South Africa: Writing and the Rising Black Middle Class

Reviewing the new anthology African Pens 2011: New Writing from Southern Africa, with stories selected by JM Coetzee, literary critic Chetty Kavish  asks over at Mahala how an anthology of new Southern African writing does not include writing from a single black Southern African author. Chetty offers an hypothesis:

... Black embourgeoisement [in South Africa] is a (relatively, as ever) recent phenomenon. Hence, the amount of black students who find themselves coming from families which genuinely place cultural capital and value on metaphysics, romantic poetry, Oedipus Rex and/or psychoanalysis is likely to be slim. I’m not suggesting that there is some definable lifeline pumping from the study of the arts into the production of writers, but the interdependency between the two is possibly something worth exploring. I’m sure there is some other naked theorising here to account for this fact, and if yours grips you in the right place, slather it all over the comment threads.

But in the judgment of art, there are two poles: the producers and the assessors. Sleuthing around the back of this book with an agenda in mind, I discover that there isn’t a black dude or dudette on the editorial board or reading panel either. I’m trying my best not to sledgehammer race into what is simply a curiosity of the way classes emerge and consolidate in a fairly fresh democracy – but I think we have a puzzle on our hands here. Is it possible to compile a volume called African Pens without (strictly speaking) an African anywhere in the process? (more)

Perhaps the question ought to be: when will the the blood in the lifeline become thoroughly thickened with the blood of Southern Africa's rising black middle class and privilege?

Speaking of new black Southern African writing,  below is a panel from Mail & Guardian 2010 Literary Festival led by Wits university Leon de Kock which includes South African authors Thando Mgqolozana and Zukiswa Wanner:

Guinea: Israel Defense Forces' First Guinean Officer

The IDF site put up a profile Avi (Ibrahima) Bari, their first officer from Guinea as well as the “the first illegal immigrant to become an officer of the Israeli Defense Forces.” The IDF profile focuses on the travails of his crossing from Guinea and illegally into Israel, his mastering of Hebrew and his integration into Israeli society.

The Jeune Afrique profile (Google translation) goes into more detail and also adds that he is:

"...a black Muslim and proudly displaying his origins... 'I am African and I will never forget where I come from. My past resurfaces every morning on waking, when I think back to the stages of my life. This gives me my ambition,' he says."

Friday

Charles Burnett's distinguished alumni award acceptance speech at UCLA's Theater, Film and TV commencement 2011  (June 10). He talks about the making of "To Sleep with Anger".

The excerpt below from an old essay on by Ray Carney on "To Sleep with Anger" and Burnett  is still on point:

Yet no doubt the title alone didn't make or break the movie. The larger problem was that Burnett made an African-American film that violated virtually every convention about the depiction of African-Americans on screen. There are no drugs, no gangs, no guns, no policemen, and no hookers. There are no views of urban life, no identifying ethnic patois, costumes, or mannerisms, and no rap or hip-hop scoring on the soundtrack (and not even any references to such realms of experience). Burnett makes us realize the extent to which the African-American experience has been cinematically stereotyped. His characters are not teenage ghetto dwellers with boom boxes on their shoulders, but middle-class mothers and fathers who head stable families, live in well-kept houses in suburban neighborhoods, and care as much about their jobs, their marriages, their children, and their relationships with their neighbors as any white suburbanite does. His film may have an all Black main cast, but in another respect, it represents a breathtakingly color-blind vision of life. Its narrative may be anchored in specific observations about the Black family(and, in particular, the distinctive role of women in it), but its net effect is to suggest that what all families have in common is much more important than the skin colors that distinguish them.

Friday

Unreleased Islamic Funk from 1973 - The sessions for the 1973 debut by Washington, DC (Adams Morgan to be precise) Islamic funk septet Father’s Children were never paid for and the tapes went into storage for almost 40 years... (more)


Fathers Children - Everybodys Got A Problem. by LitePanda

Kenya: Bargaining in Nairobi

Boing Boing explains.

Africa: The Negative Economics of Penis Size

University of Helsinki's Tatu Westlin and his much discussed academic paper "Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?" explores the relationship between the GDP growth of countries and the penile length of their residents - for which data is openly available online. Lots in the paper about how Africa stacks up:

GDP numbers for 1985 versus male organ sizes (pg 6-8):

The OLS estimates indicate that the size of male organ has a marked effect on the 1985 per capita GDP.... The inclusion of male organ does not materially change the results with respect to investment ratio [I/GDP] or human capital [SCHOOL]. However, as can be seen from Model (4), political regime type [POLITY1980] does not seem to alter the role of male organ. Quite interestingly it also suggests that from the GDP perspective male organs dwarf political institutions in importance { yet this result must be taken with reservations. Model (5) indicates that male organ is significant even after controlling for Africa [AFRICA].

Westlin reminds us on Page 4 why studies like this need to "control for Africa":

In accordance with much of the growth literature, a region dummy for African countries is included in the regressions. Here it refers to all countries on the continent, not only on sub-Saharan Africa. The various reasons for including African and other regional dummies have been extensively discussed in the literature. However, here it is included as a robustness check as African countries are characterized by above-average penile lengths but generally low GDPs. This is encouraging since it suggests that the results are not driven by Africa's high ORGAN/GDP.

On the inverse U-shaped relationship (see chart above) between size of male organ and level of GDP in 1985 (page 8):

Figure (1) plots the relationship between 1985 GDP and male organ. In this OLS regression the only explanatory variable is ORGAN in the quadratic form. It is noteworthy that the male organ can alone explain over 15% of the variation in GDPs. The inverted U-shaped relationship also shows how the GDPs collapse when the average penile length exceeds 16 centimetres. Most of these countries are found in Africa and Latin America. However, at the lower-end a similar pattern is found: the majority of countries with male organs smaller than 12 centimetres are relatively poor. These are often Asian countries. In conclusion, the inverted U-shaped link between the 1985 GDP and male organ seems robust. Interestingly it remains highly signi cant even with the full set of controls.

According to the graphs countries maximizing their GDP have penile sizes averaging at 13.5 centimeters; countries economies collapse when sizes exceed 16 centimeters. However, Westlin warns:

For obvious reasons the male organ narrative yields little in terms of feasible policy recommendations. Beyond mass [im]migration, not much can be done on the average size of male organ at the population level. Still, one practical and serious implication stands out. Namely, these findings spell trouble for countries with large male organs since they evidence both low levels and growth rates of GDPs. In fact it would be interesting to analyze whether the patterns laid out here have any predictive power in the post-1985 era..

A fun paper producing a strong "urge" to conclude that the endowed African male population, like the attractive blonde stereotype, have little or zero motivation to develop brain cells. But I'm willing to bet that if in 1985 every African male penile size averaged a GDP-maximizing 13.5 centimeters, those African GDPs would still remain stuck at low. Dysfunctional systemics thump above average dick sizes any day.

Interview with Westlin over at Global Post. Huff Post animates Westlin's chart.

H/T: Kottke

The Revolution will be Embedded

Swedish rapper Eboi (Ibrahima Banda), born to a Swedish mother and Gambian father, gives social commentary on life in his neighborhood of Husby, Stockholm, one of Sweden’s highest populated immigrant communities. More tracks - here & here.

Nigeria: Contemporary Yoruba Chanted Poetry

Ọbafemi Awolọwọ University's Niyi Okunoye talks with University of Birmingham's Karen Barber about the contemporary Yoruba poet as a local intellectual and abt the poetry of renowned Yoruba wordsmith, Lanrewaju Adepọju.

May 2011 paper on Lanrewaju Adepọju from the May issue of African Journal - here.

Zimbabwe: Cafe View of Harare's Art Scene

The Nomadic Wax crew that shot the mini documentary above about Zimbabwe's alternative hip hop scene talk at length about the capital's famous hub of cultural activity, "Book Cafe":

... The Book Cafe is one of the most exciting and interesting places I have been to anywhere in the world and the arts scene that it has helped to create and support is truly remarkable. Every night, a different young artist is featured. The audience is always made up of all the other local artists, from famous ones like Chiwoniso to up and coming ones like emcee Synik. Our team immediately fell in love with the Zimbabwean hip hop and spoken word scene, with its unofficial headquarters at one of the various wooden tables in the Book Cafe's restaurant. With a huge freestyle culture, and a unique approach to both bilingualism and English raps, Zimbabwean hip hop has a huge amount of potential. Dancehall has also exploded in popularity in Zimbabwe as whole, influencing other genres, like hip hop, as well. That said, the emcees we did meet were firmly rooted in their own hip hop identities, enthusiastically separating themselves from the 'pop' or 'traditional' music scenes. We were repeatedly treated to the most interesting and refreshing perspectives on the political situation in Zimbabwe from its local emcees, usually over some boney chicken and greasy fries from Nando's.

The Revolution will be Embedded

Teach me how to Kuku - New Song Academy (1st Grade) Sandtown, Baltimore, 2011.  Sample: "Teach Me How to Dougie," Cali Swag District. Prod. Runway Star. Album: The Kickback (2011). Capitol Records.

... Studying Africa in the 1st grade is an intentional effort to undo the negative stereotypes associated with the homeland of our students' ancestors. In tandem with their homerooom instruction where students are reading, writing and examining African climates, textiles, and cultures, the 1st grade students' dance class introduced them to West African music and movement. Making a dance music video to teach what they learned was a strategy to make their education relevant and memorable, not just for themselves, but for our entire community more

H/T: Nomadic Wax 

Somalia: Malnourished Information

At RNW, Koert Lindijer wrote on the aid industry's understandable panic calls abt the famine in the horn of Africa and the international media binge and coverage of refugee camps and malnourished children taking shape. Meanwhile Benjamin Hennig over at Views of the World produced the map above and asks the media to at least get the big picture of "malnourished children" right:

[The Map] shows each grid cell resized according to the estimated total number of underweight children under the age of five living in that area... The map shows that while we think of some parts of Africa being the worst affected region related to undernourished children, the problem is as pressing in South Asia, and quite considerable in parts of South East Asia. More than 70 percent of the world’s underweight children (aged five or less) live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone (Source: Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition, UNICEF, 2006)

The Times Editorial Cartoon, July 21 2011. Over at Africa is a Country, Neelika Jayawardane broke the malnourished African children cartoon down:

Nigeria: Christopher Okigbo's Labyrinths Reissued

Back in June the revived Heinemann African Writers Series reissued what is for our money a modernist classic in the African vein - Igbo poet Christopher Okigbo's best known book, "Labyrinths".

The Daily Champion pens a review here.

The Louis Nkosi interview mentioned in the review is included in the excerpt below from Donatus Ibe Nwoga's Critical perspectives on Christopher Okigbo (1984):

Reunion: Away from the Beaches and Breathtaking Scenery...

(Previews) Graphic novels from the team of Jerome Jouvray and Stéphane Presle, who both grew up partly in Reunion: French island east of Madagascar and south west of Mauritius.  

La Pes Rekin: a tale inspired by a true incident and told partly in Creole. Away from the beaches and breathtaking scenery, the island is proving rather hard and violent... Phil a violent middle-aged alcoholic, desperate that his wife left him, captures stray dogs in order to use them as live bait for illegal shark fishing -- sharks which end up in food served to tourists ... Nelson is an unruly who lives in the slum with a father who "busts his ass to work in the cane fields" so he and his sister will have food to eat, clothes to wear and go to school. When Nelson runs away from home he befriends a dog and three puppies. But when Phil grabs his dog, Nelson is set on doing everything possible to recover them. From Futurepolis.

More pages + the making of the Vol 1 - here. Cover for vol 1 + 2 - here. Jouvray (interview) on Vol 2 - here.

Kenya: A Skating Culture Revolves Around the Six Year-Old Ice Rink

African Expats Wives Club talks about taking the kids ice skating in Nairobi:

I've blogged about the place before but I still can't quite figure out how an ice-rink can sit on the second floor of a building without the weight of the ice causing it to crash down to earth... more

Egypt: Graffiti - Commitment to Communicate

Is there an art style of the Arab spring? No. Rather, there is a commitment to communicate using any means necessary - Guardian's Johnathan Jones on Arab Spring art exhibit showing in London

Al-Masry Al-Youm: How did you get started and why? El Teneen: It all started on 26 January, when I was at a protest. I thought that even if the revolution didn’t succeed, there should be traces of it left for people to see. I never did any street art before, and stencil was a good compromise because it was quick and easy. I started with a picture of Mubarak, which was great fun. It became a new way to express myself. Before, the internet was the only place where we could honestly converse. On the street, we simply couldn’t talk freely, especially not about Mubarak. Through street art, freedom of expression moved from virtual space to the real world - excerpt from Al-Masry Al-Youm Camille Lepage's recent interview with Stencil Street Artist, El Teneen.

Uganda: An African Little League Team is Going to the World Series

Tune in to ESPN this August because for the first time in the 65-year history of the Little League Baseball World Series, a team from Africa will be in the field. Rev. John Foundation Little League from Kampala, Uganda won the Middle East and Africa Region Tournament [on Saturday] with a 6-4 victory over 17-time World Series qualifier since 1991, Arabian American Little League from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia... (more)

Above, 2010 documentary Opposite Field by Jay Shapiro follows the journey of Uganda's Little League team, their quest to find their place in the world and to prove that the world has a place for them.

Kenya/Nigeria: Collagists

Wangechi Mutu (Kenya) on the making of her "obssessive" collages (more here and here.) and, below, Gerald Chukwuma (Nigeria) on making his collages from used up phone cards.



H/T: Naija Feed

Libya: Forging Unconventional Weapons for Unconventional "Soldiers"

Very bushpunk. BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Misrata reports on Libyans cannibalizing, repurposing, modifying and adapting conventional weapons to suit the needs of the rebels. Add that to uses found for google earth, Iphones, video games ... in this Maddest of Mad Max Wars

DRC: The Revolution will be Embedded

When Bombaye music team mates Youssoupha and Kozi hook up they serve up Congolese hardcore, circa '90s vintage Red and Method Man. Above, Bana Bantu - Kozi. Feat. Youssoupha. Niama Muluba mixtape, 2011. Below, Haute Parleur (Remix) - Youssoupha from Black & White mixtape. Feat. Spi, Sam's & Kozi. 2011.



This is Africa on Youssoupha and other Congolese rappers making waves here and here.

Rwanda: Outpeddaling the Past

In the excerpt below from the much emailed piece over at the New Yorker about the Rwandan cycling team and their preparations for Tour of Rwanda 2010, Philip Gourevitch connects pain trapped in the past to the pain a cyclist endures to get away from it:

Cycling is an excruciating sport—a rider’s power is only as great as his capacity to endure pain—and it is often remarked that the best cyclists experience their physical agonies as a relief from private torments. The bike gives suffering a purpose. Jock, who was one of America’s foremost cycling champions in the nineteen-eighties, told me that he got into racing to get out of the house after his parents divorced. “I relate to pain,” he said. Gasore’s home-town teammate, Sibo, told me much the same thing. When he bought his first bike (like Gasore, with earnings from growing potatoes), Sibo had gone joyriding. With the bike, he felt rich and tried to act accordingly, like a man of leisure and ease: “Every time I’d come to a beautiful place, I’d pedal around, checking it out.” Then he took up racing, and he found the hardship addictive. “The bike is good. I forgot all the pain I had before I joined the team,” Sibo told me. “Cycling is like a fatal drug. When you get into it, you don’t want to do anything else. You don’t look to one side or another.” Read more.

West Africa: Politics of Chocolate

Over at the Dublin Review of Books, David Ralph's penetrating review of former Reuters West Africa correspondent Órla Ryan's Bean To Bar - West Africa and the Politics of Chocolate.

Ryan, among other things, explains the cocoa roots of the recent political siege in Cote d'Ivoire. But we found two excerpts that double as commentary for 2 recent videos about cocoa posted online.



Ryan explains how West Africa is barely mentioned when you take the tour of the Cadbury museum in Bournville, England, even though two thirds of the cocoa in the company's chocolates come from West Africa:

Every day thousands of Britons and international visitors arrive to visit the small town where, [the Cadbury World, a themed museum] tour explains, in the late 1870s the Cadbury brothers began experimenting with strange, small brown beans in their shop’s tea rooms.... The story of chocolate told here is a pleasing one. But there is one glaring omission. The cocoa beans packed into the familiar brands within easy reach in every Spar shop and supermarket aisle do not come from South American jungles. More than two-thirds of global cocoa production comes from West Africa, with Ghana and Ivory Coast the world’s two biggest producers. And yet this corner of the world gets scarcely a mention from Cadbury – a company whose entire bean supply now comes almost exclusively from the two West African cocoa-producing nations.

Above, a German educational film shot in 1947 showing Ghanaian boatmen ferrying cargoes of cocoa out to sea and loading them unto a Dutch ship off the Holland West Afrika Lijn (H/T: Michael Rogge). Below, cue to 5:36 of the PBS report broadcast back in June on the economic future of Ghana. It mentions the inequality in cocoa trade with the West and one solution in the guise of Ghanaian cocoa co-ops like Kuapa selling to Fairtrade companies...



Ryan on the other hand argues that such Fairtrade narratives hide the far more complex cocoa reality on the ground facing the Kuapa co-operative:

Ryan is not satisfied with the simple story told by the celebrity backers. Visiting farmers on the ground, she discovered a muddier reality, as she arrived in cocoa villages at the height of the selling season in mid-September. She was surprised to find that, despite the premium paid by Kuapa, farmers sold beans to other buyers – buyers who did not explicitly invest in their communities. So why, asked Ryan, would farmers choose to sell to such buyers? And the

Tunisia: Hanging Portraits of the People where Those of their Dictators Once Hung, Cont'd

The first webisode is a more indepth look at the JR Inside Out Project in Tunisia. Earlier in the year, the team proceeded to place portraits of the Tunisian people in the same public spaces where, just months before, was reserved for only portraits of their leaders. Backstory blogged here. A new trailer below:

Senegal: The Revolution will be Embedded

Ablaye Mbaye, one of the most beautiful voices from Senegal, melts this track.



"Bataxal" - Checky Blaze Feat. Ablaye Mbaye, July 2011. "Bataxal" translates to "Letter" in Wolof. Track is dedicated to those hip hop artists who passed on.

Friday

inside the bookstore no one can find...



The '08 New Yorker profile.

Friday

Watch the full episode. See more History Detectives.

This episode of PBS history detectives retraces the origins of a rare 50s Negro Romance Comic. (H/T: S&A)

Check out an early blog post on a 1947 Negro Adventure Comic featuring a story set somewhere in Africa and a plot that could easily substitute for the origin story of Marvel's first black superhero, the Black Panther.

Kenya/Ghana: Threatening to Farm on Neglected Roads

To protest the local government's 24 year neglect of a road, the denizens of that part of Nairobi take first steps in turning the road into a banana patch. Best case for urban agriculture we've come across. Below, Kwesi Owusu's 2010 look at urban vegetable farms in Accra city, Ghana, grown on the land under electricity pylons, using human urine as fertilizer.



Explore the "Africa" tag over at fab City Farmer blog.

H/T: Timbuktu Chronicles

Tunisia: The World of Teen Night Clubbing

In La Presse (Tunisia) Abdel Aziz Hali explores the 6 year-old phenomenon of "Hendony" or Safe Clubbing in Tunisia, wherein mothers can now drop off their impressionable teenagers to party the night away inside tightly secured and controlled, DJ fueled, tobacco and alcohol free night clubs in the Northern suburbs of Tunis. The club chain "Hedony," a French import, has completely rebuilt the entire night clubbing experience to attract an Arab teenage population that, until recently, felt excluded.

Google translation of the piece - here. French "Hedony" scenes below:

Comoros/ Uganda: The Revolution will be Embedded

Dubai's skyline now pops up in African hip hop videos as location or projected backdrop. Above, rapper Rohff drops French bombs but seems to be exploring his Comorian roots against the Dubai backdrop in 2010 viral video for Thug Marriage, featuring Indila. However, Dubai's concrete opulence should also hint at all the migrant labor brought in to build and service it. So hip hop, apart from tapping into the Gulf's strong lyrical heritage, also becomes the expression of choice for marginalized migrant labor/class. Lots of East African migrants have been are tapping the Dubai hip hop scene. Below, Ugandan duo Bobi Wine & Nubian Li (2011) got some footage for their recent video, Matyansi Butyampa, during their music tour of Dubai:

Kenya: Extreme Winemaking

A recent AFP video/ report on a highland vineyard in Kenya's fabled Rift valley, which is tapping South African expertise in an attempt at extreme winemaking near the equator. Excerpt:

... Out of the blue, Farquharson received an email saying a rich Kenyan businessman was looking for a specialist to develop his vineyard -- and it is now more than three years since he decided to take up to the challenge. "I said to myself that this was a chance for a wonderful adventure, to try something different," he recalled. Pius Ngugi, the businessman who owns Kenya Nut as well as Thika Coffee Mills, had tried making wine from vines at his farm north of Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley in the 1990s. After deciding he was never going to achieve a wine of constant quality, he put the project on the backburner. His son Mbugua Ngugi, knowing how close the project had been to his father's heart, revived it -- but this time seeking out a professional viticulturist and winemaker who knew Africa. The vineyard's geographical situation -- at 2,000 metres (6,500 feet) right near the Equator, 90 kilometres (55 miles) northwest of Nairobi -- as well as Kenya's climate provide Farquharson with several challenges. But he knew extreme winemaking was working elsewhere, including in Argentina which has some of the world's highest vineyards at more than 3,000 metres along the Andean mountain range.

A Business Daily report from 2008 explains the viticulture logistics and high cost of production due to punitive taxes when it comes to Kenyan wines. But the report agrees, that "since Kenyans are now indulging in the finer things of life, ... wines have been performing excellently in the market."

Nigeria: The Revolution will be Embedded

Reactions to Nneka's new video/single, "Soul is Heavy":



Okayplayer:

...The brightly-colored agit-prop makes a perfect visual complement to Nneka’s sound; somewhere between M.I.A. and the Kalakuta Queens

Soulbounce:

...name checks some of [Nigeria's] important socio-political figures including Jaja of Opobo and Isaac Boro. Nowadays it seems that music with a meaning is a rarity, and even then it often only serves as a token gesture, so it's great to see an artist who sings about politics and social issues with the same aplomb as matters of the heart

 Agit-prop never looked this good.

Cape Verde: "Memories Left on the Island by Cinema"

Portuguese photographer Daniel Blaufuk's documentary, Eden, looks back at the 40s and 50s - the golden age of cinema in Cape Verde. Synopsis:

"The only two ways of leaving the island were the sea and the cinema." Blaufuks' documentary look lead us to S. Vicente (Cape Vert) and through the memories left on the island by the cinema. Based upon an interesting research work, both for the testimonies and for the images, "Eden" plunges into the contemporary imagery of a people and a place through their relation towards cinema. 

More - here.

Senegal: Making of...

... Youssouf N'dour's Salagne-Salagne music video.

Africa: Switched On

Switching on: Africa's vast new tech opportunity By Pete Guest (Wired Magazine UK, August 2011)

PDF version of Pete Guest's article in the August issue of Wired UK. It features Agosta Liko of Pesapal (Mpesa, Kenya), Saheed Adepoju (Encipher, Nigeria), Joe Muchero (Google Head of sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya), Isis Nyong’o of Inmobi (Kenya), Bright Simons (M-pedigree, Ghana), Stephan Magdalinski (DealFish & Kalahari). The first paragraph in the article is a keeper:

In 2011, visitors to Africa looking for war, famine and pestilence have to dig a lot deeper than in the past. At Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, hardened missionaries have been replaced by gap-year students clustered around iPads, and on the streets the bad old days have given way to another holy trinity: Premier League football, Toyota Hiace minibuses and cellphones... (more)

Congo Brazzaville: “Mabancool” Writing of Alain Mabancko

The Economist's profile of Congo Brazaville French writer Alain Mabanckou explians the prestigious release of the author's fictionalised memoir of childhood, “Demain J’Aurais Vingt Ans” (“Tomorrow I Will Be 20”), under Gallimard’s august La Blanche imprint:

Mr Mabanckou broke new ground when he recently swapped his prestigious French publisher, Le Seuil, for the even more prestigious Gallimard. His fictionalised memoir of childhood, “Demain J’Aurais Vingt Ans” (“Tomorrow I Will Be 20”), came out under Gallimard’s august La Blanche imprint. For nearly a century, La Blanche’s distinctive cream covers have been the entry ticket to the canon of French literature. Mr Mabanckou is the first writer from Francophone black Africa to be included, and is now published alongside Marcel Proust and Jean-Paul Sartre. A Légion d’Honneur quickly followed. Presenting it in March, France’s culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, gushed over him, calling him “Mabancool” and a “shining ambassador for the French language”.

... and why migrant/non-native authors like Mabanckou are now the torch of the French language:

Mr Mitterrand may regard Mr Mabanckou as an exotic flower in France’s literary garland, but the author is convinced that metropolitan France is no longer the centre of French literature. As Gallimard has recognised, writers from outside France are the ones now snatching the prizes and carrying the influence of French abroad. Mr Mabanckou proves that.

Find here a video in English - Mabanckou @ Jaipur Literature Festival, 2010. NY Times op-ed --blogged here--on the changing relevance of the French language and why the future of the language is now in Africa and among those for who it is not a mother-tongue but serves as a tool of empowered diversity.

Africa: Success Stories from a Dynamic Continent

Yes Africa Can: Success Stories from a Dynamic Continent

A just released document on recent African success stories across a broad range of topics with a view to: (1) broaden dissemination and knowledge within the region of the remarkable transformation that is taking place in many African countries; (2) examine what has worked and why, including re-evaluating some widely accepted past successes, so as to deepen our understanding of the drivers of success in the region; and (3) draw practical lessons with a view to informing policies and interventions. Yes Africa Can: Success Stories from a Dynamic Continent is a World Bank research study anchored in the Africa Region Chief Economist’s Office Unit.

For example, a nice sequel to our earlier blog post on the enabling absense of foreign aid in Somaliland (from Nicholas Eubank's story about Taxation, Political Accountability, and Foreign Aid: Lessons from Somaliland) can be found in chapter 9 in Jean-Paul Azam's story about Transport Infrastructure and the Road to Statehood in Somaliland. Excerpt pgs 156-7:

What seems very important when looking at the experience of Somaliland is that this gradual buildup of a functioning state started from the grassroots, with very little outside
interference. Eubank (2010) emphasizes that the Somaliland Republic has not been recognized internationally, which makes it ineligible for foreign aid. In his view, this is an asset rather than a liability, because it forced the Somalilanders to develop accountable political institutions and to engage in state formation in a non-Eurocentric fashion.

I argue here that this system cuts through a vexing “bootstrap” problem that faces all new states: a state needs to have fiscal resources to extend its control to various parts of its territory, but the state needs to have a fairly serious level of control to be able to raise those fiscal resources in the first place. This problem explains to a large extent why the control many African states exert is in fact extremely limited, leaving de facto large parts of their country without any effective state presence, as emphasized by Herbst (2000). I argue that Somaliland was put on the fast track to solve this problem thanks to two of its preexisting assets. First, this country inherited a valuable transport infrastructure, which only required establishing an efficient political regime to become competitive in the Horn of Africa. I suggest that “ports are the taxman’s best friends,” because they provide a “choke point” where taxable resources are concentrated and make revenue collection relatively cheap. Second, the traditional institutions of this nomadic pastoral society had not been destroyed by either British colonial rule, or the subsequent “modernizer” national government of post-colonial Somalia, despite the brutal attacks by the Mogadishu government in the final years of Siyad Barre’s rule in the late 1980s (Lewis 2008). That indiscriminate violence against civilians and soldiers alike probably helped the Somalilanders to achieve a consensus on the project to secede from Somalia and build a state of their own. The clans with which Somali nomadic herdsmen are affiliated are themselves subdivided into kinship groups, which are subject quite informally but firmly to the leadership of the elders. There is no real “chiefdom” among the Somali, unlike in many other African societies (Lewis 2008), but the elders exert a significant level of authority. This power was successfully harnessed to the emerging Somaliland Republic by creating a House of the Elders, called Gurti in Somali, in addition to a more standard elected House of Representatives. This upper house is playing a part in Somaliland’s bicameral system close to that played by the House of Lords in Britain’s Westminster system, allowing the traditional authorities to be involved directly in running the country’s affairs. I argue that this is one of the fundamental pillars of this country, because it is the key to establishing—at a low up-front cost—the required level of security for making the port of Berbera an economic success and hence a reliable source of fiscal revenues.

The Revolution will be Embedded

One of the 4 new tracks from the Sade Ultimate Collection, a 28-track, two-CD set released back in May. Tracks still streaming - here.

Egypt: Birth of the Comic Magazine

Scroll through Egypt's new comic magazine,  Tok Tok, launched back in January. You will recall some of the young cartoonists behind it--i.e. Makhlouf, Andil,...--from this '09 Egyptian cartoon art exhibit blogged here. Cop the interview below and the launch of the magazine over @Mashareeb



Tic Tok will have a rich African history of francophone comic magazines to draw from, going back to Ivory Coast's legendary comic daily/magazine, Gbich! Eygpt also has the recent international success of Egyptian Magdy el Shafee’s formerly banned graphic novel going for it.

Plus the folks at marshareeb recently spoke with the founder of a new Egyptian comics anthology series about the state of comic book publishing in Egypt - here.

North Africa: Arab Cinema or Cinemas of the Arab World

June issue of Widescreen has a section on cinema from the Arab World. Abstracts and links to the full articles below:

Above Sayed Badreya's documentary Saving Egyptian Film Classics ia a call for Egyptian film preservation.The 1hr and 3 mins doc retraces the history of Arab and Egyptian film, Egypt's contributions to world cinema and features talking heads like director Martin Scorcese, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, Egyptian movie star Madyha Yussury and others.

Kenya: Admitting Sex Plays a Dominant Role in Poor People’s Lives

Ndoto z Elibidi, a tragicomedy about abt a family living in Mathare Valley slum opened in theaters in Kenya last month after winning the Italian Cinema Africano di Verona @ Zanzibar Film Festival last summer. Excerpt below culled from Margaretta wa Gacherun's review of the film in the Nation:

The backdrop of the film is the poverty to be found in Mathare. But the poverty in no way diminishes the humanity and vitality of the characters, all of who are developed as full-blooded individuals, each with his or her issues. The girls’ father, Elibidi, is the main storyteller and pivotal figure of the film, but his daughters and their dilemmas and developing relationships form the body of this wonderfully told modern morality “play”. The fact that each of the girls’ experiences is an authentic reflection of everyday Mathare life is confirmed by the attentive “live” audience which laughs, cries, screams and laughs again. That sex plays so dominant a part in poor people’s lives may shock some filmgoers since it’s an issue addressed head-on in Ndoto z Elibidi.

In terms of the telling, the film is described as constantly cutting back and forth from fiction to documentary and from the original stage play to actual locations; as it takes the viewers on two parallel journeys: watching the story in real time and also watching it through the eyes of the ghetto audience.


In that case it should fit in snugly somewhere between Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako (2006) and Denys Arcand's Jesus of Montreal ('09).

H/T: Kenyan Christian

Tanzania/ France: A Different Photojournalism

Sarah Markes's much awaited book of watercolors capturing the older buildings of Dar es Salaam and the city's essence hit the shelves a few weeks ago from Mkuki na Nyota publishers.

Also, in March, Parigramme published Les carnet de L'Afrique a Paris (Notebooks of Africa in Paris) from authors Catherine Alain and Korkos M'Boudi - a book of paintings illustrating the presence of Africa in Paris in all its aspects. More - here.

Novelist Alain Mabanckou's review - here.

Old thoughts on what art can bring to African journalism.

Cote d'Ivoire/Nigeria: Regional Bonds

Political crisis earlier in the year saw Nigerian emigre communities in Cote d'Ivoire returning home - many of them to the town of Ejigbo in Osun state.



Wiki:

According to the Ogiyan of Ejigbo, around 1960, there was census in Côte d’Ivoire where the estimated population of all Nigerian living there was put at about 1.2 million. In that figure, Ejigbo people alone were said to have accounted for about 800,000 inhabitants. They believed to be so established there to the extent that in each big city and town of Côte d’Ivoire, the Ejigbo people have a community leader they refer to as ‘Oba’ of that area....

Africa/Italy: African Immigration and Italian Cinema

Decades of African immigration to Italy is enough time for the attitudes of the Italian society in relation to African immigrants to be absorbed and examined through its cinema. In the Grace Bullaro edited 2010 text above, Italian cinema also replays the love/hate relationships you find towards Africans in the larger society -- i.e. Italian soccer fans and African players.

Some Italian films discussed include dir. Luca D’Ascanio's Bell'amico [Some Friend (2002)], a look at the love/hate relationship between an Italian host and his house guest, an obssessive filmmaker from Angola. Trailer below. The book's breakdown of the film - here:



Or the love/hate relationship Italian men have for West African prostitutes captured as far back as Matteo Garrone's 1997 short film, Terra di Mezzo. The book breaks it down - here

North Africa: Women of the Arab Spring

Summer issue of Granta magazine features a short documentary by Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton profiling 4 Egyptian women - a student, a cancer researcher, an art curator and a journalist advocate - in the trenches of the revolution:



... same issue contains a look at Feminists in the trenches of the revolution that started it all - here.

Nigeria: The Revolution will be Embedded

Shot, directed and produced in Lagos, Nigeria, by Clarence Peters.



“Don’t Touch” - Goldie Harvey. Label: Kennis Music, 2011.

North Africa: Post-Uprising Advertising

Some Coca Cola and Pepsi advertising attempts to ride Egypt's post-uprising wave got featured last month in Al Masry Al Youm:

Coca-Cola and Pepsi have both launched massive advertising campaigns, with themes based on optimism and change, aimed at Egypt’s youth... It's too early to see whether the marketing campaigns will strike a chord with Egyptians, but initial feedback is positive. YouTube pages featuring Coke and Pepsi’s most recent Egypt commercials are full of positive comments...

Hawgblawg breaksdown the Pepsi and Coke ads:

... Note that the focus is entirely on Cairo's downtown, which has both been a site that the upwardly mobile in neo-liberal Egypt have been fleeing for the upscale satellite suburbs, and which is also the focus of plans for gentrification. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, note the penultimate shot, which shows Tahrir Square, with a crowd (meant, of course, to evoke a demonstration, right before the last shot of a young person drinking a bottle of Coke (more)

Other examples of post-uprising advertising - a series of spots by Claude El Khal, Stash Capar, Mohamad Hammoud & Birthmark Films for the Arabic network, Al Arabiya, which borrow a page from the successful Tunisian "The 16 June 2014 ad campaign" developed by the ad agency, Memac Ogilvy Label Tunisia - all blogged here. The ad goes forward in time to 2031 and has Arab Spring participants--i.e. a government pilot (Libya), a teacher who protected the Cairo Museum from looters (Egypt), two policemen who join the revolt (Tunisia) --fondly looking back at those crazy days of the ongoing Arab Spring.

Mozambique: Tofu Tofu, Beyonce and '4' - Behind the Scenes

Tags:
MTV Shows

More on the collaboration - skip to 6:40 mins in. All the dance moves and their African references - here.