South Africa/ Mali: Theorizing Hip Hop

April 30, 2010, Harvard University -- Dr. Ingrid Monson, professor of African Music Harvard University, talks about hip hop--rap music that is--in Mali and the way it interacts with all the other musical cultures around it. She makes the point that artists in Bamako view hip hop as the diasporic child of the Malian griot tradition - she argues that the same messages you might hear in the other Malian musical traditions is also articulated, just over a different musical language, in Malian hip hop, even to the point of paying some kind of genuflection before you speak critically.



Mandela Mellon Fellow at Harvard U/University of Cape Town's Adam Haupt talks about Youth, Media and Social Change in South Africa. He points out that the introduction of hip hop to Cape Town, for instance, coincides with a kind of social activism--something we've also wondered about here--and with left leaning youth creating an alternate education system for themselves outside the formal system, and  how, like in America, that space has morphed into a non-corporate space populated by like minded hip hop group-NGO hybrids. He does not include the likes of Ben Sharpa and Terror MC in that grouping though. Thought they rep'd Cape Town?

Africa: The Poor (And Their) Choices, Cont'd

"If the poorest [African] families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed" - NYT Colunmist, Nicholas Kristof.

Nneoma, over at Pyoo Wata, parses the William Easterly and Laura Freschi response to Nicholas Kristof's shitstorm inciting NYT column from last Sunday - she drills into the "efficacy" part of their argument:

I think that in some instances, the degree to which a person perceives the efficacy of their actions in changing their situations, may explain seemingly irrational behaviors such as spending money on drinks rather than education. In essence, many of these individuals may possess a low internal locus of control, a phenomenon shaped by external historical and societal forces and perhaps personal decisions. Information alone, the post later stresses (such as in the form of malaria campaigns etc.), does not necessarily change behavior.

I'm going to go with Albert Bandura's "self efficacy" rather than mere "efficacy," because I get the feeling Nneoma is not just implying efficacy as "competence" or "ability" but rather efficacy as a person’s perception or ability to conceive of that competence or ability to reach a goal. In other words, what kind of damage to "self conception" or self efficacy does the "African strain" of poverty inflict? Total?

When I was in high school in Nigeria, a few days after a new school term started, I recalled this rotund lady, who lived in one of the government staff housing units down the road and was one of those state government workers who don't paid for months --years even--knelt in front of our closed gate sometime

Africa: "Get Us To The Greek (Crisis)"

At the African Development Bank's annual meeting currently going on in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, two interviews from ABNDigital's Godfrey Mutizwa: one with Jean-Phillippe Stijns, an Economist with the OECD, and the other with Nigeria's Central Bank Governor, Lamido Sanusi. Both at some point touch on the Greek (and Euro) economic crisis and its impact on Africa. Stijns seems confident that as long as growth in the Asian economies are sustained that should provide a floor for African economies as well. Push to 4:15 mins in and in response to the effect of the Greek crisis on commodity prices and currencies, Lamido seems assured by the fact that Nigeria doesn't have much Euro holdings and 80% of its reserves are in dollars.

Kenya: The Revolution Will Be Embedded

"Two Clocks" - poem by Ngwatilo Mawiyoo.



Kenyan Christian wonders why poets don't make more videos?

East Africa: Regional Integration Dividends

The Accessing Regional Integration in Africa (IV) - Enhancing Intra Africa Trade report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa just came out. Here's the exec sec of the UN Commission for Africa, Abdoulie Janneh, at the AFDB bank meetings going on in Abidjan at the moment, plugging the report.

Apart from reiterating the need for infrastructure, one thing the report does explain though is the old problem of how those EPAs (Economic Partnership Agreement signed by African countries for their exports to the EU) negotiated outside regional integrating bodies should work:

The report notes, however, that the EPA principles work against the current configuration of the eight AU-recognized RECs (Regional Economic Communities). One of the principles is that the EPAs could bring progress on the issue of overlapping membership and persistent barriers to intra-regional trade. If, in the EPA agreements, the negotiating groups would adopt single starting points or common external tariffs from the basis of which to make their market-access offers to the EU, then regional EPAs would be contributing towards enhanced economies

Africa: Soccer Ads From Everywhere

The world cup is South Africa bound, therefore during this period all soccer ads from England to Kazakhstan are Africa related :-)

Below, MTV recognizes the sport's international audience while making fun of itself in a series of wacky, wacky ads that show the lengths soccer fans go and it's understandable why they won't be watching MTV come June 11:





"I'm watching you, I'm watching you" - lol. One more.

This one could bring a tear to your eye. A sweet Brvaria TV commercial lets us watch kids imitate the greats in a great setting.



An ad for England's 2018 World Cup bid. Let's just say the wound inflicted by Maradonna bleeds every world cup:



The crew over at Ad Freak called this ad for Australian telecom Optus, "beastly." I agree. Shot in South Africa with real animals.



Last and arguably the best. If you know your England soccer lore, then this pep talk / Carlsberg ad is just choke full of it. The shot of Bobby Moore at the top of the tunnel gave me goose pimples.

Ghana/ Somalia: Different Sisters. Same Tale.

Two reports on two sets of sisters in business on two continents: Reuters Africa Journal follow Nana and Abbynah Seykiamah and the older CNN story follows Ildyl and Ayaan Mohallim. The Ghanaian and New York hustle and bustle of running fashion labels don't seem that different.

Nigeria: Obasanjo's Electrical Legacy

OBJ does a talking heads with ANBDigital for The Africa Progress 2010 report which was released on Monday by the Kofi Annan think tank of which he is a member. Cue it to 4:49 mins in for questions about Nigeria and petrol shortages, which the former president compares to a road he already built but was not well maintained.

Over at China in Africa, Deborah Brautigam had a post earlier this month on the Chinese connection to Obasanjo's murky road with regards to power generation financed through oil for infrastructure deals - in this case, the Mambila hydropower project and the Omotosho and Papalanto multi phrase gas fired power plants. Brautigham refers a few times to this 2009 Chatam House "Thirst for Oil" report, which skewers Obasanjo's handling of the oil for infrastructure dealings with the Asian national oil companies and which we already broke down - here - and from which we extract this quote:

There is a widespread perception in Nigeria that the timing of the deals had a strong political undertone. This adds an important dimension to the story. The unspoken need to generate funds for President Obasanjo’s (ultimately unsuccessful) bid to change the constitution to allow him to run for a third term is seen as the key to the unravelling of the deals. There are credible reports of large sums paid to President Obasanjo to support an extension of his tenure by certain beneficiaries of the ‘oil-for-infrastructure’ deals. It is also believed that officials who negotiated the deals compromised the arrangement by putting personal profit above the national interest.

Africa: Africa Progress Report, 2010: Women Empowerment - Graphs

From the Africa Progress Report released on Monday. These graphs on women empowerment were informative (click to enlarge):

More graphs - here.

Africa: Unicef's Zero Poverty Porn - "Toy Soldiers" Ad Nabs a CLIO

Again, this shows an NGO doesn't need to train a camera on some starving African kid or one brandishing an AK 47 in order to touch donors and garner support. Unicef's Toy Soldier direct mailer went out last year and its aim was to rally support for Unicef's work in extracting child soldiers from combat and reintegrating the children back into society.

Y&R South Africa came up with a direct mailer for UNICEF to send to its supporter mailing lists as well as potential corporate sponsors. At first glance it looks like your typical packet of toy soldiers, but once opened, the recipient finds that the figurines are in fact children - reading books, playing soccer, riding bikes and doing other childhood activities.

The Toy Soldiers mailer received rave reviews across the advertising blogosphere. Unicef got a lot of kudos for the approach and managed to raise awareness and, on Wednesday night at the Skylight Soho in New York, the campaign picked up a CLIO Award, one of the world’s most recognized international advertising, design and communications awards.

This much talked about 2009 campaign also won a Clio in the billboard category.

Nigeria: This Revolution Will Be Embedded

Koola Lobitos 1964-1968. Ololufe Mi by Fela Kuti.

Africa: CNN's Isha Sesay on Isha Sesay

Plugging CNN's African Journalist of Year 2010 Awards taking place in Uganda and which she will be hosting, CNN's Inside Africa's Isha Sesay did a round of interviews in Kenya. The one above is a little groupie-ish but choke-full of Sesay trivia.

Africa: The Making of...

Dir. Alejandro Inarritu explains the flash forwards and non linear time structure chaos he brings from his films Babel (2006), 21 Grams (2003) to Nike's epic football commercial:



Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie and dir. Thierry Poiraud talk about the making of their "beastly" Australian telecom Optus soccer ad. Agency: M&C Saatchi.

Liberia: As Sirleaf Johnson Seeks Re-election...

... and a publicity soaked trip to the Oval office...



...and Foggy Bottom should have should have the opposition parties back in Liberia simmering.



And for a second there you can overhear her telling Hillary Clinton about "Georgetown," or perhaps she's telling her about the commencement speech she gave a few days ago to the graduating class of the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, 2010. Click pic below to launch web cast:

DRC: The Art of Tembo "KASH" Muhindo Kashauri

One of DRC most popular cartoonists and graphic artists, Thembo Muhindo Kashauri (aka Thembo Kash), is from Butembo, Congo. Lambiek Bio - here. Picha Bio - here. In addition to his cartoons which appear in Le Phare, Le Potentiel, and Jeune Afrique, his work has also appeared in a lot of comic magazines, collections, exhibitions and, in 2007, first part of his graphic novel, "Vanity: la folie du diable," written  by André Paul Duchateau was published by Joker Editions, Brussels. His style is said to be strongly influenced by Jean "Moebius" Giraud and Hermann-Paul -- the powerful line work, chiaroscuro and attention to detail. Titling the publication of a collection of his cartoons spanning 20 years, "CDR 1990 - 2010: Transition Eternal," he comments that although there has been a transition of four elections in the DRC:

This change is only in form. Basically, nothing has changed from the Mobutu era. I do not give a lesson, but the caricature is a form of free expression and reflects the reality acutely... As regards our country, I sometimes do not need to invent, to use more imagination. The history of our country is, in itself, a cartoon drama.

Tembo Kash/ Jason Stearns Flickr

Algeria: The Other Algerian Film at Cannes 2010

In addition to Mahamet Saleh Haroun's jury prize win for Homme qui crie, another film based in Africa, Algeria to be specific, which also won at the just concluded Cannes film fest was Xavier Beauvois's Of Gods and Men - it won the Ecumenical Jury Prize, which rewards expressions of faith and/or humanism in competition.

Of course, a film loosely based on the lives and deaths of 7 Cistercian monks beheaded in Tibiherine, northern Algeria, in 1996, during Algeria’s eight-year civil war between government forces and Islamists is a shoo in for an Ecumenical prize. THR Review - here.



But this is what I don't get. Why are a lot of reviews of the film--even THR's-- still referring to the deaths of the 7 monks in line with the 1996 Algerian-French version as straight militant beheadings? News from the Maghreb last fall was all about the frenzy over General Francois Buchwalter's revelations of an Algerian army-French intelligence cover up; I thought he revealed all the facts that the monks were mistakenly killed by the "Algerian army" in a bungled operation, and wasn't it after they were beheaded and the whole thing was made to look like the work of Islamist militants?



The ways of Francafrique run deep...

Nigeria: Colonial Lagos

Happy Lagosian has been posting some pretty cool picture of colonial Lagos. The caption on the photo below is "1912 Arrival at Lagos Custom's Wharf of Lord Fred. Lugard":

Click to enlarge

More here, here and here.

Zimbabwe: Ruwa, Area 57

X Files diehards will recall Scully, trying to disprove that life on earth originated from aliens while tracking down an alien artifact making Mulder sick as a dog, did end up in West Africa in season 7 where she came upon an alien ship half buried on some remote Ivory Coast beach.

So missing the X files is my pathetic excuse/segue into these crazy but delicious old reports about account of 62 school children in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, who, in 1994, saw an alien ship land in their school yard:



Definitely someone is using the basis of little children in Africa as some kind of unassailable proof. But 62 kids sticking to their story is huge. Apparently these videos have been circling the UFO community for years, but like the guy who recently saw a flying fish, I'm just finding out that Ruwa, Zimbabwe, has had its fair share of alien sightings over the years. Africa's Area 57 anybody?



Must all reports on alien sightings be blurry? For once can't some alien show up when there's a news crew around.

South Africa: "The Most Important Soccer Game Ever Played"

ESPN's "Outside the Lines" 19 mins documentary tells the remarkable story of the role soccer played in the lives of the political prisoners held on Robben Island.

H/T: Neo-Griot

Somalia: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on "Nicking"

Tacked on to the end of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Policy statement on Ritual Genital Cutting of Female minors was this compromise:

In some countries in which FGC is common, some progress toward eradication or amelioration has been made by substituting ritual “nicks” for more severe forms. In contrast, there is also evidence that medicalizing FGC can prolong the custom among middle-class families (eg, in Egypt). Many anti-FGC activists in the West, including women from African countries, strongly oppose any compromise that would legitimize even the most minimal procedure... However, the ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is not physically harmful and is much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting. There is reason to believe that offering such a compromise may build trust between hospitals and immigrant communities, save some girls from undergoing disfiguring and life threatening procedures in their native countries, and play a role in the eventual eradication of FGC. It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali begs to differ:

Nigeria/Britain: Shonibare's Ambivalence in a Bottle

May 24th came and went and with it the unveiling of Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare's ambivalent yet immaculate "Nelson in a Bottle" sculpture at the Fourth Plinth, making it the first work by a black British artist commissioned for the Fourth Plinth. Perhaps the duely noted ambivalence in Shonibare donning Nelson's ship with African batik sails points to the irony that a British artist of African descent is commemorating the battle of Trafalger, a battle one could argue re-established Britain's naval superiority over the rest of Europe and was one of the keys to Britain building an empire and the colonization to follow. To add to the irony, catch up on Trafalgar the monument in the monumentals podcast below, especially for the funny part where he explains:

...Nelson's victory at Trafalgar saved Britain from annihilation and allowed it to get busy with building an empire. 25 years later when the money from abusing Africans really began to roll in they had enough cash to build this amazing public monument to the guy who made it all possible...

lol

Africa: Kofi and Jessica

Kofi Annan, in The Myth of Africa's Economic Miracle article over at the Daily Beast, reminds developed countries, when it comes to development assistance, to :

Internationally, there are concerns that the consensus around development has been eroded by the financial crisis. Many rich countries are keeping their promises on development assistance, but others are falling badly behind. These shortfalls do not result from any decrease in human solidarity and sympathy. Nor, given the relatively modest sums involved, can they be blamed on budgetary constraints alone. They stem more from the failure to communicate the importance of putting the needs of the least-developed countries at the heart of global policies. Efforts must be stepped up to explain why fairer trade policies and stemming corruption are not just ethical or altruistic, but practical and in the self-interest of richer countries.

Meanwhile, today is Africa Day and just in case Africa felt the need to look in the mirror, Jessica, from the latest YouTube video gone viral, can tell the continent what to say to the mirror:

West Africa/USA: This Revolution Will Be Embedded

Toubab Krewe

South Africa: Come for the World Cup or for Africa's Bare-Breasted Women

Nandos continues its series of ads asking South Africans to live up to all the Western stereotypes about Africa so as to make their World Cup visitors feel all the more comfortable ...:

Africa/ USA/ Jamaica: This Revolution Will Be Embedded

Count Your Blessings by Nasir Jones and Damian Marley. Album: Distant Relatives. Universal/ Dej Jam, 2010.

Nigeria: Theorizing Nollywood

Click pic below for the library link to Paul Ushang Ugor's dissertation, which joins a growing list of dissertations about Nigeria's burgeoning video industry. Abstract below:

This dissertation reflects on how young people in Nigeria have appropriated global media technology in forging a local cinema industry, popularly known as Nollywood. First begun as a renegade cinematic art by jobless youth in the late 1980s, Nollywood has become the third biggest film industry in the world, next only to America’s Hollywood and India’s Bollywood, grossing approximately $50 million US dollars annually (Okome 2007a; 2007b). The study thus examines how Nollywood has become a new social space for youth to retell their postcolonial struggles. It examines selected video films, showing how the films both represent the huge social challenges faced by young people in the city and the way youth reinvent those stormy socio-economic and political conditions into moments of possibilities and hope. Combining both an ethnographic study of the video culture in Nigeria and a textual reading of several video films, the research draws insights from a

Africa: Food Politics and the African Farmer

A must-listen to conversation between The Atlantic's Corby Kummer and Wellesley College's Robert Paarlberg on agriculture issues touching on African farmers. One of the dots they connect is the low revenue from farming which instigates the movement of men from farming rural to urban areas, which in effect is what makes farming a woman's job once the men clear the fields and leave. But then such movement adds to the shrinking base of rural farmers and further prevents them from being organized politically into the kind of numbers or votes that can be leveraged to pressure governments for things like subsidies:



You can tell from their conversation that Paarlberg doesn't have the heart to tell Kummer that even if farmers were able to organize themselves like their American counterparts, African leaders being able rig elections defeats the rural votes farmers can amass. They also talk about GM seeds, or in this case, drought resistant seeds, and, below, VOA's Mike Sterns reports farmers in Niger are saying a combination of access to ground water and drought resistant seeds will abate the spate of food shortages in the Sahel. Paarlberg argues that even though the patents on such genetically modified seeds don't mean squat in Africa, hence the agriculture conglomerates can't make money off it, they can still give them away to African farmers for free since these farmers don't factor in for them revenue wise.

Somalia: The Pirate Groomsman and his Nest Egg

Last week's season finale of 30 Rock featured, of all things, a Somali pirate, and for a second there, after the dream pilot she just scored walks away, Liz, wearing a Dashiki, considered shacking up with a pirate and living on a boat. And speaking of eligible Somali pirates, the VOA report below is a visual supplement to Tom Odula's earlier AP story both looking at all the money the pirates are stashing away in the Kenyan real estate market, buying up property at an alarming clip and at any price:

Algeria/ France: Hors-la-loi Rehash

Finally a trailer for Rachid Bouchareb's Hors-la-loi, which was the cause of a lot of protests at the just concluded Cannes film fest over what many believed, even before they saw the film, was Bouchareb's biased retelling of the Setif massacres. The film tells the story of three Algerian brothers – and survivors of the  massacres– who leave their birth country for France, where they become involved in the movement for Algerian independence.



Perhaps an earlier release of the trailer and clips on YouTube might have helped clear things up? Doubtful.

Kenya: A Look at Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Library...

...even if most of the books in there were written by him.

West Africa/USA: French Teachers in Cajun Country

Michael Kilmmelman was writing in NYT a while back about the reclining use of the French language, how French is now spoken more by people who aren't French and why the future of the language seems to be in Africa. The WSJ report below seems a nice addendum - Cajun cultures in the American South hiring French language teachers from Francophone West Africa:

South Africa: Strikes - Flipping FIFA the Bird, Contd

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (cosatu) hints at joining the Transport Workers (satawu) strike for a 13% wage hike with 17 days left to go before the World Cup. Though I doubt public sympathy will be on the side of the strikers, however, with many arguing how the government has sold out to the "FIFA mafia" making it less likely that much, if anything, of the World Cup will trickle down to the average South African...



...it's easy to see why the unions might see these strikes as their last opportunity to get, for average South Africans, something out of the FIFA world cup.

Uganda: More Ssempa Porn - Gay Crimes Punishable by Death, Cont'd

Mariana van Zeller and Vanguard's cameras were in Uganda during the ruckus of the last 2 months. The doc currently airing on Hulu contains video to go with Martin Ssempa's gay porn presentation. Zeller and her team got amazing access; you've never seen Ssempa, MP Bahati and the evangelicals like this.



The American evangelicals definitely had no idea what they set off. What's more, they had no idea how power hungry and media savvy Bhati, Ssempa and their ilk were.

Africa: Advanced Capitalism Presents - "Two Annoying Men"

If nothing comes out of G8 and G20 summits headed to Canada in June, at least Canada's Globe and Mail "African Century" series of reports, articles and web chats, in addition to getting the uber-fabulous Ory Okolloh to guest edit, also got Bono and Geldof to admit to a lot of Africans, on video no less, that they realize how annoying they are.

I think the African blogosphere is relieved to know that they know. But, still, Sarah Kibaala's question, "why do we need two white men to talk about Africa," like an acupuncturist's needle, came across designed to touch a nerve rather than the point. Me thinks the point here--as well as the roots of Kibaala's question--is an increasing despair with how aid to the developing world works in an advanced capitalism - especially its fusion of NGOs and celebrities into a new soft multilateral power. 

In acknowledging this point, we can then re-phrase Kibaala's question from "why do we need two white men to talk about Africa" to "why do we need celebrities to talk about Africa." Because it seems to me that Bono and Geldof's celebrity factors in more than the fact that they are men or white; in other words, if the point here is who can really speak for Africans, shouldn't it be just as annoying if it were Lenny Kravitz, Jay Z, Beyonce, Oprah, Will Smith or Denzel Washington were doing what Bono and Geldof do?

To partly answer why Africans can't speak for themselves, I would dump the colonial frame of Western mind theory the questioner implied and go with the fact that in a world stuck at information overload and slowly dying from all kinds of attention deficit disorders, we have become beholden to celebrity to procure, capture and focus political, media and every other kind of attention. The basic equation is simple enough: celebrities command public attention because the public (even the celebrity despising half of it), whether we like it or not, look to them as walking proof that we are not stuck with our identities; that we can re-create or re-construct ourselves, and what's more and is the underlying ethos of advanced capitalism, is that we can do it through what we buy and consume. This passage from David Marshall's Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture is key:

[Celebrity], if thought of as an extrapolation of a consumer subjectivity, also aligned them with an ethos in late capitalism. The construction of identity in the domains of consumption as opposed to production made the film star an image of the way in which a lifestyle/identity could be found [contrary to Marx's belief that our identities are tied to our productive selves] in the domain of nonwork. The star, then, to borrow from Ewen's study of the development of a general consumer consciousness in the 20th century through advertising and general business objectives, performed as a "consumption ideal"... Anyone has access to the goods of the large department stores, and therefore can play in this democratic myth of identity construction through consumption. The chasm between the type of lifestyle constructed by the film star and that constructed by the audience is continually filled in by the rumors, gossip, and stories that circulate in newspapers and magazines....

I might be mixing up a Habermas' sense of "advanced capitalism" with Fredric Jameson's "late capitalism," but, for now, I'll leave that to the critical scholars to untangle and pretend not to care. So if advanced capitalism were a church, our religion is our belief in our ability to recreate ourselves or our identities through our power to buy and consume, and if that's the belief system, then celebrities gain even more import because they are the living exemplars not so much helping us to consume as we like to think, but rather keeping the myth of self re-creation alive, which in turn fuels us to consume to pursue it - and now, thanks to reality shows, the myth, on some levels, burns brighter than ever because we can now create celebrities every week to help us fuel the myth and our pursuit of it.

btw, the HBO show, "Entourage," has, perhaps, the funniest take on celebrities and their charities I've ever seen. Matt Damon, who in real life is actually part of the ONE X ONE charity, plays a celebrity obsessed with helping poor kids. The way the part is written makes the argument that there is actually a "Bono class" of celebrity holding down so much moral capital that they can bully...

And how does celebrity advocacy on behalf of Africa fit  into the mix? For now, all I can think of is that it works on two levels. First, media, NGOs, politicians (and corporations, for branding purposes) know that same chasm Marshall was referring to in the quote above is also this age's most effective way to get advocacy about Africa's poverty and what Africa needs out there into the public/consumers' consciousness. That consciousness of Africa, once out there, can then  harvested on the back end either as donations to help fight whatever or, even more importantly, as political pressure. And right off the bat, let's say this -  a lot of it works: projects (good and bad) get funded, NGOs (good and bad) survive, a lot of lives are saved and made better. The downside? Africa's poverty, as a result, ranks right there with everything else you attach a celebrity to. You can pitch doing something to stop Africa's poverty like a new shampoo, a Jenny Craig diet or taking up yoga, it can be marketed to those in the developed world as a  another identity re-constructing option.

... or terrorize other celebrities. (lol)

The second level has more to do with the political pressure that can be harvested once the public is aware of an issue and the celebrity that has come to, in the public's mind, symbolize that issue. Such celebrities can wield that soft political power to gain access to corridors of power to move politicians and governments to play some kind of ball. But then if a combination of celebrity and relentless advocacy for Africa got them soft power and access, all the other ways they can leverage it for other things is simply mind boggling. So to answer the question, why Africans can't speak for themselves. Well, no African I know of has that degree of media enabled celebrity to combine with advocacy in order to amass the amount of soft power it takes to leverage and access political power in ways the Bonos, Geldofs, Brajelinas, Oprahs and others can. That's why they do the talking to the donors on our behalf and what I guess we find annoying, apart from them, is the how aid to Africa, under late capitalism, works better for them rather than us.

It's time to start thinking of the poverty fighting industry like we are learning to think of Wall Street, credit default swaps and the whole industry of debt creation; like the director of "Enjoy Poverty," Renzo Martins, alludes to, Africa's poverty is now a resource and it is those who have accumulated massive amounts of soft power that can leverage this resource to, on one hand, fight the same poverty, and on the other hand do with it whatever... Advanced capitalism is a whole new economics or, perhaps, even an anti-economics, and, below, Renzo was on TVAfrica a while back explaining that Africans should start to see how their poverty, under late capitalism, is indeed a resource; they should learn how it works and how to work it, but more importantly, and I think he means this in the postmodern sense, they should learn how to enjoy it:

Re: Shortlists, Plugs and Ends

Yep, I saw it last week - all those shortlisted were notified. Thanks for the emails everyone. For those who don't keep up with such things, while I was away this lowly blog was shortlisted for a Diageo African Business Reporting Award , 2010, for "Best Use of New Media in a Story" category - we should be somewhere on that press release sandwiched between Reuters' Finbarr O’Reilly and Africa Interactive's Peter Vlam.You can find previous award winners - here - and below are all the Finalists shortlisted for 2010.

Diageo Africa Business Reporting Awards 2010 Finalists

Seems like Bankelele and A Bombastic Element are the only pure blogs in there and the presser does point out that "the record breaking number of entries from across the globe reflects the increase in business reporting on Africa in 2009/2010, but the type of reports have also indicated a shift in the way that news is being delivered to audiences with many more entrants being online citizen journalists and bloggers." Whooo!!! I also brought all this up because since this is junk drawer filled with all kinds of stuff, I thought I needed to clarify what they meant by "A Series on Business in Africa". Some were on The path of least resistance series, agriculture and subsidies, business and human behavior, immigration, indexes and development and so on.

A Bombastic Element also got a "pop culture blog" shout out from blogger Ory "Kenyan Pundit" Okolloh while she was doing a fantastic job guest editing online aspects of the Globe and Mail "African Century" focus last week. She kicked ass! And speaking of pop culture, I also spent some time last week writing for Manuel Manrique Gil's terrific blog, OnAfrica, about Africa and comic books. Since most discourse on this particular topic is in French, we thought the topic was important enough for English readers to warrant an essay and a list of interesting picks. Enjoy:
A Top 10 List or So of African Comics - A Bombastic Element

Africa: In the Valley of White Dolls

One partial solution? It will take one or two more generations, but eventually America's black upper and middle classes are going to wield the kind of disposable income that will force all corporations--not just urban marketers trying to sell sneakers to inner city kids, but corporations with billion dollar ad budgets--to revamp their marketing and advertising strategies. Considering ads and all forms of marketing, in one iteration or another, make up a considerable portion of the visual information we receive about ourselves daily, a marketing landscape responding to black economic muscle will have a whole lot of positive things to tel kids about blackness.



Black Danish kids choose the white doll too:



H/T: S&A

Africa/Kazakhstan: House Husband

Galym Boranbayev's cartoon took third prize at the 3rd International Contest of Caricature and Cartoon of VIANDEN 2010 - the theme was "House Husbands." Rest of the results - here.

Ethiopia: Julie Mehretu - The Making of...

16mi./ photos: Andrew Russeth

PBS' Art 21 put up these scenes from the episode in season 5, showing Julie Mehretu putting the finishing touches on her large-scale painting "Mural" at the entrance lobby of Goldman Sachs’s new steel-and-glass office building in lower Manhattan:



The March issue of the New Yorker was all over this:

“It took me a long time—six months or so—to decide I wanted to do this,” Mehretu said, pulling off her cap and running a hand through her short dark curls. Mehretu is thirty-nine, friendly, and open. “What would be the reason to make a painting for a financial institution, you know? Why would that be interesting? One reason was this wall, which is so clearly visible from the outside of the building. It’s not so often that a painting has a chance to be public art. I was thinking about that and about how I could never make a painting on this scale anywhere else.” [ ... ] Knowing what we now know about Goldman Sachs, I asked Mehretu, would she have taken on the commission? “Without hesitation,” she replied. “I don’t see it as an evil institution, but as part of the larger system we all participate in. We’re all part of it. And, anyway, for me it was about making something—it was about the art.” As she had said earlier, “I was more concerned about participating in the legacy of painting. You just hope it will feel O.K. over time.”

Luca Bonetti leads the installation of artist Julie Mehretu’s massive painting Mural (2009) at Goldman Sachs, coordinating a team of installers and studio assistants:

Africa/USA: Green Card Redesign

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services unveiled last week the newly redesigned "Green Card." What's new - here and here. For one, the new "Green Card" is now actually green.

Suzanne Labarre, over at the Fast Company, adds:

Most importantly, the card is actually green. Over the years, it has been pink, beige, blue -- pretty much anything but green. (Green was among the earliest colors, though not the first one.) Restoring the card to the color for which it was named suggests some move toward coherence. Now if only immigration policy could do the same.

Friday

At Berkeley, writers Harryette Mullen, Ed Roberson, Evie Shockley, Natasha Tretheway, and Al Young discuss their poems which appear in Black Nature, the First Anthology of Nature Writing by African-American Poets, edited by Camille Dungy. African-American nature writing, of course, goes against the common assumption that the African-American experience is an urban one, and that interesting counter intuition lends to the uniqueness of the writing I would presume. For the background, Robert Hass' intro bears repeating here:

92% of all African-Americans in 1900 were living in the country. And over the course of 2 massive migrations, one between 1910 and 1930 and the other between 1940 and 1970, 80% of African-Americans came to be urban dwellers. And that also happened at the moment of this first great explosion of consciousness of African-American writing in the heart of renaissance and of the explosion of music and art that made African-American that made African-American experience quintessentially an urban experience...

Africa/ Denmark: Sweet Tears of Immigration

I don't know what country Mukhtar's from but he drives a bus in Copenhagen and little did he know that on May 5th, his birthday, a whole bunch of people had planned to celebrate it with him.



It is also true that the bus company made the video as part of a campaign "Bedre Bustur" (better busrides) and some part had to be reshot, hence restaged, because of camera problems. However, the scenes showing an astonished Mukhter don't seem staged to me.

South Africa: Named After the Gods of Cape Flats

Ronaldo Bezuidenhout. Photo: Samantha Reinders / Twenty Ten 

/ Africa Media Online

AllAfrica put up Samantha Reiners's pics of kids in soccer obsessed township of Cape Flats, all named after soccer players.

Africa: Sustainable + Design

Some designs from the National Design Triennial "Why Design Now" exhibit at the Cooper-Hewit Design Museum:

Education

A simple grid of half-submerged tires which can be built anywhere in the world is a universal and adaptable Learning Landscape designed (by Project H Design) to teach elementary math education:



Water

Ripple Effect, a collaboration between the Acumen Fund, IDEO, and Indian and Kenyan water organizations, stimulates innovation among water suppliers. Here are 5 designs/innovations to make you go hmmm..



Architecture



A 700-year-old construction, low-cost construction method, consisting of thin tile vaults stretching across large spaces without form work built with local materials ad labor and achieves high structural strength and is energy-efficient. Lead architect, Peter Rich:



Energy

From the old and expensive method of  tide currents turning undersea turbines to the much cheaper idea of ocean waves turning....



This design dumps the old idea of flat photovoltaic panels placed on your roof for mirrors on a concave satellite arrays tracking the sun through the day, focusing its light onto a small generator to produce electricity and thermal energy:

Nigeria/ South Africa: Mo' Ads, Mo' Problems

Found two ads about children and African problems over at KMBA.



Amnesty International skewers--and we mean that literally--multinational oil company, Shell, in the ad above, which has a child making a list of Shell's crimes in Nigeria's Niger Delta. Correct me if I'm wrong, as the girl gets consumed (well, sorta), is the message here - "toxic gas flaring"?

According to KMBA, this was a spec ad by Igor Martinovic (for Adidas) and it was shot on Long Island (NY) beach with a small crew and cast of local kids from NYC.

I like the ad and on some level I know it's about poor children and big dreams, but I don't know if the actual things we did, or poor kids all over the world do, to simulate our yearnings and dreams--i.e. looking through foreign magazines for the perfume strips and rubbing them on ourselves, supposedly if you could find one with any scent left in the strip--would make good ads; by that I mean I think they make great party anecdotes, but are they really flattering to whoever is going to pay for the ad? Thus, if Hugo Boss threw its logo on that scent strip anecdote, won't they come off looking like douche bags? Won't Adidas? The whole thing takes me back though:

A nigga never been as broke as me, I like that
When I was young I had two pair of Lees, besides that
The pin stripes and the gray (uh-huh)
The one I wore on Mondays and Wednesdays
While niggas flirt, I'm sewing tigers on my shirt
and alligators.
Ya wanna see the inside, huh, I see ya later

H/T: KMBA

Friday

Bastard by Metal on Metal. Album: Damn. Skint Records. 2009.

Video Creative Concept: The Glue Society
Director: Matt Devine
Production Company: Revolver

Africa: B(r)and-Aids

Social innovations consultant Kofi G. Annan's (of fab blog Annansi Chronicles) presentation of his talk at Harvard on tapping into Africa's youth market and its mind boggling numbers has been making its way around the advertising blogosphere:

The youth and branding Africa

And for those who haven't been keeping up with the 1 Million Used Teeshirts to clothe Africa FUBAR idea (you can catch up via Nick Wadhams' Time article , and at OnAfrica, where Manuel explains how  new media was marshaled by the African development blogosphere to nip this idea in the bud in real time and why this event counts as a big deal in the annals of African development and ICT), Annan has put up a case-study document titled “No Tees Please: Why Africa aid campaigns #FAIL” in which contributors "share their perspectives on this and other Africa aid campaigns and the hard lessons which can be learned when they miss their mark":

No Tees Please: Why Africa aid campaigns #FAIL

DRC: Staff Benda Billili @ Cannes 2010