Away from Africa

Last week we attended our first Broadway show (after living in New York city for many years!), to see the much-acclaimed Fela! I was a fan of Fela Anikulapo Kuti 's music well before I ever imagined living in Africa and marrying an African, to boot. French acquaintances introduced me to his music as a student in Paris, and I was immediately smitten. In the late seventies and early eighties, when I met my future spouse and learned so much more about Africa, Nigeria seemed to be the shining star of the continent, with industry and close to 100 million inhabitants. Unfortunately, politics brought the country down; I still see it as a beacon, however, and I believe it is again on the rise, after I attended the recent African Economic Forum : it is now an even more populous country, with a plethora of highly educated people and oil revenue, I hope, being better routed, so as to serve a larger number of Nigerians. The Fela! show recounts the stages of Fela's adult life, rende...

An excellent panel discussion at the Columbia University African Economic Forum was about Tourism in Africa. Left to right: Kobina Brew-Hammond, Rumit Mehta,  Sthu Zungu, Edward Bergman In the news, we hear mainly of coups, famines, massacres and economic woes. These issues exist. However, the African continent is chock-full of fantastic scenery and exciting traditions, not to mention the beautiful handicrafts. Not only is travel from other continents to Africa rising, but increasingly Africans are traveling within their own continent rather than going to Europe or the United States. My first-hand experience is speaking with Cameroonians who shuttle back and forth from South Africa, which used to be on every Cameroonian's list of countries it was forbidden to visit (during Apartheid) just 20 years ago. The panel included: Edward Bergman , Africa Travel Association Rumit Mehta , Immersion Journeys Sthu Zungu , South African Tourism (America) Kobina Brew-Hammond ,...

On Friday and mostly on Saturday, April 13-14, 2012, Columbia University's School of International Policy held the 9th Annual African Economic Forum.   Nick Tattersall,  Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism at Columbia University, introduced t he first keynote speaker:  Sanusi Lamido Sanusi  , Governor of Nigeria's Central Bank. Mr. Sanusi hails from Northern Nigeria; on Wikipedia , he is called "Mallam" (" learned " or "teacher," from the Arabic language), as he is also an Islamic scholar---probably a rarity in the banking world! He spoke softly (a little too softly for some of us, as the microphones were not working too well on the first day of the Forum) and couched his words carefully; however, his goals for Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular were quite clear: self-sufficiency leading to prosperity, and independence from foreign economic interests. I cannot, of course, provide here the full sp...

on the occasion of the 9th Annual African Economic Forum - New York City: "Africa Reclaiming Africa" The African Ingenuity I am not an African, but in the two years of   my Peace Corps service   in Cameroon, I had fallen in love with the African people. Like most naive twentysomethings who set out to go “change the world”, I was humbled by my time in Cameroon. The country changed me in more ways than one. I barely made a dent in changing my village, much less the world. I discovered Africa beyond the mainstream portrait of the continent. Africa is a massive place, and while civil wars, famines, and the like do still exist in parts of the continent, the Western media somehow rarely highlights the incredible growth that is taking place in this part of the world. In working with the Cameroonian people, they taught me the realities of African life. Western solutions to problems often do not align with these African realities. Western perceptions of Africans often...