Tag: Africa

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What to read on South Sudan

South Sudan is in crisis. What’s going on?

Which sentence best describes your current level of knowledge?

I’m not sure where South Sudan is. Here’s a handy map. Now you do! Start here.

 

 

 

 

 

I follow African politics generally, but don’t know much about South Sudan.
Think Africa Press has a good round-up of experts to get you going.

I’ve been following South Sudan for a while now, and am looking for real-time updates on the current crisis.
Then you probably already know this, but Twitter is likely the best source of up-to-date (if not always fact-checked) news. #SouthSudan is a good starting point. Check out the Sudd Institute news and @SuddInstitute, and this terrific list of tweeps compiled by Lesley Warner.

I’m an expert on South Sudan/I’m based in South Sudan. 
Please send me your recommendations.

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Scholarships and Fellowships for African Researchers in 2014

There are a number of scholarship and fellowship opportunities for African students and researchers with deadlines in early 2014. I’m compiling a list below (descriptions from respective websites); please feel free to send along others.

EASST 2014 Visiting Scholar Fellowship
What: “The EASST Visiting Scholar Fellowship seeks to equip East African social scientists with the skills needed to carry out rigorous evaluations of economic development programs. Researchers will be based at the University of California Berkeley during either the Fall or Spring semester, and will receive a living stipend, round-trip economy class air travel to Berkeley, CA, and the opportunity to receive a $8,000 research grant to promote impact evaluation at their home institution in East Africa. While at Berkeley, fellows will be able to audit courses, present research, attend seminars, develop curricula and design collaborative research projects.”

Deadline: March 16, 2014
Application portal here.

Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders
What: “The Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is the new flagship program of President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). President Obama launched YALI in 2010 to support young African leaders as they spur growth and prosperity, strengthen democratic governance, and enhance peace and security across Africa. The Washington Fellowship, which begins in 2014, will bring 500 young leaders to the United States each year for academic coursework and leadership training and will create unique opportunities in Africa for Fellows to put new skills to practical use in leading organizations, communities, and countries.”

Deadline: January 27, 2014
Application website here.

Harvard South Africa Fellowship Program
What: “The Harvard South Africa Fellowship Program (HSAFP) is intended for South Africans who in the past were educationally disadvantaged by law and resource allocation under apartheid. In 1979 Harvard University began awarding these fellowships for a year of study in one or more of its faculties or schools. Harvard funds these fellowships from its own resources. Over the years more than one hundred and forty fellowships have been awarded to South Africans.”

Deadline: March/April 2014 (exact date TBD)
Application website here (still undergoing updates for 2014).

APSA Africa Workshop 2014
What: “The American Political Science Association (APSA) and the Higher Institute of Public Administration (ISAP) are pleased to announce a call for applications from individuals who would like to participate in a workshop on ‘Distributive goods and distributive politics’ in Maputo, Mozambique. The two-week workshop will be held from June 30th to July 11th 2014 at the Higher Institute of Public Administration in Maputo, Mozambique. The organizers, with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will cover all the costs of participation (including travel, lodging, meals, and materials) for up to 26 qualified applicants. This year’s workshop will be conducted in English.

The Africa Workshops program at the American Political Science Association (APSA) is an ongoing effort to expand the capacity of political science research and teaching in east and west Sub-Saharan Africa. With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, APSA is undertaking a multi-year program to organize a series of political science workshops throughout Africa and promote the profession of political science across the region. Each year, the program brings brings together approximately 30 scholars from across Africa and the United States for a 2-3 week seminar or short-course that focuses on a substantive theme of interest to political scientists. Driven by a unique syllabus featuring classic and cutting-edge research, each workshop program includes lectures, discussions, topical presentations and debates, guest speakers, peer review sessions, professional development seminars, and local field trips. Participants are required to arrive with and present their own current research, which they will then continue to refine for publication. Through these workshops, participants become an active part of the growing international political science community with increased access to supportive scholarly networks.”

Deadline: March 14, 2014
Online application form here.

MSc in African Studies, University of Oxford
What: “The MSc in African Studies is a three-term, nine-month course designed both as a stand-alone interdisciplinary introduction to current debates about Africa, and as a preparation for doctoral research on Africa. This advanced degree programme provides an excellent foundation for those who wish to expand their knowledge of African Studies, prior to working for NGOs, the civil service, international organizations, and the media, or in other professional capacities.”

“The African Studies Centre is offering full scholarships for the MSc in African Studies for the 2014-2015 academic year.”

Deadlines: January 24, 2014, and March 14, 2014
Admissions website here, scholarships website here.

African Women Public Service Fellows
What: “Wagner announces a call for applications for the African Women Public Service Fellowship, a fellowship program made possible by a donation from the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, which expands the opportunity for African women to prepare for public service in their home countries. As fellows at NYU Wagner, African women study in one of two graduate programs: the two-year Master of Public Administration or the one-year Executive MPA: Concentration on International Public Service Organizations. The awards for either program will support tuition, housing, travel to and from the United States and a small stipend to cover books and miscellaneous expenses. Applicants commit to return to their respective home countries at the conclusion of the program with the goal of assuming a leadership position on the continent where they can meaningfully contribute to the challenges currently confronting Africa.”

Deadline: varies, see application timetable.
Application website here.

Carnegie African Diaspora Fellows Program
What: “The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellows Program (ADF) is a scholar exchange program, offered by IIE in partnership with Quinnipiac University (QU) and funded by a two-year grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY). ADF will support 100 short-term faculty exchange fellowships for African-born academics. The program exemplifies CCNY’s enduring commitment to higher education in Africa. IIE will manage and administer the program, including applications, project requests and fellowships. QU will provide strategic direction through Dr. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and an Advisory Council he will chair.”

Deadline: TBD
Learn how to apply.

Quantitative Methods Training at U-M African Social Research Initiative
What: “The African Social Research Initiative (ASRI) at the University of Michigan seeks applications for up to four visiting scholars to attend courses in social science research methods and analysis at the University of Michigan during the months of June-August 2014. The program is open to academic researchers who are enrolled in or have completed PhD programs in the social sciences and who are from, or reside in, one or more of the following countries: Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, South Africa, and Uganda.
During their time in Ann Arbor, visiting scholars will attend courses offered by two internationally renowned summer training programs at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR). Applicants who are invited to attend the summer programs may select several options from amongst the four- or eight-week sessions offered.”

Deadline: February 14, 2014
Application details here.

Update: Rachel Strohm has a similar post, Fellowships for African Students.

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Malawi: First Thoughts

To understand any place, you have to leave it. It’s only with a comparative perspective that you recognize the significance of things you take for granted on the one hand, or the things you lament daily on the other. That’s how I’ve felt, anyway, during this past year of working on my dissertation, based in Uganda and working briefly in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and now, Malawi.

I flew into Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe yesterday afternoon. From Kampala it’s a short trip, feeling much like the journey from San Francisco to Chicago, and making intra-continental travel seem easier than it normally does.

There are no immigration forms to fill upon arrival in Lilongwe (at least the day I arrived), but they do check for your Yellow Fever card. How did Yellow Fever, a relatively uncommon disease, become the single most common (only?) vaccination required worldwide? I was thankful I had remembered my aptly colored yellow Yellow Fever card, but others who didn’t have one seemed to get through just fine. While the card is ostensibly a requirement in lots of countries, apart from Malawi I can only ever remember being checked in Nigeria.

At the immigration counter, I was not asked what I would be doing in Malawi, or how long I would be staying. There were no forms to fill out, no visa fees to pay. My fingers were scanned, photo taken, and off I went. I bought a SIM card at the airport, no registration required, and got cash from the ATM. The road from Kamuzu to Lilongwe was practically deserted; a few homes dotted the otherwise empty roadside. The road was smooth, the air hot, the ground dry. I wasn’t sure we had arrived in Lilongwe proper until I started to recognize the names of lodges I had seen in guidebooks. By contrast, coming from Entebbe you may think you’ve reached Kampala, only to find yourself snaking slowly through the city limits an hour later.

The quiet and winding streets of the Lilongwe, lined with trees, remind me of Kigali, as does the relative absence of people. While Kampala, Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra are churning, bustling, and often overwhelming, Lilongwe has a distinctly understated presence.

Uganda’s economy is nearly five times the size of Malawi, Kenya and Ghana about twice that of Uganda, and Nigeria far bigger than all four combined. The largest bill you can get in Malawi $2.50, Uganda, $20, Kenya $11, Nigeria $6, Ghana $23. As you can see, there is no relationship between bill and economy size (or GDP per capita, for that matter), which makes spending and taking out money much easier in Uganda and Ghana than in Malawi or Nigeria. In both Nigeria and Malawi (yes, with my limited experience of one day in the latter),  ATMs appear to be frequently running out of money, and sometimes with very long queues. I’m no economist, but something about tiny bills seems very inefficient. Is there an upside? Any work on the politics of moneymaking, literally?

Finally, although I generally dislike the tradition (requirement?) of adorning the walls of every establishment with presidents’ photos, it is a welcome change to see — for once if not for long — a woman in the frame.

That’s all for today. More comparative musings soon.

Update: Relatedly, though I don’t fully agree: “Africa? Why there’s no such place” h/t to my partner in crime.

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In statistics we trust?

Maybe not. Foreign Policy has a fascinating (if alarming) piece on the quality of statistics in Africa. We could expand the analysis to other developing countries as well.

Upon achieving statehood, African states moved to expand their statistical capacity. They performed population censuses, business surveys, and agricultural censuses. But their ability to do this was hit hard by the economic crisis of the 1970s. The administrations faced large external imbalances, high rates of inflation and general shortage of funds which weakened government bureaucracies around the region, leaving many of them unable to measure their economies. Moreover, the statistical offices fell into further neglect during liberal policy reform that followed the economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s (the period of “structural adjustment”).

Looking back, it seems odd that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank would have embarked on growth-oriented reforms without ensuring that governments had the tools to reliably determine whether their economies were growing or stagnating. For statistical offices, structural adjustment meant having to account for more with less: Informal and unrecorded markets were growing at the same time as the same reforms curtailed public spending. As a result, our knowledge about the economic effects of structural adjustment is extremely limited. The cumulative record of annual economic growth between 1960 and today, for African economies does not realistically show what happened with economic development.

Shanta Devarajan, World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, also writes about “Africa’s statistical tragedy.”

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2012 SFAS conference, “Mobile Africa”

This year’s annual conference of the Stanford Forum for African Studies will be held October 26-27, 2012 at the Stanford Humanities Center. All are invited to attend. Guest speakers include Francis Nyamnjoh (University of Cape Town) and Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop, best known for his book, Murambi.

The full conference program can be found on the SFAS website.

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Africa: The Devout Continent?

Published online May 1, 2012.

Between the Berlin Conference in 1884 and the beginning of the 21st century, something extraordinary happened. In the course of just over a hundred years, nearly the whole of sub-Saharan Africa adopted Christianity or Islam. The mapmakers who gave birth to today’s African states were mortal, but the legacy of religion they left behind would fundamentally alter people’s core beliefs about life and the afterlife.

In the year 1900 around 9% of the African population was Christian, and 14% Muslim. Today, nine out of every ten people identify either as Christian (57%) or Muslim (29%). Soon there will be more Christians living in Africa than in Europe. By 2030, there will be more Muslims living in Nigeria than in Egypt, and more Nigerian Muslims than Iraqi and Afghani Muslims combined. Much of the religious conversion occurred during the colonial period, but nearly half of the growth of Islam and Christianity took place after independence.

It is difficult to make many generalizations about the effect of new religious beliefs on politics and society over the past century because there is great diversity in the religious make-up of countries. Countries like Somalia and Mauritania are 99% Muslim while others, like Cape Verde and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are almost entirely Christian. Some countries are predominantly Muslim but have sizable Christian minorities, like Chad (56% Muslim, 35% Christian), while others are predominantly Christian with large Muslim minorities, like Ghana (64% Christian, 20% Muslim).

Even two countries with the same percentage of Christians are unlikely to look very similar. Countries like Rwanda are predominantly Catholic, while others, like Liberia, are largely Protestant. In Nigeria there is a strong Pentecostal following, in South Africa African Independent Churches are very common, and Uganda has a large percentage of Anglicans.

Despite these differences, there are broad trends to note. On the whole both Christians and Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa are very devout. In a survey of 19 African countries, a study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, “Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa”, found that 80% or more of the survey respondents of all faiths said that religion was “very important” in their lives. This is a much higher percentage than most populations living in Europe or even Latin America. Perhaps ironically, the importance of religion among Africa’s former colonizers (and from where most missionaries came) is quite low – only 24% of Italian respondents, 23% of Spanish respondents, 19% of British respondents and 13% of French respondents said that religion was a very important part of their lives.

Both Christians and Muslims also attend religious services very regularly. In most countries, 70% or more of Christian respondents and 80% or more of Muslim respondents said they attended services at least once a week. The vast majority of respondents across countries say they pray at least once a day. Most Christian respondents reported fasting during Lent, and almost all Muslim respondents (85-100%) reported fasting during Ramadan.

Perhaps most surprisingly, there is huge support among both Christians and Muslims for biblical or sharia law to be the “official law of the land”. More than half of all Christian respondents in countries as diverse as Ethiopia, Botswana, Liberia, and Guinea Bissau favored making the Bible the official law, while more than 50% of Muslim respondents from Mali to Mozambique favored making sharia law official. Most Christians and Muslims in countries surveyed also said the Bible and Koran, respectively, were the literal word of God.

Thus, while there are many differences in the make-up of religious organizations and practices across countries, there are also many similarities. Most notably, the importance of religion and the conception of religious texts as absolute and literal truth, truth that should guide the organization of politics and society, are widespread. While the spread of Christianity and Islam in Africa has occurred in a relatively short period of time, these faiths and their teachings have dramatically changed people’s everyday lives and beliefs.

To what extent have religious beliefs translated into government policy? In countries evenly split between Christians and Muslims, like Nigeria or Eritrea, or in countries with large Christian or Muslim minorities, can we expect to see religious conflict in the coming years?

There are not clear answers to these questions, but there is a paradox emerging in many countries – people favor politicians and policies of particular faiths while at the same time ascribing to freedom of religion. They believe that religious texts should inform if not dictate laws governing a country, but promote religious tolerance. The separation of the church and state is not usually written into formal laws, but faith nonetheless finds its way into political behavior and policymaking.

It is impossible to predict whether religious conflict will emerge, and often ethnicity is thought to be more divisive than religion, but there are some findings to warrant concern. Perhaps most disturbingly, a substantial percentage of respondents across countries agreed that violence could be justified in defense of one’s religion. For example, 55% of Christian respondents in Guinea Bissau and 37% in Botswana agreed with a statement saying, “using arms and violence against civilians in defense of their religion is justified”. 58% of Muslims in DRC and 37% of Muslims in Kenya also agreed with this statement.

People of all faiths also expressed concern over both Christian and Muslim extremist groups in their country. Many also cited religious conflict as a “very big” national problem.

Christianity and Islam are still growing and spreading in Africa, and the long-term effects of religious conversion and organization on politics and society are only beginning to become apparent. Resolving the devout-secular paradox will likely have implications for governance and conflict in the coming years.

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Our biggest development challenge

Published online April 11, 2012

Why solving inequality is a must for Africa’s development

In the morning young children brush their teeth outside makeshift houses as a snaking line of Range Rovers crawls by.  In the afternoon, businessmen fill cafes while street vendors peddle their goods in a sea of commuters inching towards home. In the evening, toddlers sit transfixed by flat-screen TVs while their neighbors sit playing by candlelight. We are living in a world where shopping malls are popping up alongside young boys herding cattle – a clash of peoples occupying the same space but living lives that bear no resemblance to one another.

Rarely in history have such extremes coexisted. The yawning chasm between rich and poor is palpable but not physical – lives but not livelihoods overlap. In some ways, disparities in wealth are inevitable. Countries whose average annual income is in the hundreds of dollars but whose annual economic growth soars at rates of 5% and beyond are bound to experience uneven transitions to prosperity. Access to opportunities, education, even liquidity is not even or equitable. We can’t wish away these disparities, but sooner or later, we will have to address them.

This was also the message of a keynote address by John Githongo, Kenya’s famous whistleblower, at a conference on innovations in governance a month ago at Stanford. I had heard a lot about Mr. Githongo and read Michela Wrong’s popular book, It’s Our Turn to Eat, which documented his time fighting corruption in the administration of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. Nevertheless, I wasn’t sure what to expect from him. I had heard so few critical words about the man that I began to become suspicious – surely he could not be as saintly as depicted! Like all of us, Mr. Githongo surely has his flaws, but I have none to report. His speech was simply exceptional.

The message? Inequality is the primary development challenge of the next few decades – inequality of outcomes and opportunities, of expectations and aspirations. Inequality is not only morally repugnant but also easy to politicize, ethnicize, and militarize in Africa, he argued.

Herein lies the real threat to development  — a new round of conflict and instability triggered by inequalities that are the product of the very economic transitions for which we strive.

Githongo likened our current state of affairs to a meeting of old and new technology. We have often been successful in getting right the hardware of the state – infrastructure, education, health – or at least making noticeable progress in these areas. However, the software, made up of political rights and freedoms, is outdated. Combining old software with new hardware is like buying a brand-new Dell laptop and loading it with Windows ’95 – it will have a blue-screen! And what follows is not pretty.

Where political opposition and mass protests have been successful at toppling regimes, there has frequently been a political hangover. After the euphoric triumph of the many over the few comes the realization that updating the software of political freedoms and institutions does not happen overnight. The end of dictatorship does not call for champagne. The inequalities that prompt regime collapse do not disappear with the despot.

The challenge of political instability provoked by inequality is particularly acute in urban areas. There are vast disparities between rural and urban populations, but it is the inequality within urban areas that seems to drive most conflict. Revolutions rarely begin in the countryside.

The hopefulness of the Arab Spring just one year ago has given way to the realization that we do not know how to cope with the mobilization of society based on inequalities, whether economic or political. Sitting governments often retaliate violently, exacerbating societal tensions that are already on the verge of a breaking point. Ordinary citizens do not know whether to join the masses in protest, run for their lives, or sit tight and wait for calm. The dominant actors on the world stage shout past each other, often rendering impotent international institutions like the United Nations.

The good news that in many places, the software is being updated, albeit in fits and starts. Coups and election violence notwithstanding, there have been gains in political freedoms across the continent. The development of the media, slow strengthening of parliaments, widespread acceptance of elections, and multitude of multiparty elections that have increasingly resulted in regime transitions are all evidence that political freedoms are far from stagnant.

Of course, just as with a computer, it is frustrating when the machinery of politics and society temporarily freezes or crashes. You lose your work, and you lose time. But if we are discouraged at the pace of progress, we have not only to look at ruling parties but also at the would-be political and social entrepreneurs who have not always put pressure on the powers that be or provided a viable political alternative. Inequality has allowed political opposition to mobilize the masses, but what comes next? Without organizational or institutional infrastructure, opposition parties and coalitions are unlikely to prove any better than the regimes they oppose.

Watching cities like Kigali or Kampala increase in size and wealth is inspiring, but the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” is also larger than ever before. Inequality will not vanish as countries grow, and may eventually impede or even threaten further progress. For this reason Githongo’s case is a strong one: inequality will be one of the greatest development challenges of this generation. I think we have the tools to avoid a meltdown. Everyone knows what Windows ’95 is a dinosaur. The question is, who is in charge of the update?

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Bad news sells, are you buying it?

Published online April 3, 2012

In the past several weeks there has been much discussion of Africa’s image, prompted in large part by the Kony 2012 video (which has become too exhausting to discuss at this moment).

There are perpetual debates about Africa’s leadership, political or otherwise, and the prospects for continent’s future. These conversations are played out everywhere from the airwaves to your neighborhood bar.

The arguments are not new. Africa gets a bad name and her image is tarnished by unrelenting negative press.  Western media, it is argued, is particularly problematic, projecting an image of Africa that paints Africans as both hapless and helpless and the western world as their saviors. The stories that sell are those that deal in death and violence, poverty and hopelessness.

At the same time, the debates on local radio stations and in the streets are often just as pessimistic. Headlines in local papers highlight corruption scandals, the failure of public services and violent deaths.

Why is it so much easier to sell and tell a negative story? The western media alone are not the culprits; bad news sells everywhere. And the pubic is complicit, after all, as consumers of bad news. Critical views, especially those aired publicly, are important for accountability and multi-sided public debate is valuable in its own right. But at some point we have to interrogate our own role in shaping the debates about society, politics, and progress.

I recently returned to Kampala after a 6-month sojourn in the U.S. and as always, I am always amazed by the changes that have taken place while I was away. Granted, I am occasionally greeted by the expansion of a pothole I thought had finally been filled up for good, but more often than not, the changes are positive ones.

Every time I come back there are new buildings that have gone up, new shops that have opened, and new businesses and products breaking into the market. The streets of Kampala are cleaner and less cluttered than when I left them. Fewer matatus crowd the roads and public buses bustle efficiently through town. City garbage collectors dash to their trucks with bags full of trash and scoop up plastic bottles that have clogged drains and ditches. The same is also true, though less surprising, whenever I visit Rwanda.

This time around, I arrived in the midst of a roaring debate about who was responsible for the death of a policeman who had been hit in the head with a stone during a demonstration by the opposition group, A4C. Following this incident, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni visited the home of the fallen officer, and photos of him with the grieving family were splashed all over the papers. The policeman’s clearly meager existence prompted debates about the poor pay and living conditions of the police, and many saw President Museveni’s house-call as a political maneuver.

I struck up a conversation with a cab driver one evening not long after the demonstration. The young man fully blamed the policemen for the unfortunate event, and remained an ardent supporter of de facto leader of the opposition, and the leader of that particular demonstration, Kizza Besigye. The young man had lived under the same president his entire life, and was tired of Museveni. University graduates can’t get jobs, he said, and everything is run by members of the same ethnic group – the president’s ethnic group. There is no change, he said.

We drove past one of many multi-storied buildings under construction. What about all this construction, I said, pointing – this city is growing and changing every day. He laughed. That building is owned by one of five people, like all the buildings in town. Both of his mobile phones began ringing and we drove on.

There is much to be frustrated about when it comes to governance and political leadership, whether you are in East Africa or elsewhere. Change does not come soon enough, and when it does, it comes in fits and starts. Politicians everywhere tend to flip flop on important issues, and then pick petty fights to derail what would otherwise be good policies. Corruption and unemployment are high, and access to economic and political opportunity is not equal. But the narrative, whether at home or abroad, is often hyperbolic. The positions that get the most attention are those that are most extreme, and thus there is an incentive to make them so.

Bad news sells, and we are just as responsible for this state of affairs as the news organizations we are so quick to castigate. We are addicted to narratives that we hate, and we gravitate toward clichés that we know can’t be true. The same phrases sprinkle news stories time and again, and while we sneer at them, they play a tune we can easily sing along to.

The stories aren’t going away anytime soon, and even good news plays to stereotypes. Senegal’s recent presidential turnover had commentators falling over themselves – they always knew the country had been a “beacon of democratic stability in a troubled West Africa!” Rather than passive consumers of these hackneyed formulas, we fight back, as we should. But no sooner do we switch off the radio than we become producers of our own hyperbolic platitudes.

As we approached home my driving directions periodically interrupted our lively cab-ride conversation – turn right at the dirt road, turn left after that house. There are still no street signs and in the final stretch we bumped along on dusty roads. But alongside them are a string of new homes and a towering apartment complex. A sprawling new shopping mall has sprung up just moments away from home. No need to join the Saturday rush into town to shop these days, which is great news. There are simply too many cars on the road!