Lecture on Marriage in 1930s Ghana

DEBATING MARRIAGE IN THE LADIES' CORNER OF THE 1930s: THE FORMATION OF A CIVIC COMMUNITY AND CULTURE IN ACCRA, GHANA

Wednesday,March 31st, 2010, 6:30-8:30pm, at The Faculty House, 2nd floor (Room 2), Columbia University The speaker will be Dr. Jinny Prais, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Committee on Global Thought and the Institute of African Studies, Columbia University. If you have not done so already, please RSVP by 12noon on Wednesday, March 31st: caruso@columbia.edu or 212-854-8045 Seminar participants who wish to join the speaker and co-chairs for an after-session dinner at a nearby restaurant, please contact Yuusuf at caruso@columbia.edu

Movin' On Up

Progression is an inherent aspect of life. Moving up and onward. Growth. Building. Making Strides.

All of the above is what Ethiopian-American musician, Kenna Zemedkun, sought out to do in his quest to raise awareness about the global clean water crisis. He will be leading a team of his friends, including Lupe Fiasco, Jessica Biel, and Elizabeth Gore, on a climb up Mouth Kilimanjaro (the highest mountain peak on the continent of Africa). The documentary of "Summit on the Summit" was covered by MTV on March 14th this month (check out MTV for a repeat!) and in doing so, Kenna is hoping to raise money for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), The Children's Safe Drinking Water Program, and the PlayPumps International.

And how did this all begin? While Kenna himself was born in Ethiopia, he was raised in the American context where the threat of water concerns had not been one of the primary issues that his family had to deal with. His father, on the other hand, knew a plethora of friends and family members from back in their country who had died on account of waterborne illnesses. This is what inspired Kenna to begin his mission, and this is also what is propelling him to continue it.

Please feel free to chime in your thoughts on this subject matter!

Alongside doing so, please feel free to check out http://www.summitonthesummit.com/#/intro where you can follow the crews adventures. In addition, take a look at the video below for what Kenna has to say about his project....and a quick taste of his musical talents!

Achebe's "Hopes and Impediments" - A Review

Chinua Achebe, arguably the grandfather of modern African literature, recently published The Education of a British-Protected Child, a collection of predominantly autobiographical essays. As an avid reader (and proud Nigerian) I was excited to leap into this new book, but my ardour was somewhat dampened by a less-than enthusiastic review on Next.com that criticised the outdated subjects addressed in the volume. A good friend (and fellow contributor to this blog) suggested that I read Hopes and Impediments instead, an earlier anthology of Achebe’s work. This is far from the first excellent piece of advice said friend has given me, as this book showcases a side of Achebe’s brilliance as a writer that I had not seen before: not only does he write beautiful fiction, but he is also an incisive, witty and compelling literary critic with plenty to say on issues that are highly pertinent to our contemporary situation.

I am certain almost everyone reading this has heard of the novel Things Fall Apart. The story of Okonkwo and the village of Umuofia is fundamental to the post-colonial literary canon, particularly as a work that “writes back” to empire and engages colonialist discourse head-on. In Hopes and Impediments, which consists of essays written between 1965 and 1987, Achebe moves out of the world of the imaginary in order to address issues ranging from the underlying racism of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the role a writer plays within their community. What I most admire about Achebe’s writing is his utter fearlessness: he was working at a time where African writers and intellectuals had to deal with condescending Western critics who claimed to promote the concept of the “universal” while simultaneously denying others equal ownership to it. The post-colonial writer was painted as “unredeemed and unregenerated” because of their “in-between” status: their immersion in Western culture had separated them from their “own people” (that is, the “real” Africans), but their “abortive effort at education” had not pushed them quite far enough into the world of the white man. Achebe turns this twisted logic on its head and asserts that the African writer’s stance between these two worlds places them in an ideal position to respond to and critique them far better than any Westerner, a job that he does admirably well. His tone is, at times, stirringly pugnacious: in the essay “Colonial Criticism” he refers to colonial rhetoric as “complete and utter nonsense” and Western reviewers as “obtuse” – a refreshing burst of frankness in a world that is often overly politically correct. Despite his academic standing, Achebe’s non-fiction remains incredibly accessible for the lay reader while continuously challenging received notions of black/white relations, depictions of Africa and the nature of culture, amongst other topics.

One essay I found particularly touching (as well as a surprising departure from the others) was “Don’t Let Him Die,” a brief yet painfully exquisite eulogy for Achebe’s close friend and fellow writer Christopher Okigbo who was killed during the Biafran war. It vividly evokes the spirit of Okigbo while putting his death in the tragic context of Nigeria at the time, caught in a state of horrific civil strife just a few short years after independence. This piece captures the grief of losing a comrade without sinking into despair: Achebe ends the piece by focusing on how Okigbo would live on through his stunning poetry, grounding his tribute in the overarching theme of the importance of literature as a voice for nations emerging from the shadow of colonialism.

Although Achebe’s more recent collection supposedly recycles many of the ideas in Hopes and Impediments (according to Ikhide R. Ikheloa he is “lecturing the West in the past tense”), perhaps he continues to revert to themes such as racism, colonialism and African literature because they are still pressingly relevant today. I still plan to read The Education of a British-Protected Child out of bull-headed devotion, but for newcomers to Achebe and African literary criticism, Hopes and Impediments, displaying this legendary writer at his very best, is about the most exquisite introduction you could ask for.

HIV/AIDS Awareness: The Red Pump Project

To the right of the Idaya page is a badge for the Red Pump Project, an annual call-to-arms across the blogosphere and 20 states to raise awareness about the impact that HIV/AIDS has on women and girls in particular. Idaya Magazine has been rocking the red pump for the past few weeks to show our support for this cause and for the many women and girls around the world coping with this disease and the stigma that unfortunately comes with it.

HIV/AIDS is now the biggest killer of women of reproductive age around the world, and in Africa over 60% of HIV-infected people are female. This sobering statistic has very real social, political and economic repercussions across our continent, which is why the members of Idaya feel strongly about the issue and wanted to do our part for the project.

Knowledge is power: visit the website (http://www.theredpumpproject.com/) for more information and remember, even a small drop of water in a pond makes a big ripple - share information with a friend, volunteer at a community clinic, learn your status. The smallest things collectively make a huge impact, which is exactly what we need to end this disease.

Africa at Fifty Years of Independence: A Discussion among Columbia Students

Abdallah Diagne, a sophomore at Columbia College, wrote the following piece after a lively discussion at an African Students Association meeting on the achievements - or lack thereof - of African nations 50 years after many of them gained their independence (editor's note: the passion and knowledge of my fellow ASA members never ceases to amaze and delight me, even when I don't agree with them):

On Monday February 22^nd I led a discussion for the African Students Association at Columbia University which focused the 50-year anniversary of the independence of many African nations. I began by introducing the viewpoints of some of the authors I read for my African Civilizations class focusing in particular on Fanon, Nyerere and Nkrumah and the notion of unity within the continent right after independence that a few of them deal with (highlighting Nyerere’s conception of a United States of Africa). I then proceeded to ask the ASA members whether they thought that unification was possible, and whether they could identify any hindrances to it. After a large diversity of responses was given, the discussion naturally progressed to Africa’s status after 50 years of independence and whether we have any reason to celebrate. I will talk about the general responses to those issues.

Regarding African unification in the direction of a United States of Africa, my first interlocutors identified situations in which steps toward unification were being taken. They mentioned that most African nations wanted to create a continental Bank of Africa that would be based in Lagos, Nigeria, and then reflected on what kind of difficulties it would create. Some snickering members questioned why Nigeria was the place chosen to locate a continental bank, due to the stereotypes of corruption associated with Nigerians especially after the recent 419 frauds. Our social chair then confirmed that Nigeria was actually almost universally selected to have the honor of hosting a continental bank, and even regional rival Ghana voted for her. This suggests that African nations trust what is arguably the largest economic power outside of South Africa and Egypt, presumably because it is capable of this task and because it is a nation that everyone can identify it. As West Africans (which about 90% of the people present were) we agreed that we do not identify especially well with South Africans and Northern Africans and we would rather be represented by a nation that most generally represents the African spirit. Once this agreement was reached, we moved back to the original question of whether a central bank was a good idea. A number of people said that it would be disastrous because not all nations have the same economic power and we would not want a repeat of what is going on with the EU where major countries like Spain and Greece are struggling economically because of the introduction of the Euro. Such a system would cause inflation in the poorer countries and deflation in the richer countries like Nigeria and Ghana.

We then evaluated Nyerere’s idea and discussed whether a United States of Africa was possible. No one believes that there will ever be unification on the continental scale, but it is plausible that regional federations will form. I told them to recall that most of the boundaries in Africa were arbitrarily determined by Europeans, so they would have been very different if Africans determined them. Most of the divided groups would be reunited, and the fact that they are located within different nations makes the transition to a federation easier. However, cultures in West Africa as opposed to Eastern or Southeastern Africa are too inherently different for their respective populations to coexist peacefully. We thus identified that social unity is the key to unification, and solidified our stance by affirming that local traditions are too strongly rooted for people to willingly give them up for the benefit of a larger nation. Eliminating all polytheistic religions would ease the process of unification, but most groups would not conform, potentially leading to unnecessary strife. It would thus in our best interest to attempt only to unify on a regional level where most of the ethnicities have enough in common to consent to coexist in a larger nation dominated by one political entity.

I mentioned at this point that most African nations were celebrating 50 years of independence later this year, and I urged the group to reflect on their individual nations and assess whether the situation has ameliorated since the Europeans left. I explained how most of the authors outlined the destructive effects of colonialism, with one striking account provided by Fanon when he “concede[s] that whatever proof there is of a once mighty Songhai civilization does not change the fact that the Songhais today are undernourished, illiterate, abandoned to the skies and water, with a blank mind and glazed eyes”. Since almost all the African nations are still seeped in poverty, did we really ameliorate our situation by being autonomous, or would we have been better off under European dominance? Did we do anything right? What is the purpose of celebrating 50 years of independence, and what should we celebrate anyway? At this point the entire mood of the room shifted from a tactful well-this-is-what-I-believe disposition to an all-out, unforgiving what-you-are-saying-is-rubbish one, and tempers flared. One Ghanaian student vividly declared that we may spend every minute of the entire year negatively reflecting on how terrible living in our respective countries may be, but we must allocate one day to at least celebrate that we are independent nations.

The naysayers and those who adopted the most cynical attitudes asserted that any acts of furthering the African cause are done for selfish reasons by individuals who are overly eager to have their efforts praised by an entire group of people. A story was brought up about how a Tanzanian 21 year-old took scrap parts from various machines to build a wind turbine which provided electricity for an entire village. He then focused on expanding his invention to benefit other villages in the area. The detractors argued that this was a selfish act for him to promote his intelligence, a point that I never fully understood. It was like they were admitting that no efforts by Africans is worthy of praise and the only admiration that matters is that given by Westerners. Since they discovered this technology long before we were able to use it on our own, such advances would hardly be front-page newsworthy. The most vocal critic of celebrating independence made the unpopular comment that Somalia, his home nation, is seeped with extreme corruption because they should never have been allowed to run the country themselves, and they should have either let British people do it, or propagate British institutions instead of tearing them down. As a result human rights are not respected, former top universities have no value, and the nation remains in general poverty.

Are such remarks generally applicable to all of Africa? Perhaps, seeing as the vast majority of countries have inordinate percentages of citizens living in poverty that die in hordes from diseases which in the Western world are very avoidable, and who are increasingly wary of governments that seem destined to oppress them. It is arguable that coup d’états would never take place in the Western world, while in Africa they are unfortunately commonplace. The pessimistic citizens have thus ample reasons to want to forgo any mass-scale celebrations of independence because there is very little success to celebrate. All agree that it is wrong to say that Africa has done nothing right since the decolonization movement, but those supporting this view will be hard-pressed to find evidence that would completely satisfy their critics. I thus concede that celebrating 50 years of independence by no means denotes celebrating 50 years of success, nor does it mean we are well on our way to traveling along an asphalt-covered road that the leaders of the decolonization movement probably foresaw in their dreams would exist. For now we must be content with journeying on a dirt road that someday will resemble its European or American brothers, but we should celebrate the fact that it has been 50 years and Africa is still independent – at least on paper.

It would not hurt to remain optimistic that someday our day will come, but for the most part patience is running out. I urged my friends to understand that no matter what appalling situation they can identify in their native countries, it is still possible to do something about it. As the new generation of ‘colonized intellectuals,’ they have much more than the power to change their nations’ fortunes. It just will not do to say that we need the British, the French or the Portuguese to install infrastructures that will help us to thrive in the future. Every child needs to stumble to learn how to walk, and we must always hope the stumbling time is behind us and that we finally have the firm legs to build the asphalt road and walk upon it with pride.

More African Fashion: Gold Coast Trading Co

FADER Magazine recently spotlighted Emeka Alams, the fashionable mind behind Gold Coast Trading Co, a label that wears its African influences proudly. Check out his signature designs here: http://www.livefromthecoast.com/

A Global Beat...for Peace

Take a second out of studying for midterms to check out this global effort at awareness on Sudan. This film, a Global Drumbeat for Peace, tells and shows the story of a drum beat (yes...a drum beat!) that starts in Sudan and gets passed around the world in hopes of having every-day people educate themselves on the current conditions in Sudan - of bringing the nation closer to peace. From Brazil, to Ireland, to Australia, individuals were giving voice to the strife that has taken place, and continues to take place...to this day.

Check out the video below -- Do you believe in the efforts put forth in this movie? Do you feel like it will truly do anything that it claims it will do? Tell us what you think!

http://www.cnn.com/video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_freevideo+%28RSS%3A+Video%29#/video/showbiz/2010/01/09/vassileva.intv.beat.for.peace.cnn

Omar Pene at SOB's

Musical artists from the African continent have a long-standing romance with New York City. One such performer that we recommend you check out is Senegalese singer Omar Pene, described by Youssou N'Dour as "the living legend of African music." SOB's is an incredible venue for checking out international music acts (and dancing the night away) - tickets to see Pene are $25: http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=1282875

Here's a preview of the magic in store on Friday March 19:

Africa's Poverty is a Curse that Comes from its Riches

I recently had the privilege of viewing the film ‘Bamako’, a 2006 film by Abderrahmane Sissako. Despite its name the film is not about Mali or the inhabitants of its capital. It is rather an exploration of the real impact the predatory capitalism spread by institutions such as the World Bank is having in African nations. This is certainly a film to see if you have ever wondered about the unspoken darker side of the globalization on which Thomas L. Friedman joyously writes.

A Bridge Over the River Nile

The Nile is, perhaps, the essence of the African continent: all of its nuances and sundry distilled and typified into its very being. She is unwieldy, fertile, destructive, glorious and inevitably fraught with political dissent. She is also large – very large. At over four-thousand miles, weaving through nine countries and reaching widths of up to five miles, the Nile is the longest river in the world. As with all of Nature's resplendent wonders, she is closely followed by the adulterating wiles of man. As contentious and volatile as the East African political landscape is, one unwavering constant has remained manifest since time immemorial: life itself heeds the beck and call of the River Nile, with all of her tortuous bends and turns. The undeniable significance of the river adds a further layer of gravitas, transforming what would ostensibly be harmless political squabbles into a matter of life and death.

The Nile sustains over three-hundred million people who reside in and around its Basin, extending from Burundi at its southern-most tip through the entirety of Egypt in the north, splitting into the vast Nile Delta and finally escaping into the vastness of the Mediterranean Sea. The Basin population is expected to double within the next twenty years, creating an unprecedented demand for water in a historically drought-ridden region. Of the 180 countries listed in the World Water Development Report’s ranking of water availability per capita, the Nile countries are conspicuously low: Kenya is ranked 154th, Uganda 115th and Ethiopia 137th, while the downstream nations of Egypt and Sudan are ranked 156th and 129th, respectively.

Burgeoning demographic growth, coupled with dwindling resources, is a recipe for political destabilization and armed escalation. At the heart of the issue lie the timeless truths of the African continent: scarcity, greed and inevitable international intervention. This crisis takes the discerning observer back to 1929 when the Nile Water Agreement, a thorny vestige of the colonial era that still bears legitimacy, was first established. The Agreement, brokered by the British, granted the Nile's downstream nations (Sudan and Egypt) extensive rights over the river's use and, more significantly, exclusive veto power concerning any public infrastructure projects built on or along the Nile by any of the upstream nations, much to the chagrin of countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia. The logic behind their concern is that the unimpeded flow of nutrient-rich river water to the downstream states is threatened by the construction of dams, irrigation canals or hydro-electric turbines further up the river. The Nile's flow adopts a particularly sensitive demeanour in the Egyptian context: the country's sustenance hinges completely on the river and its population lives entirely along its banks as the rest of its territory is composed of the largest desert on Earth. The Agreement guarantees both Egypt and Sudan 56 billion cubic meters of the 74 billion cubic meters that constitute the Nile's total water flow (more than 75% of the total water volume). The upstream states claim that the Agreement rests upon an antiquated division that grants the downstream states a de facto monopoly over the rights and usage of the Nile's waters.

Several feckless attempts at reconciliation have been sought in the eighty-year interim since the Agreement's inception, with the most recent endeavour precipitating in the Nile Basin Initiative of 1993 which sought to "develop the Nile in a cooperative manner, share substantial socioeconomic benefits, and promote regional peace and security." Nonetheless, economic incentives, justified and zealous, die hard. The source-countries of the Nile (Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda) have unilaterally embarked upon their own agricultural and developmental infrastructure projects, most notably a 170 mile-long pipeline built in Tanzania, as well as the Tekeze Dam in Ethiopia. While reasonable in their nature, these projects and others like them have had indelible environmental effects on the Nile, most conspicuously in the formation of enormous water reserves which trap nutrient-rich silt necessary for the irrigation of farmlands further downstream. Egypt and Sudan deem any diversion of the Nile as nothing less than an act of war. Exacerbating the issue is the recent involvement of the World Bank in the foray, with the vocal backing of Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Congo. Many of the Nile Basin states view this intervention as a move toward destabilization, in particular on the part of Rwanda and Congo whom the Nile barely grazes. Of course, the downstream nations' vigorous rejection of water diversion is not to be deemed simply as innocent protest. Egypt's agricultural endeavours along the Nile have been marred by their grandiose, embarrassing and ostentatious nature. The earliest of these was Nasser's construction of the Aswan High Dam which resulted in the flooding and mass displacement of 300,000 Nubians. More recently was the Toshka Irrigation Canal Project which sought to construct a colossal artificial artery of the Nile that penetrated directly into the depths of the Sahara, in order to potentially turn the desert into farmable land. The project ended in fiscal, political and social disaster and firmly ingrained the image of Egypt as an irresponsible patron of the Nile in the collective conscience of the upstream states. Perhaps most damning of all were allegations that Egypt sought to create a waterway under the Suez Canal (named the Peace Canal) which would irrigate 600,000 acres of land in Northern Sinai with water from the Nile, and which would ultimately flow into Israel. Needless to say, these rumours struck a particularly contentious nerve among all of the Nile Basin states.

Where does this leave the Basin states? A political stalemate can maintain the semblance of stability for only so long. The conflict holds implications that are all too palpable for the populations of the Nile Basin and cannot continue to remain cordoned off behind the plush walls of foreign ministries and African Union assemblies. The Nile and her abuse are intimately connected to the beating hearts of three-hundred million souls. Compromise can no longer be deemed a lofty ideal, but must be treated as a tangible necessity. The unmoving hubris of the Basin states can only serve to usher in their own undoing.

Recommended Listening: New World Water - Mos Def