Category: “Modern” Africa

Mega-Mess Getting Beautiful

Mega-Mess Getting Beautiful

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

LagosArtFestivalWhat’s going on in Nigeria is Art: The Art of Life in a mega-city after the village. The Art of Survival in the age of Snowden. It’s a mega-mess, beautiful and getting better. By most accounts there’s less of a chance you’ll get killed, now, but if you do it’s likely your coffin will be fusia colored.

The Lagos Photo Festival opened last weekend and will run through the middle of the month in, yes gulp but then reconsider, Lagos.

Lagos is doing better. Let’s start with the worst: it’s 15 million large and growing (the actual gazetted city is 10 million; surrounding areas that are indistinguishable from this core, another 5 million). There are frequent power outages, although they’re brief. There’s still widespread crime at all levels, from pickpocketing to kidnappings, and the huge police presence is basically there to institutionalize it all.
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But truly, the locals, both Nigerians and some of the near 40,000 paid expatriates, think in just the last two years things are definitely improving.

“Vibrant chaos,” is how one of dozens and dozens of expats blogging about “Life In Lagos” puts it.

And practically everyone points to the new governor, recently reelected with 81% of a totally fair and democratic vote, as the reason.

Babatunde Raji Fashola (San) has crushed much of the mafia, reformed much of the police and significantly improved delivery of public services in a short two years. How? By stopping so much of the corruption that siphoned off public funds.

Nigeria can easily be Africa’s richest country. Yes, even richer than South Africa, and that’s a simple calculation of the amount of oil it can still produce.

The Lagos Photo Festival seems to me to embody all that’s good and exciting about this very recent transition from crime and moral oppression into a legitimate society.

What I’ve seen digitally is definitely in the forefront of photo art. Much of it understandably builds on color, as a given characteristic of almost anywhere in Africa. Another central theme among the 50 artists being exhibited is order from chaos, somewhat embodied in the festival’s title, “From Village to MegaCity.”

roomWhen Guernica magazine asked the LPF founder, Azu Nwagbogu, why he created a festival dedicated to photography, he replied, ”[That is] the fastest growing art tool on the continent, and it’s perhaps the easiest to gain access to.”

Nwagbogu is not any more a photographer than a musician. In fact, what he really is is a trained public health official who almost became a professional boxer. Rich enough to wander through Lagos’s new social scene easily, he’s able to command the network that can create something meaningful in a sea of 15 million.

It’s a sad fact, today, in Africa that capitalism is exploding so fast that the trajectory of the rich leads them quickly away from their roots. Many of the artists Nwagbogu has collected for this festival are unknown, precisely because they weren’t rich enough to emerge out of the hoards.

A great example is Afoso Sulayman, born in Makoko, one of Nigeria’s biggest slums. His work is definitely inferior to many of the others, but he’s only begun. He claims to have been photographing for less than a year.

That type of affirmative action in an art festival is something only Africa dare do. And it may ultimately lead not just to new amalgams but new definitions of what art in the modern world really is.
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Nice Nairobi

Nice Nairobi

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There is no more simple example of the battle between development and wilderness than a highway. Friday the wilderness won in Nairobi.

Following the successful world-wide opposition to the Serengeti Highway project several years ago, last week’s remarkable effort by local conservationists in Kenya to stop the proposed highway through Nairobi National Park seems particularly exceptional.

This because it was almost entirely local. A combined effort from a number of local wildlife organizations and a few prominent conservation crusaders like Dr. Paula Kahumbu successfully battled several Kenyan agencies that had approved the start of the highway.

Nairobi National Park is an incredibly tiny wilderness that borders one of Africa’s largest and most sprawling cities. The battle to save it over the years has been one of those you think of as lost causes.

Birders never deserted the 40-square miles of grasslands bordered by the Athi River but many big animal enthusiasts did, particularly during droughts.

It just seemed ridiculously pointless to try to preserve a wilderness literally bordering a city that was growing so fast you can hardly move inside it, anymore. A few weeks ago I blogged about the lions that were disrupting traffic!

But I guess that should have been our glimpse into how things were going. Lions? At the edge of a city? Blocking traffic?

Before we get too ecstatic and believe that the natural order of things will always prevail, it’s important to note the judges’ decision to void the Kenyan Highway Authorities plan was also heavily based on the fact it appeared the highway was going to built too close to Nairobi’s second airport, Wilson, violating other agency regulations.

Nevertheless, the wording of the judgment and the invitation by the tribunal that the numerous wildlife authorities bringing the complaint can petition for legal cost reimbursement, suggests it might have been stopped even without this infringement on Wilson airport.

Another remarkable facet to this story is that the judge tribunal was not one in the main judicial arena, but from “NET,” the National Environmental Tribunal. Think of this as Kenya’s EPA, but it has wider judicial powers. While its ruling could be appealed to a higher court, it can’t be sued like the EPA can.

The problem is that Nairobi’s become too big. No one dare suggest a population count, despite a recent census, because the seven slums that surround the city (parts of one which actually abut the national park) make such counts so inaccurate. But many city planners are using something around 5 million.

That makes it seem tiny when compared to Shanghai or Mexico City, but given the fact it has doubled its size in less than a decade gives city planners serious concern.

And no more obvious concern than driving to work. Or for that matter, a tourist driving from the airport. Please note: Do Not Arrive Nairobi on a weekday morning, unless you don’t mind a two-hour commute over about eight miles.

One wonders what type of people can tolerate such nerve-wracking oppression? But that’s been the wonder about Africa for centuries. Once slavery. Now traffic congestion.

But above all this tale should remind us that the most powerful advocates for preserving Africa … are Africans.

Terrifying Nairobi Commute

Terrifying Nairobi Commute

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The picture of lions disrupting traffic on the Ngong side of Nairobi is all over the internet, and it’s one of the best examples to date of the terrible predicament big game has in modern Africa.

I must have received the photo above a dozen times from my loyal readers, so thank you! You can easily find a whole gallery of these blokes by simply choosing “images” on your Google search bar, and typing in “Lions Nairobi Road.”

The Nairobi National Park has always been a misplaced natural wonder. The very first thing you see even today when driving out of the Nairobi airport is the national park, pitifully divided from your highway access by a fence that would have a hard time keeping my lab at bay.

It’s always laid beside the city, even in the old days. It’s always touched the airport. Today one of its seven gates is 4½ miles from the center of the giant megalopolis of Nairobi. This is about as far as the main Broadway Theaters are from Central Park.

In the old days, of course, Nairobi was a cow town with lots of grass and trees and not too many people or buildings. The first thing Kathleen and I did after we first arrived Nairobi in the early 1970s was to rent a car and drive into the park.

We paid our fees, drove about 45 or 46 seconds, and stopped in front of a rhino that was not pleased to have been found.

Until four or five years ago the park suffered some serious setbacks, and many of us were pretty sure it wouldn’t last. The city was exploding and today is one of the most congested megalopolis on earth.

City planning lagged building construction, and today’s highways and skyscrapers are turning Nairobi into an architectural nightmare. It reflects the unstoppable growth of Kenya, and this daunting “progress” concerned a lot of local citizens who love Nairobi National Park.

Motivated by a government decision to lay another highway, but this time right through the middle of the park, the concerned citizens formed a foundation.

The Friends of Nairobi National Park has become one of the most proactive local conservation groups. I think we should take pause from time to time and realize that the celebrity foundations that make it onto our TV, like Daphne Sheldrick’s elephant orphanage and the like, are sometimes disconnected from local needs and aspirations.

FONNAP is just the reverse. Its membership, funding and power are all local, and it’s simply because Nairobi citizens want to save the park, the same way New Yorkers want to save Central Park.

Of course there’s a few bigger things in Nairobi than Central Park, and that’s the problem. Like when lions disrupt the morning commute.

That may have been comic relief to some of the mid level executives who missed their breakfast brief that morning because of it, but it is a harbinger of things to come. And in good ways it represents in real, local time the dilemma we understand better from abroad:

People or Animals?

FONNAP is taking a lot of its direction from American conservation organizations. In association with government agencies like the Kenya Wildlife Service as well as supporting NGOs, land on the outskirts of the park on the opposite side of the city is slowly being bought up or leased by the foundation to keep that southeast side unfenced.

This has allowed a good and renewed migration of many animals that continue across wilderness to places like Amboseli National Park.

Local farmers and land owners receive about $4 per hectare per year to keep their land adjacent the park unfenced. For many ranchers this is a no brainer, for they’ve been successfully raising stock among wild animals for generations.

The successful program spearheaded by the African Wildlife Foundation has been a real success story. And together with a great range of other private endeavors, nearly 16,000 hectares of private land has been attached to the park essentially more than doubling its protected size.

So for the time being, anyway, Nairobi National Park survives, and frankly, I’m rather impressed at what the future may hold.

little screen America, Big Screen Africa

little screen America, Big Screen Africa

by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

African films are exploding onto the Cannes Film Festival, opening Wednesday, as youthful African societies continue to develop this important art which is being so grossly neglected in America.

The decline in the American film industry is today’s hot topic, but I think everyone’s got it wrong. The emphasis has been on America’s growing and exciting new hand-held technologies and all the products that support them like YouTube.

Undoubtedly that has much to do with it, but I think more so it has to do with the American film industry transforming itself into making money in malls from teenagers.

There’s nothing wrong about making money. And there’s nothing wrong with malls. There’s only a little wrong with teenagers.

Film-making provides the modern world with the best way to transform imagination into reality: it’s the conduit, not the transformer. It’s the best catalyst. Nothing better.

So when that focus is placed on vampire love stories the powerful conduit is twisted towards another universe, not ours. It’s no longer relevant to our reality, and in that instance, it loses almost entirely its preeminence as an art form. Its value becomes dollars and sense, little else.

Africa is stepping into this remarkable void left by the American film industry.

This week in Cannes there is a massive representation of South African films, an excellent collection of Nigerian films and especially Nigerian writers, and from my point of view, the best dose of creativity the world’s seen for some time from Kenya.

Real stories playing into real rapidly changing worlds are American films like Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Lincoln, and Avatar – among my favorite recent American movies.

But they are so few and far between.

Nairobi Half Life and The First Grader are recent Kenyan films produced on a pittance of the budget of a single episode of American Rival, create through the Grecian act of acting and the majesty of writing stories a real and lasting impact on the world.

Madagascar 3 doesn’t do that. Nor do the Terminators or apocalypses or thousands of cars flying into the Grand Canyon. And certainly not vampires.

Good films, and by that I mean films with value to society, films that contribute to art and not just livelihoods, convey moral messages in realistic characters, characters that if we can’t identify with ourselves we can through someone we know well.

And here are several important reasons Africa is displacing America in the film industry:

Of the 150 South African filmmakers attending Cannes this year with some sort of accepted entry into the festival, twelve of them were penniless before sponsorship by the South African government.

That’s right, government involvement. Government is a reflection of society; it’s usually in the forefront – good or bad – of society’s extravagances. Without government involvement many of the best films from Canada and France would never have been made.

Two: African films fuel controversy: they take a point of view and proudly so and at the peril of failure. They dare to retell history, like Lincoln did in America recently. But Lincoln is the exception. Otello Burning is the mainstay of South Africa’s brilliant film industry.

Third and most importantly, film at its best is art. Film in America is business. Shortly before he died, Roger Ebert said this better than anyone.

Africa is developing film as art. It learned how from America. But today business eats art in America. Let’s hope the other side of the world documents this carnage rather than chooses to partake.

Unusual Risks in Africa

Unusual Risks in Africa

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Investors in new shopping malls for Kenya and Nigeria are expecting a first-year return of 12% and a long-term return of 25%, led by savy South African banks.

Business plans for Africa have always astounded Americans. I’m mostly familiar with the tourism sector, and ROIs (return-on-investments) of less than a third are not considered worth the risk. And the risk is substantial.

And the risk hasn’t for a long time been either political or health, which is what most noninvestors think. Those types of risks have diminished regularly over the years, because of two radically different trends.

The first is simple: Africa is developing. It was never banished to the dustbin of underdevelopment, forever. Roads, schools, factories, hospitals, cinemas, community infrastructure – they have all developed at a faster clip over the last generation than was ever the case when the developing world was getting built.

The second is intriguing: businessmen like tourists have become increasingly immune and enured to politics, even violent politics. With the notable exception of global bad guys like al-Qaeda, turbulent societies somehow manage to court – not scare away – businessmen and tourists.

Egypt is the best example. That society is currently in literal upheaval, yet there were more than 8 million tourists there last year, and “tourist incidents” in Egypt have been fewer since the revolution than prior to the revolution.

It seems that both sides in a local fight have increasingly recognized the importance of foreign tourists and investment.

So what is the main risk, then?

That you’ll come up with something successful. Yes exactly: that your investment begins to pay off.

This totally counter-intuitive notion is what lays bare most poorly prepared investors in Africa. The African playing field is so small by comparison with the home turf from which most investors come, that the amount of investment is usually quite modest.

And that means if you hit on something great, there are lots of bigger guys watching from behind, and they’ll swoop down the moment those high returns actually come in.

And this is inevitably what’s happened over the last generation. A relatively small investor builds a lovely little lodge aside a national park, and the moment there’s positive cash flow, a South African tourism chain eats it up.

Now there’s nothing particularly wrong with this if the investor’s game is to make a little bit of money. And it works specially well for small investments, especially as I described above with small tourism ventures.

But the problem is that while the indicator for a tourism investment is positive cash flow, that doesn’t immediately translate into high return. The originator needs to have the fortitude if foresight to wait for that high return, but the temptation offered by the big guys is often considered just too much to pass up.

African investors’ greatest risk is that they don’t wait for that high return. And it’s often not “won’t wait” but more realistically “can’t wait.” Rarely does a single investor create something wholly unique.

There are lots of tourists lodges being built. Lots of shopping malls. Lots of gas stations. Lots of plumbing fixtures.

If you don’t take the offer the big guy gives you, he’ll buy up your competitors and smother you.

There’s nothing novel in this dilemma. What’s different in Africa is that the quantitative size difference between the Joe who took the first step and his buy-outer is massive. All the leverage is with the big guys.

It’s a simple equation derived of the modern truism that the rich have become richer as the poor have become poorer.

In 2009 Chinese investment in Africa exceeded the U.S.’ By the end of this year, Chinese investment in Africa will exceed the combined investment of Europe and the U.S.

And we’re more afraid of a terrorist attack?

Africa Art This Instant

Africa Art This Instant

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Contemporary African art has had a niche among American collectors for several decades, but young artists in Africa are abandoning traditional media completely, and wholeheartedly embracing strictly digital art.

I have several precious oil canvasses bought decades ago in Africa which have been fortunate enough to appreciate in value commensurate with the unique quality. But it’s time to move on. The best young artists in Africa are no longer taking out a canvas and mixing colors with a brush. They’re doing it digitally.

Certainly digital art includes filmmaking, which we tend here at home to separate out as an entire media in itself. But it is by no means the end-all and be-all of African digital art, which includes all varieties of media translated through digital media.

Kennyan Wangechi Mutu is renowned for her dramatic female figures. Mutu’s work has been featured in some of the finest museums and galleries in the world including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Egyptian Miriam Ibrahim (one of her most famous pieces is shown at the bottom of this blog) describes her passion for digitally altering her portrait photography as one of a “deviantart.” Her often haunting portraits suggest women beset by overwhelming fears, oppressed and lost.

Saidi Ray begins and often ends with traditional acrylics but he sells the finished work not as pieces of canvas but as digital art. From Tanzania, he takes what only a few years ago would have been considered quite traditional primary color renditions of traditional subjects, like native tribes, and whisks them into modern media, a contemporary surrealism.

But of them all Kenyan Mutua Matheka epitomizes the ultimate in digital art: instagram. (His signature piece titles this blog.) His remarkably creative and powerful images are as expansive or focused as the movements of your fingers spreading on the iPad. Above all, Mutua represents what African art has become today.

For many more examples from artists across the continent, click here.

Walkabout

Walkabout

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The Botswana bushmen have finally been excluded from their homeland, having lost the final skirmishes in more than a century of battling to retain their right to a traditional life in the Central Kalahari Reserve.

As of today, Botswana’s ancestral San people may only enter the reserve on month-long permits, one third the stay allowed foreigners entering the reserve for tourism. The news was reported today by a respected African publication in London.

The Botswana government claims the exclusion policy is for environmental protection and Bushman community development, but tourism has become increasingly popular in the area, and … diamonds have been found, there.

The forced removal of peoples from their ancestral homelands is hardly new. The removal of Maasai from ancestral homelands in the Moru Kopjes in 1972 led to an immediate expansion of the Serengeti National Park that substantially and almost immediately increased animal populations, making the area more attractive for tourism.

Perhaps the most egregious of forced native removals were native Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, horribly summarized in what is commonly known as the Trail of Tears.

The difference with today’s situation with Bushmen in Botswana, and the next most recent similar situation with Maasai in Tanzania, is that the Bushmen seemed to have prevailed with a 2011 High Court decision that aggregated a number of earlier decisions securing use of their homelands.

But the Botswana government simply ignored its own high court orders and has continuously refused aboriginal people entry into the reserved and harassed those who snuck in.

The government’s defiant policy has succeeded in part because the numbers of Bushmen in the area seeking traditional rights in the Kalahari has plummeted in the last decade. There were likely 5,000 Bushmen in the Kalahari 50 years ago; today there are probably fewer than 1,000.

Numbers are down because — as the government is eager to show — many Bushmen have taken advantage of government education and training programs that result in their abandoning the traditional life style.

In the last few years I’ve encountered San people working in the Kalahari in tourist camps and have admired their wit as well as their intellect. Clearly at least for those few individuals, they had no desire to return to the bush.

Last June South Africa gave a state funeral to a famous Bushman who had worked his entire life for the betterment of his people. But as with himself and his children, that was principally to educate them in modern schools and find them modern, urban jobs.

Contemporary, modern opportunities for Botswana people are considerably better than for most other Africans from other countries on the continent. Botswana’s economic situation while challenged during the global recession is far superior to most of the rest of Africa, because of its rich endowment of diamonds and other minerals.

So the question devolves simply into whether the government – the wider community – knows better what’s good for certain individuals than they themselves claim. And whether the trade-off, ancestral land for a good-paying job and healthy lifestyle, is worth it.

The age-old argument applies to peoples round the world, from such diverse theories of eminent domain to gun control. Exclusion from ancestral lands is certainly at the extreme end of this spectrum, but fundamentally is no different from any individual liberty restriction.

How far can a government go restricting individual liberties and still be moral?

The removals of the Shoshone, Yavapai and Navajo in the United States were certainly no less egregious than the Bushman from the Kalahari.

Is it just that we pine for the old days? Or are we afraid of our own power, even if it will better a peoples? Or as with native Americans, that we really don’t care what happens to them?

Borders and Blood

Borders and Blood

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by Conor Godfrey
I’ve been accused of being a relentless Africa booster… this is almost certainly true.

To fight back, however, I am going to offer a scarier version of the continent’s next thirty years that has taken up serious mind share recently.

This idea will hopefully pass muster as a research topic, so I would certainly appreciate your feedback as I am just getting the full proposal together now.

From the late 90s to the present, we have seen tremendous agitation around African intra and inter-state borders.

I would argue that this started with the Ethiopia Eritrea war (1998-2000) and would include the escalation of civilizational conflict inside Nigeria and Mali, the 2006 Ethiopian and the 2012 Kenyan invasions of Somalia, and, of course, the separation of Sudan and South Sudan.

Dozens of conflicts—including many in the DRC—do not make this list because they did or do not fundamentally challenge the status-quo colonial borders.

You can quibble with or add to my list – that is not the point.

Before this decade the Colonial borders exhibited nigh unprecedented durability. Here is a list of African border changes post WW1… 90% of them were trades between colonial powers.

My point (or wild hypothesis if you will) is this… from independence to 2000, most African states did not possess the material capabilities to mount a sustained challenge to the territorial status quo; doing so requires states to centralize political control, neutralize domestic opponents that pose a threat to the state, and have the material resources necessary to take, hold, and administer territory.

As the U.S. knows well, this requires lots and lots of money (not to mention a professional military and a tolerant domestic audience).

For this entire period, states concentrated on papering over the inconsistencies built into their illogical creations, and, if hostile foreign action were required, they relied on cheap and effective proxy militias and other irregular activity rather than large-scale mobilization.

The Council on Foreign relations writes —not totally persuasively in my opinion—that keeping colonial borders gave African leaders “reciprocal insurance” against invasion, and that leaders were more concerned with arguing over who controlled state resources than fighting over borders.

So why are things coming apart at the seams (pun very much intended)?

This could, after all, just be a blip, a decade long aberration on an otherwise century long consolidation along the lines drawn on a cocktail napkin in Europe.

Here is what I think:

1) Differential Growth: The continent is booming, but not everywhere feels the love.

As some countries outpace their neighbors they will be tempted to acquire the military capabilities to favorably alter the territorial status quo.

Colonialism left hundreds of potential territorial flash points, and for the first time since independence, some African states can likely do something about them.

Differential growth also exacerbates tensions within countries.

As globally connected and well endowed regions grow faster than other provinces inside the same country, resentments build and fuel long simmering separatist ambitions.

This narrative plays itself out most visibly today in Mali, Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire, and to a lesser extent in Kenya and Uganda.

2) Resources: As mentioned in this post, Africa is massively under prospected and companies are racing to catch up.

A powerful country may have let unfavorable borders lie when no rents could be extracted from the disputed territory, but what happens when billions of dollars of oil and gas hang on a few lousy kilometers, and investing in a miniscule navy would be sufficient to enforce a fait accompli on the border?

There are a number of possible mitigating factors—colonial withdrawal, regional integration, economic integration, etc… — but I will save those for some future post.

This is worth getting right. I would hate to see a decade of phenomenal growth and progress undone in an orgy of territorial revisionism, and reasonable precautions could help stop spirals of security competition before they begin.

Give Peace A Chance

Give Peace A Chance

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Conflict in Africa is declining, not only relative to the rest of the world, but historically within the continent itself, and a brilliant University of Wisconsin professor has discovered why.

The truth is counterintuitive to many Americans whose understanding of Africa comes mostly from the nightly news and America’s very distorted and political travel advisories. But Scott Straus has documented the fact, and what’s more critical, explained it.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison is fast developing as one of America’s invaluable resources for everything African. Strauss is young, an associate professor brilliant enough to obtain an endowed chair, concentrating in political science and global issues.

But Madison is rife with many others Africa directed, including one of my favorite, John Hawks, whose exciting blog is one of the most important first sources of breakthrough anthropology and paleontology in Africa.

So it is not surprising that research news about Africa comes from UW-Madison. It is surprising, though, that a young associate professor will dare take on contemporary media alliances as normally disparate as Ted Koppel and Richard Engel.

Koppel suggested on Meet the Press last Sunday that Africa is going nuclear, not necessarily figuratively, and far outpacing the danger of conflicts of the past. Engel suggested on Tuesday’s Nightly News that Africa exceeds Syria or North Korea in terms of potential conflict.

And these represent the liberal media! As far as Fox News is concerned, the only indication at all that evolution might be true is that Africa hasn’t yet.

Media news in short sound bites is how most of America forms its understanding. As Straus explained in an article Monday it takes more than sound bites to reveal the truth.

Straus’ quest to disseminate the truth has been a two-year one. Using the most incontestable data since 1960, he has demonstrated in publications and conferences that conflict in Africa is on the decline. It’s a particularly difficult task right now, and he refers to the northern African conflicts as an “uptick” but when laid into any graph of any length – even just 3 or 4 years – his premise stands.

And as I’ve written recently, many of us do not see this current conflict in northern Africa as lasting very long. (So I hasten to add that doesn’t mean terrorism will be wiped out, or that Egypt won’t boil and bubble for years to come.) But it does mean that from a truly global perspective, it’s wholly rational that the world’s biggest businesses are investing hands over fists in Africa, because even they know: Africa is the place to be in the future.

But even more interesting is Straus’ more delicate conclusions as to why.

Why is there more conflict in Asia, for example, than Africa? Why are wars – when they do happen – more gruesome and often barbaric in the Balkans than Central Africa? Why is North Korea or Iran so much greater a threat than an extremist Islamic Arab Africa?

Three reasons:

1. The End of the Cold War
As I’ve often written Africa was the great pawn in the Cold War. It led to its current stubborn levels of corruption, since the patrons in the East and West lavished immature African societies with tons of money and weapons without requiring accountability. When the Cold War ended, this unfiltered pipeline did as well.

2. Democracy
This is Straus’ weakest point, but if I understand it correctly, he believes that before the advent of multi-party politics, dictators’ control of African countries’ growth, revenue streams and disbursements, were highly targeted ethnically or even just into the coffers of those dictators. The release of the economies of African societies requiring real public stewardship – coincidentally or otherwise with the advent of multi-party democracy – leads to a strong motivation to keep the social peace.

3. China
Like me Straus doesn’t hold China up as a model for how a big power should mentor small ones, but like me he realizes that China’s unique form of foreign policy is good for African peace. “China doesn’t take sides,” Straus says flatly. China takes oil. And it will do anything it can to get it. There’s no deceit, here. Everyone knows the rules of the game, and to be a winner, you have to have peace.

4. Regional Conflict Resolution
I disagree with Straus on this, but fortunately I think the previous three reasons are sufficient enough. Straus argues that regional powers and organizations have been working successfully to reduce conflict: South Africa in Zimbabwe, Kenya in The Sudan and Somalia, Egypt with the Palestinians, the African Union in many places. I don’t. I think these ostensible activities are totally emasculated without big power – mostly western – support and guidance. The signs are hopeful and this may herald the resolution centers of the future, but right now they are still the puppets in the shadow box.

But his last explanation could be stretched into an argument that is equally positive: that the Big Powers are doing better in shepherding conflict resolution in Africa. And with that I totally agree, and especially recently under Obama.

Truth is often so broad and so immutable that it fades like a watermark under the moments of things more exciting and threatening. That’s what much of Africa’s steady progress into the future is like. There was so little interest at all in Africa a generation ago by westerners, all we learned was the bad stuff.

That’s the history we store, miserably inadequate to produce sufficient contrast as a watermark on the abduction of child soldiers and Rwandan genocide. But the persistent and careful work by people like Straus will prevail, and I for one hope he continues to enthusiastically duke it out with the Koppels of the world.

Konza of Kajiado

Konza of Kajiado

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Ground breaking my eye, what happened 35 miles from Nairobi yesterday was nothing less than the Big Bang.

“Kenya’s Silicon Valley” they call it: 37,000 luxury homes and apartments, 70 acres of high-tech complexes, highways and public tennis and golf courts, several universities, high speed rail to Nairobi, 4-lane superhighways, buried electricity and fibre optics.

I know I sound like a very old man, but I can’t believe it. “Konza City” was born yesterday, and if it stays on track, by 2020 it will rival the most advanced tech cities in India and create more than 200,000 new high-skilled tech jobs.

Not only will it have call centers that we all know and hate so well serving us as likely as Proschnik in St. Petersburg, but it will have dynamic research facilities building on Kenya’s promising lead in expensive cell phone technologies, as well as medical and agricultural research facilities.

Its developers champion “green technology” and so there will be considerable solar polar.

The Kenyan’s call it a technopolis. The World Bank has funded the $330 million high speed railway that will connect the area to Nairobi, and planning is already well underway. The first rails will be laid in 2014.

But private investors are contributing up to $1 billion to a variety of areas, from private home construction to tech factories to malls. Already smaller Nairobi investors are vying for placement for car shops and grocery stores. $1 billion dollars in Kenya is easily equivalent to $100 billion in America.

More than 250 global companies have already pledged involvement, including Huawei, Samsung, RIM, and Danish Technologie.

The estimated private plus public investment that will have been spent by 2020 is expected to exceed $10 billion, which is an equivalent $1 trillion in the U.S.

I am astounded, and I admit somewhat skeptical. But I was equally skeptical only ten years ago regarding what Kenyan planned to do by today. Today its highways are reducing country-wide congestion, its education system has leaped forward, and a variety of new technologies are performing very well.

But Kenya has to get its political act together to truly manifest this dream. It has to at least achieve the level of transparency and accountability that exists today in India, or in a completely different fashion, the stability and control of a China.

Right now neither of those directions are certain. I’m encouraged that multinationals like Samsung are willing to invest heavily, but this dream will take multiple Samsungs.

The troubles confronting Kenya this minute are formidable, starting with the yet completed pacification of its neighbor, Somalia, to the still top-heavy and corrupt political leadership.

But it is getting better, and the election on March 4 will tell us a lot about whether dreams like Konza are real dreams or pipe dreams.

Voodo & Algebra

Voodo & Algebra

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

No time for nostalgia in Africa: The continent’s development is so fast, its demographic so young, kids are spinning like tops. It’s fabulous and scary.

We old folk simply get dizzy. Kids like dizzy. And we old folks should be very careful about criticizing this seemingly directionless enthusiasm. When the top finally stops spinning it’s going to land somewhere with a very loud thump.

Richard Engel of NBC news expressed it in a most dire fashion Sunday on Meet the Press when he said that African youth — and youth in general in the developing world — are looking away from America towards China.

He’s right. In fact I thought almost everything Engel said on Meet the Press was right, and he got clobbered by my age-peers for saying so, or just ignored. But Engel is right on. Democracy is just a tool in the basket of social organization, and right now, it’s not the most attractive one to African kids.

Imagine if you were a just cognizant self-aware Kenyan teenager when Bush invaded Iraq, your main city of Nairobi was a massive jumble of stick buildings and sewered-over roads, your school hardly had pencils and all you and your buddies could afford were pirated CDs of MnM from China.

And today your city of Nairobi has skyscrapers and 8-lane highways, thanks to the Chinese who all you had to give them was your oil; your school has computers and you have a Smartphone, thanks to the Chinese who all you have to give them was your oil; and you’ve started your own rap group that will be performing next month at the famous music festival in Zanzibar.

Thanks to spnsorship from the Chinese who are funding the electricity in Stone Town, and all the Tanzanians had to give them was their gold.

Well, before you grow old enough to analyze all this, who would you be thanking?

Engel is right. America and the west has disengaged, not intentionally not because Obama and Hillary aren’t doing infinitely better than Bush or Condoleezza, but because youth moves faster, and today, Africa is youth.

Social organization is only one thing.

Cultural organization is equally fascinating.

Eighteen-year-old Adrien Adandé of Benin is a decent enough high school student. But after turning in his history term paper and the school bell rings, he chooses rather than join his buddies in the locker room to gear up for the school’s winning soccer team, he’ll do voodoo.

“My friends tease me and call me a fetishist,” he explains. “Others keep away from me, fearing I might harm them with my amulets. But I stand by what I do. I can combine my studies and my vocation perfectly.”

We often look back at our own youth and marvel at how things have changed. Nostalgia often gets the better of us, and we pine for the past, and the past is uniformly slower, more tranquil and seemingly less demanding of our energies.

Imagine African youth, today. They aren’t even old enough yet really to look very far back, but every second backwards is like an epoch in time. The transformation is too fast for nostalgia. Cultural takes time to form.

Radio Nederlands quoted a 23-year-old Benin philosophy student who explains Adrien’s voodoo as a means for youth to anchor themselves: “With globalization [and] the expansion of the so-called revealed religions… young people have turned away from” modern culture.

The “Market” understands. The “Market” moves faster than governments.

One of the most suddenly successful marketing and media firms in Africa is Instant Grass, which is devoted to helping vendors sell to youth. But its reports – free from its site – outdo western university Ph.D. studies on what is happening to youth, today, in the developing world.

“The rise of the Internet and mass media has also confused identity further with Western/African-American culture having a strong influence. The reaction of African youth is to create an eclectic culture that embraces both MTV and traditional practices and thinking that flits effortlessly between the two.”

Ergo, voodoo and algebra.

This is an absolutely astoundingly colorful and awesome dynamic to watch. And I truly believe the outcome will be positive. There is simply too little egocentrism in African youth, today, to result in limits to personal freedom. Dictators are gone.

But be prepared for something that isn’t necessarily the democracy of America. And there’s nothing at all wrong with that.

#3 & #4: So Well but The South

#3 & #4: So Well but The South

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

2012 demonstrated more than any other year that African countries are doing better economically and advancing faster socially than their counterparts in The West, their former colonial masters. Except, I’m afraid to say, the giant in the hut, South Africa.

My #3 Top Story of 2012 is the explosive narrative of African progress, and the #4 story is the significant exception, South Africa. To see a list of all The Top Ten, click here.

“Africa isn’t just a place for safaris or humanitarian aid. It’s also a place to make money,” says New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff. The well respected author then went on to site dozens of statistics showing Africa out pacing the world economically.

Clearly the average African is neither as comfortable or well off as the average American. But that’s not the point. The average African is mountains higher in comfort and well-being than his parents, and there is every indication that his children will share that euphoric experience.

This is, of course, a generalization but I feel a fair one. Including Somaliland, there are 56 countries in Africa. Perpetual doom and gloom persists in Zimbabwe and the Central African Republic. Increasingly bad news in 2012 plagued Angola, Uganda, Rwanda, Chad and Mali. So my generalization applies to the rest.

This positive view stands in marked contrast to America, where the generation to generation comparison is dismal. The graph projected out another generation or two actually has parts of Africa catching up with American median income.

The World Bank explains this succinctly as a wealth of new natural resource discoveries. Like oil and gold.

But that’s hardly the end of the story. The new-found wealth in the ground is a necessary foundation, just as rich soil was to early Americans and oil was to the 1960s Arab in the Emirates.

But on that foundation is blossoming some exciting non-natural discoveries, in high tech and alternative energy, in natural products manufacture and a score of other industries.

It was poorly reported but extraordinary this year that South Africa bailed out Europe. That’s right. South Africa paid $2 billion into a world monetary fund to help with the Greek and other European bailouts. Economically, the First World took charity from the Third World.

And Africa has no qualms about embracing the best of capitalism, thank you. Walmart was welcomed into South Africa with a warmer embrace than most mid-sized towns in the United States provide the retailer.

But after the hugs and kisses were over, Walmart submitted to a labor agreement that Americans working for Walmart would die for. Why are they able to do this in Africa, and not in America?

And “thing development” is progressing no less fast than social and “thought development.”

Consider the media, (I am). A respected global media watchdog claims that Tanzania has a freer and better media than the U.S. This is because of the worst of American media, which pulls down the overall ranking.

But the worst of American media, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and sorts, have made mincemeat of the truth, have thrown civility to the wolves and turned making money into a first principal that cares little about the effects of its nearly sadistic approach to the public need.

In defense some of us Americans would point to many exceptional online services like Wired and Mother Jones and The Nation (and dozens more), and as you examine those “good” media you’ll find out the reason is the same as for Tanzania’s position: youth.

America is aging less than gracefully and its right-winger lying mentality is very much linked to old guys. So perhaps Africa has an intrinsic advantage, since such a large portion of its population is young relative to America’s.

Yesterday was historic for the American Congress: 78 women in The House and 20 women in the Senate. This reverses a trend begun about a decade ago where women in elected office began to decline.

But in Kenya that would be mandated at 145 in The House and 33 in the Senate! Mandated?! Yes, Kenya’s new constitution requires that a third of all elected officials be women, almost doubling in one fell swoop what it’s taken America more than 200 years to accomplish.

The new Kenyan constitution, modeled but improved on South Africa’s new constitution, is quickly becoming a model worldwide. Simple and common sense things like religion banned from schools and institutionalized affirmative action that adjusts to ethnicity and gender as society continually changes puts Kenya on a markedly higher moral plane than America.

I think above all other things socially, though, is the new African attitude towards justice. America is petrified with the concept of sharia Law, for instance if applied in the new Egypt. But Americans understand little of this and can’t even see how any set of laws can be molded to virtually any social model.

Our own Supreme Court has bent and twisted, upheld and struck down, and essentially remolded and unmolded society again and again. American laws on such things as drug possession (marijuana), abortion, gambling and even incest and slavery have gone all over the chart!

There was no direction from the “Founding Fathers” on those issues part and parcel to modern day life. And the irony is that so many Americans think otherwise, that there is some Founding Father out there guiding our every move.

The new Kenya justice will be an amalgam of Islamic sharia and British common law. Some feat, eh? But beautiful and adjusted to the realities of its new society.

But Kenya recognizes – like so much of the world, America excepted – that there is a global morality, today. That there is a worldwide foundation for such things as basic human rights.

Four of Kenya’s most prominent citizens have submitted to charges filed against them at the World Court in The Hague. Voluntarily they will go to The Netherlands for their trial. Now it needs to be said, of course, that these criminals (as I think they are rightly charged) would likely not do so if the Kenyan public hadn’t forced them to. And that is the majesty and beauty of the situation.

An important aside: recently convicted in the World Court, former Liberian leader Charles Taylor in pleading for leniency in his sentencing for war crimes pointed out that he was convicted of crimes no different from those of George Bush in Iraq.

The justices gave no reply.

This was not the case for our own great Justice Ginsberg who dared to speak the truth in Cairo, when she told the Egyptians that maybe the U.S. constitution wasn’t right for them.

The onslaught of criticism that followed, the incredible vitriol from the right, wasn’t just humiliating to us Americans, it was … well, barbaric. It was truly like German Goths grumbling over Roman progressives. Ginsberg is of course right, and fortunately she rather than Senator Kruz is what Egyptians will and are considering for their own new, progressive societies.

But alas, it’s not all good news for Africa. Africa’s behemoth is South Africa. Its economy is multiples of the rest of the entire continent combined. Its history is as complex and fascinating as our own. And hardly 20 years ago it reformed itself into one of the most progressive, moral societies on earth.

But now, things don’t look so good.

Residual racism and neo-apartheidism are sprouting across its non-black societies. I don’t think this is because it was always destined to be so, that there was some kind of intransigent ethic among whites that would eventually surface again, like an old whale on its last sound.

Rather, it’s because the current president has made it so. Jacob Zuma is a joke.

He’s vain, and easily set off by criticism. He’s so wrapped up in himself, he’s let the country wander leaderless. He’s patently ignored the courts, acted like a banana republic dictator and all the while the country spiraled downwards.

Many local experts, white and black and left and right, are beginning to see him not so much a central actor separate from the times, but rather the embodiment of something greater:

The implosion of the ANC, the freedom fighter party that won the battle against apartheid and whose marshal was Nelson Mandela.

I think this is true, and that’s why this is my fourth most important story of 2012. Yet it’s with hope that I also see Zuma coming to an end sooner than the constitution would mandate, and of the ANC moving restlessly to get its act together. It may, however, be too late.

So the year ends on an incredibly positive note for the continent as a whole, but a seriously cautionary one for its grand marshal.

Too Much Gaga?

Too Much Gaga?

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Africa is presenting some electric perspectives on western world hypocrisy, and I challenge anyone to explain it otherwise. Lady Gaga and cricket.

Lady Gaga’s presentation, lyrics (when there are some), causes and overall demeanor is basically that of an entertainer with a progressive set of political and social beliefs. She supported President Obama in the most recent election, is something of a humanist and a vociferous supporter of gay rights.

Her performances are downright eccentric if anarchic. I think it fair to say she’s a champion of free will.

But today in South Africa where’s she’s in the middle of a very popular performance tour, she’s getting entangled in her own beliefs in a way that would never occur in the western world.

Her concert’s ban on photographing any part of her performance may, indeed, be a violation of the new South African constitution. (As it should be, and as it should be everywhere at any time.)

The South African National Editors Forum has called on Gaga to “at least meet with us” to discuss her possible violation of the constitution, but she declined.

“Previous accepted practice at such events [as the Gaga concert] has been for accredited news photographers to be allowed to take pictures during the first three songs and then to withdraw,” SANEF continued. This time, though, Gaga says Nono.

It’s a long established practice, of course, in the west that concerts and other entertainer-centered performances be treated just like the Sunday NFL Game of the Week, a copyrighted and owned piece of intellectual property that includes virtually all images and graphics.

But the new South Africa, and from my point of view the only moral position, is that when an entertainer achieves “public domain,” then it’s a free-for-all. That’s defacto the situation, anyway. Not Gaga or Ted or Obama or Ricky Martin can keep pirated videos, photographs or sound tracks out of the public domain.

And there’s no way that journalists can report on this without referring to them.

Gaga is steeped in western hypocrisy.

And then there’s the first ever woman to head a national cricket board appointed Sunday in Kenya.

Jackie Janmohamed became one of the first cricket umpires licensed by the world cricket authority in 1989, and she’s been fighting for women in cricket ever since. Cricket is one of the most conservative of world sports, dominated almost exclusively by men.

Unlike press freedom at entertainer’s concerts, though, women in sports is much more accepted in the U.S. than in much of the rest of the western world. And we can specifically and clearly thank Title 9 for this, a series of federal laws passed in 1972.

But unlike Kenya on Sunday, America together with virtually all the rest of the western world limits the heads of governing sports institutions to the same gender of that institution. In other words, America has no Baseball Commissioner for both men and woman’s baseball … as Kenya now does for the even more conservative game of cricket.

“Unisex” in sports has come to Africa. But not to the west.

Lady Gaga and cricket. Just another day of Africa leaving the west behind in its (stadium) dust.

Statistics are Just Cosmetic

Statistics are Just Cosmetic

by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

The American demographic is changing, the earth is heating up, and lipstick is the only way to understand how well Africa is doing and how far behind America is falling.

A U.S. presidential election provides an incredible snapshot of America, because so much data and polling and social introspection goes on. Much of it confirms my long-stated beliefs that America is yet impeded by racism and sorely crippled by under education.

And that means much of America just doesn’t accept reality. Like global warming. Or like how Africa is becoming so modern, innovative and holds the potential to outdistance America on a number of fronts.

I’ve written about energy, for instance, and the aggressive use of solar and biofuels; I’ve written about the many inventions like the competitors to iPhones; I’ve written about software development and imaginative financing.

And now I’m writing about a topic I know so much about: cosmetics.

A new Kenyan beauty products company is achieving some unique success and might well enter the American market. We often criticize foreign-made products (particularly from China) because they often have a great price advantage. An advantage sometimes associated with inhumane labor practices or outright government subsidizing.

Not the case with SuzieBeauty. Her products might cost less than Lancome but it’s not because of slave labor. It’s because the division of wealth on earth is so skewed that the “richest” in places like Kenya are still less rich than in America. But that not by as much as you probably think!

SuzieBeauty is a perfect example of how American accomplishments are being exploited and enhanced faster by non-Americans than they are by Americans.

Suzie Wokabi is the founder of SuzieBeauty, and she’s Kenyan, of course. But she spent some time in the U.S. where she graduated from college and then joined the fashion industry. She became certified for media make-up and then worked for five years in New York before returning to Africa in 2007.

There and then in Africa, educated and experienced by everything wondrous in America, she really blossomed.

SuzieBeauty’s main standard-size bright colored lipstick costs about $10. A similar lipstick from MAC in the U.S. costs $15. This 50% difference is true through almost all of the beauty products offered by each company. One Kenyan and one American.

There are several interesting things about this.

The U.S. government says that the average wage of a working person in American in 2011 is $42,979.61. According to the Kenyan government the average wage of a working person there in 2011 was under $1000. (According to the CIA it was $1700.)

The big difference between the Kenyan government’s own determination and the CIA’s has to do with many factors, most notably the exchange rate which organizations like the CIA weight over longer periods of time. But regardless, either figure when compared to the American one suggests a society in Kenya of abject paupers. And it’s these numbers that teachers often use in high school much less college.

Africa and most of the third world have been growing so rapidly over the last several decades (as high as 10% per year, compared to developed countries 3-4%) that their societies have become radically divided economically.

The difference between Kenya’s richest and Kenya’s poorest is nowhere near as great as between America’s richest and poorest, but that’s because America’s richest are off the charts. But the difference say, between the top fifth-or-sixth of Kenyans and the bottom fifth-or-sixth is a chasm compared to that metric in America.

And that stat applies to most developing countries. And to be sure that’s an enormous problem. In Africa that metric is most pronounced in South Africa, where the country is fairly rich but huge portions of its population are abjectly poor. The labor unrest and social disturbances plaguing the country right now reflect this division.

Redistribution of wealth is a hot topic in the U.S., and one that few politicians are ready to embrace. But it is taken for granted in the developing world, because it’s understood without it their societies will explode.

But the point of this blog is not to lobby for redistribution. It’s to demonstrate that America’s top 10% and Kenya’s top fifth-or-sixth are not chasms apart. They’re about 50% apart, the difference of the cost of Suzie’s lipstick and Mac’s.

And that’s a remarkable fact, because only ten years ago it was probably 100%, and twenty years ago it was probably 1000%.

The developing world benefits from the youth of its societies which are unbridled by hundreds of years of law to be sure, but which are also unfettered by custom. But most of all the developing world is willing to experiment and explore new if radical social constructs which old places like America are so afraid to do.

You’ll never hear Kenyans talk of “founding fathers” or restricting their social responsibilities to what men in wigs 200 years ago thought was right.

SuzieBeauty’s mission goes well beyond value for stock holders. It includes “…innovative research …training and education, social responsibility and environmental awareness.”

Not your normal lipstick manufacturer. I can hear Kenya smacking its lips right now!

How To .. do everything.

How To .. do everything.

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

We all know the media is the message. And we all deny it: the media seriously effected the U.S. Presidential election. Africans are more honest and thereby less self-destructive.

Today and tomorrow in Dakar, African intellectuals gather with African media moguls to continue work on a continent-wide framework for developing media. This is the 5th annual “Africa Leaders Media Forum” and they know that they control much of Africa’s destiny.

Last year’s conference closing declaration said, “as demonstrated by the Arab Spring…, media have a profound role to play in social transformation, giving voice to people, and promoting freedom.”

Just like CNN, MSNBC, Rush Limbaugh and the NBC Nightly News. The difference is that we Americans staunchly refuse to accept the obvious brashly insisting a good journalist can be “objective.” Africans know better.

That doesn’t mean that objectivity isn’t a plausible tenant of news reporting; it just means that it’s unattainable. With that realization a reporter is able to temper his own bias better, while clearly accepting and admitting it. There is then much less suspicion between her and her readers.

Today’s agenda began with an open public forum at a nearby university that was covered by Forbes contributor, Elise Knutsen, writing for AllAfrica.

“Panelists at the meeting spoke with manifest passion as they discussed issues related to media, governance and inclusive citizenship,” she reports. Again and again the electrified forum affirmed how powerful the media is: Whether to “promote citizenship” or “empower women” the media had a critical responsibility to frame itself correctly, otherwise it would do so intrinsically, out of control.

Is that what’s happening in America?

This is communist stuff to many Americans, despite the fact that Marshall McLuhan’s the-medium-in-the-message theory was widely accepted with his first publications in 1964.

Tomorrow’s opening session acknowledges the massive revolutions, new constitutions and increased turbulence in much of Africa. “How is the media exploiting citizens’ new wave of awareness?” the session narrative asks.

Because the media alone is the thermostat for so many public events. You dial up the enthusiasm or you dial it down. The media does this more than government organizations, schools or dining room table conversations over dinner. It’s the media, stupid!

In America we’re so afraid of power. We’re certain that power of any kind has a preeminent evil, and that any corralling of it is generally for greed and misuse which will right away curtail our own free will.

That’s really laughable, because power is power and if it isn’t corralled there’s at least an equal chance with anything else that it will curtail our own free will, and that’s the point!

Combine these notions with the false hopes that objectivity can be followed and you’ve a formula for master disaster.

What the African media understands it lacks is the technological know-how of America. Later sessions will explore the new technologies, and that will be followed by a session that then asks, “Are the African media fit to report on these multiple challenges?”

As with so much in Africa’s rapidly progressing institutions, today, there is a concern there isn’t enough money (resources) to properly develop. But the question is broader than getting enough video cameras. It includes, too, the moral and temporal fitness of the people who will be using those cameras.

Ooooh. Once again, socialism, communism whatever you want to call it, right? Yes, actually, that’s right. Media is community of-the-people and by-the-people more than many other institutions in society, certainly more than the elected assemblies and officials whose paths to power are wrought with obligation.

Media is much more dynamic. It reflects the moments of truth, and it’s those aggregate moments that we need to display, analyze and preserve.

Following Dakar’s stellar example, I intend to invite Brian Williams, Rush Limbaugh, Robert Murdoch, David Brooks and Maureen Dowd to our own American conference on how the media needs to become morally fit and responsible to the will of the people.

I’m going to call it, “The How To Do Everything” conference to attract a broad audience.

… Although I might have to run for President, first.