Africabeat

I was asked yesterday to comment on Chinese investment in Africa for Radio France International’s English news service (Broadcast #1, Broadcast #2).  This was in response to comments made on Saturday by Maxwell Mkwezalamba, Commissioner for Economic Affairs for the African Union at the summit currently underway in Kampala.

Reuters ran a sensational headline: ”AU says must replace Western partners with China.”

Here’s the far less controversial thing Mkwezalamba *actually* said (emphasis my own):

“We need to diversify our partners that we work with and hence for us, working with China is something that we have welcomed.”

He’s promoting an idea I first encountered several years back in Uganda, while talking to a government official who dismissed fears of China’s takeover of Africa as overblown.  He said Uganda had and would continue to engage with Western donors, but that China was increasingly giving Uganda the freedom to dictate their own terms.  So, for example, if the flavor of the month, whether it was fighting TB or promoting women’s microcredit or abstinence-only HIV/AIDS prevention, didn’t align with the government’s actual needs or interests, they’d have more room to say: actually, what we really need is funding for agricultural implements or to pay teachers’ salaries, or what have you.  He said what China was increasingly doing for Ugandans was giving them the ability to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Although on the one hand donor coordination is important to give aid policies some semblance of coherence, there are very few markets where monopolies lead to good outcomes.  Considering the West’s track record in ending poverty in Africa, I think Western donors could stand some competition.

I’m aware I often come off as a cheerleader when I should be a critic.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many things that are problematic about Chinese investment in Africa, but many of those same things are what is also wrong with Western investment.  China offers a few unprecedented opportunities that I think at least some countries, if leaders are savvy and the public holds them to account, will make work to their advantage.

I’ve been getting my feet wet in non-academic writing again.  Here’s a piece for ISN in Zurich on fifty years of Françafrique and a short interview on RFI English.

This year makes 50 since France granted independence to its African colonies. On the whole, the moment has inspired little fanfare, perhaps because there is precious little to celebrate. If you were born in an African country, and the country you were born in happens to have once been a French colony, you are significantly less likely than your counterparts in anglophone Africa to reach your first birthday. If you do, you are less likely to go to school or learn how to read, and the country you live in is, on average, poorer and less democratic. The Internet revolution, shallow though it still may be, is being absorbed by your anglophone brothers at an exponentially faster rate, who also enjoy both higher initial stocks as well as well as faster expansion rates of telecommunications infrastructure like fixed telephone lines and mobile phones, as well as physical infrastructure like roads, electricity and rail.

Fifty years after independence, in just about every measure of human well-being and progress, there is clear evidence for a ‘francophone effect.’ Less clear is why.

Keep reading

Google has added 30 African cities to Google Maps, according to a press release I received this morning:

As of today new detailed maps of 30 African cities and towns are accessible on Google Maps through any web browser or via Google Maps for mobile on data enabled handsets. The new service means that Google Maps users will now be able to search online maps, look up businesses, advertise for free via Google Maps Local Business Centre, create their own maps and even check locations while they’re on the move.

The immediate benefit of this is clearly for local entrepreneurs and civic organizations.  Although more extensive maps of many African cities have been popping up on Google over the last few years, this launch offers local users new opportunities to contribute their own content: Continue reading

Kind of like this one, which I didn’t like all that much.

David Sengeh, a junior at Harvard College studying biomedical engineering and originally from Sierra Leone, has asked me to share the following with you:

One Laptop per Child is asking for applications from student-led teams who will receive funding to spend a summer in an African country of their choice deploying XO laptops. 

According to the website, student-led teams will:

Applications are due March 27th.  Visit their website for more details.

After a some cajoling and loving harassment by friends, I've decided to properly repost an article I recently wrote for CNN.com, "Obama and America's 'patchwork heritage'. 

Thank you to everyone who connected with the piece and reached out via email.  America is a far more diverse and complex place than the stories that usually get told.

*   *   *

WASHINGTON (CNN) — When I was a small child, even before I had the right vocabulary, I could tell that my parents were different.

When I was with my mother, strangers would gush over me. When I was with my father, I felt a distance.

For reasons deeper than I could explain, it was safer with Mom; I was
more special when, as far as the outside world could see, I belonged to
her.

I later learned this was because people were reacting to
the fact that my mother was white and my father black. Like a growing
number of Americans, like our new president, I grew up straddling this
country's racial divisions.

Continuing reading on CNN.com

1. On Tuesday, I stood on the mall, in the cold, with 2 million of my fellow Americans, because I wanted to be able to tell my kids, when they learn about this chapter of our history in elementary school, that I was there.  Some day, I will take them to the Mall and point to the spot on the high ground on the east side the Washington Monument where I watched a sea of every color extend all the way to the Capitol.

Continue reading

If you're still on the fence about whether to make the trek to DC for the inauguration, get your ass down here!

I arrived late at the We Are the One concert.  We filled half the Mall.  There were more music and movie celebrities than the Oscars, and all to fête this man.  Every time Obama's face appeared on the JumboTron, the crowds roared.  He's become Jesus, or Elvis, and the streets of DC, a sort of Graceland, with Obama hats, Obama t-shirts, Obama $100 bills, Obama bags, and Obama buttons with blinking lights.

U2 sang "Pride", and the man in amber shades told the audience, "This is not just an
American dream, it's an Irish dream, a European dream, an African
dream…a PALESTINIAN dream."  I'm glad someone said it, because Obama has remained frustratingly mum.  (Bono, if you're reading this, I'm sorry
for ever making fun of you!) 

I'm no longer worried about braving the cold.  It's amazing the body heat several hundred thousand people huddled together on an open green can make.

At night, I got down at theRoot.com ball at the National Museum of American History with the very talented Dr. Jelani Cobb.  The exhibits were all open, and in between chocolate custards and Obama-themed pomegranate martinis, you could quite literally walk through the past and ponder all the ways the world is about to change.

I'm not the kind to run and up and take pictures with celebrities, but I am also not above the not-so-subtle ogle.  I spent half the night star struck.  Isaiah Washington is just as fine in person as he was on Grey's Anatomy!  Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Larry King, Alice Walker, and of course Henry Louis Gates, Jr. were also in attendence.

The highlight of the evening was definitely seeing Christopher Hitchens (make a valiant attempt to) get down to the beats of Biz Markie.  Times, they are a changin…

We ended the night at U-street, where revelers were pouring out of bars well after 4am.  There were more street peddlers and makeshift portrait studios.  "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, get your picture taken with a life-sized, airbrushed Obama!"  The only restaurant with the business sense to stay open that late was a Congolese takeout joint, serving pizza and chicken tikka masala.  It was packed, with a line to the door, but the disco lights and lingala rhythms made it all worthwhile.