President Obama Hopes African Leaders Are People of Conscience

In his speech at the AU in his just ended visit to East Africa, President Obama seems to be appealing to the consciences of African leaders, hoping that African leaders could be people of conscience and dignity. That is still to be seen. See the speech below:

 

Is Gay Rights a "Non-Issue" In Kenya?

In a press conference with President Barack Obama today, the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was pressed about gay rights in his country. His response to the question could be broken down into two interrelated parts: 1. that Kenyan culture looks at gay rights differently from American culture and 2. that gay rights is not a pressing issue in Kenya. Both of these responses could however be seen as a single response as it was a roundabout way to reject the notion of gay rights in Kenya. Many African politicians are talking about gay rights these days as if it were an American thing when being gay is not foreign to African cultures. Thus, linking being gay to American cultures as if being gay is foreign to African cultures is to misrepresent African cultures. If Africans want to oppose gay rights they may do so on other grounds rather than appealing to culture.

The second point President Kenyatta made has to do with the claim that gay rights is a non-issue in Kenya. If one thinks of a non-issue as an issue that does not exist, one cannot honestly say that gay rights is a non-issue in Kenya. Gay rights can only be a non-issue in Kenya if it is taken to mean that most people do not lose sleep over whether or not gay people are treated fairly in the country. As a matter of fact, most people are perhaps more concerned about bread and butter issues, as President Kenyatta rightly said. However, this does not mean that gay rights is or should be a non-issue. Once we are talking about questions of human rights, it can never be a non-issue because it relates to the question of human flourishing. If President Kenyatta is interested in working for the flourishing of all Kenyans, gay rights cannot be a non-issue because there are many people in Kenya who suffer because they have no breathing space in a homophobic Kenya. As long as they are gay people in Kenya who seek equal treatment from the state, gay rights can never become a non-issue.

Two Myths from Politico

The American conservative news site, Politico, has published two stories about President Obama's visit to Africa that are based more on assumptions than reality.

1. Kenya is more dangerous for Obama than Afghanistan. Really? To buttress its narrative, Politico cites the activities of Al Shabaab in Kenya, claiming that Obama has more protection in Afghanistan than in Kenya. Forget that Obama will be driving through the streets of Kenya, something he has never and will never do in Afghanistan. Even though Obama will drive through blocked streets in Nairobi, that is something he will never do in Afghanistan. In fact, Obama goes to Afghanistan only under cover of darkness and is confined only to military camps. The same will not be the case in Kenya where there is ample protection for him to drive through the Nairobi. How does this make Kenya more dangerous than Afghanistan?

2. President George Bush did more for Africa than President Barack Obama. This is a claim that is often heard in the United States. The evidence often cited is the aid money George Bush spent on fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa. While this is important work, it is difficult to say how this is more important than the entrepreneurship President Obama is cultivating among some Africans. Politico only states, without giving any evidence, that Bush's work saved many lives. How many lives it saved is hardly stated. Politico's claim that Obama is doing less for Africa than Bush is based on the American assumption that provision of aid is better than doing business in Africa. Obama however sees things differently and his view is one that is currently being argued for by many economists.
 

Donald Trump As the Public Face of Empire

Empire is arrogant. Empire is hubristic. Empire is superior. Empire always teaches its people that they are the best and all other peoples of the world are inferior. The world often turns around empire because empire is the center. Empire gives meaning to all things and all things derive their meanings because they are connected to empire. Without empire there would be nothing, literally, because everything that has existed before, and that will come after, have been inferior. That is why it is often assumed that there can only be chaos after empire.  Thus, empire has a responsibility, nay, the duty, to stave chaos from the universe. All the children of empire are taught, from kindergarten to college, to see themselves as the very center of the universe. They should be bold, aggressive, and never admit of not knowing because it is always in the nature of empire to know even when it does not know. In fact, the very fact of claiming knowledge when one does not know is the mark of knowledge. Feigning knowledge is how knowledge is achieved. Empire never backs down, whether it is right or wrong! In fact, empire can never be wrong. It can only think differently of the same thing, but always from the superior position because authentic human being is superior, as Nietzsche rightly saw. The superiority of empire is often simply stated rather than argued and it is often hyperbolized and based on caricatures of the other. In fact, empire hardly knows the other because anthropological studies are often based on the assumption of empire's superiority. From the perspective of empire, the other is often to be pitied because they are often pale imitations of authentic humanity. Empire does not study the other to know the other but only to know how they are superior to the other.

All this has been the spectacle that is Donald Trump. He is the public face of empire, manifesting all what empire has to teach its people. What The Donald is doing is that he is revealing the assumptions on which empire is built to be arrogant and inhumane. As the public face of the education that empire provides its people, he is not doing anything extra-ordinary.

While I was till in grade school in Cameroon, I studied the geography and history of Europe, America, and Asia. I knew about the Communist Revolution in China more than I knew about the liberation struggle in Cameroon. I knew about the weather of the Alps more than I knew about the weather of the village where I lived. All this because we lived on the periphery of various empires. When I came to America, I began to find out that many Americans knew little or nothing about Cameroon. They only know, without a doubt, that they are the greatest nation the world has ever seen. That is the kind of education that has built Donald Trump, the greatest human being the world has ever known. He is an empire made up of just one human being - a kind of hyperbolized empire, if you like. The man has learned his lessons well.

1300 Days of Protesting Paul Biya's 31-Year Dictatorship in Cameroon

FlourishingAfrica has been protesting the misrule of Paul Biya in Cameroon since the machinations of the last election that returned him to power. At the time of writing this post, the dictator has been out of the country for a long time, with rumors rife that he is suffering from prostrate cancer. He has been seeking medical help in Europe where he is listed as being on a private visit. His years at the helm of the state in the country has not brought the medical system to a level he could entrust with his own health, that is why he keeps spending more time in Europe for medical purposes. For most Cameroonians, however, this is not an option. Whenever they suffer from a serious ailment, the option left open for them is to pray for a miracle or die.

Even as the country  is currently fighting Boko Haram in the north of the country, with many Cameroonian soldiers losing their lives there, Paul Biya has hardly been engaged in the issue. The country apparently does not even have money to engage in the fight as citizens are being asked to donate money towards the fight. All the while, the dictator is out of the country, minding his own business in Europe. There is no good reason why he should continue to remain the head of state in Cameroon, given that he is hardly present there.

Ethiopia - World's Best Tourist Destination

Ethiopia has been designated the world's best tourist destination for 2015.

 

Is Economic Theory Racist?

Given that the social sciences as a whole developed in the context of the Enlightenment, which saw only White people as rational and other people around the world, especially Black people as emotional, some will not doubt the racist nature of the sciences of society that developed in this context. Thus it came to be that sociology and history were seen as applicable to the study of Western societies and anthropology was assigned to the "inferior" other. This is how Anthropology came to be the discipline of people who went to live in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia while sociology, political science, history, and economics were used to study Western societies. What this means is that in the social sciences, theories of society applicable to Western societies were not applicable to these "others". This non-applicability to the other is not just in the postmodern sense that knowledge should be contextual, but rather in the sense that "inferior peoples" should not be theorized about in the same way as "superior peoples". Thus, a theory that would be destructive if applied in a Western context was allowed to be applied in the context of the "other".

This is how economic theories that are not often applied in the West came to be seen as applicable in Africa, for example. This is especially so in the theories of economic development, especially manifested in theories about the usefulness of aid and austerity. The question of aid has been well debated but what is left to be said about some theories that support aid is that they are racist because they propose doing for the other what has not and will not be done for the West. They are subterfuges that do not focus on what has worked in the West but rather on what applies to the inferior other. The other can always come to economic development through other routes, routes that are often dead-enders.

A similar story can be told in terms of the call for austerity. What is applicable in the West is especially not applicable in non-Western contexts. When Cameroon began experiencing economic difficulties in the 1980s, the IMF and the World Bank proposed stringent austerity measures. The civil service was reduced, government-owned companies were privatized, banks were closed, and the currency was devalued. All this generated serious unemployment in the country and the country went into a tailspin from which it has not emerged in about thirty years. When a similar situation happened in the United States in 2007, caused by the irresponsible economic and political policies of George W. Bush, the government instead took over private companies and bailed out banks. Conservatives who would otherwise call for austerity if such a thing happened in Africa threw huge sums of money to bail out banks and to take over private businesses so as to stave off disaster.

The economy of Greece is currently in a tailspin brought about by the irresponsibility of successive Greek governments. Austerity measures have been proposed but it has since been strenuously resisted. In the process, many economists have come out of the woodwork to harp against austerity - a thing that was hardly heard when it was forced on many African countries in the 1980s. Where were these economists when austerity was being forced on many African economies?
 

Uhuru Kenyatta, Africa's President of the Year?

Some African students have recently voted Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta as Africa's president of the year "for his ability to build consensus locally and abroad." The report itself does not say what this means and how Kenyatta is the best example of this in Africa. It is, however, important to note that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, with its very clear and rigorous understanding of leadership in Africa, did not see fit to select Mr. Kenyatta as Africa's leader of the year; it chose the President of Namibia, President Hifikepunye Pohamba.