My Beauty Best Teacher

Africaworks reviews When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa by Robert H. Bates :

His new book aims to describe why African societies — and the governments that serve them — did so poorly even after recognizing the importance of markets. His book, while brief, is studded with great insights and, to my eyes, intended as a counterweight to reductionist arguments by others,notably the Oxford professor Paul Collier and Columbia’s Jeff Sachs, that the African state is essentially powerless in the face of wars over “greed and grievance” or geographic forces that isolate and undermine political actors. In a bid to undercut the ciricularity of these arguments, Bates tries to put politics — as a human activity — back in the center of the African condition.

Ethan Zuckerman reports on Sokwanele's mashup of electoral fraud in Zimbabwe:

Sokwanele announced..: a Google maps mashup of election-rigging incidents. Each icon on the map corresponds to a media report of an incident that controvenes SADC standards for a free and fair election. Clicking on an icon will take you to the issue of Sokwanele’s Zimbwbe Elections Watch newsletter, which summarizes media report on the elections, and to a database record, where each instance is coded as to which SADC rules it violates.

Mark Shuttleworth’s HIP2B² program is based on the premise "...that for young people, education, particularly in the sciences, is the foundation for personal and career prosperity. In short, it is the biggest investment you will ever make, and the dividends you receive will be enormous. By diligently applying yourself to your studies in STEM (Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship and Maths), you will be greatly rewarded for your efforts.When you immerse yourself in these disciplines, you cultivate an enquiring mind that can think outside the box, and see opportunity and innovation in the world around you. As a natural by-product, you will also develop analytical thinking skills. With these, you will see 'challenges' where others see 'problems,' and this analytical ability will enable you to master your universe, whether it's creating fantastic enterprises, coming up with business ideas or finding solutions to global problems..."

June Arunga a TED fellow, speaks at DLD about growing evidence of demand for goods and services within the continent:

The Economist reports:

Until recently Botswana, a country of 1.8m people that produces 27% of the world's diamonds by value, exported only rough stones. The government, which is struggling to diversify its economy and create jobs, wants to get more out of its main commodity. Cutting adds about 40% to the value of rough stones. But the idea, explains Akolang Tombale, the permanent secretary of the ministry of minerals and energy, is to create an international diamond centre that not only cuts and polishes, but also trades diamonds and provides security, technology and financial services. The government hopes this will spill over into other sectors and help diversify the economy. For now, the diamond industry should create over 3,000 jobs by the end of next year.

The NYTimes reports on how Dilip Ratha reframed the remittances debate:

Mr. Ratha has argued that the importance of the money exceeds its sheer size. Unlike foreign aid, it cannot be skimmed by potentates. Unlike investors who flee crises, migrants increase their giving during hard times. The money is directed to the needy. And Mr. Ratha contends it is well-monitored, too, by intimates on the sending end. “It comes with a lot of goodwill, advice, knowledge and punishment if necessary — keeping in mind the welfare of the recipient,” he said.

Amity Shlaes comments at Bloomberg:

In a recent paper(pdf), scholars Simeon Djankov, Jose G. Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol surveyed data from more than 100 countries over four decades. They also found that aid tends to supplant growth and makes countries quantifiably less democratic. They compared aid with petroleum wealth. Based on their research, they determined, ``aid is a bigger curse than oil.

Editor of Under the Tree of Talking Onyekachi Wambu states:

“One of the lessons Africa should have learned and must apply is defining its own interests and then defending them. In the past we have tended to rely on other people’s agendas, hoping that they coincided with ours.”

Ben Olken posits that:

A country is “more likely to see democratization follow­ing the assassination(death) of an autocratic leader,” but found no substantial “effect following assassinations—or assassination attempts—on democratic leaders.” They(Olken and Ben Jones, an economist at Northwestern,) concluded that “on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy.”... results suggest,” they write, “that individual leaders can play crucial roles in shap­ing the growth of nations,” provided they are ruling with minimal or nonexistent checks and balances to their power (think Augusto Pinochet or Robert Mugabe).

ColdTusker writes about the recent Forbes Billionaires list:

The list is an - somewhat skewed - indictation of what economic reforms can do for a country. Africa has a few billionaires - Dangote of Nigeria & some S.Africans - but the combined wealth of the top 4 Indian billionaires is far greater than most African countries' GDP...Unlike many Kenyans - and Africans - who continue harping about 'colonialism'... India has moved on...
I have said that Kenya (and Africa) needs to look at India for development ideas. It remains a model for African countries.

It has:

-Democracy - albeit often flawed
-Diverse population, cultures & languages
-Wide economic base that was very low 20 years ago
-Agragian based economy until 5 years ago. Agriculture still remains the core mainstay for most Indians
-A former British colony - I don't think this is a handicap. I am just saying that Africans should quit moaning
-Huge educated diaspora in the Western world
-Huge entrepreneurial diaspora in the Western world
-Navigated tough shoals regarding sectarian violence e.g. Khalistan ('seccession' war), Hindu-Muslim riots, Wars with Pakistan, War with China, Caste (Tribal-style divisions) discriminations, etc

The compendium of essays Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress asks questions which include:

Why do some cultures achieve economic success while others languish? Why do some countries develop successful democracies while others continue to undergo political upheavals? Are these discrepancies because of the cultural values of a people and their country? How important are these values, and can they be modified? These questions and others are discussed within the wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and sometimes quite controversial essays presented here.

Open Access News reports:

The same group that launched e-Math for Africa in 2006 is now working on e-Physics for Africa and e-Chemistry for Africa. (Thanks to Anders Wändahl.)
The goal of e-Math for Africa is "to coordinate the efforts to make an African consortium for e-journals and databases." It includes both OA journals and TA journals discounted for African researchers.

Mckinsey reports on opportunities in health care :

In Nigeria, Kenya, and elsewhere, the private sector already serves more than 40 percent of the people in the lowest economic quintile. With the right investments, it could do even more.

The increasing demand for health care due to improved economic growth across much of the region could translate into $20 billion of additional investment in the region’s private-sector health care infrastructure in the coming decade.

James Surowiecki writes in the New Yorker:

Businesses that can generate jobs for others are the best hope of any country trying to put a serious dent in its poverty rate. Sustained economic growth requires companies that can make big investments—building a factory, say—and that can exploit the economies of scale that make workers more productive and, ultimately, richer. Microfinance evangelists sometimes make it sound as if, in an ideal world, everyone would own his own business. "All people are entrepreneurs," Muhammad Yunus has said. But in any successful economy most people aren't entrepreneurs—they make a living by working for someone else. Just fourteen per cent of Americans, for instance, are running (or trying to run) their own business. That percentage is much higher in developing countries—in Peru, it's almost forty per cent. That's not because Peruvians are more entrepreneurial. It's because they don't have other options...What poor countries need most, then, is not more microbusinesses. They need more small-to-medium-sized enterprises, the kind that are bigger than a fruit stand but smaller than a Fortune 1000 corporation.

PSD Blog reports on the trailblazing work of Beatrice Ayuru:

A few years ago, with no business training and no money, Beatrice decided that she would build her own school. "No girl should endure what I had to go through myself," says Beatrice. "Education is the best way to help reduce poverty in my region […] and giving girl children education empowers them. In my village, women are over-dependent on men."

Lira Integrated School, today has 1500 students, a school bus and an income-generating brass band. With the savings from the school, Beatrice has built a small-scale yoghurt factory and employs in total 104 people. Beatrice is far from being done. She is planning to open a university.

Founder of DIN Bola Fajemirokun's "...approach to improving the Nigerian judiciary system has three primary thrusts: ongoing research and monitoring of the system currently in use; introduction of an effective electronic records center; and consultation with lawyers, judges, and others to bring them up to speed on using and expanding the resource database she has created...",Ashoka.

Nick Smith posits at CSIS:

Transparency has been a watchword in development circles for some time now, and the concept is usually linked to a faith in the rational workings of free markets. Researchers and policy makers have argued that overweening state structures in Africa have allowed corruption to proliferate, undermining prospects for broad based growth. Large state structures allow state officials to capture resources and corruptly funnel them through patronage networks. Such invisible patron-client networks work behind the formal state structure, causing distorted development outcomes. The solution, the experts argue, is to free the market from the state and allow it to work with as little government intervention as possible. As this happens, a state’s economy can more readily become embedded in the global market, which will strengthen the incentives for rational economic behavior and serve as a further check on corruption.

In Equatorial Guinea, however, the process has not worked out this way. Formal financial networks have proven opaque rather than transparent because they exist alongside and in conjunction with informal markets. This combination provides increased opportunities for illicit graft, but also simultaneously produces the conditions for wealth creation in licit markets. In this case, greater embeddedness in global markets did not solve the problem of corruption; it merely added new mechanisms through which officials could engage in graft.

G. Pascal Zachary revisits the continents boundaries :

Jeffrey Herbst has observed in his perceptive study of the relevance of African political boundaries, “States and Power in Africa”: “The traditional view of African boundaries is that they are a critical weakness of African states,” Herbst writes, “because they have remained unchanged despite the fact that the original colonial demarcations were done in a hurried manner that often did not account for local political, sociological, economic, or ethnic factors.” Herbst adds, “Despite spectacular state failures … there has not been a profound debate about alternatives to existing states.”
There ought to be. Isn’t redrawing the African map warranted? The possibility of a new nation, South Sudan, on Uganda’s northern border, suggests that the question of new boundaries for Africa is not purely academic. East Africa is home to other potential reconfigurations. Somalia is effectively three separate countries. Eastern Congo could well hive off into its own nation, or join Rwanda in a confederation – to the delight of its hard-working, talented people who are tired of war and their central government’s invisibility and eager to take advantage of the material endowments of their territory.

Binyavanga Wainaina writes:

"Would you like an Oxfam biscuit? Can we fly 103 of you to France to be loved? We can breastfeed you. We can save you from yourself. We can save ourselves from our terrible selves. Help us to Oxfam the whole black world, to make it a better place. We will shut all your industries and build our organic Jeffery Sachs-designed school inside your national parks, where you can commune with nature, grow ecologically friendly crops, trade fairly with eco-tourists and receive visitors from the United Nations every month who will clap when you dance. Instead of sweatshops, we will have Ubuntu shops where you can arrive in biodegradable loincloths to make bone jewellery for caring people who earn $1million a year, live in San Francisco or Cape Town and feel bad about this. In our future world you will have three balanced meals a day. Trust us. You can’t do it yourselves. We have dedicated our lives to you. Come kitties, come to mummy".

African Loft presents:

“Different but Equal” a six-part video produced by legendary Basil Davidson, an Africanist and authority on early African history. The African History series was produced and narrated by Basil Davidson.

G. Pascal Zachary writes:

Even by African standards, Biya’s 25-year reign over this picturesque West African country has been a disaster. While he has rarely organized killing sprees, he quietly has demolished a country that ought to be among the most successful, not only in Africa, but in the developing world. Instead of planning a permanent retirement somewhere in Europe (where he seems to spend a great deal of time anyway), Biya wants to inflict more wounds on his long-suffering countrymen.

Much of the anger comes from a younger generation who see few career options beyond driving motorcycle taxis, known as “Bendskins” after a dance approximating the hip-swaying motion of swerving round potholes.“If you see people throwing stones, it means if they had guns, they would have been shooting,” said Frederick, an economics graduate who survives by driving a Bendskin.The government has agreed to a small reduction in fuel prices to placate protesters, saying it cannot afford the kinds of subsidies needed to shield the economy from global market forces. But many residents blame Mr Biya for the hardship, saying years of venal rule have skewed the economy to favour a tiny elite.

Publishers Weekly reviews Aya, a graphic novel written by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Clément Oubrerie :

Just released in the U.S. with an initial print run of 10,000 copies, Aya portrays a more hopeful, prosperous Africa than the one typically seen in Western news. Abouet, originally from Ivory Coast and now living in Paris, explained in an e-mail interview with PW Comics Week, “I was so annoyed by the manner in which the media systematically showed the bad sides of the African continent, the usual litanies of war, famine, AIDS, and other catastrophes.” She added, “I wished to show the other side, to straightforwardly tell about the daily life of Africans.”

The TED Blog reports the launch of Andrew Mwenda's paper:

You can now read journalist Andrew Mwenda's newspaper, The Independent, online. Based in Kampala, Uganda, the paper promises "uncensored news, views and analysis" -- a promise that has already led to government threats against the paper's printer.

African Loft reports:

Six gubernatorial elections have been overturned so far and several others in the national and state legislatures. The legal courts are doing what many thought is impossible in Nigeria. This is unprecedented and a pleasant development...