The International Labour Organization (ILO) just released a frightening report on unemployment worldwide. It said that more than 1.5 billion people, or half the world’s working population, are in vulnerable or insecure jobs and that 205 million workers were unemployed last year. According to the ILO, the official figure is probably an underestimate because many people have given up trying to find a job. The most unsettling aspect of the report is that 77.7 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unable to find work. This is a particular problem for countries in Africa.
There are 200 million Africans in this age range, comprising more than 20% of the continent’s population. Worldwide, youth are 43.7% of the total unemployed people even though they account for only 25% of the world’s working population. In sub-Saharan Africa, about 60% of the unemployed are youth, and an average of 72% of youth live on less than US$2 a day.
Young Africans have tried to seek better opportunities in urban areas, but too often find themselves stuck in slums with little or no way to make a survival salary. Many of them end up being paid as thugs by political parties or joining militias – not because of an ideological compatibility, but because they need to eat. Criminal enterprises also recruit from this pool of the unemployed, hopeless youth. This large, desperate and restive population poses a danger for many African countries. One of the underlying causes of the sudden revolt in Tunisia was high youth unemployment. While the overall unemployment rate in Tunisia is 13.3%, it is much higher among the young.
It is still higher in many other African countries, whose base unemployment rate is high to begin with:
Zimbabwe: 95%
Liberia: 85%
Mozambique: 60%
Djibouti: 59%
Namibia: 51.2%
With rates that high, the entire population is having trouble surviving, and youth are three times more likely to be unemployed than their elders, so there are veritable armies of unemployed youth eager to make a living doing whatever they have to do to survive. An increasing number of unemployed youth are college graduates. While some do leave for the developed world, many are stuck without the funds to go abroad. They are dissatisfied with what their governments have done for them and have the smarts to connect with others to channel their discontent into action.
The Tunisian example spread to Egypt, whose population is comprised by two-thirds under the age of 30. They make up an estimated 90% of the unemployed. Even though Egypt’s official unemployment rate is 9.4%, university students facing the prospect of no jobs and ever-rising prices are the moving force behind the Egyptian demonstrations that are demanding change. The wave of youth-motivated demonstrations for change in government have reached Yemen, and though the focus is now on the Arab world, African governments should be very concerned about what their youth will do given their economically dire straits.
If unemployment of less than 15% in North African countries boiled over into demonstrations, what might be the case in Africa, where more than 20 countries have equal or higher unemployment rates?
Poor governance, corruption and systemic economic problems certainly cause much of the unemployment in African countries. However, a lack of investment in enterprises that could create jobs also is at fault. If African countries can attract more investment – both domestic and foreign – then the problem of unemployment gradually can be minimized.
Many of Africa’s countries are sitting on a powder keg. More and more youth leave school each year, whatever the grade, with little prospect of honestly earning a living. They will not tolerate being kept in such a situation forever. With a window on the world provided by the internet, young people know how their status matches that of their counterparts elsewhere, and they now see that young people elsewhere are taking steps to remedy their predicament.
If you are a government leader in Africa, don’t wait too long to tackle this issue. Young people are notoriously impatient. Ask the Tunisians and Egyptians.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
A Twitter Revolution in Africa?
Africa is a large continent with more than four dozen countries. It is difficult for any government to keep track of what is happening in all its countries. That is, of course, quite obvious, but it also is an explanation for why surprising things happen so suddenly on the continent. Such was the case a few days ago in Tunisia.
Tunisia has been an American ally in Africa and was considered safe enough to host the African Development Bank when Cote d’Ivoire became too turbulent. Little has been said publicly about Tunisia’s government being unstable. In fact, Tunisian President Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali was only the second president in the country since independence from France came in 1956. He had governed the country since 1987 and was most recently re-elected in 2009 with 89.62% of the vote. Yet Ben Ali has been forced to step down as president and flee the country.
So how did he come to be deposed within weeks of street protests and anti-government Internet activity being launched?
Corruption was perceived to be rampant in the Tunisian government. I use the term “perceived” because the government has been quite successful in keeping a lid on information. The media has not reported much of the negative side of Ben Ali’s rule and has made a strenuous effort to clamp down on the Internet, especially social media. Despite leading North Africa and the Arab world in the level of Internet access, Reporters Without Borders ranks Tunisia 164th out of 178 countries in its press freedom index. Tunisia is listed as one of the group’s “15 enemies of the Internet” and says it has established a “very effective system of censoring” the web.
However, its system apparently was not effective enough. BBC News reported that a steady flow of protest videos, tweets and political manifestos have made their way into Tunisian homes and offices in a variety of languages: Arabic, the Darija Tunisian dialect, French and English. In addition to informing Tunisians of the depth of misrule by their government, social media were used to coordinate demonstrations. Most of this activity was generated by Tunisians, though some came from abroad. Moreover, while unions and opposition political parties have played some role in the uprising that has now deposed the President, much of the anti-government content has come from average citizen bloggers.
In yet another example of unrest insufficiently tracked by Western governments, an ally was forced out without warning. I give credit to our intelligence services who may well have known how bad things were, but if their information was taken seriously by those who make our foreign policy, they surely kept it to themselves. The U.S. government now has issued a travel warning, but if the situation was looking as dire as it now is, why wasn’t there some prior warning for tourists and business people caught in the midst of the current unrest? A group of Swedish wild boar hunters were arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in Tunisia, and I’ll bet they wish there had been some prior warning for them.
Ironically, some North African leaders, such as Libya’s Muammar el-Quaddafi, believe American intelligence services deliberately leaked information detrimental to the Tunisian regime to Wikileaks in order to bring it down. This belief also is catching on within the remaining government operatives within Tunisian. This conspiracy theory comes despite the American government’s battle with Wikileaks on other leaked cables that have proven embarrassing to the Obama Administration. Those who buy into this conspiracy don’t say why America wanted Ben Ali deposed and
Tunisia thrown into chaos; they just believe America is too all-powerful to get caught unaware by an Internet site.
Arab and North African leaders are becoming increasingly concerned that the Internet and social media could lead to their downfall as well. But little is said about how sub-Saharan Africa leaders may be taking the Tunisian example. Governments like Zimbabwe’s have made every effort to crack down in the Internet and social media for some time. The Tunisian example and the Wikileaks tales about U.S. views of their government leaders will undoubtedly lead to more repression on freedom of speech elsewhere in Africa, but we have gone past the time when that could be completely successful, as Tunisia has now shown.
Wireless Internet allows video and commentary to be distributed worldwide immediately, forcing transparency on government dealings when none is wanted. So if our intelligence services uncover weaknesses within foreign allies, those who execute American foreign policy need to take heed. Governments who replace those overthrown by the release of secret information will not be so friendly to an America complicit in their misery.
Tunisia has been an American ally in Africa and was considered safe enough to host the African Development Bank when Cote d’Ivoire became too turbulent. Little has been said publicly about Tunisia’s government being unstable. In fact, Tunisian President Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali was only the second president in the country since independence from France came in 1956. He had governed the country since 1987 and was most recently re-elected in 2009 with 89.62% of the vote. Yet Ben Ali has been forced to step down as president and flee the country.
So how did he come to be deposed within weeks of street protests and anti-government Internet activity being launched?
Corruption was perceived to be rampant in the Tunisian government. I use the term “perceived” because the government has been quite successful in keeping a lid on information. The media has not reported much of the negative side of Ben Ali’s rule and has made a strenuous effort to clamp down on the Internet, especially social media. Despite leading North Africa and the Arab world in the level of Internet access, Reporters Without Borders ranks Tunisia 164th out of 178 countries in its press freedom index. Tunisia is listed as one of the group’s “15 enemies of the Internet” and says it has established a “very effective system of censoring” the web.
However, its system apparently was not effective enough. BBC News reported that a steady flow of protest videos, tweets and political manifestos have made their way into Tunisian homes and offices in a variety of languages: Arabic, the Darija Tunisian dialect, French and English. In addition to informing Tunisians of the depth of misrule by their government, social media were used to coordinate demonstrations. Most of this activity was generated by Tunisians, though some came from abroad. Moreover, while unions and opposition political parties have played some role in the uprising that has now deposed the President, much of the anti-government content has come from average citizen bloggers.
In yet another example of unrest insufficiently tracked by Western governments, an ally was forced out without warning. I give credit to our intelligence services who may well have known how bad things were, but if their information was taken seriously by those who make our foreign policy, they surely kept it to themselves. The U.S. government now has issued a travel warning, but if the situation was looking as dire as it now is, why wasn’t there some prior warning for tourists and business people caught in the midst of the current unrest? A group of Swedish wild boar hunters were arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time in Tunisia, and I’ll bet they wish there had been some prior warning for them.
Ironically, some North African leaders, such as Libya’s Muammar el-Quaddafi, believe American intelligence services deliberately leaked information detrimental to the Tunisian regime to Wikileaks in order to bring it down. This belief also is catching on within the remaining government operatives within Tunisian. This conspiracy theory comes despite the American government’s battle with Wikileaks on other leaked cables that have proven embarrassing to the Obama Administration. Those who buy into this conspiracy don’t say why America wanted Ben Ali deposed and
Tunisia thrown into chaos; they just believe America is too all-powerful to get caught unaware by an Internet site.
Arab and North African leaders are becoming increasingly concerned that the Internet and social media could lead to their downfall as well. But little is said about how sub-Saharan Africa leaders may be taking the Tunisian example. Governments like Zimbabwe’s have made every effort to crack down in the Internet and social media for some time. The Tunisian example and the Wikileaks tales about U.S. views of their government leaders will undoubtedly lead to more repression on freedom of speech elsewhere in Africa, but we have gone past the time when that could be completely successful, as Tunisia has now shown.
Wireless Internet allows video and commentary to be distributed worldwide immediately, forcing transparency on government dealings when none is wanted. So if our intelligence services uncover weaknesses within foreign allies, those who execute American foreign policy need to take heed. Governments who replace those overthrown by the release of secret information will not be so friendly to an America complicit in their misery.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Building the Links to African Unity
There is a famous 19th century drawing of adventurer-businessman Cecil Rhodes standing like a colossus with one foot in South Africa and the other in Egypt. It symbolized his dream of a Cape to Cairo land connection. The British Empire that he represented wanted a road, but Rhodes preferred a railway. More than a hundred years later, that land connection is still not fully realized, and in the failure to complete it lays the explanation of why Africa’s transportation infrastructure remains inadequate.
The British saw this land connection as the key to advancing their commercial and military interests on the continent. The road (or highway) would link the British colonies of Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Nyassaland (Malawi), Northern and Southern Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Unfortunately for the British, Tanzania (then Tanganyika) was a German possession until after World War I, but soon after the so-called Great War, Egypt became independent.
Then there were the problems of climate and terrain. Furthermore, French ambitions to link their territories in West Africa to Djibouti in the East and Portuguese ambitions to link Angola and Mozambique also interfered with the land connections the British sought. After World War II, the struggles for African independence put a final cap on British ambitions (as well as those of the French and Portuguese).
What the colonial powers left behind when their African empires finally ended in the last half of the 20th century was a conflicting collection of roads that didn’t connect neighboring countries, railroads of different gauges that could not be linked, ports that were too shallow or too small for significant cargo handling and air traffic designed to serve the colonial powers but not the Africans themselves. All too often, to get from here to there in Africa, you run into dead ends, impassable rivers, vast deserts and other natural and man-made obstacles.
Now that we are entering the second decade of the 21st century, it is long past time to identify and correct the problems that hamper transportation linkages on the continent and allow more efficient movement of goods and people. In his book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” author Jared Diamond explains that Africa’s geography has led to its fragmentation. He writes that the continent’s north-south orientation, as opposed to Asia, Europe and North America’s east-west orientation did not facilitate the sharing of culture and intermingling of people that allows unity.
But we now have the technology to overcome the obstacles that prevented Africa’s forefathers from learning from one another and becoming stronger for this sharing of knowledge. The question is now: Does there exist the will to create transportation infrastructures that allow for progress in the modern world?
There are efforts underway to address the obstacles to freer transportation in Africa. For example, the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program is a partnership of 35 African countries, eight regional economic communities, the United Nations Economic Community for Africa (UNECA), the African Union’s New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and the African Development Bank (ADB). The aim of this partnership is to better enable African governments to integrate their transportation strategies into their poverty reduction strategies. The driving force behind this partnership is a commitment to regional planning and cooperation.
The German Marshall Fund and the Hewlett Foundation are working on a Development Corridors program to stimulate the expansion of existing and creation of new transportation structures to allow African products, especially those produced by smallholder farmers, to be brought to market. The plan is to encourage public-private partnership that will allow currently underutilized economic potential to be realized more fully.
By the way, the Cairo – Cape Town Highway – envisioned by Rhodes more than a hundred years ago – has been taken up by UNECA, the ADB and the AU. When completed, it will link Cairo, Khartoum, Addis Ababa, Kampala, Nairobi, Lusaka, Harare, Gaborone and Cape Town and smaller cities and towns in between. Only this time, the road known as Trans-African Highway 4 will serve the needs and interests of Africans and not just those of foreign powers.
The positive cost-benefit ratio of investing in transportation infrastructure in China has demonstrated the wisdom of investing in roads, for example. At the G8 Summit in Gleneagles back in 2005, world leaders highlighted Africa’s lack of infrastructure as the main constraint on economic growth and development. The World Bank and other international organizations pledged create a diagnostic to determine the state of the continent’s infrastructure, but while we now know far more than we did before then about the limits of Africa’s transportation infrastructure, the financing of projects has been slow to materialize.
The World Bank estimates that US$93 billion in infrastructure investment is needed annually for African infrastructure to be brought up to date, but only US$45 billion are arriving. Now that African governments and regional institutions are cooperating in creating the necessary policy structure, perhaps lenders and investors will loosen the purse strings.
As the old saying goes: “God helps those who help themselves.” Apparently, international lenders and investors live by that motto as well.
The British saw this land connection as the key to advancing their commercial and military interests on the continent. The road (or highway) would link the British colonies of Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Nyassaland (Malawi), Northern and Southern Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Unfortunately for the British, Tanzania (then Tanganyika) was a German possession until after World War I, but soon after the so-called Great War, Egypt became independent.
Then there were the problems of climate and terrain. Furthermore, French ambitions to link their territories in West Africa to Djibouti in the East and Portuguese ambitions to link Angola and Mozambique also interfered with the land connections the British sought. After World War II, the struggles for African independence put a final cap on British ambitions (as well as those of the French and Portuguese).
What the colonial powers left behind when their African empires finally ended in the last half of the 20th century was a conflicting collection of roads that didn’t connect neighboring countries, railroads of different gauges that could not be linked, ports that were too shallow or too small for significant cargo handling and air traffic designed to serve the colonial powers but not the Africans themselves. All too often, to get from here to there in Africa, you run into dead ends, impassable rivers, vast deserts and other natural and man-made obstacles.
Now that we are entering the second decade of the 21st century, it is long past time to identify and correct the problems that hamper transportation linkages on the continent and allow more efficient movement of goods and people. In his book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” author Jared Diamond explains that Africa’s geography has led to its fragmentation. He writes that the continent’s north-south orientation, as opposed to Asia, Europe and North America’s east-west orientation did not facilitate the sharing of culture and intermingling of people that allows unity.
But we now have the technology to overcome the obstacles that prevented Africa’s forefathers from learning from one another and becoming stronger for this sharing of knowledge. The question is now: Does there exist the will to create transportation infrastructures that allow for progress in the modern world?
There are efforts underway to address the obstacles to freer transportation in Africa. For example, the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program is a partnership of 35 African countries, eight regional economic communities, the United Nations Economic Community for Africa (UNECA), the African Union’s New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and the African Development Bank (ADB). The aim of this partnership is to better enable African governments to integrate their transportation strategies into their poverty reduction strategies. The driving force behind this partnership is a commitment to regional planning and cooperation.
The German Marshall Fund and the Hewlett Foundation are working on a Development Corridors program to stimulate the expansion of existing and creation of new transportation structures to allow African products, especially those produced by smallholder farmers, to be brought to market. The plan is to encourage public-private partnership that will allow currently underutilized economic potential to be realized more fully.
By the way, the Cairo – Cape Town Highway – envisioned by Rhodes more than a hundred years ago – has been taken up by UNECA, the ADB and the AU. When completed, it will link Cairo, Khartoum, Addis Ababa, Kampala, Nairobi, Lusaka, Harare, Gaborone and Cape Town and smaller cities and towns in between. Only this time, the road known as Trans-African Highway 4 will serve the needs and interests of Africans and not just those of foreign powers.
The positive cost-benefit ratio of investing in transportation infrastructure in China has demonstrated the wisdom of investing in roads, for example. At the G8 Summit in Gleneagles back in 2005, world leaders highlighted Africa’s lack of infrastructure as the main constraint on economic growth and development. The World Bank and other international organizations pledged create a diagnostic to determine the state of the continent’s infrastructure, but while we now know far more than we did before then about the limits of Africa’s transportation infrastructure, the financing of projects has been slow to materialize.
The World Bank estimates that US$93 billion in infrastructure investment is needed annually for African infrastructure to be brought up to date, but only US$45 billion are arriving. Now that African governments and regional institutions are cooperating in creating the necessary policy structure, perhaps lenders and investors will loosen the purse strings.
As the old saying goes: “God helps those who help themselves.” Apparently, international lenders and investors live by that motto as well.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Africa Predictions for 2011
When I looked ahead last January to important African developments in 2010, I focused on elections because they seemed to offer the most important events that could be foreseen. This new year is little different in that election issues are important, but there are non-electoral developments that loom large for the continent as well. The following are my five top forecasts for Africa in 2011.
1. The results of next week’s referendum on the independence of Southern Sudan could produce the world’s newest country or a renewed North-South conflict in that country. According to a recent article in the New York Times, neither the National Congress Party government in Khartoum nor the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement government in Juba wants a return to war because each has too much to lose. Both North and South depend on oil for most of their revenue, and renewed war would be devastating in that regard.
While that is true, and while Northern leaders have sounded accepting lately of the upcoming referendum’s likely results, the Khartoum regime has not taken any action in recent memory that didn’t have loopholes allowing it to renege on promises. In this case, the government has not removed its troops as required by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, continues to support rebels in the South and has prevented the full level of voter registration as required in the 2005 peace accord. That sounds like the government is hedging its bets. However inevitable independence of southern Sudan is, this will not be an easy process, and problem likely will linger beyond this year.
2. My next forecast is that for the more than two dozen African elections scheduled for 2011, the international community’s response to serious discrepancies could be different from what it has been -- depending on the outcome of the deadlock in Cote d’Ivoire. The usual international community response has been to complain about election irregularities when it involves an ally and sanctions when it is not a friendly government. Most often, the preferred solution has been to call for a government of national unity to smooth over problems. In the current Cote d’Ivoire case, though, there has been pressure on the presumed losing party to step down rather than accept the winner as a partner.
Having set this new precedent, it will be difficult to go back to taking the easy way out of electoral deadlocks in the future. Perhaps it also will encourage more international support for earlier training of parties and election officials and monitoring of the pre-election environment. It is much easier to prevent bad elections before they actually happen than to correct them once they have taken place. Elections in Nigeria, Egypt, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries are too important to rely on cookie cutter approaches to electoral problem solving.
3. In the largest change of land ownership since the colonial era, more than 50 million hectares of African land has been leased or is in the process of being leased by 20 African countries. This modern land grab is displacing African farmers and failing to create jobs for African workers. In 2011, the trend toward leasing massive amounts of African land will accelerate due to the continuing global food shortage and dwindling supplies of water. This shortage is especially acute in the Middle East, which happens to be the main source of African land leasing arrangements. In Madagascar in 2009, a government was displaced largely due to reports of a land deal with foreigners. Perhaps as early as this year, there will be other citizen eruptions because of what they see as negative consequences from these land deals.
4. African societies, especially in rural areas, cling to traditions that are sometimes millennia old. One of these traditions is the disdain for open homosexuality. Those who keep their sexual orientation to themselves usually are ignored, but in recent years, evangelical activists have taken their war against what they describe as the gay agenda to Africa to warn of foreign influences drastically changing African cultures. Some point to Zimbabwe, where gays there were encouraged by outsiders to be open about their sexuality. Unfortunately, African societies are not as tolerant of behavior celebrating what African spiritual leaders largely find as being n violation of religious standards. Apparently, these American evangelicals did not realize that African governments would not react as the U.S. government has. Gays have been arrested and prosecuted in countries like Zimbabwe and Malawi, and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, speaking to supporters in November, called for gays to be arrested and jailed for their behavior. Pressure from the international community forced Uganda to back down from a law that would in some cases have sentenced homosexuals to death sentences. In 2011, the clash between modern views of human rights and traditional views of acceptable sexual behavior in Africa may come to a head, provoking court challenges to laws and rising harassment of openly gay citizens in African countries.
5. Finally, a hopeful sign in 2011 will be an increase in foreign investment. The continent as a whole is expected to see a growth rate of 5% or more this year. The fall of interest rates in many African countries is caused by lowered rates of inflation. Along with the anticipated rise in the level of bank credit on the continent, one can expect renewed interest in the more than two dozen African equity markets. Various economic analysts say the fastest-growing areas will be telecoms, banks, retail outlets and manufacturing. With the broad use of advanced telephones in Africa, many on the continent are in a position to take advantage of tele-banking. Members of the recent African Diaspora have been increasing their transfer of funds to Africa, and remittances now outpace foreign aid. Moreover, traditional elements of the African Diaspora, some of whom have been linked to specific countries through DNA testing, are taking a closer look at the African equity markets and see opportunities for profits that exceed what traditional Western stock exchanges are offering.
I see a mixed picture for Africa this year, with some progress and some challenges, but even the challenges provide opportunities for advancement.
1. The results of next week’s referendum on the independence of Southern Sudan could produce the world’s newest country or a renewed North-South conflict in that country. According to a recent article in the New York Times, neither the National Congress Party government in Khartoum nor the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement government in Juba wants a return to war because each has too much to lose. Both North and South depend on oil for most of their revenue, and renewed war would be devastating in that regard.
While that is true, and while Northern leaders have sounded accepting lately of the upcoming referendum’s likely results, the Khartoum regime has not taken any action in recent memory that didn’t have loopholes allowing it to renege on promises. In this case, the government has not removed its troops as required by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, continues to support rebels in the South and has prevented the full level of voter registration as required in the 2005 peace accord. That sounds like the government is hedging its bets. However inevitable independence of southern Sudan is, this will not be an easy process, and problem likely will linger beyond this year.
2. My next forecast is that for the more than two dozen African elections scheduled for 2011, the international community’s response to serious discrepancies could be different from what it has been -- depending on the outcome of the deadlock in Cote d’Ivoire. The usual international community response has been to complain about election irregularities when it involves an ally and sanctions when it is not a friendly government. Most often, the preferred solution has been to call for a government of national unity to smooth over problems. In the current Cote d’Ivoire case, though, there has been pressure on the presumed losing party to step down rather than accept the winner as a partner.
Having set this new precedent, it will be difficult to go back to taking the easy way out of electoral deadlocks in the future. Perhaps it also will encourage more international support for earlier training of parties and election officials and monitoring of the pre-election environment. It is much easier to prevent bad elections before they actually happen than to correct them once they have taken place. Elections in Nigeria, Egypt, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries are too important to rely on cookie cutter approaches to electoral problem solving.
3. In the largest change of land ownership since the colonial era, more than 50 million hectares of African land has been leased or is in the process of being leased by 20 African countries. This modern land grab is displacing African farmers and failing to create jobs for African workers. In 2011, the trend toward leasing massive amounts of African land will accelerate due to the continuing global food shortage and dwindling supplies of water. This shortage is especially acute in the Middle East, which happens to be the main source of African land leasing arrangements. In Madagascar in 2009, a government was displaced largely due to reports of a land deal with foreigners. Perhaps as early as this year, there will be other citizen eruptions because of what they see as negative consequences from these land deals.
4. African societies, especially in rural areas, cling to traditions that are sometimes millennia old. One of these traditions is the disdain for open homosexuality. Those who keep their sexual orientation to themselves usually are ignored, but in recent years, evangelical activists have taken their war against what they describe as the gay agenda to Africa to warn of foreign influences drastically changing African cultures. Some point to Zimbabwe, where gays there were encouraged by outsiders to be open about their sexuality. Unfortunately, African societies are not as tolerant of behavior celebrating what African spiritual leaders largely find as being n violation of religious standards. Apparently, these American evangelicals did not realize that African governments would not react as the U.S. government has. Gays have been arrested and prosecuted in countries like Zimbabwe and Malawi, and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, speaking to supporters in November, called for gays to be arrested and jailed for their behavior. Pressure from the international community forced Uganda to back down from a law that would in some cases have sentenced homosexuals to death sentences. In 2011, the clash between modern views of human rights and traditional views of acceptable sexual behavior in Africa may come to a head, provoking court challenges to laws and rising harassment of openly gay citizens in African countries.
5. Finally, a hopeful sign in 2011 will be an increase in foreign investment. The continent as a whole is expected to see a growth rate of 5% or more this year. The fall of interest rates in many African countries is caused by lowered rates of inflation. Along with the anticipated rise in the level of bank credit on the continent, one can expect renewed interest in the more than two dozen African equity markets. Various economic analysts say the fastest-growing areas will be telecoms, banks, retail outlets and manufacturing. With the broad use of advanced telephones in Africa, many on the continent are in a position to take advantage of tele-banking. Members of the recent African Diaspora have been increasing their transfer of funds to Africa, and remittances now outpace foreign aid. Moreover, traditional elements of the African Diaspora, some of whom have been linked to specific countries through DNA testing, are taking a closer look at the African equity markets and see opportunities for profits that exceed what traditional Western stock exchanges are offering.
I see a mixed picture for Africa this year, with some progress and some challenges, but even the challenges provide opportunities for advancement.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Why Not Africa?
Progress means that countries that produce simple products often move onto more complex products. Low-skilled jobs are transferred to countries down the economic ladder whose labor costs are less, while the original producers find new products requiring more skilled workers. Thus far, the economic phenomenon of comparative advantage hasn’t worked for Africa as it should have. For example, products no longer being made in America still are not being made in African locales.
For example, the United States stopped making Rawlings baseballs – the ones used in the major leagues, college and high school games and sandlot ball – back in 1969. The St. Louis factory’s production was shipped first to Puerto Rico, then to Haiti and now to Costa Rica. Why not Africa?
Remember the toy Etch-A-Sketch? It used to be made in Bryan, Ohio, but since 2000, it has been produced in Shenzhen, China. Similarly, Mattel toys have been made in China since the last California factory shut down in 2002. Those Converse athletic shoes – know as Chuck Taylors for the All-American high school basketball player – are no longer being made in Massachusetts. Since 2001, they have been made in Indonesia. Levi Strauss & Company shut down its U.S. production of jeans in 2003, and production was outsourced to Latin American and Asian locations. Why not Africa?
For some products, Asian and other locations are still more competitive than African locations for a variety of reasons. No televisions have been produced in the U.S. since 2004. Cell phones stopped being made in America in 2007. Just this year alone, Dell computers, canned sardines and even kitchen flatware (forks, spoons and knives) stopped being produced in America. Complex products can be produced easier and cheaper in Asian countries, but there are still opportunities for African manufacture of products no longer economically feasible for the developed world.
Then why isn’t Africa taking advantage of these opportunities and becoming the destination of choice for the manufacture of products no longer made in America or often other developed countries? I could mention the lack of road and rail infrastructure, or the lack of consistent electric power that forces producers to rely too heavily on generators. The small production capacity of so many countries makes them less competitive on a global scale.
The failure of neighboring countries to cooperate in bundling goods at ports and airports, which also suffer from a lack of security and efficiency, make them less attractive sites for shippers. The dearth of shipping alternatives makes prices too high to be competitive on the world stage. All these and other reasons are certainly the cause of African countries as a whole failing to compete more effectively in the global marketplace, but there are African countries that have made the jump into a position of enhanced global competitiveness.
For all developing countries, it is estimated that manufactured goods account for more than 80% of their exports. That’s up from only 25% thirty years ago. What happened was that many of the resource-rich developing countries invested revenue from resources in the enhancement of infrastructure, the development of human capacity and the employment of new technology. At the dawn of the wave of independence for the developing world in the late 1950s and 1960s, several African countries were economically stronger than their Asian counterparts. However, the discovery of oil and the presence of commodities such as diamonds, gold and cobalt in Africa discouraged much lasting investment in manufacturing. Where would Benin, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria stand among world economies today if they had pursued such policies as the so-called Asian Tigers did back then?
Instead, too many governments relied on a policy known as “import substitution,” under which production was encouraged in domestic goods instead of exports. This can work if you have sufficient infrastructure, internal markets, skills and technology, and oh yes, if you don’t depend on imported goods to make it work. Unfortunately, this policy, which seemed sound at the outset, was not positioned to work effectively.
Yet countries such as Mauritius, South Africa and Botswana have employed far-thinking policies to diversity their economies and compete well with their more resource-blessed neighbors because of it. One hopes that oil won’t spoil Ghana, Sao Tome and Uganda and lead them to get so comfortable with the production of oil that they neglect other sectors of their economies that produce more jobs than does the oil industry.
It is possible that African countries can take their place among countries attracting outsourced sectors from the developed world. None of the obstacles facing Africa today are insurmountable, and with sound policies keyed to tomorrow and not today, African countries can realize their competitive potential.
The 20th century is often referred to as “American century” because the United States used its natural and human resources to become the sole superpower by the turn of the century. China and India are off to a great start at the beginning of the current century. Still, with better planning and collaboration among African governments, the 21st century can become Africa’s century.
For example, the United States stopped making Rawlings baseballs – the ones used in the major leagues, college and high school games and sandlot ball – back in 1969. The St. Louis factory’s production was shipped first to Puerto Rico, then to Haiti and now to Costa Rica. Why not Africa?
Remember the toy Etch-A-Sketch? It used to be made in Bryan, Ohio, but since 2000, it has been produced in Shenzhen, China. Similarly, Mattel toys have been made in China since the last California factory shut down in 2002. Those Converse athletic shoes – know as Chuck Taylors for the All-American high school basketball player – are no longer being made in Massachusetts. Since 2001, they have been made in Indonesia. Levi Strauss & Company shut down its U.S. production of jeans in 2003, and production was outsourced to Latin American and Asian locations. Why not Africa?
For some products, Asian and other locations are still more competitive than African locations for a variety of reasons. No televisions have been produced in the U.S. since 2004. Cell phones stopped being made in America in 2007. Just this year alone, Dell computers, canned sardines and even kitchen flatware (forks, spoons and knives) stopped being produced in America. Complex products can be produced easier and cheaper in Asian countries, but there are still opportunities for African manufacture of products no longer economically feasible for the developed world.
Then why isn’t Africa taking advantage of these opportunities and becoming the destination of choice for the manufacture of products no longer made in America or often other developed countries? I could mention the lack of road and rail infrastructure, or the lack of consistent electric power that forces producers to rely too heavily on generators. The small production capacity of so many countries makes them less competitive on a global scale.
The failure of neighboring countries to cooperate in bundling goods at ports and airports, which also suffer from a lack of security and efficiency, make them less attractive sites for shippers. The dearth of shipping alternatives makes prices too high to be competitive on the world stage. All these and other reasons are certainly the cause of African countries as a whole failing to compete more effectively in the global marketplace, but there are African countries that have made the jump into a position of enhanced global competitiveness.
For all developing countries, it is estimated that manufactured goods account for more than 80% of their exports. That’s up from only 25% thirty years ago. What happened was that many of the resource-rich developing countries invested revenue from resources in the enhancement of infrastructure, the development of human capacity and the employment of new technology. At the dawn of the wave of independence for the developing world in the late 1950s and 1960s, several African countries were economically stronger than their Asian counterparts. However, the discovery of oil and the presence of commodities such as diamonds, gold and cobalt in Africa discouraged much lasting investment in manufacturing. Where would Benin, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria stand among world economies today if they had pursued such policies as the so-called Asian Tigers did back then?
Instead, too many governments relied on a policy known as “import substitution,” under which production was encouraged in domestic goods instead of exports. This can work if you have sufficient infrastructure, internal markets, skills and technology, and oh yes, if you don’t depend on imported goods to make it work. Unfortunately, this policy, which seemed sound at the outset, was not positioned to work effectively.
Yet countries such as Mauritius, South Africa and Botswana have employed far-thinking policies to diversity their economies and compete well with their more resource-blessed neighbors because of it. One hopes that oil won’t spoil Ghana, Sao Tome and Uganda and lead them to get so comfortable with the production of oil that they neglect other sectors of their economies that produce more jobs than does the oil industry.
It is possible that African countries can take their place among countries attracting outsourced sectors from the developed world. None of the obstacles facing Africa today are insurmountable, and with sound policies keyed to tomorrow and not today, African countries can realize their competitive potential.
The 20th century is often referred to as “American century” because the United States used its natural and human resources to become the sole superpower by the turn of the century. China and India are off to a great start at the beginning of the current century. Still, with better planning and collaboration among African governments, the 21st century can become Africa’s century.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
What to Do About African Elections?
In Cote d’Ivoire, the long-awaited presidential election ended with the two top candidates both declaring victory and being sworn in. In Egypt, the main opposition party accused the government of committing widespread fraud and preventing their observers from monitoring the vote in the recent legislative elections. In Guinea, the June elections resulted in a runoff that had to be postponed due in part to the conviction of election commission officials for vote-tampering in that initial election.
Since the wave of elections that brought multi-party democracy to Africa in the 1990s, there have been significant advances made in consolidating democracy and the resulting good governance in African countries. However, there continue to be forces that try their best to frustrate the political will of the African people, and the international community seems to lack understanding or will to make the long-term investment to help prevent abuses that frustrate a broader advance of democratic elections in Africa.
After working on African elections for nearly 20 years – observing them, analyzing them and training people to prevent fraud in them – it is clear to me that whatever the intentions of the past three U.S. presidents and the current one, too many bureaucrats within the American government don’t fully understand the complexity of the electoral process. I always thought that officials in the U.S. Agency for International Development in the early 1990s associated the political process with former U.S. President Richard Nixon, whom they hated. So despite what I and others working to help elevate political process in Africa told them, they didn’t enable us to do what was necessary from the start to make elections acceptable because they saw the political process as inevitably flawed.
What former U.S. President George W. Bush called “the bigotry of low expectations” also comes into play. There just doesn’t seem to be the ability by too many American or other international officials to accept that Africans are capable of world-class elections. So the mood of “it’s good enough for Africa” seems to permeate the reaction to African elections. Whenever an African election is troubled, the first reaction is to call for a Government of National Unity. Somehow, these international leaders think, by putting opponents together in one government, trouble can be put behind them since all the African politicians want is a share of power.
Arranged Governments of National Unity are not really the way things work in the developed world. If the voters choose divided government, so be it, but who puts a viper in his or her own nest? In America, Democrat and Republican presidents usually appoint a member of the other party to their cabinet as a sign of cooperation. But when has the losing presidential candidate ever been given a major role in the winner’s government, especially if that losing candidate is a viable future candidate for president.? Under what circumstances would President Barack Obama ever have given Senator John McCain a major role in his government? It was a surprise when Obama appointed his primary opponent – Senator Hillary Clinton – as Secretary of State.
American and other international officials must understand that elections are often won or lost long before the first ballot is cast. For example, the Kenyan African National Union created a majority of small constituencies for itself and larger, fewer constituencies for the political opposition and used this tactic to hold onto power in the transition to multiparty democracy in the 1990s. In Cote d’Ivoire in the 1990s, one of the current presidents, Alassane Ouattara, was declared ineligible to run on the bogus charge that he wasn’t a citizen. In the historic 1992elections in Angola, entire segments of the population were not registered to vote. Tactics called “wholesale fraud” are used to prevent parties, candidates and voters from participating in elections. Election day can be scrupulously clean if the election has been won in advance. Unless those trying to guarantee free and fair elections pay attention to this phase, nothing done on election day will matter.
Then there is the voting process. African governments to often wait until late in the day to train election officials and find qualified election workers. Polling places are often poorly chosen. For example, I saw polling places in Equatorial Guinea in Mongomo a few years ago that had no security of the ballot as there was access to voters while they cast their ballots out of the sight of election officials. You don’t usually see ballot boxes being stolen and ballots being stuffed nowadays. What you do see (if you pay attention) is manipulation of vote counting as was the case in Ethiopia in 2005 and Kenya in 2007.
Rather than trying to find an expedient solution to an electoral crisis as was the case with the international community in both cases, why not make a more concerted effort to prevent the crisis before it develops?
Since the wave of African democratic elections crested in the 1990s, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute have worked on all phases of African elections. Unfortunately, their efforts have been hampered by U.S. government officials who delayed funding until almost too late, required equal treatment for all political parties even when they were parties on paper only and asked for favorable public assessments in the face of blatant election manipulation.
Permanent, professional electoral commissions with input from political parties, political parties prepared to effectively contest elections on behalf of their supporters, timely funding of election mechanisms and the application of new technology, such as biometric voter identification systems, must be applied to African elections to put governments, political parties and voters on a more secure road to lasting democracy.
There are important elections coming up in 2011, including in Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Cameroon. For some of these process, particularly Sudan, it is too late to make the investment in setting the stage for free, fair and transparent elections. We can only hope that what interventions are made at this late date can be helpful.
In those African elections where timely interventions may help guarantee the accurate expression of the will of African voters, efforts must be made now to ensure that the goal of a fully functional democracy is served. Trying to clean up a preventable mess must no longer be the option when it comes to African elections.
Since the wave of elections that brought multi-party democracy to Africa in the 1990s, there have been significant advances made in consolidating democracy and the resulting good governance in African countries. However, there continue to be forces that try their best to frustrate the political will of the African people, and the international community seems to lack understanding or will to make the long-term investment to help prevent abuses that frustrate a broader advance of democratic elections in Africa.
After working on African elections for nearly 20 years – observing them, analyzing them and training people to prevent fraud in them – it is clear to me that whatever the intentions of the past three U.S. presidents and the current one, too many bureaucrats within the American government don’t fully understand the complexity of the electoral process. I always thought that officials in the U.S. Agency for International Development in the early 1990s associated the political process with former U.S. President Richard Nixon, whom they hated. So despite what I and others working to help elevate political process in Africa told them, they didn’t enable us to do what was necessary from the start to make elections acceptable because they saw the political process as inevitably flawed.
What former U.S. President George W. Bush called “the bigotry of low expectations” also comes into play. There just doesn’t seem to be the ability by too many American or other international officials to accept that Africans are capable of world-class elections. So the mood of “it’s good enough for Africa” seems to permeate the reaction to African elections. Whenever an African election is troubled, the first reaction is to call for a Government of National Unity. Somehow, these international leaders think, by putting opponents together in one government, trouble can be put behind them since all the African politicians want is a share of power.
Arranged Governments of National Unity are not really the way things work in the developed world. If the voters choose divided government, so be it, but who puts a viper in his or her own nest? In America, Democrat and Republican presidents usually appoint a member of the other party to their cabinet as a sign of cooperation. But when has the losing presidential candidate ever been given a major role in the winner’s government, especially if that losing candidate is a viable future candidate for president.? Under what circumstances would President Barack Obama ever have given Senator John McCain a major role in his government? It was a surprise when Obama appointed his primary opponent – Senator Hillary Clinton – as Secretary of State.
American and other international officials must understand that elections are often won or lost long before the first ballot is cast. For example, the Kenyan African National Union created a majority of small constituencies for itself and larger, fewer constituencies for the political opposition and used this tactic to hold onto power in the transition to multiparty democracy in the 1990s. In Cote d’Ivoire in the 1990s, one of the current presidents, Alassane Ouattara, was declared ineligible to run on the bogus charge that he wasn’t a citizen. In the historic 1992elections in Angola, entire segments of the population were not registered to vote. Tactics called “wholesale fraud” are used to prevent parties, candidates and voters from participating in elections. Election day can be scrupulously clean if the election has been won in advance. Unless those trying to guarantee free and fair elections pay attention to this phase, nothing done on election day will matter.
Then there is the voting process. African governments to often wait until late in the day to train election officials and find qualified election workers. Polling places are often poorly chosen. For example, I saw polling places in Equatorial Guinea in Mongomo a few years ago that had no security of the ballot as there was access to voters while they cast their ballots out of the sight of election officials. You don’t usually see ballot boxes being stolen and ballots being stuffed nowadays. What you do see (if you pay attention) is manipulation of vote counting as was the case in Ethiopia in 2005 and Kenya in 2007.
Rather than trying to find an expedient solution to an electoral crisis as was the case with the international community in both cases, why not make a more concerted effort to prevent the crisis before it develops?
Since the wave of African democratic elections crested in the 1990s, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute have worked on all phases of African elections. Unfortunately, their efforts have been hampered by U.S. government officials who delayed funding until almost too late, required equal treatment for all political parties even when they were parties on paper only and asked for favorable public assessments in the face of blatant election manipulation.
Permanent, professional electoral commissions with input from political parties, political parties prepared to effectively contest elections on behalf of their supporters, timely funding of election mechanisms and the application of new technology, such as biometric voter identification systems, must be applied to African elections to put governments, political parties and voters on a more secure road to lasting democracy.
There are important elections coming up in 2011, including in Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Cameroon. For some of these process, particularly Sudan, it is too late to make the investment in setting the stage for free, fair and transparent elections. We can only hope that what interventions are made at this late date can be helpful.
In those African elections where timely interventions may help guarantee the accurate expression of the will of African voters, efforts must be made now to ensure that the goal of a fully functional democracy is served. Trying to clean up a preventable mess must no longer be the option when it comes to African elections.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Dimensions of the African Diaspora
A little while back, I wrote as blog post about Africa reaching out to its Diaspora. Although this outreach could be more robust, it does exist. But what about the Diaspora’s outreach to its own disparate parts? We generally know very little about who the other members of the African Diaspora are or where they live today.
As African Americans, we consider ourselves the preeminent sector of the African Diaspora. However, in terms of size, we are only number two. Brazil has nearly 86 million people of African descent who comprise 45% of that country’s population. African descendants comprise about 13% of the American population and about 38 million people. Of course, the African liberation and civil rights movements in America have enabled Diasporans living here to flex their political muscles and impact the continent far more than black Brazilians have been able to do.
In Brazil, people we would consider to be Diasporans are divided into pretos (blacks) and pardos (mixed race or brown). Centuries of racial mixtures means that many Brazilians have African ancestry that is not easily recognizable, thus the invention of the term moreno (tanned or of olive complexion). The result of Brazil’s ethnic history is that many Brazilians don’t really consider themselves to be African descendants; they are as likely to describe themselves as Brazilian descendants.
This was only the case with a smaller portion of American Diasporans – those who were quadroon (one-quarter black) and octoroon (one-eighth black) back in the 1800s when those were distinct racial categories. When those classifications were nullified by U.S. law that declared anyone with one drop of black blood to be black, many of the lighter ones passed as whites to avoid the bitter discrimination faced by those more easily identified as black. Over time, they intermarried with whites and are the ones surprised to find they have African heritage when they take the DNA tests.
We know about the Diasporans who live in the Caribbean. Countries such as Haiti (8.7 million), the Dominican Republic (nearly 8 million) and Jamaica (2.7 million) have large Diasporan populations who we see in America. They are very obviously black, and we associate those countries with being largely black. Yet there are other countries in this hemisphere with significant black populations: Columbia (11.7 million). Venezuela (2.6 million) and Ecuador (680 thousand). Most of the islands of the Caribbean are, of course, majority black countries: Saint Kitts and Nevis (98%), Antigua and Barbuda (95%) and Grenada (91%).
But did you know that the Cayman Islands, the noted destination for offshore funds, is 60% black? French Guiana is 66% black, and Suriname is 47% black. Have you ever met a black person from one of these countries? Perhaps you did, but didn’t know where they were from, or you thought they were a small minority in their country of origin.
Europe is only 1.2% black, but France has 3 million Diasporans, and the United Kingdom has 2 million. The Netherlands has 507 thousand Diasporans, and Germany has 500 thousand. People from Africa and the Caribbean are playing increasingly visible and important roles in these countries. Famous black people from Europe include NBA player Tony Parker, who was born in Belgium, and former heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis, who was born in the United Kingdom. They are but two of the many Diasporans born and raised in Europe.
We may know about the 200 thousand Diasporans (mostly from Ethiopia) who live in Israel because of the famous airlift of Jewish Africans, but what about the other black populations in the Middle East? Egypt and the rest of North Africa, which are considered part of the Middle East, is African, of course, but there are significant, identifiable black populations in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman.
I used the term identifiable because while they may look black, many Afro-Arabs do not identify themselves as African descendants. Being African is akin to being identified as slaves. That remains a persistent issue in countries such as Sudan today. Nevertheless, Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are believed to have their origin in Ethiopia, which at one time in history controlled territory on both sides of the Red Sea. Swahili, the widely popular east African language, contains much Arabic and was once the language used by traders in the region.
Although many scholars doubt the claims of African ancestry among people in the Pacific, it is quite clear that Melanesians and many other Pacific Islanders have strong African features. There are the Australian aboriginal people, the Semang people of the Malay peninsula, the Aeta people of Luzon and the Ati of Panay. Again, these people have little connection to Africa today and likely do not identify themselves as members of the African Diaspora.
The dimensions of the African Diaspora are broad, but the linkages in practice are tenuous. We may look alike, but we don’t all identify ourselves as having the same ethnic origin. So while some members of the African Diaspora are reaching back to a connection with Africa, many others don’t for many reasons. Still, they are our brothers and sisters whether they know it or accept it or not. What becomes of that truth remains to be seen.
As African Americans, we consider ourselves the preeminent sector of the African Diaspora. However, in terms of size, we are only number two. Brazil has nearly 86 million people of African descent who comprise 45% of that country’s population. African descendants comprise about 13% of the American population and about 38 million people. Of course, the African liberation and civil rights movements in America have enabled Diasporans living here to flex their political muscles and impact the continent far more than black Brazilians have been able to do.
In Brazil, people we would consider to be Diasporans are divided into pretos (blacks) and pardos (mixed race or brown). Centuries of racial mixtures means that many Brazilians have African ancestry that is not easily recognizable, thus the invention of the term moreno (tanned or of olive complexion). The result of Brazil’s ethnic history is that many Brazilians don’t really consider themselves to be African descendants; they are as likely to describe themselves as Brazilian descendants.
This was only the case with a smaller portion of American Diasporans – those who were quadroon (one-quarter black) and octoroon (one-eighth black) back in the 1800s when those were distinct racial categories. When those classifications were nullified by U.S. law that declared anyone with one drop of black blood to be black, many of the lighter ones passed as whites to avoid the bitter discrimination faced by those more easily identified as black. Over time, they intermarried with whites and are the ones surprised to find they have African heritage when they take the DNA tests.
We know about the Diasporans who live in the Caribbean. Countries such as Haiti (8.7 million), the Dominican Republic (nearly 8 million) and Jamaica (2.7 million) have large Diasporan populations who we see in America. They are very obviously black, and we associate those countries with being largely black. Yet there are other countries in this hemisphere with significant black populations: Columbia (11.7 million). Venezuela (2.6 million) and Ecuador (680 thousand). Most of the islands of the Caribbean are, of course, majority black countries: Saint Kitts and Nevis (98%), Antigua and Barbuda (95%) and Grenada (91%).
But did you know that the Cayman Islands, the noted destination for offshore funds, is 60% black? French Guiana is 66% black, and Suriname is 47% black. Have you ever met a black person from one of these countries? Perhaps you did, but didn’t know where they were from, or you thought they were a small minority in their country of origin.
Europe is only 1.2% black, but France has 3 million Diasporans, and the United Kingdom has 2 million. The Netherlands has 507 thousand Diasporans, and Germany has 500 thousand. People from Africa and the Caribbean are playing increasingly visible and important roles in these countries. Famous black people from Europe include NBA player Tony Parker, who was born in Belgium, and former heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis, who was born in the United Kingdom. They are but two of the many Diasporans born and raised in Europe.
We may know about the 200 thousand Diasporans (mostly from Ethiopia) who live in Israel because of the famous airlift of Jewish Africans, but what about the other black populations in the Middle East? Egypt and the rest of North Africa, which are considered part of the Middle East, is African, of course, but there are significant, identifiable black populations in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman.
I used the term identifiable because while they may look black, many Afro-Arabs do not identify themselves as African descendants. Being African is akin to being identified as slaves. That remains a persistent issue in countries such as Sudan today. Nevertheless, Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are believed to have their origin in Ethiopia, which at one time in history controlled territory on both sides of the Red Sea. Swahili, the widely popular east African language, contains much Arabic and was once the language used by traders in the region.
Although many scholars doubt the claims of African ancestry among people in the Pacific, it is quite clear that Melanesians and many other Pacific Islanders have strong African features. There are the Australian aboriginal people, the Semang people of the Malay peninsula, the Aeta people of Luzon and the Ati of Panay. Again, these people have little connection to Africa today and likely do not identify themselves as members of the African Diaspora.
The dimensions of the African Diaspora are broad, but the linkages in practice are tenuous. We may look alike, but we don’t all identify ourselves as having the same ethnic origin. So while some members of the African Diaspora are reaching back to a connection with Africa, many others don’t for many reasons. Still, they are our brothers and sisters whether they know it or accept it or not. What becomes of that truth remains to be seen.
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