Dear Everyone, Africa is Not a Country

We have written about this on our pages before. You have probably visited the blog Africa is a Country? One of our readers, first time writer, sent in  this: 

I honestly do not think it is entirely an ignorance issue as no one in their right minds can confidently argue that for instance, multi Pulitzer Prize winning author, Thomas Friedman does not know that Africa is a continent. It appears to be a respect issue.

A peek into the past and future of Pan Africanism

To quote Prof Zeleza, “‘Africa’ the map and the place is becoming increasingly ‘Africa’ the idea and the consciousness, buttressed by an intricate web of continental institutions.” In the second decade of the 21st century, the continent is “perhaps more ‘African’ than it has ever been… more interconnected through licit and illicit flows of commodities, capital, ideas, and people... more conscious of its collective identity.” As the pressures of globalisation continue to buffet and mould the continent, as they always have, a continental economy and, eventually, government is inevitable — with or without Gaddafi’s harangues.

More.

The UnaAfrican African

What is African? What isn't? What defines who we are? Our identity? From our archives is an article by Stephen Wanyama on why he finds little identity with Africa. The comments that follow are a lively debate.

Read here .

The Africa that pushes back

I have been asked many times a variation of the same question: "Why do Africans wait until it is too late?" For most Westerners, Africa is hunger, war, despotism, AIDS and poverty - full of Africans who are either helpless victims, or who choose to sit on their hands, only lifting them up to accept Western handouts.

But there's another side of Africa, the one that pushes back. This side is comprised of political and social organizations and activists, school teacher organizations, journalists, and health professionals, as well as women, worker and youth organizations that patiently chip away at Africa's problems, usually with no funding, media coverage, or national and international recognition to speak of.

Read more from Mukoma wa Ngugi here.

China and the African Wage Paradox

Recently, I sat down with a Washington Post reporter and several CGD colleagues to discuss under-reported topics in globalization and development.

Inevitably we came around to the topic of Chinese development and manufacturing, and whether special conditions there (low wages, an undervalued exchange rate, and so forth) are contributing to de-industrialization elsewhere in the world. The impact of China on global manufacturing is certainly no under-reported topic, but the discussion usually focuses on the consequences for the US.

Read more from Chris Blattman here.

Africa and the Future

Published here is a speech given by the Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon on February 22 to the Africa Investment and Finance Conference held at the London Stock Exchange.

Africa, and Leadership

Is the failure in Kenya- now that we have been proved not so special- and in Africa, really a failure of leadership or this there other, perhaps justified, extenuation?

Musing through recent events, the apparent suspension of the ongoing mediation most of all, some questions are impelled on one's consciousness. Is there something (beer voucher to Ken Opalo for setting off this train of thought) to Chinua Achebe's thesis that the poverty of our leadership is the main obstacle to African progress?

Participate in this open thread here.

The chains of colonisation's cold afterglow

Events from the past week have raised the question of whether or not third world people should sever the ties of dependency with their former colonial masters once and for all.

The first group of these issues revolved around the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in Kampala. I was vicariously embarrassed by the entire spectacle, Ugandans swarming the darkened streets in the millions to welcome the British Queen and to underline their country's subservience to her throne. It was all a little much.

Read more from John Victor Ogot.

World Tea Expo without Africa

Year after year, Kenya is either the world's largest or second largest tea exporter. Although 16 African countries like Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda also produce tea, none of them makes even a fraction of Kenya's output.

Read More Here

New aid; the change in development assistance to Africa

Change is afoot across the African continent and even where it is slow in coming, there's evidence all around of a new generation of Africans -- entrepreneurial and inventive who are shaping a brighter future for the their communities. Jacqueline Novogratz explains a new path to development assistance, one which leads only in facilitation, providing investment rather than traditional aid.


Read More and watch the video here.

Getting Aid or Getting Paid?

Ken Teyie on Paul Collier's book The Bottom Billion.

An emotional must read, the book defines the bottom billion as people who live on less than a dollar a day, people who coexist with the 21st century, but whose reality is distinctly 14th century. Their lives are surrounded by civil war, plagues and ignorance. They are concentrated in Africa and central Asia with a scattering elsewhere. They live in Chad, Haiti, Bolivia, Cambodia and North Korea.

Read more here.

US of Africa

This week, The African Executive Magazine spoke out on the clamour for the formation of a United States of Africa proclaiming, "we do not need a United States of Africa." According to the magazine, the African Union (AU) summit issued a road-map to a federation of African States (Accra Declaration) without mentioning a single idea on political or economic freedom for African citizens.

Read here as Ken Teyie advises African states to move away from ideology onto action that will lead to economic growth.

Zimbabwe needs other Africans' help

Rejoice Ngwenya:

Although we are an extreme case, these oppressive economic and political policies are not exclusive to Zimbabwe. The fallacy of the African dream of Ghanian founding father Kwame Nkrumah about self-rule has been exposed by the brutal failures of governments with a revolutionary history. Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Milton Obote, and perhaps even such so-called models of excellence as Yoweri Museveni and Thabo Mbeki, all espoused Nkrumaism, meaning state control of the economy and even of society.

What will this generation offer Africa? Read more here.

Boeing, Airbus and African Airports

Kimani Njoroge on the global aviation industry.

The global aviation industry is up for a shake up. This follows the introduction of new planes by both Boeing and Airbus, and the entry of BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) into the civilian aircraft manufacturing industry.

Read more here.

Is Africa Ready for Google

Read as Al Kags congratulates Google's first employee, and his assessment of IT growth in Africa, and what he sees as an impediment to this growth.

However, we need to accept, Africa, that the largest impediment to our development is our cultural outlook - not the traditions and customs but the way we do business and our openness to new concepts. I recently had a meeting with a government official with regard to accessing some of the records that they have, digitizing it at my own cost and sharing the digital data with them for them to develop its use by wider sharing it. Amazingly, his first reaction was "absolutely not." Why? Because it is not done in government. When we got over that, we found that there is a huge fear with regard to what the information will be used for.

Read more here.

Africa: Understanding China's Interest

Ahmed Mohammed seeks to analyze the Chinese economic interest in Africa urging an objective centered on "the attraction of more Chinese direct investment specifically in infrastructure and services". Follow this link for more on this.

The Chinese President and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao's interest in Africa and the rest of Asia is similarly based on two important factors, namely trade and material resources. While Emperor Zhu Di demanded tributes and fancied giraffes and other exotic animals for his personal zoo, Jintao is principally focused on markets and fossil fuel amongst other natural
resources for his massive industrial appetite. But President Jintao's hospitality for dignitaries is not any different from that Emperor Zhu. Small talk from some of the dignitaries who have had the chance to enjoy Chinese hospitality give glimpse of the unreserved and tantalizingly luxurious receptions accorded them. Is such indulgence aimed at creating a reckless exuberance on the part of the African for Chinese benefit?

Poverty and AIDS

Bosibori Ndemo's article of the 19^th of February got me thinking about the reality of HIV-AIDS and the power of the media in shaping our perceptions on disease.

The dominant view is that the high prevalence rates in Africa are caused by the nature of sexual behaviour there. This view excludes other important factors such as poverty and biological factors. However only the most prejudiced would choose to ignore the fact that HIV has only a 1% prevalence rate in permissive American society, but reach 25% in Africa. Partner exchange rates and unprotected sex have no reason to be higher in Africa than anywhere else. The charge that it is sexual behaviour that sets African infection rates apart has not been made, but it is implicit in an HIV combat strategy that has the ABC doctrine at its core.

Stephen Wanyama links the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa with poverty advocating for improved health care and nutrition across Africa.

Excuse Me!

Last Sunday marked 200 years since the abolition of slavery by an act of the British Parliament.

To mark the event many writers around the globe suddenly remembered that they were black and that society; i.e. Western society owed them all sorts of reparations and apologies for the horrors of the slave trade, and of colonisation. More dangerously, they have sought to explain the troubles facing black families and black society as a whole as a legacy of slavery. The violence, the crime often internecine, the gangs, the ghetto culture all of it, is the curse of slavery.

Annette Keino on the history of slavery on the world's Black populace,: As a black person who works hard for everything that I have, who struggles every day against institutional racism and historic disadvantage, I believe I much better off not thinking that I am congenitally disadvantaged as well, thank you very much."

Economic effects of global warming in Africa

Global warming took center stage in Kenya a few months ago as the United Nation Environmental Program (UNEP) held its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conference in Kenya.

The delegates who attended the meeting came back with the same conclusion they have in the past; we should aim at reducing the carbon dioxide emissions. The human carbon foot print.

There are several arguments in the global warming story, there are those who insist that the carbon dioxide and the burning of the fossil fuels is casing the earth to become a warmer place. Then there are those who insist that the earth warming up is a natural trend, a cycle through which the earth naturally goes through, it just happens that we are warming up and have been warming up for the last 1000 years. Then there are those who believe that the warming is related to the sun’s activity, the lack thereof.

Brian Mogaka on the environment and economic growth or lack thereof in Africa.