The World’s Next State?

9 05 2012

“The World’s Next State?” New York Times, 19 March 2012.

HARGEISA, Somalia — If a country isn’t recognized, does it make a sound? Here in Somaliland, the semi-autonomous northern part of the failed state of Somalia, I discovered that the answer is an emphatic yes.

The government in Mogadishu has virtually no influence in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, or over the territory’s 3.5 million residents. Since 1991, when the end of Said Barre’s dictatorship plunged Somalia into anarchy, Somaliland has written its own Constitution, held four peaceful elections, established a central bank that prints its own currency, built schools and universities, and created an elaborate security apparatus that has managed to keep at bay terrorist groups like the Shabab, a Wahhabi group that operates with impunity in southern Somalia.

Though Somaliland also borders the tempestuous Gulf of Aden, virtually no pirates haunt its coast. In fact, the maximum-security prison in Hargeisa currently holds some 70 accused pirates. During the drought that thrust the Horn of Africa back into the news last year, Somaliland dodged the worst effects of famine by spending around $10 million — a combination of government, private and diaspora resources — while in the south tons of food given by foreign groups were stolen.

About 50 percent of the $43 million budget (pdf) goes to security and policing. When I left Hargeisa, the government mandated that I travel with an armed guard. Shukri Ismail, the only female on the first National Electoral Commission, told me locals tolerate such arrangements because “if you don’t live in peace, everything else is trivial.”

This has left Somaliland with an ironic disadvantage: comparative stability. Unlike Eritrea, East Timor, Kosovo and South Sudan — recent additions to the community of nations — Somaliland goes about its business mostly free of violence or political infighting. And so it gets passed up for economic opportunities, like the $9 million job-creation grant the World Bank gave South Sudan earlier this month.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Abroad, Africa, Culture, Development, History, Politics

The Kony Kerfuffle

9 05 2012

“The Kony Kerfuffle,” New York Times, 9 March 2012.

“Kony 2012″ is a distraction from issues Ugandans care about.

DJIBOUTI — The only person I’ve ever met who was in the Lord’s Resistance Army (L.R.A.) is a Ugandan man named Francis. He was abducted by the group sometime in the late 1990s, when he was a teenager, and forced to march from central Uganda to what is now South Sudan. During a firefight with the Ugandan national army, Francis escaped with his best friend. They had never spoken aloud. The L.R.A. enforced silence on marches.

The older Francis is a soldier again. But he isn’t in Uganda. He’s in Iraq. Like many well-trained local fighters, he’s gone to fill the vacuum left after the United States military fled its war of choice.

I met Francis only once, last summer, in passing, but “Kony 2012” made me remember his story. The viral video by the American nonprofit Invisible Children showcases Joseph Kony, the madman at the helm of the L.R.A. who has been indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. The video calls for his arrest this year and for public pressure on the U.S. military to stay in the hunt. Thanks to it, some 50 million viewers, mostly non-Ugandans who understood nothing of Kony, now have the knowledge to despise him as much as a generation of Northern Ugandan families.

Except that hardly anyone in Uganda is talking about him. I spent most of February in Kampala and environs, and there Kony was a whisper on nobody’s lips. Even since the United States sent 100 Special Forces (pdf) to Central Africa in the fall to assist in the chase, both he, and the L.R.A., remain far from a mainstream concern.

Ordinary Ugandans are worrying about other things. The government needs a strategy for assessing its capital needs by sector. Should Uganda build an oil refinery or forgo the profits and send crude to Kenya for processing? And if it’s Ugandan children in peril you’re looking for, there are those suffering from “nodding disease” — an unusual neurological disease that’s killed hundreds of children in the very region Kony once terrorized.

In an earlier post I wrote about the Ugandan government’s gay-bashing as a smokescreen for other issues facing this society, especially governmental corruption. The Kony video is a similar distraction.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Abroad, Africa, History, Politics

Don’t Crimp My Ride!

9 05 2012

“Don’t Crimp My Ride,” New York Times, 2 March 2012.

Kenya’s beloved matatus threatened by government plan.


NAIROBI — What if the New York City subway disappeared tomorrow? This is the situation facing Kenyan commuters. The government has proposed a law to phase out the vans used by privately run transportation services in favor of smaller taxis and larger buses. And the operators of those classic 14-seaters, the matatus, are threatening a massive general strike across the country next week.

The attempt at regulation looks like sour grapes from a state that was too late to the transportation game. And abolishing the matatu system, a network both comprehensive and affordable, would hurt the Kenyan commuter-consumer. Here, as across much of the continent, matatus are the primary means of conveyance for millions of Africans with minimal income.

Matatus are both notoriously reckless and completely indispensable. The word “ma tatu” — “for three” in Swahili and referring to shillings — comes from the price it cost to travel Kenya’s roads in the 1950s. The minibuses loghundreds of miles per day, along informally agreed-upon routes, on no set schedule and for negotiable fares. In Uganda, they’re also called “matatus”; in Nigeria, they’re “danfos”; in Tanzania, “dala-dalas.”

On pocked roads and in traffic jams, the best that can be said of matatus is that they work. In the right frame of mind, however, they are charming. Many have flamboyant décors: loud paint and prayer beads, louder reggae music, even backseat television screens. “Follow us on Twitter,” read one in Nairobi.

In some Kenyan towns, the official state-run buses roll by like staid battleships; in most, there is no centralized system for moving people. Matatus fill the gap. Few hard statistics exist on the scope of the sector, but 10 years ago there were 24,000 matatus in Kenya. The industry has boomed since then: matatu owners and their allies claim that today 500,000 jobs are directly or indirectly associated with the massive private endeavor.

Most Kenyans regard matatus as an imperative public service and a showcase for local culture. “The experience is the African roller coaster — you have fear, you have hope, you have joy,” said Tim Rimbui, a producer for Ma3, an Afro-pop band inspired by the mishmash of conversations in matatus. “It is exhilarating.” Ephraim Maina, a member of Parliament, says of the proposed phase-out: “It is like saying that by the end of this month, everybody should stop breathing.” He may sound hyperbolic, but he is right.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Abroad, Africa, Culture

Gay Bashing in Uganda

9 05 2012

“Gay-Bashing, a Government Diversion,” New York Times, 22 February 2012.

Gay rights in Uganda are a stand-in for other freedoms that unnerve the powerful.

KAMPALA, Uganda — On Feb. 7, Uganda took again the same large step backward it had taken in 2009. The member of parliament David Bahati (pictured) reintroduced his anti-homosexuality bill. The proposed legislation would impose a life sentence for any consensual same-sex act and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” which includes same-sex acts by a person with H.I.V. or with a minor. Gays in Uganda are seeking refuge in neighboring Kenya and farther abroad.

It isn’t easy being gay almost anywhere in Africa: homosexuality is criminalized in 37 countries on the continent. But even against that backdrop, Uganda has distinguished itself for its hostility to same-sex freedoms.

Last week, just on the tail of the reemergence of Bahati’s “Kill the Gays” bill — and about a year after the gay-rights activist David Kato was murdered in Kampala — Simon Lokodo, Uganda’s minister for ethics and integrity, physically broke up a conference of gay-rights activists. Lokodo, a former Catholic priest, appeared with police officers at a retreat for Freedom and Roam, evicting them from a hotel room in Entebbe.

To hear some Ugandans tell it, the resurrection of official gay-bashing is a handy distraction from more troubling ethical lapses in the halls of power. Official abuses of authority and neglect of development goals stretch from municipal councils to the presidency.

Last year, the government spent more than $500 million on new military planes while failing to build, staff or maintain maternity hospitals. This year, parliament approved payments of 103 million Ugandan shillings (about $45,000) per representative in order for each to buy a new car. A recent wave of influence-peddling scandals has left seven cabinet positions vacant. In this climate, it seems curious that Lokodo, whose portfolio includes both “gay issues” and dealing with corruption in government, should invest such personal interest in the former and not the latter.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Abroad, Africa, Culture, Politics

“The Hidden Cost of Africa’s Air Travel Boom”

10 03 2012

“The Hidden Cost of Africa’s Air Travel Boom,” The Atlantic, 16 February 2012.

The rush to take flight may be ignoring more democratic transportation infrastructure.

DAKAR, SENEGAL—”Sorry, only workers here.”

A thick man in a green military getup will not let me see the future. The trouble is, I can see it already. Just past a forest of hulking baobabs, and 45 minutes from Senegal’s capital city, a telltale air traffic control tower looms over a dusty, 25,000-hectare construction site. If its builders have their way, the tower will soon direct traffic for five million air passengers every year.

Africa’s newest airport is named for Blaise Diagne, a Senegalese politician and the first African to serve in the French National Assembly, beginning in 1914. It’s a fitting tribute: Diagne would have relished the idea of hopping from Paris to Dakar and back with 21st century ease.

Work on the ambitious, $400 million project began in 2007, with inaugural flights slated for 2012. The project is nowhere near completion, but represents a bold play for airspace in west Africa and beyond: over four miles of runway are under construction (the current offering in central Dakar is half that size.)

Blaise Diagne International Airport (BDIA) is part of an exploding trend on the continent: air travel. Taking flight seems an elegant solution to a prominent African problem. The lamentable road infrastructure across many countries slows the formation of trade distribution networks, restricts movement for ordinary people, and subjects road-dependent economies to price shocks when the cost of fuel spikes. What’s more, tens of thousands of annual road accidents amount to a ruthless theft of African lives.

Contrasted with flight maps from a decade ago, the proliferation of new routes connecting Africa to itself is astonishing. Once, traveling from Nairobi to Nouakchott required a pit-stop in Europe. Today, those cities, as well as Accra and Lagos, Lagos and Lusaka, Lusaka and Johannesburg are connected by direct flights. You can board a plane in Addis Ababa and wake up in Washington, D.C. The days of sporadic domestic flights on rickety carriers (one memorable flight to Abuja on the defunct Shanshangi Airlines comes to mind) are over; new low-cost, high quality carriers like Fly540, OneTime and Arik Air repeat the EasyJet model, puddle hopping across Africa. Senegal is using its pending airport as a selling point for new national carrier Senegal Airlines, a successor to the now-bankrupt Air Senegal International.

As a frequent passenger, I’ve personally welcomed the new air infrastructure in Africa. For increasingly international businesses, deal-making and due diligence for investors just got easier. BDIA’s projected 5 million annual passengers will enjoy refreshingly simplified access to the Americas, Europe, and Asia—and vice versa. American professor John Kasarda coined the word aerotropolis—conurbations built around an airport. In the book he co-authored with Greg Lindsay on the subject, they note that, “in the area of globalization, we choose cities drawing closer together themselves, linked by fiber optic cables and jet aircraft.” Africa, where high-speed web and mobile connections have already taken off like a hockey stick, is now poised to fulfill the second part of that prediction.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Abroad, Africa, Development, Energy, Green, Technology

African Growth? It’s Complicated

31 01 2012

“African Growth? It’s Complicated,” Special to CNN, 20 January 2012

Traditional development rankings and tables miss the mark on Africa’s explosive potential.

In the world of economic and social development, lists are easy to come by. The class of leaders gathering in Davos are well aware that ranking nations — by levels of freedom, ease of doing business, competitiveness, fragility — has become a preferred sport for analysts working for governments, magazines, NGOs or think tanks around the world. But it’s rare to find a surprising result.

Nevertheless, that’s what economists Ricardo Hausmann and César Hidalgo, researchers at the Harvard Center for Economic Development, have produced with their new Atlas of Economic Complexity. In their global ranking of GDP growth to 2020, Uganda comes out number one.

That’s a head scratcher. How could a tiny, land-locked African nation, best known for Idi Amin, lead a list predicting economic growth? There’s more: Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Senegal, Malawi, and Zambia round out the top ten. Hausmann and Hidalgo project that these countries will grow faster than most others in the world, including emerging market favorites Turkey, Brazil, and China. In fact, thirteen of the top thirty countries for growth are in sub-Saharan Africa. Sweden, France and Japan rank 100, 101, and 102.

What gives? To look at the more established lists and tables for development, Africa is doing poorly — at or near the bottom of the heap for GDP per capita, infant mortality, primary school enrollment — you name it. To determine that the booming economies of the next decade lie in Africa, Hausmann and Hidalgo exit the traditional framework. Using international trade data since 1964, the pair developed a metric they call “economic complexity,” which suggests that population growth, industrial webs and networked knowledge may reveal more about future growth than conventional metrics like life expectancy, formal education or political risk.

Not that these factors don’t matter for everyday lives in Africa and beyond — but I like to think of GDP as a metric useful for a certain kind of evaluation that can miss the wider, more human picture. The region’s economic potential is more fully realized when complexity is the baseline.

What is economic complexity? The authors explain that “society functions because its members form webs that allow them to specialize and share their knowledge with others.” The Atlas focuses on exported goods (not services), tracking how easy it is for an economy to leap from the simple (growing cotton, or making steel) to the complex (manufacturing garments, or building cars). The easier it is for a nation to diversify exports and, in turn, produce skilled workers and pricy exports, the more complex it is. Thus economic complexity, per Hausmann and Hidalgo, “reflects the structures that emerge to hold and combine knowledge.” Notably, this includes demographic trends and social networks — the webs and serendipities often lost in pure GDP analysis.

To derive their ranking for future GDP growth, Hausmann and Hidalgo track the gap between complexity and current income. And here is where things get interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Africa, Development

Sick in America, Aching for Africa

30 01 2012

“Sick in America, Aching for Africa,” New York Times, 4 November 2011

I came down with my first African disease in America. It happened after I traveled to Nigeria last April to witness my country elect a new government. I landed with notebooks and questions, but not antimalarial medication. I had been more prudent on dozens of prior stays, but, I thought, no matter: I had already been running around the continent for months with no mishaps. After three rounds of free and fair voting, I returned to my apartment in Nairobi, buoyant about democracy in Africa.

Two weeks later, during a visit to the United States for Mother’s Day, I found myself flat on a gurney, shuddering in a hallway in a bleached Chicago hospital. Fever, chills, muscle pain, dehydration: I knew I had malaria. The mosquito-borne parasite must have been brewing in my bloodstream for weeks.

Malaria is a nasty disease and a grave threat to life and to productivity, particularly in Africa. The parasitekilled about 781,000 people in 2009, mostly south of the Sahara, and is properly called a scourge of the 108 countries where it’s endemic. But the disease can be prevented by taking the prophylaxis I forgot or simply by sleeping under a mosquito net.

Upon arriving at the Chicago hospital, I told every doctor in sight I had malaria. They needed a lot of convincing. Over the next two days, I underwent blood cultures to check for typhoid, a spinal tap to screen for meningitis, and lengthy interviews with the rarely roused tropical-disease specialist. Three bags of antibiotics hovered over two separate IVs in my right arm. Curious doctors hovered over them.

Feverish and miserable, I found myself wishing I had fallen ill in Africa — anywhere where the disease is so prevalent as to be unmistakable. My nurse — a Nigerian, coincidentally — shook her head at the stream of orders and ointments coming into my room. “It’s just malaria,” she laughed with me.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Africa, Culture, Development

« Previous Entries


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.