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.

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The comment below I drafted in response to: U.S.-China Relations: An Apology of Sorts  I’ve decided to post the comment here instead as Bill’s original thread has nothing to do with the Sudan and I was going completely off-topic.  I don’t offer a solution to any of the previous discussions on Jewels in the Jungle and Chippla’s Weblog – Thoughts and Issues, just some ideas that I hope will spur more discussion.

First, I apologize for my absurdly slow repsonse. 

I’m not sure
how to defend the Chinese government’s actions in the Sudan, but nor do I think that just because I have a more neutral view
on the issue of Chinese involvement in Africa
(i.e., that there are aspects that are both promising and troubling)
that I have to.  And if I did, it would get me started on a long
tangent about the history of immorality in the pursuit of oil and other
natural resources that would lead me to the conclusion that again,
China is not the devil, it’s Europe circa the mid-19th century, Japan
circa 1940 or the United States circa right about now.

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It looks like Liberian members of parliament, in anticipation of being booted out by winners of the recent elections, are stripping their offices of everything of value.  The IRIN Africa New Service reported:

"…the 76 out-going parliamentarians are so attached to their government-issued Grand Cherokee Jeeps that on Friday they passed a "binding resolution" to keep them beyond the end of their term."

Presumably, the MPs were given Jeeps to bring them closer to their consituents, enabling them to move around areas in their districts where unpaved roads and frequent rains would otherwise make travel impossible. Jeeps are one of those concrete inputs donors love to use to "build democracy."

Of course, considering how little Liberian MPs make legally, none of this surprises.  In Liberia, as in most desperately poor countries, there are no rewards for honesty.

Related news article:

"Scramble for goodies ahead of political turnover" – IRIN Africa News Service

Tags:

Liberia, Parliament, Looting, jeeps