My Beauty Best Teacher

Last summer I decided to earn an extra few bucks by teaching a summer school class called Global Studies. Global Studies class is supposed to be a survey of the countries of the world, and touch on their geography, history, economic systems, and current political issues. It's a good class, and gives kids a nice introduction to world history, US history, comparative government, and geography. In my mind, I saw this class as an opportunity to teach kids about the history and issues facing every country in the world- oh, I know it would just be an overview, but it would still give me a real chance to teach kids. I was very excited to teach it at first. Then I met with the teacher who taught in full time during the year who showed me the way the class was supposed to be taught.

The first unit that was to be taught in the class was Africa. I'd already done some background research for this class and put together a binder of stuff that I wanted to talk about with Africa- the geography of the area, an overview of the history of the continent, talk about the types of governments found on the continent, and finally expose students to some of the modern issues facing Africa. I told the other teacher all about my ideas, the projects I'd planned, the lectures I was going to give, the articles students could read, and all the fun stuff we'd learn.

The other teacher listened to me talk about my plans for the class with a bored look on her face. At the end of my excited talk about my lessons, she looked at me and said "that’s nice work, but this is how we teach this unit.” She was around 40, and had been teaching this particular class full-time for almost 20 years- about 200 kids a year went through her class, which means that she'd had time to touch over 4000 kids so far. The way that she taught this unit was to give the students a textbook that they were to use and a worksheet packet to work on. That's how she wanted me to teach the unit.

"Okay, we'll use the book and the worksheets, but I'd also like to talk about other things too," I said, disgusted, but needing the paycheck from this job.

"Good," she said, "I also spice things up in the class. Our department has approved the following additional materials to be used in addition to the textbook." She handed me packets about racial issues, articles about the bad effects of colonialism, biographies of 'great' African leaders like Mandala and Mogube, a lecture on shamanism, a project on apartheid, and pictures of rain forests. "This is it," she said, "at the end of this unit, make sure that students understand that Africa is poor, starving, illiterate, black, and hopeless due to the oppression of white colonial powers."

Stunned by the one-sided nature of this unit, I sat in silence. Mistaking my silence for approval, she continued "If you want to do something really fun, in years past we've set up a charity in school to divert money from rich spoiled white kids to the poor people of Africa."

I found my breath again, and somehow managed to keep my anger in check as I hissed "Isn't this all just rather empty jargon? Where is the educating about the real history of Africa? Why is no time set aside to study the true nature of political and economic systems in Africa? Isn't this class just one that perpetuates stereotypes and promotes a shallow understanding of the issues that Africa faces?"

The other teacher looked at me in surprise, and then she frowned, and said "Just stick to the curriculum and don’t change it.” With that, I was dismissed.

I took whatever this teacher gave me, threw it in the garbage, and taught the class the way I wanted it taught. My 20 kids learned the history, geography, economic and political systems, and current issues facing Africa, and then Asia, and then Europe, South America, and every part of the world.

The next year, I wasn't asked back.

Stephen Thomsen has just published a paper(PDF) on the increasing level of private investment in Africa:
"...Private capital flows to Africa in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) are growing. While in the past much of this investment was limited to the raw materials sector, the current wave involves firms from more countries and sectors than ever before.
• Foreign investors, including from within Africa itself, invested almost $50 billion in Africa during 2000–03. While this represents only a small share of global flows, the more relevant comparison is with the size of the African economy. By this measure sub-Saharan Africa attracts almost as much FDI as Southeast Asia.
• Although Europe remains the principal source of investment, a rising share is coming both from Asia and from within Africa itself.
• Investors have been influenced by improvements in governance, most notably with respect to the business climate, where the desire to attract foreign investors can provide a strong incentive for African governments to reform their policies and practices. Although much remains to be done, some countries have nevertheless made great progress in areas such as political and economic stabilization, privatization and simplification of cumbersome regulations.
• This foreign investment also has implications for patterns of trade and integration. Many African exports are channelled through multinational enterprises, helping to integrate African countries both with one another and with the global economy.
Via Owen.org

Julius Court and Toru Yanagihara suggest strategy alternatives for African countries in a world of globalisation "...Most countries in Africa are small and poor, making an inward looking strategy unattractive. Significant advances in economic development in Africa in the future will depend in no small part on the success with which countries can exploit the opportunities and avoid the risks presented by globalisation. A viable outward oriented strategy for countries in Africa will have to reflect the structure of the economy and endowments relative to other parts of the world. On the first point, the primary sector dominates most economies in Africa. On the second, Africa has low levels of human capital in comparison to other regions. The familiar proposition seems to hold – for most countries in Africa comparative advantage lies in primary production and unskilled labour-intensive primary processing...Given the long gestation period of investments in human capital, this is likely to remain the situation for many years to come..."

Jerry Guo reporting from Newsweek:

Many experts believe Africa, with its expansive base of newly minted consumers, may very well be on the verge of becoming the next India, thanks to frenetic urbanization and the sort of big push in services and infrastructure that transformed the Asian subcontinent 15 years ago. Just as India once harnessed its booming population of cheap labor, Africa stands to gain by the rapid growth of its big cities. Already the continent boasts the world's highest rate of urbanization, which jump-starts growth through industrialization and economies of scale. Today only a third of Africa's population lives in cities, but that segment accounts for 80 percent of total GDP, according to the U.N. Centre for Human Settlements. In the next 30 years, half the continent's population will be living in cities.

In PoliticalArticles:

At the time of decolonisation in the 1950s and 1960s, the level of economic development in most of Asia was comparable with that of Africa. For instance, four decades ago, the per capita income of South Korea was comparable with that of the Sudan in Africa. However, since the 1960s, South Korea has achieved an incredible record of growth to become one of the 26 richest countries in the world and was able to join the trillion dollar club of world economies in 2004 while the Sudan is still one of the 33 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in sub Saharan Africa (SSA)...[continue reading]

Suman Bery writing in the Economist:

With the two exceptions of Malaysia and Indonesia these countries did not enjoy rents from significant mineral resources. As such they were not subjected to the so-called “resource curse” of a struggle for control of these rents, the problems of an appreciated real exchange rate, and lack of competitiveness of the tradables sector. Also, at the time of their fast growth episodes, most of the Asian countries were well into their demographic transition, with the dependency ratio declining as the labour force expanded. This led to a rise in their saving rates, complemented in many cases by significant foreign aid.
As Angus Maddison pointed out a decade ago (in his "The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective") Africa’s underlying circumstances are much less favourable. (His discussion includes Mediterranean Africa, while I will restrict myself to sub-Saharan Africa.) Several of its major economies enjoy enormous mineral riches, which the world over pose tremendous problems for economic management. The prices for these minerals fluctuate violently in global markets causing volatility in revenues; the easy availability of mineral revenues inhibits the growth of a domestic taxation culture essential for the development of accountability to the citizenry; the struggle for illegal control of the mineral resources has been a source of fierce conflict and corruption; while the easy foreign exchange revenues the mineral exports make available boost the real exchange rate. This inhibits the growth of labour-intensive manufacture, which was the source of Asia’s growth.

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..."

Jonathan Power writes in the IHT:

"We are focusing on merger and acquisition in emerging markets in Asia and Africa because these places enjoy high growth rates and have great potential.",Jiang Jianqing of ICBC...The fact that a top Chinese banker brackets Africa with Asia is one more sign that the Asians themselves see what is happening in Africa as a repeat of what happened to them 20 and 30 years ago.

Matthew Lockwood writes on the need for non-standard remedies in Africa, he states "...What Africa needs is to shake off its dependence on primary commodity exports, a problem underlying not only its marginalisation from world trade but also its chronic debt problems. Many countries rely today on as narrow a range of agricultural and mineral products as they did 30 years ago, and suffer the consequences of inex orably declining export earnings. Again, the campaigners' remedy - to improve market access for African exports to Europe and America - is wide of the mark. While imperfect, various preferential schemes already give the poorest African countries excellent market access.To understand how Africa might diversify we must look elsewhere, to the experience of east and south-east Asia. Not only have these countries revolutionised their trade performance in the last four decades to become world leaders in everything from clothing to computers, they have also achieved the holy grail of broad-based growth. The "Asian miracle" has seen countries poorer than their African counterparts in the 1960s virtually eradicate $1-a-day poverty today. If you really want to know how to make poverty history, it is this transformation that you must grasp..."

Apoorva Shah asks?

The question is not whether there should be more innovators and entrepreneurs in Africa, but how? What concrete steps must be taken in order to develop the business sector?

The importance of governance, financial institutions, and the overall "enabling environment" has already been proven by the widely referenced World Bank Doing Business Reports. By measuring the difficulty of starting and sustaining business, the report allows for governments to know where to direct and manage reforms. However, an assessment of business know-how and expertise is less frequently discussed, and some over-enthused optimists, especially those on the microfinance bandwagon, insinuate that skills like balancing a checkbook or managing organizational structure are inherent in all entrepreneurs, even budding ones in Africa and South Asia.
Yet studies show that many times it is not the availability of funding or even government reforms that hold back business development, but simply business expertise. Management skills are especially important when entrepreneurs look to scale their businesses and employ more workers

The Association of African Business Schools (AABS), organized by the International Finance Corporation's Global Business School Network, is a quiet but crucial voice in a sector where passions thrive on shirtsleeves and megaphones. The AABS member schools collaborate to improve the standards and increase accreditation of business schools in Africa. Right now, only one school, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, ranks within the Top 100 Business Schools on the 2007 Financial Times Global MBA Index.
But more entrepreneurial Africans in the middle and lower-middle classes should also have the opportunity to attend decent business schools close to home, preventing brain drain and catalyzing larger-scale local business development. As the AABS addresses the quality of business schools, private donors can look to increase the quantity of these schools

Moeletsi Mbeki writes(pdf) "...When the colonies in Africa and Asia became independent, their political leaders were faced with two main challenges: achieving domestic political stability and transforming their economies from the production of raw materials to industrial production...At the root of Africa’s problems is ruling political elites that have misused the economic surplus generated by the African continent over the last 40 years. African political elites have exploited their position in order to
■ bolster their standard of living to Western levels,
■ undertake loss-making industrialisation projects that were not supported by the necessary technical,managerial, and educational development, and
■ transfer vast amounts of money from agriculture and mineral extraction to overseas private bank accounts, while borrowing vast amounts from developed countries.What were the results of those predatory policies? According to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which have become Africa’s fairy godparents, Africans are poor and getting poorer..."
Via Global Growth Org

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..."

G. Pascal Zachary writes:

To a greater extent than any of the other regional powers in global “football,” African star players leave their countries and sub-regions to play for higher-paying clubs elsewhere in the world, usually in Europe, which has the best and highest-paying club teams on the planet, and increasingly in Asia and the Middle East. The exodus of football talent from Africa mirrors the general “brain drain” from the world’s poorest continent. The outflow of footballing talent from Africa is singular; it impoverishes African sporting life – and civil life generally — in a more profound way than when Brazilian joins the Italian league, a German plays for Chelsea or a Japanese suits up for a Spanish club.

what’s the damage from “football imperialism.?” I’d argue that even elite Africans in Africa still suffer from an inferiority complex, around race and place, which fuels brain drain and a lack of a “stake” in their own countries, where many talented people – from doctors to goal keepers to university professors – feel under-appreciated because they are under-appreciated. So club football is a kind of proxy for a dysfunctional modernization process in Africa, and in African cities especially.

Africa Focus analyses the continents commodity trap:

"...most African countries have been losing market shares in commodity exports to other developing countries, while at the same time most have been unable to diversify into manufactured exports. Africa's difficulties in maintaining market shares for its traditional commodities derive from its inability to overcome structural constraints and modernize its agricultural sector, combined with the high cost of trading. Africa has not been able to increase the productivity of its agriculture because of a combination of factors, including land tenure and small-scale farming, rudimentary technology and policies that reduced the role of state institutions in innovation and investment in the sector. As a result, it has lost its competitive advantage in producing cocoa, tea and coffee vis-a-vis the new and more competitive producers in Asia and Latin America..."

Ali Mufuruki writing in BusinessinAfrica states that:

Africa has come up with a story to explain why, in the past 30 years, while people in Europe, America, Asia and Australia have become incredibly rich and more peaceful, Africa has actually managed to shrink the size of its economy, drive its best educated elite into political and economic exile, reduce the life expectancy of its people, and create more wars and social unrest than the rest of the world combined...Africa’s problems are many, and very complex. Fixing them will not be easy. But it is certainly doable. And, as always, we are going to need a special form of outside help this time round — not millions of dollars, but some honest truths. Our development partners could be helpful if they could look us straight in the eye and say: “In the entire history of mankind, no country has ever developed by outsourcing its own development work. Just because the Indians are very good at mathematics and computer science and they can do loads of work for a few cents an hour, does not make it right that you outsource your child’s computer science homework to India.
“By the same token, Africa must not expect to improve the living conditions of its people by asking foreign taxpayers for charity.”

The musicals made in Egypt and Asia form a genre that is always highly popular with audiences in Africa. Yet the continent's filmmakers seem practically to ignore this art form, which has fed their own imaginations. What with the Egyptian musicals, Asian adventure films, and American productions, little place is left on Africa's screens for its local tales. However, even if African productions still face the same distribution difficulties on the continent, their singularity has developed and become more polished since Independence. It a priori seems paradoxical, therefore, that Africa's directors only rarely go down the musical route in cultures that are impregnated with music, song, dance, humour

This is Africa reporting on efforts to bolster regional integration. A bugbear if there ever was one:

Africa accounts for just 3 percent of world trade today, and just 12 percent of that is internal. Underdeveloped transport and power infrastructure, as well as cumbersome regulatory environments and corruption also make it the world’s most expensive business environment. Dominated by fragmented and small economies, the continent lags well behind the likes of Asia, Europe and North America in terms of competitiveness – and as a consequence – struggles to attract large scale private investment outside of the extractive minerals and oil and gas industries.Addressing these challenges will invariably focus attention on Africa’s regional economic communities. While each geographical part of the continent has its own REC, one has quickly emerged as a model for integration; the East African Community. Having broken up in 1977, the EAC was re-established in 1999, and has since then taken significant strides towards building an effective economic and political framework for integration across its five member states – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

Mona Gable writes at Huffington Post:

Why doesn't Obama appoint a special envoy to Africa, not just Darfur, considering his family ties and the continent's unrealized promise? I know we're in debt to Asia, as evidenced by Hillary Clinton's tour where she met with virtually everyone except rapper M.I.A. But Africa deserves our attention too. And not just from George Clooney's occasional outings along the border of Darfur...[continue reading]