Out of Africa

Introducting Solving Africa.

Written and organized by journalist Kingsley Kanu Jr. Solving Africa is a project/quest to discover how young people can contribute toward the development of Africa. 
He is a currently on tour of seven African countries— Dakar (Senegal), Accra (Ghana), Lagos (Nigeria), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Tunis (Tunisia), Nairobi (Kenya), and Johannesburg (South Africa). In this interview with Farafina magazine, he explains what Solving Africa is all about: 

This project is a collection of dreams; asking young Africans what they see as wrong or right with the continent and their role in its development. But it’s not a policy book. This is first and foremost a work of creative nonfiction that I hope makes people think about some of these issues. …

The African dream is to leave Africa. There are many people like me. We are often at the tops of our classes and each year, our SAT scores and achievements prove that we can run with the best from any country on earth. We have capable people who do not see Africa as theirs to build as much as something to sidestep. But if it isn’t this generation of an educated, uninformed African middle class, who else is going to care? Who else has the resources – social, political and economic – to care?

For those of us in the Diaspora, let’s keep up with his findings and see how we can contribute as well!

I had meant to do this a while ago, but kept on putting it off. But as our class is coming to an end, I wanted to take the time to mention the blogs of some of my classmates who have featured Africa in one form or the other in their blogs.

• James Edwards – The Violence Project: With an entire blog about violence in Chicago, it’s kind of hard to feature news pertaining to Africa. But James did it in this post about Francis Oduro, a Ghanaian international student who was shot to death. Along with the Violence Project, my prayers go out to the Oduro family.
• Holly Fox – Familienpolitik: A new family law in Mali that would give illegitimate children inheritance rights is the subject of this post. Islamic groups are against this change and Holly provides an interesting comparison to the meaning of marriage and a marriage certificate in Mali versus the United States.
• Christa Hillstrom – Human Goods: In an earlier post I had linked to Christa’s blog about slavery in Mauritania. A more recent post looks at a former slave in Niger who is suing the government for not enforcing anti-slavery laws. In a country were human rights groups estimate about 43,000 people are still living in slavery, this is just the kind of accountability African countries need to be held to.
• Erin Halasz – Wikileads: Erin’s blog follows the online conversation about Wikileaks and the myriad ways in which its uncensorable, untraceable documents appear in public discourse. If you don’t know what Wikileaks is, basically it’s a site that leaks a whole lot of info, but is primarily user-generated like Wikipedia and stuff (Erin, or anyone else who knows, correct me if I’m wrong!). Some of the confidential documents received anonymously includes corruption in Kenya and other “shoddy standards of human rights” in sub-Saharan Africa. One of Erin’s particular posts highlights a recent posting on Wikileads of an invoice for Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Defense, charging the country for a shipment of Chinese rockets, bombs and rounds of mortar.

I hope you take the time to check out their blogs, and while these are the only posts about Africa, each is very interesting and sophisticated. To see more blogs from my class, check out our class Web site.

A lot of Africans are in support of Barack Obama, and I don’t doubt one of the factors is because he’s half-Kenyan. It’s what intrigued me about him. I loved how he has taken an invested interest in Africa and has not sought to distance himself from the continent, which usually garners negative attention from the rest of the world.

Here’s an editorial piece, or really excerpts from a speech Obama gave in Nairobi, about the issues facing his fatherland. He brings to surface the historical circumstances that count against Kenya (an argument I often make about all African countries and I feel many people discount), but he also holds the Kenyan government to some level of responsibility for the lack of progress (which is just as important – while the past may count against you, one must still be held accountable for the choices you make as one moves forward.) 

It’s the choices of the government, Obama says, that will break the despairing downward cycle African countries have found themselves in.

An accountable, transparent government can break this cycle. When people are judged by merit, not connections, then the best and brightest can lead the country, people will work hard, and the entire economy will grow – everyone will benefit and more resources will be available for all, not just select groups.  – Barack Obama

This speech given by Maina Kiai, Chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, in Ukraine earlier this week. On the same lines as Obama, he analyzes what “went wrong” in Kenya in light of their December 2007 elections. For Kiai, it comes down to the fact that Kenya lacks real democracy:

Clearly one of the most important lessons is that we need to look beyond the forms and façades of democracy to the substance of it. Democracy must mean more than having legislatures that sit and simply endorse the wishes of the Executive, or when they differ, it is to perpetuate their personal interests. It must mean more than having judges sitting all decked up on a raised bench but afraid to make decisions that upset the Executive. And it must mean more than holding periodic elections.

 

A wise man once said that democracy is more about what happens between elections than elections themselves. And on this cardinal principle, Kenya—and many other countries such as Zimbabwe–falls flat. Also failing are the international support programs that look at elections as an event, rather than a process.