Non-Existent Ivory Towers

Salisu Suleiman's searing indictment of Nigeria's Universities:

I interact with students who know everything about soccer, nothing about Socrates; all about Arsenal, nothing about Aristotle; all about Maradona, nothing about Michelangelo; all about Pele, nothing about Plato. I see the mast of memories misted by the fog of foiled, failed folios; I see the sunlight of education supplanted by hollow halogens, fanning the flames of familial frames into frayed fringes. Next time you tell me I can’t speak, read or write English, I will tell you that I speak better English than my teachers. Next time you say youths today are without creativity nor intellect, I will reply that I am taught by professors who have published nothing in a dozen years...[continue reading]

Nigeria's Maladjusted Middle Class

Babatunde Ahonsi in 234Next writes about Nigeria's defective middle class:

Too many of its members are bogged down with devising and pursuing private or individual solutions to macro and collective problems. The resultant strong sense of insecurity about its future well-being is therefore undermining its capacity to think trough what it needs to do to address the root causes of the situation. It is a class that seems to be unable to see that it is in its medium-to-long term interest to begin to collectively work for the building up of sustained pressure on the ruling class for the enthronement of good governance.

More here.

Bisi Silver's Centre for Contemporary Art

In 234Next Obidike Okafor reports on Bisi Silva's Art Place

In trying to break uncharted areas in the art world, the curator felt that there were few avenues for critical discourse. So, like a scientist experiments, discovers and develops, Silva set out to create a space that like a laboratory will allow artists to develop themselves, experiment on new ideas and interact with colleagues from different parts of the world and the African Continent."There was nobody out there for the teeming population of artists who needed to keep abreast of what is happening in other parts of the world," she said. Thus, the CCA was born.

More here

Gambia's Donor Supported Dictator Strengthens His Grip

The latest on Yahya Jammeh in the Economist:

The arrest of nine journalists on sedition charges appears to constitute an attempt to eradicate the last vestiges of resistance to the president's rule in Gambia. There are other threats, however...

Meanwhile...

Donors have some leverage over the administration and, along with public pressure, the withholding of aid is reported to have been a factor in the previous release of arrested journalists. However, donors have been reluctant to use this leverage and, ironically, the EU, World Bank and African Development Bank have this year given direct budget support to The Gambia—rather than funds earmarked for specific projects—for the first time.

More here.

The PanAfrican Cultural Festival

Via the VOA:

Algeria is preparing to host the second Pan-African Culture Festival, and the first in 40 years. The event hopes to draw hundreds of thousands of people to Algiers this July to celebrate Africa's artistic renaissance...[continue reading]

Bande annonce du festival panafricain 2009 version anglaise
by eljazairpanaf

Obama in Africa

G Pascal Zachary in the Guardian:

Obama's tendency to view Africa through an American lens is thus both understandable and inevitable. Yet his African roots give him a unique capacity to transform American relations with Africa, elevating the importance of African self-reliance and achievement, while striving to make American aid more intelligent and effective.

More here.

Interviewing Paul Sika

Scarlett Lion interviews Paul Sika covered earlier:

On the technical side of things, can you tell me a bit about how you create the sort of Technicolor dream space that your photos occupy? How much of the work happens during the snapping and how much during postproduction?

Well I am a digital technology advocate. In fact when I was considering starting photography, I investigated the type of technology around and trust me if digital did not exist, I would not have entered the field. I wanted quick and accurate results. I love immediate feedback so I can orientate my choices. I love to move at the speed of thought.

More here:

Women will be Steering

In CS Monitor:

The English Restoration poet John Dryden observed that "Mighty things from small beginnings grow." Today, if you poke around in Nigeria, you'll find small beginnings that offer tentative hope. And much of that hope is being generated by women.On a recent trip to Nigeria's capital, Abuja, some friends and I taught a group of close to 100 university graduates. For the sake of convenience, we divided them into eight small groups. The quiet shocker was that although the men heavily outnumbered women in each group, half the groups elected women as their class leaders.

More here
via Maxsiollun

The Beautiful Tree

Liam Julian reviews James Tooley's The Beautiful Tree:

In slums around the world, from Lagos, Nigeria and Nairobi, Kenya to rural villages in Ghana and China and places in between, Tooley has discovered poor people opening small private schools that offer alternatives to dismal or inaccessible public education. The schools charge only pennies a day, and most also provide scholarships to orphans or children of the indigent. One in five students in the Hyderabad slums, for example, attends a private school on some kind of need-based scholarship. Whether in Kibera (Kenya) or Gansu (China), these schools all seem to boast committed and punctual teachers, efficient and attentive owners, and satisfied parents...[continue reading]

New rules for Rebuilding a Broken Nation

Paul Collier at TED@State:

Nigerian Returnees vs India's

Jeremy Weate writes:

...it might be an idea to begin to compare what the recent influx of diasporic Nigerians has done for the country's corporations. Compare and contrast with India.Ten years ago, Indians with Californian technology experience started to return home during the dot com consolidation that began in late 1999/early 2000.On the back of this migration, India's IT services sector began to boom from Bangalore to Pune, with the incumbent early-starters such as Infosys the tip of a large iceberg.What have diasporic Nigerians brought to Nigeria?

More here

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Quick Hits

Nigerians are a conquered people.-Sahara Reporters
'They Came in the Name of Helping'
A canny chameleon-Blaise Compaoré
The Longevity Project,Ghana.
Black Economic Empowerment failed-Moeletsi Mbeki
Carnegie's gospel of wealth

Not Caring about Our Women

Juliette Tuakli of Child and Associates in the Stimulist:

If we don’t start systemically supporting African mothers and re-conceiving the role and relevance of African women, we simply will not enjoy sustained economic development in Africa. Full stop. As things stand, the continent’s considerable “female resources” — agricultural skills, negotiation, commitment to infrastructure development and, last but not the least, child rearing — have been completely mortgaged to supporting an inequitable patriarchal system. Whether we like to admit it or not.

More here

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• Facets of Lagos (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Democracy Attitudes

In a paper M. Bratton and R. Mattes report on attitudes to democracy building:

The good news is that democratic attitudes are generally on the rise among the African populations we have surveyed. If sustained, this up-tick– measured prior to the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008 – is a promising portent for
further democratization. But the bad news is that fewer than half of all Africans interviewed demand democracy and perceive its supply when these indicators are measured rigorously.As such, the project of democracy building still has a long way to go.

via Pambazuka

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Agahozo Shalom Youth Village

The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) aims to create a safe and structured residential community for orphaned children in Rwanda. The village will be a place of hope, where traumatized youth can "dry their tears" (Agahozo) and "live in peace" (Shalom).-website

A Literature Boom?

In Bookforum James Gibbons writes:

Are we in the midst of an “African literary renaissance,” as Rob Spillman (author of God and Soldiers) contends, an el boom from the other side of the Atlantic? Perhaps, but the surge of African writing is tellingly different from the Latin American explosion of the ’60s. Besides being identified with magic realism (though not all its writers practiced it), the literature of the Latin American boom was already formed within the region’s own institutions and coteries before being packaged in translation and exported. The new African writing is emphatically not homegrown. Forged in the crucible of globalization, it is a literature largely of displacement and exile.

More here
via 3quarksdaily

Makaechi “because of tomorrow”

Makaechi's

...mission is to offer solutions to the social and economic hardship that affect our global community. We pledge to introduce innovative platforms that will inspire a call to action for the greater good. We believe that we can improve the quality of countless lives through the implementation of simple technologies, self-help initiatives, and public awareness. Watch a video from their Patrick Okoroafor campaign

Quick Hits

An architect of Singapore's astounding economic growth-via Ethan Zuckerman
Investing and empowering farmers-Guardian
Nurturing an industrial renaissance in Ghana.
Africa,Business destination-TIME
Favoring poor governments over poor people-Aidwatch

Reducing Car accidents-Amend

From the Amend website:

Road traffic injuries are the number one cause of death and disability for children between the ages of 5 and 21 in the developing world — in areas where little, if any, emergency and pre-hospital medical care is available.
Remember the adage “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? It’s true. The most effective way to improve this reality is to stop the incidents before they happen...[continue reading]

ewaBAMIJO

YK project's ewaBAMJO is:

...A bi-annual international festival for interdisciplinary arts, specially dedicated to throwing glamour on the city of Lagos and establishing relationship through DANCE, CIRCUS, COMEDY, MUSIC, DRAMA, SPOKEN WORD and other interdisciplinary art forms, under one dance umbrella, that brings about conferences, debates, film screening and shows around the theme: HOME AND ABROAD