My Beauty Best Teacher

James Shikwati writes:

For resource rich Africa, the Copenhagen meeting if not well debated, might provide yet another excuse for wealthy nations to seek to micro manage mineral exploitation on the continent. It is therefore crucial that the continent's experts and leadership focus on judicious parameters for exploitation, and use of technology to ensure clean usage of the same. Climate change eschatology through the fear of "melting earth" or "end of the world" should not be used to render a resource rich continent poor at the stroke of the pen simply because world powers are at each others throats over resources.

James Shikwati writes in African Executive:

A redefinition of development to put Africans at the center of determining what they need (and not what they have been taught to need) is crucial. In an East African Community forum in Arusha recently, delegates sought to know how the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative leads to development. One delegate quipped: "Why not one tractor per farmer?" Psychologists remind us that when every other moment it is someone else fixing us, we cannot mature.

James Shikwati writes in African Executive:

What passes for education in Africa is nothing but a conveyor belt system that churns out labor as opposed to critical thinkers. We must urgently probe political and economic systems that have alienated Africans from their own wealth and relegated them into spectators who watch on the sidelines as huge trucks ship out tree logs and small jet planes ship out minerals and ship back beer, pornographic magazines, cigarettes and guns.

James Shikwati writes

Development is the Ability to interpret/understand the World and creatively/efficiently respond to the challenges that confront humanity in order to increase the levels of human comfort on earth. The current development model sustains Africans on the "scratch the soil" level while they (G8 and re/emerging economies) import raw materials and add value to them. Adding value to African raw materials enables importing countries to grow their industries, financial and knowledge sectors while the African is left with hoe in hand scratching the soils for minerals and crop. Please note that even chicken in Western Kenya scratch the soil. Little ingenuity is needed in the scratch the soil model!

In Business Daily Africa James Shikwati returns to the theme of wealth creation:

In a recent business breakfast forum, Michael Hastings,inquired from the audience whether one can give what they do not have.He pointed out that although Western capitalism model may have broken its back, the fundamentals of one must produce in order to give, still remains...It is clear that to give one must be a producer of what they give. In Kenya and Africa, we have “capitalists" who simply loot from what others produced.The great lesson that one gets from the “broken back of capitalism” is that if one fakes production and assumes to give what they never produced in the first place, the system will implode.

James Shikwati writes:

Africans ought to drive their own age of enlightenment by asking such basic questions as to why a continent rich in minerals is perceived to be poorer than the rest of the World. Why must a rich continent be AID dependent? Why is it that ethnicity in Africa is perceived to be the core to conflicts on the continent? What prevents African leaders from developing a long term vision for their own people? How can we fuse cultural beliefs and legal systems with the larger global systems in order to surface Africa's predominantly underground economy?...[continue reading]

Two articles in the African Executive emphasize the importance of small holders, firstly James Shikwati states:

Our foot soldiers (read- smallholder farmers) have endured myriad onslaughts that have left them numb. First was the attack from 'exotic' crop varieties such as maize, wheat, pawpaws, citrus fruit, and 'sukuma', among others, which reorganized their dietary habits. The demand for indigenous foods dropped and forced them to attempt production of 'exotic' crops. The modern day farmer's definition of hunger may be lack of maize, rice and perhaps wheat....[continue reading]

There is need for commercialization of production at this level. This process involves transformation from production for household subsistence to production for the market. Essentially, it implies monetization of the rural economy...[continue reading]

James Shikwati highlights the lack of emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa:
"...For Kenya, and by extension Africa, entrepreneurship is understood to mean activities carried out by the illiterate and the uneducated. The ‘Jua Kali’ (open air market) sector predominantly focuses on modifying items for household use. The education system is designed to produce workers and not innovators. Most people follow pre-set manuals to the already existing products that may not necessarily fit the needs of the continent. Very few individuals are willing to risk and venture into the uncharted seas of economic opportunity..."

James Shikwati writes about Intellectual Property Rights "...The West have always sought systematic knowledge that can be replicated and refer to that knowledge as 'science'. It is for this reason that they have moved from focusing on natural resources such as 'land' to resources such as transistors, radios, fiber optic cables from sand. Most third world countries on the other hand have focused only on the 'visible wealth' and 'tribal organization'. This structure instead of fostering wealth, promotes war over resources.The list of inventions and innovations rarely indicates participation from Africa, falsely creating an impression that Africans are not creative and innovative. On the contrary however, long before the colonialist came to Africa, the African people had started ventures in medicine, iron smelting, arts, music, house building, and bead making and curving. The power of innovation was also exhibited in the way they preserved fire for later use, stored foodstuffs and the very fact that they could light a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
However the lack of systematic recording and beyond a collective level of property right recognition(PDF), robbed many innovators in Africa the ability to have their ideas improved upon and made economically viable. More so, the lack of a property rights regime that could measure to the countries that later colonized Africa made it easier for both physical and intellectual property to be seized by the occupying powers..."

Todd Pitman writes "...When aid money keeps coming, all our policy-makers do is strategize on how to get more," said,James Shikwati the Kenya-based director of the Inter-Region Economic Network, an African think tank. "They forget about getting their own people working to solve these very basic problems. In Africa, we look to outsiders to solve our problems, making the victim not take responsibility to change."Moving the aid can be nightmare in itself. Africa's good roads are few, and often pass through the front lines of civil wars. But Shikwati notes an additional problem: Even African countries that have food to spare can't easily share it because tariffs on agricultural products within sub-Saharan Africa average as high as 33 percent, compared with 12 percent on similar products imported from Europe."It doesn't make sense when they can't even allow their neighbors to feed them. They have to wait for others in Europe or Asia to help," he said. "We don't have any excuses in Africa. We can't blame nature. We have to tell our leadership to open up and get people producing food..."