The karaoke parlors are numerous, and almost all of them double as brothels. The poorest residents take part in one of the largest citizen recycling programs anywhere in the world. In an alley one family collects scraps of fabric to sell to the local textile mills, another hoards scraps of paper and cardboard to send to the paper mills, and in front of a lot that looks like it is being used for a garbage dump, a man has set up a secondhand goods shop.

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via Stealth of Nations

Makoko's Hive Mind

Adun Okupe writes about the under appreciated 'Collective Intelligence' exhibited by the Makoko community in Lagos:

Image courtesy of NLE

...within such ‘chaos’, or apparent disorganization, the system works. Somehow it does, and nowhere is this more exemplified than in Makoko, Lagos’ water community. Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ works is doing some very interesting work in this community and I am enthusiastic. Not only does the community provide 33% of Lagos’ fish supply and a high proportion of its timber, but it is also the city’s cheapest
dwellings...The fact that this community is existent after 100years shows that there must be a way around this. A form of collective intelligence that goes into how the residents co-habit successfully, how they build, how they plan their dwellings. I find it interesting and exciting. Excited to learn more about it, to understand it, and know how this intelligence can be replicated across the city in terms of intelligent and effective urban planning.
This is intelligence.

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via Nigerians Talk

Mass Transit that Works-BRT Lagos

Bus Rapid transit Lagos:

BRT is a transport option, which relies on the use of dedicated ‘interference’ free segregated lanes to guarantee fast and reliable bus travel. The BRT buses run on physically segregated lanes and thus make them run faster in a situation where there is traffic congestion. It is one of the several options available for tackling the huge public transport predicaments of Lagos.

Portugal Appeals to Angola for Funds

In the FT:

Portugal, struggling to comply with the terms of a €78bn financial rescue package, is encouraging oil-rich Angola to invest in its debt-stricken economy, highlighting a reversal of roles with few parallels among European countries and their former African colonies...“A post-colonial role reversal on this scale is unprecedented,” said Paulo Gorjão, director of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security. “The challenge is to make it mutually beneficial for both countries.”

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African Collectors and the Canon of African Art

S. Okwunodu Ogbechie on his new book:

A culmination of three years of research and writing, the book investigates the curious fact that African art history largely disregards African art collections owned by Africans or held in Africa. The goal of the book is to review the reasons for this marginalization and use a notable African art collection, the Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection, based in Lagos, Nigeria to examine how such collections might be recovered for art history.

Fool's Gold - Africa Investigates

Al Jazeera's Africa Investigates highlights the work of Anas Aremeya Anas who lifts the lid on "Ghana's illusory pot of gold and exposing those duping gold speculators out of millions of dollars."

Building Technology Villages-AproTech Ghana

In the spirit of various initiatives that focus on indigenous self-sustaining DIY philosophy's.We spotlight The Appropriate Technology Centre (‘the Centre’) a brainchild of Kofi Sam covered earlier. The centre's recently proclaimed manifesto makes a number of observations and contentions:

Uncle Joe's roofing sheet fabrication facility

At first glance,there’s nothing extraordinary about the shed sitting next to Uncle Joe’s mud brick home in the coastal Ghanaian village of Atabadze.Inside there’s a certain familiarity about the clutter – tools propped up against stacks of roofing sheets and machinery – the kind of organized chaos you’d find in tool sheds and workshops anywhere in the world. But the sheer ordinariness of it of all belies the fact that this is the birthplace of a remarkable and important technology.Those roofing sheets – Uncle Joe made them,out of local river sand,using only his own ingenuity and the electric vibrating table in the corner – he made that too.
Uncle Joe is an innovator.He has brought his community something they never had before:a roofing material that is both sturdy and affordable.Before his intervention,his neighbours had a hugely unsatisfactory choice between using expensive,often imported, manufactured materials, or local unprocessed thatch, at a fraction of the price,but at the cost of durability;there was no middle ground.But Uncle Joe was not so sure this was necessarily a matter of ‘either or’; why couldn’t there be an alternative that was both manufactured and local, he wondered.
So he set about answering his own question,experimenting with local environmental inputs and different manufacturing processes.And through his efforts he developed a process to produce roofing sheets from river sand – a sturdy,high quality product The poor need opportunities to generate income and work themselves out of poverty manufactured from a sustainable local resource. To produce these sheets,Uncle Joe even had to build his own electric vibrating table,a vital piece of machinery that blends the sand with a small quantity of cement (added as fixative),enabling the mixture to set.All in all,an unlikely triumph of innovation considering the poor infrastructure and extremely limited availability of capital and manufacturing know-­‐how in his rural locality.
Uncle Joe is a prime example of the creativity and dynamism that are blossoming in Africa; one of the manyindividuals and communities championing innovative technologies that,by mobilising local resources to provide essential goods and services,and create income generation opportunities for the poor,can deliver sustainable and equitable ‘grassroots’development across the continent.And yet his story also illustrates the uphill task they face.
For all the originality of his idea and his dedication to implementing it,Uncle Joe cannot currently make ends meet manufacturing tiles – he simply cannot afford to hire the labour he needs to produce viable volumes.Without capital,his operation will not reach a level at which the technology can really impact the livesof the poor.

In conclusion

For the global development community (donors,NGOs,etc) Uncle Joe’s story is one of opportunity: it highlights an opportunity forthem to create the opportunities the rural poor need to work their way out of poverty.To date the governmental and multilateral institutions with the resources and clout to change the lives of those living in poverty have favoured...To make meaningful inroads into poverty reduction in Africa,the development community must foster the growth of robust local industries that mobilise the continent’s substantial environmental resources to meet local needs and create opportunities.Technologies like Uncle Joe’s manufacturing process are the foundation on which such industries are built,and donors should support their development,whether by investing in the entrepreneurs pushing innovative local solutionsor by providing the tools and training rural communities can use to unlock the developmental potential in their local environment.

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"Systeme D." The DIY ingenuity economy

Robert Neuwirth writing in Foreign Policy:

System D is a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call them débrouillards. To say a man is a débrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is. The former French colonies have sculpted this word to their own social and economic reality. They say that inventive, self-starting, entrepreneurial merchants who are doing business on their own, without registering or being regulated by the bureaucracy and, for the most part, without paying taxes, are part of "l'economie de la débrouillardise." Or, sweetened for street use, "Systeme D." This essentially translates as the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy. A number of well-known chefs have also appropriated the term to describe the skill and sheer joy necessary to improvise a gourmet meal using only the mismatched ingredients that happen to be at hand in a kitchen.

I like the phrase. It has a carefree lilt and some friendly resonances. At the same time, it asserts an important truth: What happens in all the unregistered markets and roadside kiosks of the world is not simply haphazard. It is a product of intelligence, resilience, self-organization, and group solidarity, and it follows a number of well-worn though unwritten rules. It is, in that sense, a system.

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Quick Hits

How does Africa unlock its economy the way the Asian tigers did?
Lets not deceive ourselves, economic growth is not wealth
There was a time when Islamic atheism thrived
Ways of formalizing the informal sector

Congolese Wrestling and other DRC Flowerings

The DRC endlessly surprises with distinctive emergent activities at odd with the picture painted by the mainstream media and its cohorts. From the Kinshasa Orchestra to inventions, film and agriculture we may be witnessing the debut of a very different story that is quite distant from the despondent western driven narrative.Colin Delfosse's images of Congolese Wrestling help fill out a picture of a people that are willing to build from within and succeed at it despite the overwhelming circumstances:

Image courtesy of Colin Delfosse

Congolese Wrestling via Kilele and African Digital Art

More 'hands-on' Science Centres Needed...along with Hacker-type spaces

Graham Durant writing in SciDev:

image courtesy of IMLS

Science centres have grown rapidly in the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Europe, as the value of hands-on experiential learning in science has been recognised. But Africa has yet to see a similar expansion. Of 54 African countries, only four have science centres, and these are not as advanced as elsewhere.

quoting Mohamed Hassan, formerly of the Academy of Sciences...who

called for establishing science centres in every African country, especially those lacking scientific capacity, and linking them with academic institutions. "[Science] academies are usually the homes of the grandfathers and grandmothers," Hassan said. "Science centres are the places that delight the young. Linking these is key to creating solutions that will sustain us across the generations."

Science Centres, cafe scientifique's, Maker Faires and Hackerspaces should be seen as mutually self reinforcing. The former more hierarchical and the latter primarily bottom-up. New York Hall of Science's relationship with Maker Faire being an example of such a complementary and symbiotic relationship.

Building a New South Sudan

In the Guardian:

Photograph: Zed Nelson/Institute

Mabior Garang, son of Dr John Garang, a former SPLA rebel leader and Sudanese politician

'The people are edgy right now. They fought the war, contributed their children, their crops, their livestock. The moment they should be paid back, the ­movement is hijacked by the ­"cut-and-paste ­middle class" – the foreign diaspora returning. They can’t institute ­policies that speak to the people. And when ­people are hungry and perceive those in power are denying them food, they will rise up.'

via Kilele

The Evolution of South African Opera

The reframing of the classical music perspective within Africa continues,the AFP reports:

Township Opera from invisible sessions on Vimeo.
South African black opera voices have burst onto the international stage, mirroring the country's shift to democracy, decades after white Afrikaner soprano Mimi Coertse debuted at the Vienna State Opera in 1956. Experts say their rise is no sudden outpouring of new talent but rather that all-race freedom in 1994 levelled the playing field to allow those with remarkable gifts who were stifled under apartheid to enter the game. "At the moment our best singers are black," said Virginia Davids, head of vocal studies at the South African College of Music based at the University of Cape Town. South Africans can be found from Tel Aviv to London, with soprano Pumeza Matshikiza performing at Monaco's royal wedding-- where the principality's Prince Albert II married South African Charlene Wittstock in July -- and Sweden-based Dimande Nkosazana taking first prize in a competition in Italy.

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via Bombastic Elements

Luo Nyatiti Music

More on the business of music from Saharan Vibe:

Nyatiti is an eight-stringed plucked lyre from Kenya. It is a classical instrument used by the Luo people located in the Nyanza western region in Kenya. It is about three feet long. The player of Nyatiti holds it to his chest, seated on a low stool, with the base firmly to the ground. Usually it is played together with the oporo, a curved horn...[continue reading]

"Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul"

An official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival:

In a country with innumerable problems, Skateistan represents an oasis where children can be children and build the kinds of cross-cultural relationships that Afghanistan needs for future stability.

via Hactivate

The Maker Movement's potential for Education and more

Dale Dougherty founder of MAKE speaking in Washington D.C:

"Tinkering was once a solid middle-class skill. It was how you made your life better. You got a better home, you fixed your car, you did a lot of things. We've kind of lost some of that, and tinkering is on the fringe instead of in the middle today.

The software community is influencing manufacturing today, said Dougherty, including new ways of thinking about it. "It's a culture. I think when you look at 'MAKE' and MakerFaire, this is a new culture, and it is a way to kind of redefine what this means." It's about seeing manufacturing as a "creative enterprise," not something "where you're told to do something but where you're invited to solve a problem or figure things out."

This emergent culture is one in which makers create because of passion and personal interest. "People are building robots because they want to," Dougherty said. "It's an expression of who they are and what they love to do. When you get these people together, they really turn each other on, and they turn on other people."

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The Subtle Condescension of “ICT4D”

Hash picks apart ICT4D, in sense he he could be describing the entire 'development' field
For a “ICT4D Postcards Project” he contended that:

“ICT4D” represents a mental roadblock. A term that brings as much baggage with it as a sea of white SUVs, representing the humanitarian industrial complex’s foray into the digital world. It means we’re trying to airlift in an infrastructure instead of investing in local technology solutions. Like the SUVs, it’s currently an import culture that will not last beyond the project’s funding and the personnel who parachuted in to do it.

Describing “ICT4D” as "A roadblock to African tech" he makes the following points:

First, the African technology startup scene is young, but it’s ready to be treated as a real industry with real investors looking to make real returns. When the people who are doing business and making money in African tech get a sniff of an “ICT4D” project, they immediately dismiss it – labeling it as a special needs project where the regular rules don’t apply.

Second, the funds and work put into this space by the NGOs are creating a false floor in the economy. They’re undermining the community of tech entrepreneurs who could be building the same products and services and charging for it, just like we’d expect any company in the West to do if there was a valuable service worth paying for. If it’s a service that should be supplied by the government, then they’re short-circuiting those responsibilities and subsidizing actions that subvert the public offices away from their duty.

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Berhane Asfaw-Paleontologist

From the Discovery channel:

Photo © 1998 David L. Brill, Brill Atlanta

Dr. Asfaw is an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist who has done field and laboratory research in Ethiopia since the first Middle Awash season in 1981. Dr. Asfaw has written numerous publications on fossil hominids and worked extensively on the recovery and analysis of several notable fossils, including the cranial remains of Ardipithecus, Australopithecus garhi, a 2.5 million-year-old hominid species, and Homo sapiens idaltu, a million-year-old Homo sapiens whose child-size cranium he discovered. As co-leader of the Middle Awash research project, Dr. Asfaw works in Addis Ababa and the Afar to coordinate each field season.

Tackling judicial corruption in Ghana

In Menas Associates:

Justice Joseph Akamba said that the spectre of corruption was incredibly harmful to the legal profession. Complaints were not just about the payment of money to judges, but about the attitudes and practices shown towards litigants in court and within court premises, he said. Statistics from the complaints unit were disheartening and it was important that judges did not shy away from addressing the issues raised.

He called on judges to be committed to learning and to remain up to date with developments in the law.

A group of lawyers sparked controversy earlier this year when they accused the judiciary of corruption, leading to calls from magistrates and judges for the lawyers prove their claims or retract and apologise.

'The Chocolate Islands'

The Economist profiles Sao Tome and Principe:

Image courtesy of Paxgaea

Across São Tomé dense cocoa plantations cling to the sides of monolithic pillars. A third of the archipelago is covered in the crop which makes up 80% of its exports. In the late 1990s, dips in production and prices left the island state heavily reliant on foreign aid and farmers on the poverty line. But since 2004 farmers have set up collectives, eliminating the middlemen who had been eating into their profits. With facilities to ferment the product and dry the cocoa to export they are benefitting from prices five times higher than those for cocoa seeds still in their treacly translucent liquid. São Tomé and Príncipe does not produce huge quantities of cocoa but what it does grow is organic and Fairtrade which goes down well with wealthy Western consumers.

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The World of Free and Open Source Art

From the p2p foundation:

“This is a collection of artworks, texts and resources about freedom and openness in the arts, in the age of the Internet. Freedom to collaborate – to use, modify and redistribute ideas, artworks, experiences, media and tools. Openness to the ideas and contributions of others, and new ways of organising and making decisions together. This non exhaustive collection is intended to inspire, inform and enable people to apply peer-to-peer principles for making things and getting organised together. We hope that all art lovers, makers, thinkers, organisers and strategists will find something for them from this set of imaginative, communitarian and dynamic contemporary practices.” – The World of Free and Open Source Art

A Senegalese spring?

In Pambazuka Ella Scheepers writes about June 23 Movement and democracy in Senegal:

The formation of M23 – a new movement born out of the 23 June protests against President Wade’s proposed constitutional amendments – is the latest result of African democracy at work. Here different (and sometimes opposing) voices join together to create a singular organization for a common cause to protect and promote the constitution and democratic principles. Instead of adhering to rules about what traditional democracy is and what traditional relationships it permits, M23 went back to the basics in defense of the common good, hence bringing together very diverse sections of society.

courtesy of CS Monitor

Its impact has been both immediate – halting the adoption of the proposed amendments in parliament - and there seems to be potential for the development of a longer lasting impression where civil society has a strong voice in the halls of power. However, this phenomenon will be tested in the upcoming 2012 election when the question of whether the movement was the voice of particular interest groups or truly has the peoples' interests at heart will be answered.

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