My Beauty Best Teacher

G. Paschal Zachary on the advent of higher prices for cocoa and the consequent higher income for farmers:

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The benefits to African farmers should be significant over time. Unlike some other crops, new gardens can require years of planning and labor. Existing trees are subject to blight and aging and must be worked intensively to maintain yields. When I visited Ghana’s cocoa-growing region a year ago, I was struck by the prosperity of farmers I met but also the relative inflexibility of growing cocoa. Expansion of output is hard to achieve. Inputs, such as fertilizers, are expensive and are used less than they should be by non-organic growers. New trees take years to reap fruit. Field labor is surprisingly costly. Producers also fear a glut; they can benefit from stagnant production too...[continue reading]

Shouldn't the farmers be exploring ways collectively or otherwise to add value to their primary product? The irony of having to purchase chocolate derivatives in the West for usage back on a continent is simply inexcusable 50 years after independence.

G. Paschal Zachary revisits the issue of the continents borders in FP:

Silence about borders has become Africa's pathology, born in the era of strongman leaders that followed decolonialization. Loath to lose any of their newly independent land, the continent's leaders upheld a gentleman's agreement to favor "stability" over change. Today, the unfortunate result is visible in nearly every corner of Africa: from a divided Nigeria, to an ungovernable Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to the very real but unrecognized state in Somaliland. Borders created through some combination of ignorance and malice are today one of the continent's major barriers to building strong, competent states. No initiative would do more for happiness, stability, and economic growth in Africa today than an energetic and enlightened redrawing of these harmful lines.

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G. Pascal Zachary writes in FP:

Obamania in Kenya has gone on for years now, but the hype isn’t just about the president-elect’s roots. Rather, Kenya’s Obama fixation seems to represent a kind of escapist fantasy for an African country beset by political dysfunctionality. Still raw with the memory of the electoral violence that left hundreds dead last spring, Kenya is thirsty for exactly the sort of change Obama represents. Indeed, the Illinois senator seems to possess everything that Kenya’s political leaders lack: youthfulness, a conciliatory image, and the hope of transcending narrow ethnic identities in favor of a common national interest...[continue reading]

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G. Pascal Zachary writes:

"Saving" Africans is all the rage among celebrities. Hollywood is releasing a string of African morality tales, from "The Last King of Scotland," about Idi Amin's capricious rule, to "Blood Diamonds," the story of a white smuggler in West Africa who has pangs of regret over his misdeeds....By reducing Africans to the status of props in an American morality play, Africans are themselves robbed of some measure of their dignity, which is why a number of Malawians are upset by Madonna's fast-track adoption.

G. Paschal Zachary writes:

The temptation to choose the path of gigantism is overwhelming, at least for an American business hero. Why Gates and his wife Melinda, who already have by far the world's largest foundation, with more than $30 billion in assets, would want an even better-endowed outfit, is understandable. Gates intends to cure some of the world's most awful diseases, such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, that plague the lives of tens of millions of people across the planet...The Canadian health economist Anne-Emanuelle Birn has criticized Gates' foundation for taking the wrong approach on African health care by emphasizing technological fixes while ignoring the unequal distribution of resources common in African countries.
In a widely cited 2005 article in the Lancet,Birn wrote that Gates has "a narrowly conceived understanding of health as a product of interventions divorced from economic, social, and political contexts." She argues that Gates must inevitably deal with messy questions about government performance and inequities in African societies that contribute to the spread of illness as much as any technological failures do.

via AfricaWorks

G. Pascal Zachary writes about the Ghanaian film industry:

These populist films, while didactic and predictable, at least present an alternative to elite allegiance to the visual arts of former colonialists. In the quarter-century following Ghana’s independence from British rule in 1957, government subsidized filmmakers through a state agency modeled after the British Broadcasting Corporation. State financing led to the production of such minor classics as Love Brewed in the African Pot (1981) by director Kwaw Ansah.
In Francophone Africa, subsidies to filmmakers from the French government spawned a generation of well-trained and high-minded directors, including Ousmane Sembene (Senegal), Souleymane Cissé (Mali) and Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso). These and other French-speaking directors made movies that were acclaimed by discerning critics in Europe and the United States, but rarely screened at home. The French justified African movie subsidies as part of a defense of the French language globally and the influence of France with its former African colonies, but African directors gradually began to mourn their alienation from their roots.

G. Pascal Zachary on the 'The Oracle of Africa'

While Achebe criticizes Western thinkers on Africa, he also sets himself apart from other African intellectuals by his complex stance toward the Christianization of his people. The Igbo are among the most fervent Catholics in Africa, and evangelical Christianity is also strong among them. Achebe’s own father was enlisted by Anglican missionaries to convert other “natives,” and Achebe himself benefited from the schools established by foreigners. Yet he remains alive to the damage done by Christianity and relishes how traditional spiritual beliefs persist among Igbo and other Africans.

The critiques of the colonial and the Christian legacies in Africa come together in Achebe’s powerful indictment against Western do-gooders who, he asserts, demean and diminish Africans in their pursuit of helping them. “Lurid and degrading stereotypes,” he writes, are invoked by aid workers, humanitarians and missionaries in order to drum sympathy for African causes. Yet by “dehumanizing the sufferer,” advocates of assistance for Africa, abetted by international media and Hollywood, promote corrosive stereotypes that drown out authentic African voices.

More here

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.

G Pascal Zachary in the Guardian:

Obama's tendency to view Africa through an American lens is thus both understandable and inevitable. Yet his African roots give him a unique capacity to transform American relations with Africa, elevating the importance of African self-reliance and achievement, while striving to make American aid more intelligent and effective.

More here.

G. Pascal Zachary writes:

I’d long noted the influence of Indians in Africa, so I put the two together to create a new “frame” for viewing Africa’s present and future. Maybe Africa is no longer a “white man’s burden,” not because we have been persuaded by NYU professor William Easterley to abandon the continent, but rather because Chinese and Indians have supplanted (or will) Westerners in the task of “saving” Africa. The irony is delicious, and the practical implications enormous. While Westerners debate amongst themselves whether foreign-aid to Africa helps or hurts — a debate, I think, is increasingly irrelevant — Indians and Chinese are pragmatically (if not always effectively) engaging Africa.

G. Pascal Zachary writes in Atlantic Community:

To stimulate growth and development in Africa, governments and international organizations to reverse the negative consequences of the “brain drain.” Aid donors should tap into the underutilized knowledge of Africans living outside of Africa when trying to craft aid plans...[continue reading]

G. Pascal Zachary writes:

The emphasis on large dams reinforces centralized power and invites corruption, because large dams bring big money into the hands of a few government officials and technocrats. By contrast, small dams capable of generating up to 15 MW are relatively inexpensive and require the hands-on involvement of villages and communities, thus potentially serving as a tool for local empowerment. Perhaps because small dams spread political and economic power, rather than concentrate it, African governments and the foreign donors who fund so much of Africa's infrastructure have generally ignored them.

image courtesy of IEEE spectrum

A friend of G. Paschal Zachary makes the following comments:

One can imagine drawing a continuum of investing in poverty stricken countries.On the extreme hard radical right, you have vulture investors who buy defaulted debt of deeply impoverished countries and then litigate in international courts for recovery against the limited cofers of these countries. Such has happened to many countries including congo and zambia. On the other side of the spectrum are “social entrepeneurs” who’s url end in “org”. Deeply subsidized microlenders who
distribute profits to back to the country might be an example. But an org is an org, and I don’t consider them investors, social or otherwise. What I’m looking to do is more “com” than “org”, but I want to be comfortable that my investments are helping the country (and not just a select few entreprenuers). Since [the government] has stated that private sector investing is a key foundation of development, I feel I can invest and still feel that my activity is springing from my charitable side and not my profit maximizing side. I’m doing good, even if I do well

continue reading here

G. Pascal Zachary writes :

The problem of course is that Congo, as a political entity, is an illusion. The country is too large, diverse and riven by durable differences to be managed from a single center. It is time to explore a truly federalized Congo that might over the next 10 to 20 years peacefully “devolve” into a several nation-states. Eastern Congo would be especially well-served by “devolution,” since the region – today the least stable in the current Congo – has natural economic, social and geographic links to neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. If Scotland can engage in a process of “devolution” from Britain, why cannot eastern Congo engage in the same process? Colonial maps cannot forever burden the serious and expensive efforts to develop regional integration, whether in East Africa or the sub-Saharan generally. The double-standard – whereby European countries can split themselves apart based on democratic processes but African countries are eternally bound by the borders of their former European masters — ought to end. That European governments often quickly oppose any talk of redrawing African are examples of both hypocrisy and stupidity. European governments spend billions of dollars holding together unwieldy African countries and in the end sustain only the fiction of real sovereignty. The Congo is perhaps the best example of this. Congolese elections, which cost European donors a hefty sum, accomplished the little more than to highlight the folly of holding this vast territory together under a single political rubric. Maintaining the fiction of the Congo, in short, is dangerous and ultimately futile.

Akin dissects what may become the benchmark in White Elephant projects - The Grand Inga Dam Project:

When I read of the instigation of the largest dam project in the world being planned for Africa in a hydro-electric configuration last week, I skipped the news as one of those grand schemes of delusion...I find it interesting that for a project that would affect so many African countries, as it also involves 7 African countries with the intention of distributing electricity from DR Congo to Egypt in the North, Nigeria in the West and South Africa down South is coordinated by the World Energy Council in London.
This represents the Genesis of why this project probably serves no particular purpose to Africans in general, it is a project that would cost $80 billion and a good deal of that would not go to Africans but we would be saddled with the debts...There is no people-driven element about this grand scheme, it is a résumé boosting project that would be completed by 2022 and would probably collapse in 3 years with the big names involved having moved on to another grand white elephant.

G. Pascal Zachary also states:

For the forseeable future, however, there are many more practical and beneficial African hydro schemes. Talk of Inga is irresponsible and should cease, pending some clear watershed in the Congo's own stability. The country is riven by civil wars, badly governed and fatally wounded by its own sprawling geography. Supporters of Inga should be forced to shelve any financing maneuverings until the Congo sorts out politically and socially. Today, the country is essentially a fiction, propped up by the armed forces of the United Nations and the money of foreign donors.

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.

And the FT commenting on the unrest states:

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.

G. Pascal Zachary writes in The East African:

“If autocrats do not deliver prosperity any more reliably than democrats, then the romance with benign authoritarianism is probably misguided. Democratisation must be pursued wholeheartedly in Africa — but pursued without illusions. Elections inevitably heighten ethnic tensions, but these tensions can be managed. If democrats are to triumph over authoritarian populists, they must take more seriously the importance of balancing ethnic differences along with promoting economic growth. One without the other is unsustainable.”-[continue reading]

via Africa Works