My Beauty Best Teacher

“Because we believe that in economies driven by innovation and growth, populated by digital natives, and not indoctrinated with regard to controlling intellectual property, such behavior will become the mainstream, not the fringe—and will confer an important advantage. Is it a dynamic that will come to characterize the entire economy? It’s hard to tell. Surely much collaboration will continue to be done explicitly, with clearly delineated contributors joining forces to achieve carefully architected outcomes.”

This is the invisible handshake.This handshake has more power potentially in emerging economies, which is one of their main points. These new capitalist thinkers don’t have the US baggage of what a business or company should look like. This isn’t to say that some in the US can’t or won’t be as innovative, disruptive, and adaptive.

“It’s a little fanciful, but think of a 3-D printer as a seed. Plant one in a village. If it’s a RepRap seed (and you have the raw materials to fertilize it with), it will yield more seeds. And if there’s a network, the village can have access to all the designs in Neil Gershenfeld’s (MIT Center for Bits and Atoms) open source libraries—and everyone else’s. To sum it all up, if information can be free and if goods are just information plus resin, then goods can be pretty close to free.”

Residents of Kano in Nigeria are struggling to keep alive their centuries-old tradition of hand-dying delicate cloth a deep indigo blue, with their trade under threat from the realities of modern commerce.Kano's pits are said to date back 500 years and were once the center of a bustling Saharan trade in dyed cloth.There are still over 120 pits in Kano but only 30 of them are functioning. Many of them have been filled in, often because families have moved on to other businesses, but sometimes because they're waiting for their children to grown up, dig out the pit and reclaim their tradition.

When Wangari Maathai began her campaign to reforest Kenyan’s landscape, her success was not with the members of her government. It was with her people; local people without much education, but who had a vision bigger than any government official had the mind to conceive. Trickle down policies do not work in Africa, because there is rot at the head. Africa’s only way forward is a grassroots/wildfire movement. With one spark, you can ignite an entire continent. It’s not going to be easy, and change never easy. Sometimes you will have to take a beating – figuratively and literally – to get the change you want to see. Ask any person who has been successful if that success did not come with some measure of pain.

Igbo Ukwu pot courtesy of Chika for Africa

Fifty years after Independence, Africans have refused to deconstruct and reconstruct the foundations of its colonially bequeathed knowledge. There is no one for Africans to blame, but themselves. The blame goes to African intellectuals who would rather write in ways that would please the West. To African medical doctors who despise indigenous medicine and healing systems, opting completely for Western medical knowledge – the origins of acupuncture, yoga and other acclaimed Eastern medical practices notwithstanding. To African historians bent on analyzing and presenting African history to their students from the Euro-American point of view. To African graduate students unconcerned with applying themselves to objective and critical studies and research on African issues. To African parents who refuse to speak their native languages to their wards, constricting their children’s world, their thoughts and their expressions to the limited vocabulary of the English language. To African religious leaders who have not espoused Africans to love themselves as Africans, before loving their European and American neighbors, just as the Holy book admonishes. Yes, all Africans are to blame for the situation of Africa today. Not one person is exempt, not one.