My Beauty Best Teacher

I was privileged to listen to Wangari Maathai the Nobel Laureate in conversation, she exemplifies what African's seek in their leaders. In her words "...Africa needs to rebuild responsible leadership to regenerate her cultures of peace, justice and equitable governance...Good governance requires responsible leadership. This has been undermined over the last 100 years in Africa. We need to recuperate the values that restore dignity and wisdom to our leaders.Citizen education should help people understand their rights and their responsibility to hold government accountable to them and to future generations..."

Commenting on the African Diaspora Wangari Maathai stated "...I commend the African diaspora for believing in small and medium-sized enterprises, which are key to enabling Africans to fulfil their aspirations for jobs and economic security. The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido) reports that 90% of all businesses in Africa are small and medium-sized. We must support this sector and ensure that it thrives.The diaspora can ensure that this sector grows in the home countries. Africans in the diaspora are estimated to send back some $200 billion to Africa each year. This money assists both their families and the national economy. We need to encourage and sustain this interest and commitment. We need initiatives that are simple, attainable and able to generate visible success in a short time. This creates momentum, trust, excitement and goodwill around solutions that ordinary people themselves own and believe in..."

C0-Chaired by Wangari Maathai the Congo Basin Forest Fund (CBFF)was "...set up to take early action to protect the forests in the Congo Basin region. The Fund invites proposals for transformative and innovative initiatives from the governments and civil society and private sector of the Congo Basin to slow the rate of deforestation, through developing the capacity of the people and institutions in the countries of the Congo basin to manage their forest. This includes helping local communities find livelihoods that are consistent with forest conservation and developing new approaches which will bring genuine change and ensure future sustainable forest management..."
via TED Blog

In and African minute writes about fixing America's foreign aid policy.
More on the curse of Nigeria's "Black Gold"-The Independent.
Wangari Maathai on resources and conflict.
Brain Power Key to Wealth Creation?-Trading Markets.
Gone Rural believes in sustainability and development.

In reviewing Wangari Maathai's The Challenge for Africa and Zambian Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid Francis Fukuyama argues that:

Both women see sub-Saharan Africa's fundamental problem not as one of resources, human or natural, or as a matter of geography, but, rather, as one of bad government. Far too many regimes in Africa have become patronage machines in which political power is sought by "big men" for the sole purpose of acquiring resources—resources that are funneled either back to the networks of supporters who helped a particular leader come to power or else into the proverbial Swiss bank account. There is no concept of public good; politics has devolved instead into a zero-sum struggle to appropriate the state and whatever assets it can control.

...both at least focus on the real core of the problem, which is the region's level of political development. In this realm, solutions are going to have to come from within the region itself. It is a positive first step for the discussion to shift away from what the outside world owes Africa and toward what Africans owe themselves.

In the Guardian Wangari Maathai writes about the Obama victory:

Earlier this year Kenya was riven by ethnic conflict. Now Obama has shown us all that a society can elect its best person as leader, and reject the ethnic labels we are so often stuck with. So many leaders across the world, in Africa especially, have exploited these differences to divide their people and bring misery and conflict. Right now that is happening on a catastrophic scale in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I hope that leaders across Africa will be inspired: here is a young man who could have been one of their own people, but who may have found it impossible to overcome his ethnicity in the continent of his father...[continue reading]