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Before Egypt and Libya, There was Ivory Coast

Libya (left), Ivory Coast (right)

Foreign Policy Hypocrisy of Our Generation

Over the past two months, the world has keenly being following the political events in Egypt and Libya. Television screen at homes, schools, workplaces and major airport had one item on the waiting list: when the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would make his next statement and what would be the response of the US President Barack Obama. Facebook and Twitter were and are still floating in traffic like hell. Journalists who were hitherto unknown are now household names because of their coverage of the North African revolution. Some journalists were happily beaten up just to cover the news and they still enjoy it. Some risked their very lives just get their stories out.

The situation in Egypt and Libya ‘needed’ to be covered; the two countries play strategic roles in the US and European countries’ foreign policies. Both countries hold sweet big oil in their bosoms and the West likes that milk. Egypt does not directly make a momentous contribution to the global oil supply but it hosts the Suez Canal which is a major boulevard for oil transport to the US and other western countries. It’s also an excellent vacationer destination for the most westerners who periodically need to take a break. Libya, on the other hand, is a big player in the global oil market. The country is a swollen with pride for being a member of the OPEC and is the world’s 17th largest oil producer, the third-largest producer in Africa and holds the continent’s largest crude oil treasury. About 85% of Libya’s oil is exported to Europe. The penalty of the crisis in the two countries need not be recounted. In the US, regular fuel is now nearly $4 per gallon. Doesn’t this explain why twitter, Facebook, CNN, MSNBC and BBC are on Libya 24/7?

Another country, on the same continent, which is on the threshold of civil war and perhaps genocide, is the Ivory Coast. In fact the situation in the Ivory Coast started several months before there was a single protest in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. How much on Ivory Coast can we find on Facebook feeds? How much is atwitter? When was the last time you heard somebody call the US too weak for not calling on Laurent Gbagbo to hand over to the constitutionally elected president? In fact, how many even know who that man is?

Two weeks ago, six women were killed in the Ivory Coast by forces supporting the incumbent tyrant Laurent Gbagbo, while on a peaceful demonstration. How much coverage did the western media bestow to that story? Actually, have you heard it? How many American reporters have questioned the President of the US or his Press Secretary where US stands on the Ivory Coast crisis?

Well, the truth is unlike Egypt and Libya, the Ivory Coast has not yet had a dream of producing oil for their local consumption, how much less to export to Europe or North America. The nation has no strategic importance to either the US or UK. Genocide in Ivory Coast will not result in one cent increase in fuel price. Will it? Ivory Coast is by far the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans, and that where your chocolate comes from. The Ivory Coast crisis may lead to some increase in the price of chocolate, but don’t we celebrate Valentine Day only once a year?

Why does the Ivory Coast deserve less than Egypt and Libya. The silence demonstrated by the World’s powers towards the Ivory Crisis is deafening, and even embarrassing.

Thanks for reading?

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They Asked Me if I Preferred to Die or be Raped. I told them, ‘Rape Me Then’

Women at the Mugunga III camp for the forcibly displaced in North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

MUGUNGA III CAMP, Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 16 (UNHCR) – Marie* was first raped three years ago during a raid on her village that left her husband and 10 children dead – she was about 70 years old at the time.

In January, the Congolese grandmother was raped again by armed men when she left the shelter of Mugunga III – a hilltop camp for some 2,000 of the most vulnerable displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo – to search for a teenage girl who had gone missing while foraging for firewood in the forest.

“I told them I was a poor old woman and that I was not interested in politics. They then asked me if I preferred to die or be raped. I told them, ‘Rape me then,'” Marie, struggling with her emotions, recalled of the second incident.

“There were six of them. When one finished, another took his place. They hit me and broke my knee. Other women were also there in the forest and, after being raped, the men pushed pieces of wood inside them and the women died,” she told UNHCR. “I was lucky, they did not kill me.”

Many other women in the DRC’s volatile North Kivu province have suffered similar abuse and family loss and they feel that the outside world is doing too little to help them or to tackle the widespread problem of sexual and gender-based violence in this neglected corner of Africa. Last year, some 15,000 cases of sexual violence were reported in the DRC, mainly in eastern provinces.

“There are many visitors, many delegations, who come to listen to survivors of sexual violence, but we never see results from these visits,” said Jeanne, another forcibly displaced woman at Mugunga III.

She was among a group of 20 women at the camp, many of whom have lost everything, who asked UNHCR visitors in late February to tell the world their stories and to solicit help. “We are touched to see that people think about us,” said another victim, Thérèse, “but we also need help to get over our problems and sustain our families despite all our internal suffering since being raped.”

Women and girls in the Mugunga camps are particularly vulnerable if they have to go out and collect firewood, mostly in the Virunga National Park. They risk sexual assault, but things would be far worse for their menfolk.

“We are scared to go to the forest, but we have no choice,” said Sabine. “We have tried sending our husbands, but if they go they get killed, so we prefer going by ourselves. In the best case, we only get beaten, but often we are raped.”

Marie was not looking for firewood when she was attacked, but she was searching for a 15-year-old girl who had been sent to bring back the precious resource, which is used for cooking or to sell for a small sum.

The 74-year-old was a rich woman before she was forced to flee her home in North Kivu’s Nyabondo district in 2008. “I had more than 100 cows and 40 pigs and goats. I had a house on a hill, a guest house with six bedrooms and a sewing machine,” she recounted. “Everything was stolen.”

Her husband was forced to watch as she was raped, before he was killed. Marie was also shot in the legs and still has to use a crutch to get around. In Mugunga III, she lives in a small hut with six of her grandchildren and the three children of a neighbour who died, including the girl who went missing in Virunga.

“I had heard that girls were kept as sex slaves in Virunga Park,” Marie said, explaining why she went to look in vain for the girl. She said she has felt sick ever since the rape ordeal. “It hurts when I move. It hurts when I walk. It hurts when I breathe . . . I have to go to hospital, but I cannot afford it.”

Aside from such health problems, victims of sexual and gender-based violence also face ostracism from their community, lack of sympathy, mental trauma and problems earning a living and supporting their family.

The women in Mugunga III who approached UNHCR for help, also want support for socio-economic and income-generation projects to help female victims of sexual violence. They want their husbands and sons to be sensitized to the problem. “I talk to my son when rapists are sent to jail. I tell him that if this happens to him one day, I would never visit him in prison,” said Thérèse.

Meanwhile, UNHCR has swiftly responded to one of the requests from Mugunga III by launching a project to provide about 500 women with fuel efficient stoves so that they no longer have to forage in the forest for firewood. They will also be taught to make fuel briquettes from sawdust and paper. The project will benefit all households in the camp.

* Name changed for protection reasons

By Celine Schmitt in Mugunga III Camp, Democratic Republic of the Congo

UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency

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Strip Clubs Outpace Laws in Kenya

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By Rose Odengo

Sunday, March 13, 2011

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 1 – Police raided a popular Nairobi strip club and arrested at least 15 people on the New Year Eve, the latest in a series of crack downs on night spots deemed to promote immorality in the city.

NAIROBI, Kenya: At 9 p.m. on a Saturday, a 6-inch glass heel pierces the air at the Pango F3 club. An agile exotic dancer wearing a red G-string bikini gyrates on a golden pole, entertaining the mesmerized clientele.

“Just here to have fun,” says Bhavesh, a regular patron who declined to give his full name to protect his reputation.

The disc jockey plays international hits and the spotlight focuses on Norah, a stripper, who climbs the pole and whips her long weave around as she slides down it. She lands on her head and gyrates upside down. The patrons go wild and queue to tip her 1,000-shilling bills ($12 in U.S. currency) in her G-string.

The 10 dancers work six nights a week, plus have daily aerobics sessions and dance rehearsals, says Sabrina, the dancers’ supervisor and trainer, while monitoring them from the back of the club. She says they declined to give their full names because of the stigma attached to stripping in Kenya.

Relatively new to Kenya, strip clubs are on the rise. Some cite urbanization, Internet advertising and international pressure for their advent. High pay also fuels the industry, as strippers say they can double the money they could earn at other jobs, where they may be sexually harassed anyway.

Yet because it’s a new phenomenon, no clear laws governing stripping are on the books. Advocates propose creating red-light districts to curb illegal activities around strip clubs and granting legal rights to strippers.

Clubs Previously Unheard Of

Seven years ago, strip clubs were unheard of in downtown Nairobi, says Chris Hart, a psychologist. Now, patrons and managers estimate there to be 10 public strip clubs and 20 private clubs, or houses rented for private parties. There are no official statistics yet.

Not far from Pango F3 is a competing strip club, Liddos. The strippers dance on the pole and give lap dances to the predominantly male crowd. At 11 p.m., pornography plays on two 40-inch plasma TVs. At midnight, the strippers remove everything but their bikini tops.

Hart attributes the rise in strip clubs in Nairobi to Kenya’s “catching up with the world.”

Bhavesh and other clients say they discovered Kenya’s strip clubs online. Liddos uses Facebook to update fans about new events.

Mike Katana, Pango F3’s manager, says the club attracts international celebrities such as Wyclef Jean, Shaggy, Gramps Morgan and Akon.

“When they come to Kenya to perform, they also look for their own entertainment,” he says. “They tell their promoters that they want to feel like they feel in Atlanta.”

Hart says strip clubs attract dancers because of the high income. Winnie says she used to be a waitress but switched to stripping at Pango F3 after her manager hit on her.

“If it’s all about my looks, then I’ll make as much money as I can out of it,” she says.

Katana says a stripper’s average income in Nairobi is 10,000 shillings ($120 USD) a month–almost double Kenya’s monthly per capita income. Nearly half of Kenyans live in poverty, according to the World Bank.

Lucy, 21, a former stripper, says the job isn’t easy, adding that some strippers use cannabis to help them perform.

“You smile not because you enjoy yourself,” she says. “You are here to please clients and get paid, so you fake a smile.”

Strip Clubs Illegal

Strip clubs are illegal in Kenya. The owners evade that law by registering them as bars. John Ngugi, Nairobi City Council treasurer, says that the City Council must award the bars operating licenses after the liquor licensing board awards the required liquor licenses.

“Our hands are tied,” Ngugi says. “We don’t regulate how people drink beer–if they drink their beer naked or not.”

Police occasionally raid strip clubs, but, without legislation, procedures are unregulated. Lucy recalls a 2 a.m. raid at Barrels, another Nairobi strip club, where police said the club hadn’t paid for its license.

“Police came in with guns and all the strippers were asked to take all their clothes off,” she says.

The police whisked the patrons and dancers to the police station. At dawn, Lucy bailed herself out with her tips but says she left behind eight shivering colleagues who couldn’t afford bail.

Eric Kiraithe, Kenya police spokesperson, says stripping needs clearer regulations, as the Kenyan penal code doesn’t differentiate between strippers and prostitutes. Both are misdemeanors, carrying a 3,000-shilling ($36 USD) fine.

Evan Monari, a lawyer, says no strip clubs existed when the penal code was instituted.

He says the Kenya Tourist Board should work with local authorities to create a red-light district. Another lawyer, Duncan Mwanyumba, says this will reduce illegal activities around the clubs and accord the strippers respect.

Mwanyumba says he and the International Federation of Women Lawyers will advocate for legal rights for strippers and prostitutes at this year’s Koinange Street Festival, a carnival in Nairobi’s unofficial red-light district.

Rose Odengo Women enews correspondent

Rose Odengo describes herself as a benefactor of African oral tradition. She is passionate about writing stories of Africa in order to empower disadvantaged African women in hopes of restoring their dignity to make Africa a glorious, proud, prosperous and beautiful continent. She joined Global Press Institute’s Kenya News Desk in 2011.


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Nadia Buari Wins Straw Poll of Popularity in Netherlands and Belgium

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Nadia Buari

A survey conducted by a group Celeb for Cause in Netherlands and Belgium showed that 29% of Africans in the two countries who are following events in Africa think Nadia Buari is the hottest celebrity alive on the continent. Despite accusations in some circles that the actress is the most secretive of all stars, the folks who participated in the survey do not seem to care much about that. Her closest competitor came in at a distant 13%. All four Nollywood stars in the survey ended with single digits. This was not a scientific poll and the selection of the responders might not be representative of the African Diaspora in Europe.

 

So who is Nadia Buari?

Ms Buari was born in November 21, 1982 in Ghana to a Ghanaian musician Sidiku Buari. She obtained a degree in Performing Arts in the University of Ghana, Legon.

In the late 2005, Ms. Buari premiered on Ghanaian national television with the TV series Games People Play. Her first major film was Mummy’s Daughter. Later she also starred in Beyonce: The President’s Daughter. In fact, most analysts believe her role as Beyonce was her major breakthrough

. From the information available to me, Nadia Buari has starred in over 20 movies.

As at the last time I checked, the Nadia was dating Chelsea striker, Michael Essien.

(Please check for entire results next weekend. Results from a similar survey focusing only on Nollywood stars wil be availabe by Mar 17)

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South Africa: Opportunity for HIV Prevention That Works

Oprah Winfrey takes an HIV test in South Africa in 2007. The nation has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world

Joanne Brink

South Africa’s HIV/AIDS National Strategic Plan for health has two objectives – reducing the incidence of new HIV infections by half and placing 80% of those in need onto anti-retroviral treatment. As a country, we are making some progress in scaling up our national HIV treatment programmes, but concurrently we need to maintain the status of those that are HIV negative.

Over 95% of grade 8 to 12 learners are HIV negative. Although not preventative, testing for HIV in secondary schools presents a significant opportunity for establishing a culture of knowing your status, allowing for the enforcement of a healthy lifestyle. Yes, there are many concerns, but let us focus on addressing the concerns by involving learners and their parents in the design and implementation of any school health and HIV testing programme, rather than lose this opportunity. By instilling healthy habits and regular HIV testing amongst our teens of today and at an early age, we have a better chance of reducing new HIV infections amongst our adults of the future.

And make no mistake, many of our teens are having sex and are very much at risk of contracting HIV. A recent study conducted in Tshwane Municipality by The Foundation for Professional Development (FPD), a private institute of higher education, found that 40% of grade 8 to 12 learners are engaging in sexual activity, half of them with more than one sexual partner. However only 22% of these sexually active teens had been tested for HIV or thought they were at risk of contracting the disease. Yet, the vast majority reported that HIV was a topic discussed in their school at least once a month. This suggests that our current classroom model of delivering HIV prevention programmes to our learners is excelling on a theoretical manner, while the reactive behaviour that should stem from such knowledge is not evident.

Focus groups conducted through FPD’s HIV management courses for schools, have provided some insight into the reasons that HIV prevention is not working in our schools and how to improve on the current approach. Discussions in the grade 8 to 12 learner focus groups confirmed an extensive factual knowledge of HIV – learners were able to quote statistics and recite the majority of HIV transmission and prevention methods. Yet they did not see themselves at risk of contracting HIV, even though the majority reported to be sexually active.

The critical insight here is that learners are not able to relate to or internalise the meaning behind these “HIV facts” that they are being taught at school. According to them, the current HIV prevention messages are delivered through didactic classroom lectures – often emphasising abstinence – whereas they would prefer to engage in the open and have direct conversations about the reality of their lifestyles and sexual health, as young adults, rather than focusing on HIV only. They advised that we should not be “coming in saying HIV HIV”, but make the campaign part of a wider focus about looking after their overall health. “Talk to us about what has been happening in our lives and [then] compare it to HIV and AIDS – helping us to differentiate between the lives that we are living and the lives that we need to lead” – female Grade 12 learner.

A school based health screening and HIV testing campaign will give learners a chance to engage with counsellors and health workers, whether they choose to test for HIV or not. For many, this will be their first open conversation with an adult about sexual health and lifestyle choices. Broadening the school based HCT campaign from an exclusively HIV screening focus to an integrated health programme, as proposed by the departments of health and education, will help to make HIV testing routine amongst our teens. The pre- and post-test counselling experience will provide learners with the opportunity to ask direct questions and reflect on their own lifestyle and behavioural choices.

Furthermore, learners shared that their most trusted and valued source of information was their parents or caregivers. Yet their parents were unwilling and uncomfortable discussing sexual health matters or HIV with their children. The majority of parents believed that their role would be fulfilled once the “birds and bees” had been discussed once, whereas their teens craved regular conversations starting at a much younger age. Parents were however accused by their kids of being relatively uninformed about HIV and its effects. “They only know to tell us to use condoms to prevent HIV and that’s it. It would be nice to have parents who are informed about HIV. And if we could do something to inform our parents”- male Grade 12 learner. Although talking about sex to their parents would initially be awkward, learners yearned to do so and wanted to find a way to make the conversation easier for their parents.

A school health and HIV screening campaign is an opportunity for parents to become better informed and thereby help to open the conversation between parents and their teens. Parents should be encouraged to accompany their children for health and HIV screening at the school, not only for their own wellbeing, but so that they can better understand the emotions and questions that their children will face during an HIV test and can better provide ongoing support and compassion post-testing.

Grade 8 to 12 learners were born after the years when South Africa started responding to HIV and have grown up knowing about HIV and anti-retroviral treatment. This implying, that the messages to this group should be different to those of other generations.

School based HIV counselling and testing, integrated with a general health screening programme, is a chance for us to get HIV prevention right amongst our adults of the future. What is clear is that our teens have a lot of good advice to offer about how to improve HIV programmes that target youth. Involving them in the design of any school based health and HIV screening programme is critical to ensuring its success.

Joanne Brink works for Foundation for Professional Development (FPD) – The Foundation for Professional Development’s (FPD) vision is to build a better society through education and development, and the best place to start is with the foundation of society – our teachers – developing their ability to manage classrooms and inspiring them with the latest international teaching methodologies.

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The Women of Benghazi

 

 

The story from the revolution in Libya and Egypt tell us one simple truth: the desire to be free is universal. Men or women, children or adults, Muslims, Christians or Jews; the desire in the soul to be free is collective.
With husbands, sons and brothers at the front, women are supporting them with meals and supplies.

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Cuts That Kill: The Senate Must Restore Global Health Funding

Joanne Carter
Executive director of RESULTS/RESULTS Educational Fund (REF)

Last week Congress approved a two-week extension of federal funding to avoid a looming government shutdown. The vote postpones — but does not resolve — potentially devastating cuts to global health programs. The House-proposed bill for the balance of 2011 proposes deep cuts to some of the most effective investments the US makes globally, including a drastic 40 percent reduction for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

In a recent interview Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter and advisor to President George W. Bush, called the cuts “irrelevant and destructive.” He’s right on both counts, and there’s still time for Congress to reverse course.

The cuts are irrelevant to the deficit problem that members of Congress are ostensibly trying to solve. Our entire foreign aid portfolio amounts to little more than a rounding error in the federal budget. Foreign aid focused on health, education, economic opportunity, and other anti-poverty programs account for less than 1 percent of federal spending. Even if Americans believed that erasing these programs was a good idea — and they don’t, as public opinion polls consistently reveal — it wouldn’t put a dent in the deficit.

These cuts are destructive because they would be measured in human lives.

With the U.S. as a leading donor, the Global Fund has helped save more than six million lives, and in just a decade has fundamentally altered our ability to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria, among the biggest killers on the planet. If the House proposal to slash $450 million from the Global Fund were adopted it would mean six million treatments for malaria would not be administered. More than 400,000 people won’t be provided with antiretroviral medication to treat AIDS, and nearly 60,000 women won’t receive the drugs they need to prevent transmission of HIV to their newborn children. More than 370,000 people won’t be tested and treated for tuberculosis, the world’s leading curable infectious killer of adults.

This budget crunch comes just as new tools are available to transform the fight against infectious diseases. A new way to diagnosis TB using a machine called Xpert is one such breakthrough. The current method of identifying TB bacteria under a microscope was developed nearly 130 years ago and is still used throughout the developing world. This method often fails to detect TB in people living with HIV/AIDS and in children, cannot detect drug resistance, and is frustratingly slow. Patients must take time off from work and family to return to a clinic and submit multiple specimens over several days — often an impossible demand in very poor communities. Although TB is curable, correctly and rapidly diagnosing the disease has been a major stumbling block.

Xpert has the potential to change that. It’s fast, accurate and easy to use. About the size of an espresso machine, it relies on DNA technology to diagnose TB, detects drug-resistant strains of the disease, and returns the results in about 90 minutes. That may not grab headlines, but in the world of TB control it’s nothing short of revolutionary.

Other breakthroughs abound. The promising trial results for a microbicide gel to prevent HIV transmission electrified the HIV/AIDS community in search of new prevention methods. Vaccines to help prevent pneumonia and diarrhea — the two leading killers of young children — are newly available in poor countries through the GAVI Alliance, an international partnership to expand access to childhood immunizations.

The question for Congress is whether global health policy and funding will keep up with global health evidence and opportunity.

The innovations in global health now at our fingertips are not just new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, but also the means of financing and delivering them. For example, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has led the way in changing the business model for how aid is delivered. Last week the conservative-led UK government released an exhaustive multilateral aid review of 43 development institutions which rated the Global Fund as one of nine organizations with an “excellent track record” for delivering results. Global Fund proposals are developed by the countries who implement them, they are evaluated by an independent review panel, and continued funding is awarded according to performance. Project documents — everything from glowing reports to unforgiving audits — are made publicly available on the Fund’s website.

That may sound like common sense, but it’s not necessarily common practice among global health and development aid donors.

As a board member of the Global Fund, I see the Fund’s challenges up close, and I also see its ground-breaking model, its impact and the even greater potential it represents. The proven success of the Global Fund allows us to think about seizing the next set of opportunities presented by modern medicine and break the backs of the world’s greatest epidemics.

Congress faces unenviably tough budget decisions this year, but funding for these programs is not a close call. The Senate should reverse the House’s proposed cuts to global health for 2011, and restore this sliver of the federal budget that delivers unparalleled results. To do otherwise would be irrelevant and destructive.

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Chinafrik –Economic Model and Blueprint for African Development.

CHINAFRIK as a concept is defined as ”the process wherein developing states in Africa adopt economic measures from China and localize such measures for their respective development.

While the developed countries of the world worry over the management of technological breakthroughs and volatile economic landscapes, many developing and underdeveloped nations are cringing in poverty, hunger and starvation, woeful health conditions, high maternal and child mortality rates, energy crisis, and high incidences of corruption, among others.

Most Africa countries, unfortunately, find themselves in the latter categories. The failure of African  nations to develop and match such countries as the Asian Tigers, who started the race to nationhood with us, is essentially a leadership problem, a self-imposed crisis of underdeveloped psyche that makes our leaders enslaved to primordial instincts. They focus on power acquisition as a means to self-aggrandizement; undoing and sometimes, complete elimination of perceived enemies.

Consider a report by GOLDMAN SACHS: The rise of the BRICs(Brazil, Russia, India and China). Goldman Sachs had to say in its original report, ”Dreaming with BRICs: The path to 2050,” published in 2003; that: China’s economy will surpass Germany in the next few years, Japan by 2015 and the United States by 2041. India’s growth rate will be the highest – not China’s- and it will overtake Japan by 2032. Taken together, the BRICs could be larger than the United States and the developed economies of Europe within 40 years.

According to the Goldman Sach’s report, the economy of China overtook Germany’s a year earlier than expected, and has already overtaken Japan’s by July 2010. It is now believed that the Chinese economy will overtake the United States by 2027. And with India accounting for 10 of the 30 fastest growing urban areas in the world and 700 million people moving to cities by 2050, its influence on the world economy will be bigger and quicker than was implied in 2003 (source: Wikipedia).

Closely following the BRIC prediction is the 2004 Report on the NEXT ELEVEN (N-11), in which Nigeria is included among eleven nations also warming up to assert themselves in the global economic map. While China overtakes the United States as the greatest economic power in the world by 2047, Nigeria would become the 20th largest economy by 2025 and the 12th by 2050 ahead of G-7 giants, Italy and Canada.

Of interest to me is that the BRICs have gone through abject poverty, but armed with a strong demographic profile, vast natural resources and an adjusted purposeful leadership with vision, have asserted themselves in the new economic order where demography has become a major factor in a world of competitiveness. They planned for it, made it work and today are economically challenging the G-7 nations. The same story can be an economic reality for Africa if African leaders and the African people can show the same spirit of national interest, patriotism, and selfless devotion to the development of the continent.

The development of most western economies and the G-7 nations can be attributed to investments in science and technology. Nations such as the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Japan, Korea and China, among others, are economically developed today largely due to strong and dynamic technological-based system. Needless to say, science and technology are not the only basis for the attainment of economic growth and development around the world. There are economies that appear technologically disadvantaged but have been able to pride in their local resources or strength to achieve optimum development. In other words, they have learnt to globalize the local, and localize the global for their development. That is exactly what China did, and that is what needs be replicated locally by Africa nations. Today, the economies of China and India thrive, amongst others, on healthcare. Brazil has been able to develop soccer locally to a world-class level. Others have invested in the area of tourism for their economic development.

A call goes out in this respect to African leaders under the auspices of the African Union. As addressed in an earlier article titled ‘GLOCALISATION, in my view, African Union should positively challenge itself towards what China has been able to achieve today in economic terms. If nations such as Brazil, India and China who started the race to nationhood building with nations in Africa such as Nigeria, Ghana, and South-Africa can achieve this much economically, then the latter can do it with commitment and determination. To this end, the African Union should collaborate with sub-regional bodies such as ECOWAS, SADC in the actualization of CHINAFRIK locally. There is the need to locally identify what defines each region in terms of its resources and potentials. This should be followed by an integrated developmental framework, short or long-term, designed for each respective region out of the identified potentials therein. Such a framework or model needs to outlive any government in power in all the states concerned.

The end product we envisioned to see is an Africa with globally recognized in academic prowess and intellectual proficiency, an Africa with the North reckoned globally in sports and healthcare, the East recognized globally in tourism and athlete, and the South globally reckoned in international diplomacy and academics. Consolidating efforts by the AU and sub-regional bodies in this respect over a reasonable period of time will take the continent to her rightful position among the comity of nations. The common practice of employing the services of foreign expatriates in human and infrastructural projects needs to be discontinued henceforth by African leaders. Until we begin to believe and pride in ourselves as a people, much of our desired expectations will not begin to materialize. Juxtaposing and applying the principles inherent in both ‘Glocalization’ and CHINAFRIK will result in an African continent that the citizenry will be proud of. It is our individual and collective responsibility to make Africa a continent of global recognition in human and infrastructural development.

Let’s DO it NOW!

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