Africabeat

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

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

A bit belated, but here is a collection of personal anecdotes about being in Kenya when Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee for next President of the United States.  Written for EbonyJet.

36 Hours in Obamaland

When you’re a citizen of the world’s only superpower, and you travel
abroad, you become a symbol of all kinds of things that probably have
nothing to do with you–wealth, power, Hollywood fairy tales, and, most
recently, the unmitigated hubris of cowboy-kings. Being American in
2005 was to invite a million questions and reproaches and lectures. It
was to have blood on your hands. So for a long time, I’d hold my
passport eagle side down while waiting on the customs line, not wanting
to invite that conversation.

But now it’s 2008.  Goodbye to all that?

(Keep reading)

Just as a P.S., Africabeat recently got a shout out on Katine Chronicles, a Guardian blog (along with several of my favorite African/Africanist bloggers; I’m tickled to be in such good company).  Katy Taylor says Africabeat is: “Passionate but not too opinionated, this is an energetic and well-informed blog.”  Thanks for the kudos, Katy, but I often think I am too opinionated.  Or at least I’ve put my foot in my mouth on more than a few occasions.

When I was a little girl
growing up in Queens, NY, I played house like any other girl, but my
house was almost never in America.   I’d pretend I was a Russian
peasant woman burrowing for seedlings during the Polvolzhye famine; a
little girl in Sudan, washing clothes at the bank of the Nile; a Qing
Dynasty Empress; an Egyptian Queen commanding vast armies.

Read more

Africabeat is not dead, merely on a very long holiday.  I’ve been frantically visiting graduate schools and am trying to finish up field research for a book I am writing on China and Africa.  The conversations on this blog were very much a part of its genesis, so thank you to everyone who participated. 

I’ve also just started writing a column for EbonyJet called The New World.  The first column is autobiographical, and by consequence, not that interesting!  But I hope that I can use it to explore topics dear to my heart–migration, identity, change, politics, globalization, and global Black culture–using the particular lens through which I see the world. 

Finally, and this is very exciting for me since it means the political scientist part of my tag line is about to become a little less "aspirational," I will be starting doctoral studies in the Department of Government at Harvard University this fall.  In the US, master’s degrees and Ph.D’s generally form a continuous course of study, which means it should take me anywhere from five to seven years to finish!  I’m aiming for six.

I hope to be back in a real way in September, but I might just send a few dispatches into the ether in the intervening months.  After all, there’s like seven African countries I hope to visit in the weeks to come, and the Olympics in Beijing.  These are exciting times!

I ended up writing a post titled “Saving Africa in blackface” for the Guardian’s group blog, Comment is Free.  Here are some of my thoughts:

“I am waiting for my last day in school; the children in Africa are waiting for their first one,” reads the slogan hovering alongside a young German girl who’s just cute as a button. It would be just another run-of-the-mill solidarity campaign, were it not for the puzzling fact that her face, stretched into a farcical grin, is covered in mud. Let’s save Africa. In blackface.

I was a bit appalled, but laughed in spite of myself. I can appreciate satire. Lord knows after Kate Moss’s Nubian makeover and Gwyneth Paltrow gone native – OK, more Cherokee Indian than Chewa, actually, but why get lost in the details? – the debate over celebrity advocacy for Africa could use some.

But an email exchange with UNICEF headquarters in New York revealed that this children’s minstrel show was not, as I had hoped, the latest in a long tradition of internet hoaxes trafficking in bad taste. It was an actual ad campaign to promote an actual plan to give African children an education: UNICEF Germany’s “Schools for Africa” initiative. All I could do was shake my head.

(Keep reading)

Continue reading

I’ll stand up and shout when I think people are dead wrong or heading in a dangerous direction, but I’m generally the girl who sits back, listens and when she speaks tries to do so with conviction but hopes she won’t rock the boat too much.  The flurry of blog posts, digg, newsvine and reddit comments, del.cio.us bookmarks, and personal emails (both laudatory and critical) since the article on aid/Bono/TED was (finally) published a few days ago has taken me by complete surprise. 

I am really glad that so many people are debating these issues.  And if I’ve been able to spark interest and get people talking about TED, aid, entrepreneurship, and the media’s portrayal of Africa in a meaningful way, even if it meant being uncharacteristically polemic, then I am happy for it.

But a few clarifications:

1) Yes I’ve been to Africa and no I don’t think all African children carry AK-47s – A few lazy readers have suggested I go to Africa and see for myself  how wrong I am to take a few exceptional examples of African dysfunction to generalize for the entire continent. 

Putting aside the fact that I had to be in Africa in order to have attended a conference in Arusha, I’ve been to seven African countries and in none of them have I seen an AK-47-toting child, people dying of famine or war, or any of the other completely ludicrous stereotypes that form the opening paragraph of the article.

Continue reading

This article originally appeared on this blog and has since been published at American.com.  It differs slightly from the original version.

Continue reading "Africans to Bono: ‘For God’s sake please stop!’"

Image credit: Photo by Flickr user advencap

Continuing an age-old debate–is religion the “opium of the people” or can it be a catalyst for social change?–Congolese blogger Blaise Mantoto at UDPS Liege says the Congo’s Christian revivalist churches, which he cynically refers to as “for-profit spiritual shops,”
encourage political disengagement
[Fr]. He calls on revivalist churches to rewrite their missions,
arguing they should inspire their followers to improve their social and
economic situation through political activism.

UDPS Liege is the Belgium-based branch of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, a major Congolese opposition party and a vocal critic of Joseph Kabila, the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Revivalist and charismatic churches have become increasingly popular
in the Congo–at the expense of Catholic churches–by offering magical
and miraculous solutions to the misery and insecurity Congolese have
faced for decades. (These churches have also made news for making money
off of the cruel exorcisms of child witches.)

But whether or not these churches encourage apathy, not everyone agrees that religion and politics should mix.

Read the rest at Global Voices