There’s a saying in Nigeria that goes:  better soup, na money do am – which essentially means that money equals quality. I don’t think so.

In my first week home, I’m realizing that it’s not as if I was wary of returning because things would suck. My main fear boils down to one thing: things wouldn’t look nice anymore. Sounds silly right? But let’s think this through. Instead of well-planned streets, it would be semi-planned streets without sidewalks and medians. It’s not like the roads wouldn’t be paved, it’s just that it’d be done haphazardly in some cases, or ignored in others. Instead of clean, symmetrical, inviting shops, it would be shabby lopsided boxes as excuses for entrepreneurship. In fact, what one would consider a low-end bodega in New York is priced way above Whole Foods in Abuja and could pass as a high-end shop.

I’m aware that I sound like I’m complaining so let me  unpack this a little. What happened to the desire to make things look nice? What happened to demanding that the walls be absolutely straight and the paint work be impeccable when masons complete a house or shop for you? What happened to packaging and presentation? It’s not like we lack the materials present in other countries. It’s the presentation of it that becomes the deal breaker 9 times out of ten.

Stories in Nigerian cinema are clearly riveting to its audience. It’s that extra step of white balancing so the picture doesn’t look cheap and washed out, or editing so the sound is that much crisper that is missing. There are entrepreneurs every which corner. However, what makes one stand out from the pack is presentation and not necessarily the contents in his or her shop. The quick buck seems to always win out against the planned investment. At Mr. Bigg’s (Nigeria’s main fast food chain) – it’s the same thing. The drabness of their presentation makes it that much less appealing, still this franchise is making bank because it even attempts some form of decor in a country where there is none. I realize it takes money to do certain things, but I’m not talking about those types of things. I’m talking about making the most of what’s available to you. Having standards and expecting the best that you can afford. I’m talking about going the extra mile just when you’re tempted to settle because it’s all you see around you. I’m talking about stewardship. About symmetry than about quantity. About presentation than about reinvention.

I know we have it in us. Just look at the variety of clothes at church on a Sunday morning. The styles, the ingenuity, the flare. If only we’d put the same efforts into our homes, offices, shops and cities that we do into our clothes! It’s the cumulative effect of such small things as people taking the extra step to make their surroundings pretty that speaks volumes of how much they value themselves and how much they expect you to value them. Putting all that effort into clothing speaks more of vanity, which in the Nigerian situation, deserves its own article.

Wake up Nigeria, we’ve got work to do. Lots of it. And this time, I’m afraid to break this to you, it has nothing to do with the government.

I left New York last week to live and work in Nigeria. It felt like an out-of-body experience as I packed the articles that constituted my life since I moved to the U.S. in 2002. I’m here now, I’m living in Zaria and working as an energy consultant for the United Nations Development Program’s efforts in bringing efficient firewood stoves to people in Millennium Villages. My work starts in Nigeria, but I expect that after a successful test run in Nigeria, I’ll be moved to Senegal, Mali and hopefully elsewhere.

You should have seen me packing. It’s like I was trying to pack as much of America into my suitcase before leaving. As I walked around New York that last week, I looked around knowing it could be a while before I’d see “order” and “choice” and “convenience” as embodied by the subways, restaurants and other amenities of life in New York. However, this attitude almost ruined me. It wasn’t until I’d mentally let New York and the US go and fully embraced the reality that I was leaving and it was counterproductive and unfair to my time in Nigeria to keep wanting to capture as much of the US as I could. This realization was particularly freeing and has made the transition quite fun.

Boy, it was great to hang out with my parents and my sister. I get to be home for Easter, my sister’s graduation, my parents’ 25th Anniversary, my other sister’s 21st birthday, my little bro’s 13th birthday. I get to hang with my aunties and uncles – who can be quite a riotously funny bunch. I get to be uncle Jr to their kids. I’m also acutely aware of how much I have to learn about being a grown up in a place where I’ve only ever been a kid. It’s in small things like being called uncle Jr, but also in the way parents treat you and value your opinions – they actually kept quiet and wanted to hear stuff I had to say. People at work randomly assaulting you with a sir instead of your first name, etc. I promise I won’t let it get to my head.

Now that I’m here, I would recommend it to others who’ve lived away for a while. But remember, financial stability makes this move a lot easier. Like others have said, it’s no use comparing your life in Nigeria to your life abroad. In some ways it’s better and not so great in others. What matters most to me right now is that I get to see firsthand all the things I’d talked about with friends in the comfort of coffee shops and restaurants abroad. It’s a lot like putting your money where your mouth is, and sometimes, having your money and mouth in the same place won’t be tasty.

Well, work starts tomorrow. I’m not as nervous as I thought I’d be. Let me spell out what my job is: Open firewood fires remain the main stove option for many African villages. In some places, this is a heavy burden on the forests and causing the desert to creep south even faster. To counter this, there are stoves that burn firewood more efficiently and could lead to as much as 40% less wood being burned and possibly less time spent fetching firewood for cooking. My job is to help community workers in these villages test the stoves and determine which one the community prefers. Once we’ve identified a stove that people are willing to buy, we will set up a cooperative to sell these stoves in the community. This also has benefits in terms of carbon credits that can be received from richer nations – but that comes up further along the road.

What does this mean for Solving Africa?

It means I’ll be a lot closer to the projects we’re hoping to start. I’ll be looking into how hard it is for ordinary individuals to start schools or basic health centers. Keep checking www.solvingafrica.com for what I’m learning about setting up these facilities. It’s going to be a busy next few months and with writing the book, it’s going to be a fun ride, but I hope to stay on schedule with completing a first draft of the book sometime this summer.

Now that I’m not in New York and wanting to concentrate fully on book-writing , Solving Africa will need a steering committee of a 3-5 people that will:
a) work on helping us organize events like April’s kickoff, where people can share their project ideas;
b) incorporate Solving Africa as a nonprofit; and
c) keep the website updated with fresh content.

If any of this interests you, please send me an email: junior.kanu@gmail.com and we’ll get the ball rolling.

From Zaria, Nigeria,

Jr.

Columbia University’s SIPA Pan-African Network, African Business Club and African Law Students Association

Invite

The 7th Annual African Economic Forum

March 26th and 27th, 2010

Columbia University in the City of New York

Sessions:

African Hospitality: The Power Within| Infrastructure Development in Africa

African Fashion Going Global |China-Africa Trade and Investment

Aid vs. Investment| Brand Africa: Defining a Continent

Greasing the Wheel: Law, Corruption and the Economy

Niger Delta Investment Summit

Fashion Show | Movie Screening

Details: http://www.aef2010.com

Register: http://africaeconomicforum.com/aef2010/register

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnRPunzOZds

Meet Eyram Tawia of Leti Games: http://www.letigames.com as he discusses what it’s like being a game designer in Ghana.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/v/eYRUJuacrMs

I am pleased to announce that Solving Africa will be published in Nigeria by Kachifo Limited. They publish some of Nigeria’s best authors, and it’s an honor to sign my first-ever book deal with them. Manuscript due in 6months. Yikes!

Jr.

On Saturday Feb. 6, 52 people braved the winter to attend Solving Africa’s 2010 Kickoff event. Our vision is to have three or four events like this every year that follow this format:

1. Three Africans present their ideas for projects they’ve been thinking of launching in their communities in Africa. These ideas usually fall into education, health care, or the general pool of entrepreneurship.

2. Attendees choose a project to work on for the evening. They brainstorm, create project deliverables, and build a steering committee to get the idea up and running.

3. After the evening, participants meet offline and continue working on these projects, giving ongoing feedback to the larger group and asking for whatever help is necessary.

In this fashion, between 9 and 12 new small scale projects will be launched each year by people from the communities they want to serve.

By Tomi Lamikanra

Call it culture shock but I was in a daze here for the first few days of getting into the American classroom! It was not the blackboards or the nice seats, afterall we have those where I was coming from in some schools:), and who has not seen a blackboard before? Even children in Kewu classes have blackboards! It was the attitudes of students to the teachers and the teachers to the students that made me stare so much. Continue Reading

George Ayittey is a professor of economics at the American University in Washington D.C. He is from Ghana and champions the idea that since independence, Africa’s leaders have been deterrents of change whose main goal has been to maintain the status quo of the colonized countries handed to them as a way to keep money in their pockets. He calls them the hippo generation. Ayittey contrasts this group with the rising crop of young leaders today in Africa – the Cheetah generation – they are tired of the ineptitude of the hippos and are racing to transform the continent one initiative at a time.

I agree with you that our governments are a joke. What do people like you and I who may have very little by way of social or political capital do in the meantime? Continue Reading

I first met Ory Okolloh (photo courtesy TED.com) as a forwarded link in my email in mid-November 2008. My friend Jagila had sent me her 2007 presentation at the TED Conference in Arusha, Tanzania where she talked about her experience using the internet as a tool for activism.

The 33-year-old is a mother of two, who used to consult on legal matters for nonprofits. She has since left that to focus her energies full time on turning Ushahidi into a free open-source platform so that other activists are able to use the software to monitor everything from NGO aid delivery to elections. Ushahidi was used by Al Jazeera to monitor the war in Gaza when all media personnel were ordered out of the region. It was used again by the UN to monitor the War in Congo and is being used in monitoring relief efforts for the earthquake in Haiti.

She stands at about 5-feet 10-inches and wears her hair the only way a female African activist does – curly and natural. This is an excerpt of a longer interview in which she discusses where education in Africa is failing its people.

Name: Tolu Itegboje
Age: 22 going on 23
City: Lagos, Nigeria
Educational history: Primary school @ Yaba College of Technology Staff School; Secondary @ International School, Lagos; University/College @ Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

When did you start hashing the plan to come back home?
It was never really a plan. It was just something I figured I’d eventually do. I actually kind of dreaded it. The plan was get a job on my OPT after graduation, work for one year, apply to film school in between, get accepted, and go to film school after the one year was up. I had however planned to visit Nigeria in the summer, before film school would start. Unfortunately, like all human plans, mine didn’t quite materialize the way I wanted it to. I didn’t get accepted into film school, the job thing worked out and then didn’t , my OPT was about expire, and what essentially was supposed to be a visit home ended up becoming an extended stay. Continue Reading