My Beauty Best Teacher

Ayisha Osori in NaijaBlog:

We tell ourselves that the decay in our society is because we have lost our values and followed the western world. The truth is we have lost the best of our ways and adopted only the worst from outside. We have traded the strength of the Aba women and the governance of Hausa Queens for western consumerism. We continue to buy machines we cannot make or fix and continue to treat children as chattel, while ignoring the science of psychology. In the West the young have a voice, they thrive and innovate, ours use drugs in the north to escape a bleak future and in the south, use arms to rage against inequity and to join the band of greed...[Continue reading]

In NaijaBlog:

"...Last night I dreamt that 33 Nigerian Miners were trapped underground and the govt sent a capsule down to rescue them one after the other, but the rescue had to be called off as the trapped miners could not agree amongst themselves on who goes first. Zoning was suggested but they could not agree on which zone will go first. Eventually in a struggle to all board at the same time, the capsule was :leading to the attempt being called off...[continue reading]

From Straightline Films"....Increasing the number of female teachers in rural schools can lead to an increase the number of girls enrolled. So the Girls' Education Project through a trainee teacher scholarship programme is encouraging more women into the classroom...[continue reading]

via NaijaBlog

'Publishing in Africa' via NaijaBlog
Author of children's books Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo via IP
Niger Delta is a 'Human Rights Tragedy'-VOA
DAAD prizewinner and aerospace student, Erick Mule Kitili
Kufunda Learning Village asks the question "...what it means to be a self-reliant and sustainable..."

Jeremy at NaijaBlog rails against the conservatism of Nigerian Youth:

The assumption in the West is that youth culture is all about rebellion, resistance and challenging the status quo set by the previous generation. Henceforth, irruptions of angst, malcontent, anger, extreme fun and quirkiness are expected in the music, art and words of the 18-30's. In Nigeria, things are quite different. Young people are often more conservative and prudish than their parents, avoiding any kind of experiment with life, whether it be sexual, hallucinogenic, expressive or otherwise, spending their free time in the church or the mosque or 'gisting'. How is a society expected to challenge its own assumptions without a Rocknrolla spirit amongst the yoof?...[continue reading]

Henry Louis Gates discusses post-colonial Africa and other subjects with Wole Soyinka:
click here
via NaijaBlog

The October Gallery presents the first London solo exhibition of Nnenna Okore:

Emerging, young artist Nnenna Okore will be exhibiting new works in her debut London solo show.A former student of El Anatsui, whose magnificent bottle-top cloths were the highlight of the 52nd Venice Biennale, Nnenna Okore also transforms discarded materials into cultural objects, forms, and spaces...[continue reading]

NaijaBlog profiles "This Is My Africa" a film by Zina Saro-Wiwa:

This Is My Africa. A delightful, thought-provoking and utterly unique film seeks to create an alternative image of Africa created out of the memories, tastes and opinions of 20 London-based Africans and Africaphiles. "I wanted to make a film that used private reminisces to challenge the way Africa is talked about publicly - which is often negative, reductive and wholly defined by the current affairs and NGO sector"...[continue reading]

Dele Olojede makes a clarion call for Freedom of Information in Nigeria:

We have usually preferred to conduct our affairs in the open, in broad daylight. Every significant marker of our existence—births, weddings, deaths—all unfold with extravagant openness, leaving only those which are meant to frighten, or which are forbidden, for the dark.Except of course, in our modern politics.
Here, we exist almost entirely in an area of darkness, where any demand to share information is treated with great suspicion, and our political class regards itself largely as unaccountable to the public.The conduct of our affairs, in the political sphere, can most usefully be likened to a feeding frenzy, where all tiers of government have effectively fallen under the sway of unrestrained men [and the occasional woman.]The public business goes on largely behind closed doors, and the sharing of the most elementary information is viewed with horror...[continue reading]

Image via WikipediaThe Times reports on the corruption and excesses of another aid seeking African leader-Omar Bongo:

A mansion worth £15m in one of Paris’s most elegant districts has become the latest of 33 luxury properties bought in France by President Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, the world’s longest-serving leader, and his family, it was alleged last week...[continue reading]

NaijaBlog questions the 'prosperity and deliverance' creed of evangelicals.
An 88 year old contributes to reforestation.
The Hideyo Noguchi Africa prize has a recipient.
Senegalese women call for an end to clandestine immigration.
PSD Blog reports on "making finance work".
Forbes writes about the brain drain in a conversation with the founder of the African Leadership Academy.

Jeremy of NaijaBlog writes:

Underneath all the bluster of Nigerian super-confidence and pride, there remains an internalised racial inferiority complex - an identity crisis lurks and circulates. The sub-conscious pattern logic is: nothing good comes from here. Everything good comes from overseas, and must therefore be white.

Wangui wa Goro writes in Pambazuka:

Most worryingly, is the fixing of tradition as something staid that will never change and which condemns the majority into servitude or slavery. For me, culture should answer the question whether it can promote and deliver democracy, equality and social justice for the majority. A pro-people culture would bode well for peace, justice and democracy in Africa; a culture that would enable a re-engagement with the self that has been lacking - a re-engagement with our neighbours and the world in ways that are powerful and which would yield tremendous wealth, enjoyment, creativity, learning and exchange.

NaijaBlog writes about the response to the latest Airplane Crash in Nigeria:

"...Never has the opiatic, under-developing effect of religion in Nigeria been so clear to me as it was last night, watching NTA. There will be no major change in the way aviation is run here, so long as the crash is classified as an Act of God, and our response to it conditioned to be one of prayer. Religion Nigerian-style numbs every sinew of the body, freezes the brain, and erodes any possibility of rational response, and above all, transformative action. It is, at present, a malign force – a force which does not transform, which does not heal. It is, as Soul says, the most vicious colonial effect.
It could, of course, be altogether different. Religion (whatever the hue) can be a force for change, for good. Prayers can probably be answered, in a sense (one crystallises intent through quiet moments of contemplation). But not where there is no accountability, not where religion is used as a political tool for repression (explicit or otherwise), not where material wealth is taken to be a necessary precursor to spiritual wealth..."

NaijaBlog writes about the "Replication of Values":

If one takes a glance around the Nigerian elite, one finds that it is populated solely by corporate types who work in banking or have senior management roles within large corporate organisations.There aren't any other types of elite at work (for instance, there isn't an intelligentsia elite or a bourgeoisie chattering class). The more difficult trick therefore is how to lure back Nigerians who actually might improve the society with a different set of values - interested in ideas, culture, research and challenging social norms with more contemporary attitudes. I suspect this is a general problem in developing countries - how to create ideological development and inject fresh thinking into conservative societies.
The trouble is, those who are in power tend to select as advisors and thinkers those who share their values. So, in Nigeria, we have 'gender experts' appointed senior advisory roles who believe firmly in the evangelically motivated doctrine that women should be subservient to their husbands; or we have economists who hold that the way forward for Nigeria is to create sweat shops across the country. In other words, conservative, purely economically-motivated values attract their own. In societies such as this, people with fresh ideas will always be treated as outcasts and alienated, while mediocre talents with outdated views get rewarded.

In a keynote speech covered earlier Dele Olojede stated "...The fastest growing industry in Nigeria today—faster growing than even the telecom sector, and perhaps just as profitable—is the faith industry, which feeds off the misery of the people and appeals to their worst instincts and propensity to superstition, illogic and unreason...This unquestioning faith has adopted and perverted one of the tools of modern management, which is the concept of outsourcing non-core competencies to others. In this case, our prophets simply ask us to outsource everything to God...I do not by this mean to single out Christians at all; I think the same is largely true,perhaps even more so, in the other major religions. But our country right now is in a desperate state, a time that calls for clear thinking and rationality, not magical solutions and a reliance on divine intervention. Life is grim and hard, and it should not be obscured by the sentimental philosophy of the pulpit, where everything is outsourced to God and people are encouraged to believe that the just and the good will somehow result from some deity reaching down through the clouds to sweep all our sorrows away..."
covered also on NaijaBlog

NaijaBlog succinctly characterizes the barren Nigerian political discourse, "...Nigeria at this time desperately needs a new political language. Instead of 3rd term, South-South vs North etc, fiscal federalism, percentage deviation blah di blah, its time there was talk of transformation, nation-building, planning for the next ten or twenty years, free (or sustainable) education and healthcare for all, job creation strategies, concern for the environment and fostering innovation..."

Altitude Book Club (ABC)"...is a community of professionals from all walks of life committed, as book lover and book collectors, to the reading and intellectual conversation of great books in order to foster mutual affection/interaction among its members and other stakeholders, and in the process impact the society by putting at its “doorpost” the innovative ideas obtained from the books we have read...Altitude Book Club operates on these three levels: Intellectual, Social & Communal..."
Via NaijaBlog