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.

New York Times Article – Nice Example of how the Intent of the Message can be easily lost.

“I KNOW there is nothing a white person can say to a black person about race which is not both incorrect and offensive,” James Spader’s hard-driving lawyer says in the new David Mamet play, “Race.” “I know that. Race is the most incendiary topic in our history. And the moment it comes out, you cannot close the lid on that box. That may change. But not for a long long while.”

That harsh sentiment, a classic bit of Mametian blunt speak, might earn a particularly sympathetic hearing from the friends of the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. As much as we would like to think we live in a postracial America, having elected a black president, the potency of race as a topic for generating scandal — however cynical or bogus — suggests otherwise.

This partly explains why I’ve been finding plenty of reasons to put off airing my conflicted reactions to the new musical “Fela!” Mr. Mamet’s drama, about a legal case that ostensibly turns on perceptions of racism, seems intended to stoke controversy with its forthright title and its boiling arguments about who can say what to whom. But paradoxically the most provocative show in town in this regard may be the feel-good musical about the Nigerian singer and activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

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photo: Jos Main Market. Courtesy PlateauStateGov.org.

Jos, the city I grew up in, is fighting. Again. No one is sure why the fighting started and already, 149 people have died. One story says the fighting started when residents opposed the rebuilding of a Mosque that had been destroyed in the 2008 riots. Another report says angry Muslims went to St. Michael’s church and started shooting people as they left church. None of these stories makes heads or tails. The Muslims I know are not angry people, so where exactly is this coming from?

Why is no one asking?

- How were people so readily armed? I know the parts of the city where this fighting is happening. Those guys can’t afford the kinds of specialized weapons and uniforms that all of a sudden appear as if on demand when a fight breaks out.

- Who is supplying the weapons being used to terrorize my city? One friend theorizes that it’s the surplus from army reserves being sold by dirty officers on the black market. That’s a theory. The truth would be nice.

- This started in 2001, again in 2006, and 2008. Why has the governor not investigated the previous riots and come to the bottom of it?

- Yes it’s a safer response to leave the city entirely. But what is the best response? When those who can afford to relocate do so and leave the city in the hands of people who don’t mind burning it down. What then?

Read the story here (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100118/ap_on_re_af/af_nigeria_violence)

The most appropriate reaction to Nigeria’s name on a list of 14 countries to watch in the war on terror is not the one that most Nigerians and I have had. It should not be dismay, shame, or outrage. Instead, it’s times like these that we need to hunker down and get to work on making our home a place that isn’t so easy to ridicule. And this applies to every person from the continent of Africa.

I think I’m done talking and thinking about the entire AbdulMutallab incident. We have an ailing continent to build and all this talk isn’t necessarily getting anyone closer to that goal. There is little room for dissension to the fact that creating strong education, healthcare and business systems in every single African nation with or without the help of the government is a priority.

As much as is in our hands to do, Africans, Nigerians, what’s your role in moving your country off the so-poor-and-dysfunctional-it’s-easy-to-ignore-them list? The thing is, when we start answering that question and implementing those solutions, the activities of extremist crazies are less likely to have a voice to drown out the idealism, hard work and plain-to-see results of millions of individuals working to build their piece of home.

There’s an Igbo proverb that says, “If one finger touches palm oil, it spreads to all the other fingers.” This is indicative of how Nigerians the world over felt when they heard the news of a young man who attempted to detonate a bomb on U.S. soil in the name of Al Qaeda. Many of us worried that the actions of this one finger would spread to cover the entire 150 million of us. I even heard some people say that this is why north, south, and eastern Nigeria should have  never been the same country.

And then the next day, the news surfaced that the young man’s father had sent word months earlier to security forces saying he was worried that his son had become radicalized and might even be a threat. In an instant, I was again proud to be Nigerian. I was relieved that the shame that would have hung over my country’s reputation by adding terrorism to the list of already popular vices was abated. Yet somehow, the newsflash on CNN did not reflect this development as fervently as I’d hoped. Instead, there was a special on CNBC about whether or not Nigeria could be a new place to watch in the war on terror.

If all British citizens don’t have to carry the stigma of the shoe bomber, if all Oklahomans, don’t have to bear the shame of the Oklahoma bombings, then let the world be mindful of the invidious conclusions it so easily makes when someone from a poorer nation commits similar crimes. And if this is too much to ask, then let the oil of his father’s noble and highly sacrificial actions spread to cover those worried 150 million fingers.

In Michael Porter’s article, The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City, I found striking parallels between the inner city in the United States and struggling economies in Africa. The article’s assertion that inner cities are located in what should be economically valuable areas rang true for Africa – a land of oil and precious metal deposits and climates ideal for growing almost anything. Also, just as the inner city market itself represents the most immediate opportunity for urban-based entrepreneurs and businesses, other African nations represent the most immediate opportunity for African entrepreneurs and businesses. Continue Reading

Reading the book, West Africa since A.D. 1000 by F.K. Buah. How was I not taught these things in school! What’s most eye-opening is the book’s account of the Slave Trade. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade lasted about 400 years and cost Angola and the West African coast  millions of lives – the numbers aren’t agreed upon. Nevertheless, here are some of the more interesting facts and their contemporary parallels: Continue Reading