Africabeat

Africabeat is not dead, merely on a very long holiday

Africabeat is not dead, merely on a very long holiday.  I've been frantically visiting graduate schools and am trying to finish up field research for a book I am writing on China and Africa.  The conversations on this blog were very much a part of its genesis, so thank you to everyone who participated. 

I've also just started writing a column for EbonyJet called The New World.  The first column is autobiographical, and by consequence, not that interesting!  But I hope that I can use it to explore topics dear to my heart--migration, identity, change, politics, globalization, and global Black culture--using the particular lens through which I see the world. 

Finally, and this is very exciting for me since it means the political scientist part of my tag line is about to become a little less "aspirational," I will be starting doctoral studies in the Department of Government at Harvard University this fall.  In the US, master's degrees and Ph.D's generally form a continuous course of study, which means it should take me anywhere from five to seven years to finish!  I'm aiming for six.

I hope to be back in a real way in September, but I might just send a few dispatches into the ether in the intervening months.  After all, there's like seven African countries I hope to visit in the weeks to come, and the Olympics in Beijing.  These are exciting times!

Why Will Saletan's Calling for the Miscegenation of the Races

I've been meaning to respond to Will Saletan's piece in Slate last month on race, genetics and intelligence.  In it, he summarizes a number of genetic theories, which all point to the disturbing conclusion that:

"Tests do show an IQ deficit, not just for Africans relative to Europeans, but for Europeans relative to Asians. Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern, and there's strong preliminary evidence that part of it is genetic. It's time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true."

I cannot deny the possibility that there are racial differences in average intelligence (or rather differences in average intelligence between previously isolated populations, since race is a social, not a biological concept), even though my gut reaction is disgust.  I know this is something about which I ought to remain agnostic absent credible, compelling evidence not just because that's the position from which a social scientist, whatever his or her unspoken agendas, ought to begin, but because my emotions on the subject run so damn deep, it's hard to be "objective" (as if anyone can be about a topic as dangerous as it is seductive).  Without a certain intellectual coolness, I'm liable to burst out in expletives.

Mahmoud Mamdani on Darfur

I have in the past on this blog taken potshots at the SaveDarfurers; my essential criticism is that many seem like hypocrites or bandwagoners engaging in advocacy without really understanding what it is they are advocating or why.  (I don't necessarily mean that you are, rather only that most are.)

The most common defense I hear from readers runs somewhere along the lines of, "at least they're doing something!" or "but we can't just do nothing!  we have to do something!"  or "doing something is better than doing nothing at all" etc.

Something. Nothing. Nothing something nothing.

Mahmoud Mamdani, I believe, offers an explanation for this stunning lack of articulateness in an essay  published last March in the London Review of Books when he argues that in America, the Darfur conflict has been "emptied of its political content."  He reasons this is why it's easier for sunny college kids to advocate the end of mass murder in Darfur than in Iraq, where we Americans are much more conscious that the situation has moral and political complexities--even if we can't exactly name them--not to mention our own complicity in their creation; or at least I naively cling to the hope that we have become aware of that much, even though it is certainly easier to wage a theoretical battle against a theoretical evil in lands that may as well be theoretical than it is to admit your own, very concrete sins.

From the Democracy Now interview:

Well, I was struck by the fact—because I live nine months in New York and three months in Kampala, and every morning I open the New York Times, and I read about sort of violence against civilians, atrocities against civilians, and there are two places that I read about—one is Iraq, and the other is Darfur—sort of constantly, day after day, and week after week. And I’m struck by the fact that the largest political movement against mass violence on US campuses is on Darfur and not on Iraq. And it puzzles me, because most of these students, almost all of these students, are American citizens, and I had always thought that they should have greater responsibility, they should feel responsibility, for mass violence which is the result of their own government’s policies. And I ask myself, “Why not?” I ask myself, “How do they discuss mass violence in Iraq and options in Iraq?” And they discuss it by asking—agonizing over what would happen if American troops withdrew from Iraq. Would there be more violence? Less violence? But there is no such agonizing over Darfur, because Darfur is a place without history, Darfur is a place without politics. Darfur is simply a dot on the map. It is simply a place, a site, where perpetrator confronts victim. And the perpetrator’s name is Arab, and the victim’s name is African. And it is easy to demonize. It is easy to hold a moral position which is emptied of its political content. This bothered me, and so I wrote about it. (emphasis added)

A very smart man with very many smart things to say.  Read more of this argument in Mamdani's LRB essay or check out the Democracy Now interview transcript.

Precision in fly patterning

This has nothing to do with Africa or business or political and economic development.  I just wanted to give a shout out to a certain biophysicist who is first author on two papers appearing in this month's issue of Cell, one of the world's leading molecular biology journals.  You can probably count on one hand the scientists who have been double published in Cell. 

Check out "Probing the Limits to Positional Information" and "Stability and Nuclear Dynamics of the Bicoid Morphogen Gradient" in this month's issue of Cell (subscription only).

Or read about it in the The Scientist:

Precision in fly patterning

New findings suggest a surprising level of accuracy in regulation of protein controlling body plan development

The mechanism that sets up the basic body plan of the developing fly is surprisingly precise, according to two papers in this week's Cell. The finding contradicts earlier studies that suggested that expression levels of the key protein were only loosely controlled.  (Keep reading)

France: World Food Program grants starving peasants grain

I was having dinner with a French-British Afrophile journalist friend here in Kigali the other night.  It involved a lot of shouting and righteous anger even though we agreed with each other.  Again the topic turned to aid.  My journalist friend said something along these lines.  I've elaborated:

France, 1788:  The countryside is plagued by major food shortages.  Mobs are lynching tax collectors.  The government, which has squandered all of its tax revenue on foreign wars and luxury goods for the ruling elite, asks the international community for assistance.  The World Food Program starts distributing grain.  They are a major success!  They save the lives of thousands who may have died of famine or malnutrition.   (Had they known how many would have died under the blade of the guillotine, they would have given even more food.)  The Bourbons live to see another day, and the international community implores them to be nicer.  They run training workshops to sensitize the peasants on their rights as citizens.

South Africa: Centre for Chinese Studies

I've just learned about the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa which bills itself as "the first institution devoted to the study of China on the African continent."  They offer a weekly briefing on China-related African news and a research report on Chinese investment in African infrastructure and construction sectors. They also appear to be doing some work on Indian investment on the continent.

This is an absolutely fantastic and important undertaking.  In fact I know of no other academic center dedicated to China-Africa studies in the world, even in China.  I will follow their work with interest!

Doubting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

William Easterly, father of the "aid harms" school of social justice, has an editorial in today's LA Times that mentions TED in passing ("a recent African conference") and takes aim at the anti-poverty glitterati's often negative portrayals of Africa:

JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna's Malawi." At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that "War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they're riding hard through the back roads of Africa."...

Can China offer Africa an alternative path for development?

Jeffrey Sachs criticizes the "extreme free-market ideology of structural adjustment" promoted by the IMF and the World Bank while praising Chinese investment in Africa.  Here's why he is both right and incredibly wrong.

Jeffrey Sachs's editorial at the Guardian's Comment is Free, "China's lessons for the World Bank," touches on recurrent themes of the China-Africa story: the hypocrisy of Western criticism and China as a viable alternative model.

Sachs attended the African Development Bank meeting in Shanghai a few weeks ago, and from his participation in high level meetings observe,s "The advice that the African leaders received from their Chinese counterparts was sound, and much more practical than what they typically get from the World Bank."

States and Power in Africa

States and Power in Africa - I first realized I wanted to be a political scientist while reading this book for the second time. Stresses imposed borders, population density and distribution, and the problem of "broadcasting" authority across vast tracts of sparsely populated lands as key challenges of African political development. 

In the words of Wikipedia, this article is only a stub.  I'm gonna expand it at some point.  For now, all I have to say is that this book rocks.  I don't agree with every single argument, but it still rocks.