My Beauty Best Teacher

Basil Enwegbara asks "...Can Africans learn something from today’s Chinese and Indians? Can we learn that a strong market for goods and services is a leading cause of economic growth, and that market is itself a major cause of capital, investment, and technological advancement? Are we now convinced that economic growth is an organic process, involving many interrelated factors? What about understanding that even the banking industry and other financial institutions do not create the conditions for economic growth, since they are only important when an economy is sufficiently sophisticated to make efficient and creative intermediation between savings and business?...Have we now finally realised that a continent that does not educate majority of its young men and women in job-enhancing education (science and engineering) to prepare them as useful citizens is not building its future high-value carrying workforce? Are we still in doubt that Africa having the world’s single largest number of highly educated professionals in the US and yet they could not be made to work closely with their African counterparts—like their Chinese and the Indians counterparts—to help jumpstart continental economy is our collective sin future generations will find difficult to forgive us? Have we now come to pose the question: How come our well-trained scientists and engineers, those that refused to migrate are allowed to roam our streets without being fully mobilised? What about the understanding that the future of our economic development lies in the mobilisation of Africa’s entrepreneurs, especially our highly gifted men and women who have the psyche of economic warriors? Put differently, are we now fully aware that it is this lack of entrepreneurial dynamism that today separates us from the developed economies of the West and recently Asian economies..."

Project Momentum founded by Hamilton Doughba Caranda-Martin is "...attempting to shift an African paradigm of corruption, dictatorship, and hardship to one that is an open egalitarian structure, where all people have an opportunity to live healthy and prosperous lives. We dare to dream big dreams, we dare to imagine a world free of HIV/AIDS, where children don’t go to bed hungry, where healthcare is equally available to all, where education and not war is a major industry, and where people everywhere can live up to their full potential...The Dollar for Africa campaign is a vehicle designed to support our ongoing fundraiser for Project Momentum’s initiatives in sub Saharan Africa. The Dollar for Africa campaign is perhaps the most significant fundraising campaign begun by an African national without any government involvement or support. Project Momentum is not affiliated with any national entity or any religious group, it is structured to develop, propose, as well as provide solutions..."

Joan Holmes president of the Hunger Project stated "...Only Africans can lead Africa. Only Africans can shape Africa..." there is a "...disconnect between the political leaders and the people. "What's missing," Holmes argued, "is leadership - leadership committed to the well-being of their people..."Forty-six percent of Africa?s people live in abject poverty," Holmes said. "There is corruption in virtually every part of the world, but in Africa it is particularly devastating. Corruption costs African economies more than $148 billion a year..."
Via AllAfrica

Stephen Ellis in Foreign Affairs proffers solutions on how to repair failed and failing states in Africa. "...a better approach to dysfunctional states in Africa would begin with a diagnosis that takes full account of their individual characters and does not assume that the same therapy will work on all of them...A new approach will also require new institutional frameworks that draw in all interested parties, including some of Africa's more capable states and regional institutions. International financial bodies, especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), must also be brought onboard...In some cases, a form of international trusteeship will be required. This idea, anathema since the end of colonialism, deserves rehabilitation. Done properly, it need not involve the wholesale dismantling of national sovereignty, a precedent that would rightly worry many parties. Instead, trusteeship should entail a new, enhanced form of international responsibility...Instead of more money, what Africa really needs is governments that are responsible to their own voters, that are largely self-financing, that are internationally respectable, and that can attract home some of the hundreds of thousands of talented Africans who currently live in the West. New infusions of aid would likely just perpetuate the kleptocratic regimes that have slowly strangled the continent since independence..."
via NYTimes

Chamberlain S. Peterside analyses the rise of the BRIC(pdf) nations and its relevance to Africa. "... There are a myriad of socio-political issues confronting them, but the potency of these countries (Brazil,Russia,India and China) transcends merely the labor market and natural resources into value-added productivity through utilization of technological tools that are easily accessible and cheaper to acquire. As free trade and globalization erodes barriers and diminishes competitive advantage of industrialized nations (such as financial wealth, developed infrastructure, high productivity and bargaining power), opportunities are gradually shifting to these erstwhile-impoverished countries...The Rise of BRIC the nations is dispelling the myth about archaic political doctrines and development models. The countries in question cut across all ideological spectrum and continents (except Africa). They all seem to agree on one thing - that the "market" is king. Another common denominator is size and natural resources, but today what counts is how countries deploy their human and material resources.You can identify amongst them, developing countries (all but Russia), former colonies (India and Brazil), former/current communist countries (Russia and China respectively) and of course poor or debt-ridden countries (all but Russia). Their experience could serve as a road map for most developing countries in Africa and other places..."
Via NigeriaWorld

Jonathan Elendu's Elendu Reports and Sowore Omoleye's Sahara Reporters are a pointer to the promise of bottom-up methods. More familiar but maverick instruments like Al-Jazeera have been positively disruptive to the social-political fabric of the Middle East and beyond,however their establishment and operational costs have been prohibitive and a barrier to scrappy potential new entrants. Elendu Reports demonstrates the potential of diligent no holds barred investigative reporting for the continent of Africa enabled by the tools of web 1.0 and 2.0 . Recent reports of corrupt goverment officials with the accompanying images of their ill-gotten luxury properties in Western cities is threshold breaking,the denials and obfuscations of the past by the officials is now indefensible the brigandage seemingly more brazen . The effect of this is undeniable, it brings the third dimension of texture to accusations of corruption, in the flesh so to speak, the world can now see what happens to the revenue and resources of some of the most impoverished countries in the world, while the leaders don the caps of debt-relief and aid. This medium yet to include podcasting (sound) and vodcasting (video),are the developing worlds alternatives to '60 Minutes' etc. The erosion of the digital divide and its interactive enabling nature could have an accelerated cleansing effect on the hitherto incorrigibles that rule the roost, accountability and transparency sought so long in Africa's leadership might now be within its grasp.

Richard Dowden writes"...Africa is changing fast. Driving those changes are mobile phones and radio stations and China's appetite for raw materials. The G8's agenda of aid and debt relief may, if delivered, play a secondary role. The external driver is China's search for minerals , particularly oil, which pushes up Africa's mineral prices...The internal driver is the mobile phone revolution that has transformed business and politics in Africa in the past ten years. In 2001, only 3 per cent of Africans had telephones of any sort. Now there are 50 million mobile-phone users, with numbers growing by 35 per cent a year. The phone companies completely misjudged the market - they thought that only the super-rich would buy mobiles. But it turned out that the people who really needed them were small self-employed businessmen, market women, taxi drivers and the casual workers who keep Africa going. In some areas, beer sales have plummeted as people have invested their meagre earnings in mobile phone cards instead. The pace of life has picked up hugely..."
Via Textually.Org

"...Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation..."

Kurt Hoffman of the Shell Foundation makes the point that"...Poverty is about a lack of money. With a job and a stable income, the poor can access shelter, education and healthcare. Small enterprise is the vehicle to make this happen, but I'm not sure the aid industry alone can spur the creation of a responsible and flourishing private sector because setting up and running a business is not something aid professionals know much about"...Therefore the Shell Foundation makes the case for reforming the aid industry by applying fundamental business principles to enhance its performance and accountability. It calls on the aid community to give poor people real choice when delivering development, which in turn can be measured against tangible targets such as the number of pro-poor enterprises supported and jobs created..."

Andrew Rice reviews Martin Meredith's new book 'The Fate of Africa' "...he writes that "what is so striking about the fifty-year period since independence is the extent to which African states have suffered so many of the same misfortunes." Some countries, like Nigeria and Zambia, have gone through cycles of reform and decay. But Meredith's subtitle--From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair--sums up the overall trend. It's hard to imagine now, but in the heady days of the 1960s, much of the continent was no less prosperous than South Korea or Malaysia. While those Asian nations have transformed themselves into economic "tigers," however, gross domestic products across Africa shrank during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Africans are getting poorer, not richer. They are living shorter, hungrier lives... The decline of an entire continent confounds our preconceptions about human advancement... How can one continent be so out of step with humankind's march of progress? Everyone agrees that Africans are desperately poor and typically endure governments that are, to varying degrees, corrupt and capricious. The dispute is about causes and consequences. One group--call it the poverty-first camp--believes African governments are so lousy precisely because their countries are so poor. The other group--the governance-first camp--holds that Africans are impoverished because their rulers keep them that way. The argument may seem pedantic, but there are billions of dollars at stake, and millions of lives. The fundamental question is whether those who are well-off can salve a continent's suffering, or if, for all our good intentions, Africans are really on their own..."

SpectrumWomen highlights the work of Warie Dirie's Foundation and its efforts to make female genital mutilation a thing of the past. She makes the point that "...Female Genital Mutilation has nothing to do with culture, tradition or religion. It is a torture and a crime, which needs to be fought against...".The establishment of foundations by diaspora Africans is a welcome trend. The building of institutions can be a dedicated effort that can take generations, foundations can be seen as an integral building block to these ultimate goals.

Commenting on the viewpoints of Anti-Globalization agitators the writer and presenter of the documentary 'The Devils Footpath' Akinyi June Arunga stated that,"...Like many other globalization protesters I've encountered, they seemed to believe that Mexicans and other poor people don't want the same conveniences of life that they themselves enjoy: running water, permanent homes, affordable clothes and food, leisure time, cars. They preferred things to stay "exotic"—underdeveloped and poor.The "indigenous" customs enjoyed by such tourists are not so charming when they make up one's day-to-day existence. The protesters curse the use of DDT, the only effective control of malaria, because it harms birds. But they never have to wonder if their children will survive the current malaria epidemic. They argue against the use of pesticides and pest- and drought-resistant crops, but they never have to wonder how they will survive if a pest invasion or drought destroys all their grown food.They argue against new technologies, such as the genetic modification of crops, that might increase productivity and help us move from subsistence farming to cash crops, but they never have to worry that there might not be food on the table..."

Warrick Smith writes(PDF) about the potential of entrepreneurship in the developing world. "...Today, few informed commentators question that the private sector plays a critical role in growth and poverty reduction. The ideological debates of the past are giving way to more pragmatic discussions about how best to unleash and expand that contribution while preserving other social values. New research is also providing fresh insights into what works and what doesn’t...when assessing the contribution of entrepreneurship to development,we need a more encompassing view. We need to include peasant farmers toiling in their fields in Uganda and Bangladesh; street vendors peddling their wares in La Paz and Manila; and microenterprises in Cairo and Istanbul...The private sector is the principal source of investment, with domestic private investment substantially overshadowing foreign investment across the developing world...The private sector accounts for about 90 percent of jobs in developing countries, .and poor people rate self-employment and jobs as the two most promising ways to improve their situation. But employment is not the only mechanism. A vibrant private sector expands the availability and reduces the prices of goods in society, including goods consumed by poor people. And firms and commercial transactions are the main source of taxes from which governments can empower the poor through investments in health, education and other public goods, as well as through direct income transfers..."

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong comments on the bane of superstition and irrationality and efforts being made to mitigate their effects."...West Africans need a new mindset and new thinking informed by their experiences, culture and history. West Africans live in new challenges and new dangers, some of which emanate from within their culture, unknown to them has led them lead a dim life...In a move reminiscent of the European Enlightenment era, which used reason to demolish entrenched deadly superstitions, Ghanaian scientists are currently working on strategies that would help explain things rationally, based on facts and given reasons, and are also mapping out strategies for science acculturation in order to minimize the degree of irrationality in the Ghanaian society...The challenges facing the nation today is to transform the minds, attitudes and behaviours in our society to appreciate scientific approach to doing things..."
Via GhanaWeb

Chippla writes "...How could Nigerian society have evolved in such a way that those who legislate in it receive such treatment that well grounded medical doctors, engineers and professors could only dream of? Could this really be called a democracy? One goes to elect someone who ends up living the life of a plutocrat amidst want and squalor so prevalent in society...This crisis of Nigerian society lies in the fact that its ruling class sees no reason why it shouldn't live like the ruling class anywhere else in the world. The truth however is that Nigeria is not like 'anywhere else in the world' – it is a poor developing country with a pathetically low per capita income..."

"...In a short cover story this summer Newsweek contrasts the promises at the G-8 summit with the entrepreneurial revolution already taking place on the ground in Africa. It's not planned, rather much more spontaneous and bottom-up. But the evidence is that its working in at least 25 of the continent's countries. Even World Bank President Wolfowitz is impressed, according to the magazine.Before an Africa tour last month, the newly installed World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, called corruption "the worst threat to democracy since communism." But after visiting Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Rwanda and South Africa, he was striking a more positive note: "Every—where I found people who had a real willingness to work hard, intelligence, energy and a can-do attitude. Africa is a continent on the move..."
Via NextBillion

In a paper about Somalia, Tatiana Nenova writes that "...the private sector has demonstrated its much-vaunted capability to make do. To cope with the absence of the rule of law, private enterprises have been using foreign jurisdictions or institutions to help with some tasks, operating within networks of trust to strengthen property rights, and simplifying transactions until they require neither. Somalia’s private sector experience suggests that it may be easier than is commonly thought for basic systems of finance and some infrastructure services to function where government is extremely weak or absent..." A discussion analysing this assertion had a number of conclusions in their introductory remarks Ian Bannon and Tim Harford stated that "...Entrepreneurs in Somalia have used three tactics to operate in an institutional vacuum. First, they have “imported institutions,” for example by using banking systems in nearby countries. Second, they have used clans and other local networks of trust to help with contract enforcement, payment and transmission of funds. Third, they have simplified transactions to a point where other tactics are not needed. How can these tactics be reinforced or defended? Are there others that can be supported? There are inherent limits to what the private sector can achieve without the support of a capable state to enforce property rights and provide basic public goods. But there is also a risk that a failed state will be replaced by a predatory one. How can fledgling states be encouraged to support, rather than predate on, entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurs often need to bridge religious, ethnic or tribal boundaries to get things done. Can entrepreneurship be harnessed for peace and reconciliation?..."
Via PSD Blog

Benard Wasow writes"...It was not access to foreign aid or special access to Northern markets that gave Asia its advantage over Africa...The external conditions facing these two great regions were similar. The North looked out for its own interests in its dealings with Thailand as much as with Kenya...Asian success was not made in Washington — nor in G8 summits. It was made in Asia. Likewise, we have to recognize that African success ultimately will be made in Africa...the burden of stimulating economic development, the burden of allowing economic development to happen without draining it away through corruption and authoritarian regulation, does not lie in Europe or the United States...The leaders of the G8 cannot bring democracy to the Middle East, nor can they bring prosperity to Africa..."