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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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.

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Howard French, The New York Times correspondant in Shanghai, explains France’s waning power in Chad and the increasing influence of the Chinese:

How did things reach this pass? During the long tenure of Jacques Chirac, France underestimated Africans and China alike, while mistaking America as its rival in a part of the world where Washington has never had grand ambitions or even much vision. (Read more)

Here, I’ve attempted to translate the reactions of a Chinese blogger to the film Blood Diamond. She runs the gamut of feeling: shock, sadness, horror, pain, grief, guilt and finally relief (of a sort) that whatever her problems, they pale in comparison to the misery and suffering of Africans.  Sounds like White Guilt to me.

But what of the Chinese living in the countryside?

I’ve been thinking a lot (and writing a bit) about the role of Africa in the popular imagination of Western Europeans (similar, I would argue, to the role of the Black man in the popular imagination of Americans).  Europe could never have considered itself "civilized" if there were not also people to call "savage."  Whites could never have considered themselves "superior" if there were not also races that were intrinsically "inferior."  Enter the African.

As more and more, China and Chinese people come into contact with Africa and Africans, I predict a similar dynamic will develop.  You already see it in the contributions of the Chinese media, businessmen and some officials to the emerging discourse.  Africa is "backwards"  (落后）. Africa is "poor" (贫穷).  Africans ascribe to quaint tribal traditions that we, the forward-looking Chinese, have long abandoned.

These characterizations come with an implicit pat on the back. China – still light years away from being "developed" if we apply Western standards – can consider itself "modern" because others are "backwards."  Enter the African.

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French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is in Africa this week, prepping for the upcoming Franco-African summit.  He first stop was in Chad, where he offered additional troops (Fr) to help prop up Idriss Debby’s government, whose situation is now precarious in light of major gains made by rebel forces.  De Villepin is off to South Africa next.  (His visit to the Republic of the Congo was cancelled after Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the president, slipped and hurt his back.)

The biannual summit, to be held in Paris this coming February, will undoubtedly elicit comparisons to the October summit in Beijing. The international media have already been talking about rising powers like China (and India) stepping into Europe’s "backyard" and a France desperately trying to hold on to her "waning influence."  High drama makes for good copy and gives new angles to stale or
overreported stories.

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China Dialogue, a bilingual, Chinese/English blog on China and the environment, has two recent posts on the environmental impacts of China’s investment in Nigeria and Angola’s oil industries.  And I’ve got commentary.

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While I have the feeling that
Elaine Meinel Supkis is just a little more to the left than I am, her blog,  Diplomacy: Winning Without Killing, is always worth a read.  Most recently, she offers a very funny and unforgiving look at why so much of American and European criticism of China – while valid – is also shamelessly hypocritical.

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In an October 23rd interview (Fr) with Les Echos, World Bank president, Paul Wolfowitz, sharply criticized China’s lending policy in Africa.

(South Africa Insurance Times & Investment News has an English language recap of the interview):

The World Bank president has attacked China over its
foreign policy in Africa, deeming it irresponsible and capable of
pushing African countries back into their huge debt build-up cycles.

In a scathing interview with
newspaper Les Echos in Paris, sister paper of the Financial Times, the
president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, has denounced Chinese
lending to Africa as irresponsible and accused the country of ignoring
universal human rights and environmental standards when setting up loan
portfolios with Africa.

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Articles on European countries’ views on China’s role in Africa,  especially former colonial powers Britain and France.

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