A new paper published by the African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes takes a look at formal and informal leadership in Africa in light of leaders’ pivotal role in setting political agendas, distributing resources and political action. The author argues that the international perception of Africa as a continent of endemic conflict largely overshadows the significant progress made towards more stable, accountable and open political systems.

Increasingly, international donors are coordinating their aid behind sector-wide national education plans. However, too often the focus of dialogue has been between Ministries of Education and consortiums of donors, with little space for the active engagement of civil society. This report published by the Commonwealth Education Fund argues that national education plans will be effective when they are owned and supported not just by the government but by wider society.

The Regional Committee for Coordination of Rural Dwellers (CRCR) in Sikasso, in partnership with the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), has initiated a new project called Jèkafo Guèlèkan. The projects focuses on establishing connections between the Local Committees for Coordination of Farmers’ Organisations and local sections of farmers’ organisations belonging to the CRCR and the AOPP in the Sikasso area.

Short-sighted and inadequate foreign aid has worsened the plight of millions of people in Africa's parched and poverty-stricken Sahel belt, according to a report commissioned by major charities in the region. The study entitled "Beyond Any Drought", backed by charities including Oxfam and Save the Children, argues that unless aid programmes are overhauled Africa's poorest nations face harsher famines as free-market reforms deepen the roots of poverty.

Leeds University Centre for African Studies will host a conference on The State, Mining and Development in Africa from 13-14 September, 2007. Africa has a long history of mining. It remains a continent with some of the richest world reserves of minerals and its oil is earmarked by the US and other western consumers. The mining sector is recognised by many international institutions and policy groups as a vehicle for promoting growth and development in the 21st Century.

Pan Africanism arose as a philosophy to restore the humanity and dignity of the African person and indeed all humans. The concept of dignity and humanity has gone through many iterations from the period of enslavement to the period of colonialism, segregation and Jim Crow, the periods of apartheid and neo-colonialism to the current period of the HIV-AIDS pandemic when corporations have given themselves the right to patent life forms.

Sometimes, numbers speak louder than words. Six years ago, the Kenya Women Finance Trust (KWFT) was losing around US$290,000 a year. By 2006, it was posting annual profits of US$1.87 million and changing the lives of more than 100,000 poor women. By any standard, this is a remarkable turnaround. But behind the numbers lies an even more remarkable story.

The editor of the privately owned Nation magazine, Bheki Makhubu, was sued for E3.5 million [approx. US $ 500 000] by a Member of Parliament for alleged defamation of character. The MP, Marwick Khumalo, an ex journalist and also a member of the Pan African Parliament, claims to have been defamed by an article Makhubu wrote and published in the June edition of the Nation magazine.

The United Nations Security Council has applauded the resumption of talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front in Western Sahara. The next month's talks will include the stakeholders and neighbours, Algeria and Mauritania. A statement read by the Security Council President, Wang Guangya of China, the council expressed delight over the resumption of talks.

Two former Nigerian governors, Orji Kalu and Saminu Turaki, have landed in trouble over their failure honour an invitation by the officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). They waited to be arrested over indictments relating to corruption. Turaki and Kalu were governors of Jigawa and Abia states respectively.

The UN mission in Cote d’Ivoire (ONUCI) said in a June report that corruption is so widespread in the Ivorian justice system that “people have come to believe, even though fortunately it’s not always the case, that it is impossible to get a favourable decision without handing over money.” The report said bribes are also given in the form of sexual favours.

Many HIV-positive Nigerians are still losing their jobs or being denied work because of their status. Activists say a national workplace policy to protect them from stigma and discrimination, adopted over two years ago, is practically toothless. "The policy is not effective at all; most companies are only paying lip service to it," said Josephine Odikpo, Executive Director of the Centre for Rights and Development, in the port city of Lagos.

Rejection. Fear. Anger. These are some of the feelings that come to the surface when HIV-positive women talk about stigma and discrimination. "It's like being completely invisible to society," said Esther Sheehama, 24, of the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) of Namibia. Sheehama and other women living with the virus have many stories about how they were rejected by their families and communities because of their status.

Thousands of children and adults living rough on the streets of Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, face a daily struggle to eat and find a warm corner to sleep in; many blot out the reality of their situation by turning to sex and drugs. Sexual violence is also prevalent, as people living on the streets of Bujumbura are vulnerable to sexual attacks and often have nowhere to turn.

A group of about 60 Sudanese asylum seekers spent 8 July being bussed between Israel’s southern city of Beersheba and the lawns in front of the Knesset (parliament) in Jerusalem, as the authorities tried to decide where they could spend the night. The Sudanese, including some from Darfur, had illegally crossed the Egypt-Israel border in the past few days. Initially, the Beersheba municipality found lodgings for them, while others went to Rahat, a Bedouin town in the southern Negev desert.

With an estimated 200 million migrants around the world, governments must strengthen the positive impact of migration on the development of home countries by ensuring people move in a way that is safe and legal, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said. "We cannot stop this force of human nature, but we can do a great deal to build a better migration experience," Ban said on 10 July in Brussels during the opening of the first Global Forum for Migration and Development (GFMD).

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on an Ethiopian court to reject the prosecutor's demand for the death penalty for four journalists who have been convicted, along with opposition members and activists, of attempting to overthrow the government, treason and inciting violence. "We condemn this cruel and unreasonable demand by the prosecution who wants journalists sentenced to death merely for doing their job," said Gabriel Baglo, Director of the IFJ Africa office.

SaferAfrica is proud to endorse and participate in the 3rd Annual Maritime Safety and Security Africa 2007 Conference from 30 July to 2 August 2007 at the Cape Town Convention Centre, South Africa. The theme of the conference is the regional developmental perspective for promoting and executing maritime surveillance, reconnaissance, partnership, fisheries, combating crime and legislation.

Khartoum, 11 July 2007 (IRIN)- The UN and African Union are to meet key regional and international actors in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur to seek a blueprint for peace in the region.

The meeting in Libya on 15-16 July comes days after the UN warned that violence in Darfur had displaced another 160,000 people since the beginning of 2007, and increased the number of people in need of aid to 4.2 million, or nearly two-thirds of the population.

No one denies that it is only through a Union government and unity of purpose that Africa can claim its rightful stake in the world.

Barring unity, Africa would continue suffering the depredations of Western nations bent on exploiting its vast resources for self-enrichment.

But so vast are the challenges Africa has to overcome that a really radical approach is needed if the dream of a United States of Africa is to be realised, which means there is no room for placating the West in this revolutionary undertaking.

It may sound like an old problem to other countries but in Uganda where use of information and communication technologies is relatively new their arrival came with a new type of crime. The government needs to fast track the formulation of the laws that would be used to protect victims of cyber crime whose increasing rates have forced the Uganda Communication Commission (UCC) to seek intervention from the police.

Abuse of state power by Zimbabwe's state security agents, disregard of court orders by the police, harassment of lawyers, intimidation of opposition and civic society activists continued unabated in May according to the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum's monthly violence report . The Human Rights Forum records its dismay at the continued harassment and intimidation of lawyers representing civil and political rights activists who might have been arrested.

Cost of living in Nairobi slums higher than minimum taxable income

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS - RAPE JOURNAL Call for Abstracts. Abstracts and contributions must be written in English language and a style accessible to a wide audience. Please submit abstracts to [email][email protected]

All abstract submissions must:

* Specify the specific key area you would like to write on;
* Count 200-300 words;
* Include contact details: your name, institution/organisation, telephone, email and the country in which you reside/country of origin.

Deadline: Please submit no later than 11 July 2007.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), is currently seeking a committed individual to join us as Africa Research and Policy Associate (Horn, East and Central Africa), for a fixed-term, one-year position. Our program staff works both regionally and thematically. The position will be based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Africa Research and Policy Associate’s primary function will be to provide research, writing, and campaign leadership as well as programmatic and administrative support as part of our 3-person Africa Program Team.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is seeking an international human rights lawyer with a comprehensive knowledge of international human rights and humanitarian law with practical experience of human rights legal advocacy and an understanding of the history, politics and legal systems of East and Southern Africa. The ICJ seeks a Legal Officer with a well-developed network in East and Southern Africa.

Transcend Peace University announces a series of online Expert Courses, specifically designed to address middle to senior level experts and mediators, who, due to their on-field or in-country assignments, can not travel to participate in intensive training programs. The training process will be constructed basing on groups of peace practitioners from various countries, joined together for 10-12 weeks in an online community, guided and advised by experienced TRANSCEND Course Directors, internationally recognized Experts and Global Consultant in peace-building and war transitions.

The Council for American Students in International Negotiations Inc. (CASIN) is pleased to announce the annual call for papers for Eyes on the ICC, a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of the International Criminal Court. Eyes on the ICC invites high quality papers and book review submissions from various disciplines that examine issues related to the ICC. Eyes on the ICC encourages scholars and related professionals of all nationalities to submit their original work; student papers deemed to be exceptional will also be considered.

I greeted the news from a friend of Chimamanda Adichie winning the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction for Half of a Yellow Sun with ambivalence. It was more in regards to the book than the talent of the author. I must preempt the following explanation by stating how much I admire Adichie as a writer. I think without question she is one of the most gifted and refreshing authors to come out in recent years. Her first novel Purple Hibiscus took me unawares and left me with no doubt that it was a seminal piece. It was one of those books that became a yardstick by which I measured other novels and writers. Its beauty is in its simplicity. Ask me to tell you what it’s about and it’s a stretch – in short not a lot happens. Through it’s main character Kambili, it deals with very familiar topics like domestic violence, religious zealotry and hypocrisy and coming-of-age. Here lies the genius of Purple Hibiscus. In the hands of any ordinary writer the book would have been derivative but Adichie masters the art of taking age-old issues and presenting them in a refreshing, sensitive and accessible way. Not overly reliant on elaborate imagery and with a similar prosaic narrative-voice so effectively used in Chinua Achebe’s Things fall Apart (one of Adichie’s literary heroes) her first outing managed to be at once empathetic and emotive without the reader feeling they were being manipulated to react this way.

I cannot however say the same for Half of a Yellow Sun. Having held her debut in such high esteem I could not wait to get my hands on the follow-up and pre-ordered my copy. It soon became apparent to me that what made Purple Hibiscus so special was missing in the second novel. There was a sense of self-consciousness in the writing that was not apparent in her debut, as if she wanted this to be regarded as an epic piece. The young author admitted in a recent interview with BBC Africa Beyond that there was not the same sense of expectation with ‘Purple Hibiscus’, obviously because she was a new kid on the block. This self-awareness made the book seem less sincere in parts.

‘…Yellow Sun’ ticks all the boxes of what makes a controversial and sensational novel – sex, war/violence, issues of class, badass language – and yet it lacks the soul of Purple Hibiscus. The debut did not need to resort to these plot devices to be such a worthy read. If you think this is coming from a socially conservative standpoint think again. I recently discussed the book with a friend who is not prone to prudishness by any count. To my surprise he commented the book was overly reliant on graphic scenes when he said, and I paraphrase, that he doubts any one anywhere would have been so liberal sexually even in the swinging 60s, let alone a middle class family in Nigeria. This is a country that still has a very conservative outlook on many things, as I experienced on my recent trip there.

‘…Yellow Sun’ is told from multiple viewpoints but the characters in the first novel seem a lot more 3-dimensional and easy to relate to despite the fact it is told from one perspective. Now this could be down to my own predilection for character as opposed to plot-driven stories. However the majority of people I know who have read both novels, with the exception of one, found it easier to connect with ‘Purple Hibiscus’ and an altogether better book. And whilst the first novel was short and sweet and got to the point, ‘…Yellow Sun’ seemed too long in parts and much was superfluous to the novel’s needs. Ironically I think it’s Adichie’s skill as a writer that saves ‘…Yellow sun’ from being barely-readable melodrama.

Now Adichie should be commended for tackling such a sensitive topic as the Biafran war. She has certainly achieved what I believe she set out to do in raising awareness of the war especially amongst young Nigerians of her generation, like myself. As a result of reading the book I started to take an active interest in researching the causes of the war although finding texts with a non-Biafran bias has proved difficult indeed. I don’t doubt that her desire to deal with this subject has been a long time coming. In a recent interview in the Guardian Miss Adichie reflects on how she started writing about Biafra at 16. Being of the Igbo tribe of eastern Nigeria, who suffered great loss of life prior to and as a cause of the war, she felt the need to explore this dark and seldom-discussed part of the country’s history.

Nevertheless I have my own cynical view as to why she chose such a monumental and ambitious subject matter and it is the same reason I believe the Orange Prize judges decided to award her with the prize this year. It seems little do with the actual quality of writing but more to do with literary politics. Adichie was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and short listed for the UK Orange Prize for Fiction with 'Purple...’ in 2004 but lost out on the latter to another epic novel Andrea Levy's 'Small Island' which also had a good dose of sex, war and questionable language in parts. Don’t misunderstand, ‘Small Island’ is a great novel but Levy had several books to her credit by this time. Yet even as a debut novel ‘Purple…’ was in a league of its own. But it seems that for the panels judging these book awards the more sensational the novel and ambitious the topic the better and more likely it is to win. I imagine Miss Adichie felt slighted and cheated when she did not win the prize 3 years ago – and so she should. Miss Adichie wants to win awards too and it's my estimation she feels the need to play 'the game' – hence a change of tack. But surely it takes more dexterity to write a novel that takes the simple and mundane aspects of the quotidian, makes the reader care about the protagonist(s) daily struggles without it all becoming a bit too self-indulgent. The debut novel had that quality –despite it’s ‘ordinary’ subject matter.

I cannot say I am familiar with most of the other books short-listed for this year's Orange Prize except the ‘Inheritance of Loss’ by Kiran Desai, which won the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Ms Desai has undeniable skill but I found the novel less inspired than it was acclaimed to be. Once again we find the author deals with major issues such as class conflict in post-colonial India, the repercussions of colonialism, disenchantment with the American dream, romance, cultural displacement and anything else that has plagued man since the dawn of the modern age. The novel tried to deal with so much at once I was distracted and much of the sympathy and sense of engagement that I should have had for the characters didn’t have a chance to develop. But what do I know? ‘Inheritance…’ is an epic novel and the Man Booker judges duly rewarded Ms Desai for her efforts.

The same theory could be applied to Zadie Smith. One of the most prodigious and distinctive writers of the new millennium and a personal favourite, Smith’s gift of characterisation is second to none. She is also very adept at writing books, which are not big in the way of story line but make compulsive reading nonetheless. Her characters are so believable the reader could be convinced they have always known them and that they are merely a phone call away. She won the Orange Prize 2006 for ‘On Beauty’. This too is a good book – I believe Smith is incapable of writing an unengaging read – but not necessarily her best work. Yet it has a healthy dose of sensationalism, graphic scenes and yes, ticks those all-important boxes. I also think Smith’s winning of the Orange Prize last year was to compensate for her two previous books, the iconic ‘White Teeth’ and ingenious but underrated ‘Autograph Man’ being snubbed by the prestigious award. That leads to the second reason I feel Miss Adichie won this year – a consolatory gesture for what was denied her in 2004.

Of course all of this is conjecture and without a signed confession from the judges of these awards, hard to prove. But there does appear to be a pattern forming for what it takes to win these awards – and quality of work I fear is not always the paramount consideration.

There is hope that the simple but effective novel can sometimes triumph. Diana Evans was awarded none other than the Orange Prize for New Writers in 2005 for the sublime ‘26A’. Once again this is not a book so heavy on plot and more interested in exploring the diverse personalities of the two main characters, twins Bessie and Georgia, the dynamics of their relationship with each other, their family and the big wide world around them. Not to say that there are not meaty issues addressed in the book but these are discussed and driven by way of the characters and not vice versa.

I should be ecstatic that Miss Adichie is being recognised for her indisputable gift as a writer even if I do not feel as strongly about her second book as I do about ‘Purple Hibiscus’. Still it seems a phyrric victory that ‘…Yellow Sun’ is receiving so much attention compared to her, arguably, superior debut. Perhaps Richard & Judy and the like feel obligated to laud her efforts due to the topic of the Nigerian civil war and how it’s packaged in the book as oppose to the quality of writing itself. It is my hope that Miss Adichie’s third novel will see a return of the style and magic that set ‘Purple Hibiscus’ apart.

* is a trainee solicitor living in London.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The president of Sudan, Omar Al Bashir, has agreed to an initiative to tackle the problem of water shortage in northwestern Sudan. The "1,000 Wells For Darfur" initiative was agreed on during a meeting (20 June) in Khartoum between Al Bashir and the Egyptian scientist Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing at the US-based Boston University, who proposed the initiative.

The course runs from 19th May to 28th June 2008, and aims to strengthen the capacity of trainers, training organisers and educators working in or for the broadcast sector to assess training needs and design, develop and deliver effective and efficient training solutions. These training solutions will enable broadcast organisations to meet the challenges of increased competition, technological change and professional mobility and to improve the quality and appropriateness of their output.

Inspired by the market logic, the world is currently hostage to a stifling vision of democracy informed by a very narrow idea of what it is to be beautiful, healthy, successful and free. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the colossal investment that consumer capitalism has made in slimness, the greatest icon of which is Barbie. This image is made and sold aggressively around the world by global consumer and entertainment media to be consumed as the ideal to which all must aspire, if they are to attain the good life. Francis Nyamnjoh assesses the lessons Africa has learned from the implementation of Barbie democracy and examines alternatives to the market model for Africa.

The idea of writing a paper on Barbie democracy came to me from reflections on the idea of ‘The Market’ and the sort of socio-political institutions this model has tended to inspire. In neoliberal circles, The Market is packaged and presented as omnipotent, omniscient and infallible. It is said to guarantee success for those disciplined by its orthodoxies. It chastises resistance, dissidence and creative difference by a ruthless and reckless extravagance of force, propaganda and self-proliferation. By downplaying the positive dimensions of its sacred aura, The Market has demonstrated it has little tolerance for human sentiments of compassion, solidarity, sociality, conviviality, negotiation, and community, which render one vulnerable in the face of it. The Market comes across as an autocratic and demanding catalogue of insensitivities. As a God-substitute, it trains its followers to develop hearts of stone, which it prescribes to people seeking a better life and to those merely committed to staying alive. Disciples present The Market as the one best solution for the predicaments facing individuals and communities globally. They blame everything and everyone but The Market in case of falls and detours on their way to Calvary. The logic and motto are simple: in victory The Market takes credit, in failure or mitigation, The Market is not to blame. Heads or Tails, The Market always wins.

Among external factors championed in the face of The Market are values that insist on success as a collective pursuit, where achievement is celebrated when it accommodates the dregs of humanity as well. Although portrayed as a constraint by The Market, these values and the notions of success they engender are informed by ideas of personhood and agency that see the individual in the community and the community in the individual. Following this view, people cannot be considered successful individuals independent of the relationships forged with others in their communities. Such an understanding discourages the distinction between the rich and the poor, since it refuses to endorse the privatisation of talent, luck and success, even when these can be traced to particular individuals and communities. This outlook is, instead, informed by a view of humanity as simultaneously free and constrained, and therefore subject to a negotiated, interconnected and interdependent existence.

The Market thus equates success with the actions of those who discipline and punish their own humanity and that of others. The Market recognises sterile accumulation and celebrates individuals who sacrifice the sociality and humanity it perceives as standing in the way of individual self-fulfillment. Hence the slogan: there are no sentiments in business. The Market privileges statistics over people, just as it does profit, and is more comfortable with figures than with actual cases of human victims of its exploits. This makes of surveys and quantification methodologies of collusion and subservience, and ethnographies and qualifications methodologies of emancipation vis-à-vis The Market and its diktats.

The Market, in a way, is comparable to the psychoanalyst. The couch is to The Psychoanalyst what structural adjustment is to The Market. Both The Market and The Psychoanalyst are insensitive to external factors (except when it comes to apportioning blame), and are stubbornly standardised, routinised and predictable in their assumptions and prescriptions. While ready to claim success, both refuse their share of failure. To both, there is no possibility that the structures and assumptions which inform their existence and functions could be part of the problem for which their patients are seeking solutions. The formula for success and failure are to be found in the patient, exclusively. Every individual or community must look within for inspiration to overcome predicaments.

It is within this framework of the real or assumed omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence of The Market that this paper examines Barbie democracy in Africa, where states have inadequately asserted themselves vis-à-vis orthodoxies informed by The Market, despite popular and ongoing processes to harness the continent’s distinctive creativity, adaptiveness, sociality and conviviality in relationships.

Inspired by The Market logic, the world is currently hostage to a stifling vision of democracy informed by a very narrow idea of what it is to be beautiful, healthy, successful and free. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the colossal investment that consumer capitalism has made in slimness, the greatest icon of which is Barbie. This image is made and sold aggressively around the world by global consumer and entertainment media to be consumed as the ideal to which all must aspire, if they are to attain the good life. With a focus on consumption as the ultimate unifier, a supreme indicator of cultural sophistication and symbol of civilization, individuals are seen and treated as autonomous agents glued together by a selfless Market slaving away for their cultural freedom, development and enrichment as global citizens. By emphasising the ‘unregulated flow’ and ‘transnationalisation’ of the streamlined, standardised and routinised cultural products of the global media industries, The Market is able to slim all differences down into Barbie proportions. Barbie-like celebrities are recruited to endorse slimming diets, which more ordinary people are then persuaded to follow, with results that entail varying degrees of disappointment.

Its rhetoric of benevolence and munificence notwithstanding, The Market is more about closures than free flows. The agents that sustain it globally promote a largely one-way flow in consumer products that favours a privileged minority as it compounds the impoverishment of the majority. The Market and its corporate media police global material possibilities and consciousness, mostly by denying access to creativity perceived to stand in the way of profit, power and privilege. The result is a Barbie-like socio-cultural, political and economic world devoid of complexity, richness and diversity. In the light of such an impoverishment of difference, plurality is mistaken for diversity, as if an appearance of plenty could not conceal a poverty of perspectives.

Ordinary individuals and marginal communities are thus left literally at the mercy of the Barbie-like information and entertainment burgers served them in the interest of profit. There is a tendency towards convergence in outlook and content, regardless of the nationalities or cultural identities of individuals and communities at the beck and call of The Market and its global gendarmes, the corporate media. The Market and its advocates are most comfortable with passive, depoliticised, unthinking consumer zombies who guarantee profitability at the least possible cost in the name of consumer sovereignty.

Seen in terms of democracy, Barbie (slimness) is imbued with the mission of freeing the individual of relationships or the excess bulk (obesity) of responsibilities standing in the way of personal consumer success. Salvation is to be found in slimness. According to this perspective, the slimmer an individual’s burden of relationships and responsibilities, the better their life chances. Instead of encouraging the rich to get fat with responsibilities and relationships of support to the hungry, consumer capitalism systematically invests in the rich to be thin and unburdened, as it fattens the poor with unfathomable responsibilities, dependencies and a pounding sense of worthlessness and self-persecution.

This Barbie model takes the form of a dictatorship that makes a misery of ordinary lives. But Barbie-isation is at best a bazaar to which millions are drawn but few rewarded or given real choices. Just as obesity is considered an abnormality, so are relationships and sociality seen as dangerous if not watched at close range. A real or false sense of success means that people need not be obsessive about coping with deprivation. In the words of The Economist, [1] ‘People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies’ [2]. Persuading people to get thinner becomes an obsession to be supported with public-health warnings and media pressures.

In America for example, the risks notwithstanding, obesity-related stomach stapling operations are on the increase, as people desperately seek to lose weight [3]. According to Dr Trisha Macnair, the despondency of many people who are overweight ‘means that they will go to extremes to reach their goal, try wacky diets which defy common sense, pay large amounts of money for dubious “quick fix” remedies, and even turn to drugs from anonymous clinics, in the hope that somewhere there is an easy answer’[4]. It seems so easy: if only ordinary, overweight or overburdened consumers could follow the slimming menus prescribed by those who know best, they just might realise their dream body, beauty, health, comfort and freedom. In this way, relationships or ties with others are seen as fat that stands in the way of a perfect dream: something that must be burnt out of existence with health foods, slimming pills, fitness exercises, etc. The bulk and bulky are, at the end of the day, mostly disillusioned and disaffected, as the more they strive, the less the satisfaction that comes their way. Instead of learning meaningful lessons on how to bear the burdens of life, they are being schooled on how to shed the burdens of life.

If Barbie has been sold to the rest of the world as an American icon, to most Americans she remains a distant dream and a constant source of embarrassment. Obesity is the order of the day, spawning an industry that generates billions of dollars from products and services consumers hope will help them keep fat in check. According to a recent article on ‘the obesity industry’[5] , nearly one-third of adult Americans ‘are thought to be obese’, and ‘American girls today shop for clothes that are roughly two sizes bigger than those worn by their mothers’. While ‘most Americans are well aware of the risks of obesity’ and believe themselves ‘personally accountable for their weight’, and while ‘miracle slimming drugs and the latest dieting fads become best-sellers’, ‘people are not prepared to give up taste as their solution to this problem’. They refuse to translate Barbie into reality through embracing ‘more healthy lifestyles’, even if they would rush to try out new ‘easy and tasty ways to lose weight’ proposed by those seeking ‘fat profits in fat people’. Sales of healthier foods may be booming, but few are getting thinner as a result. As The Economist observes [6], ‘once people get fat, it is hard for them to get thin’. The future, far from being one of slim Americans paying tribute to Barbie in their fantasies or realities, The Economist foresees ‘a growing herd of fat people’ providing ‘lots of demand for firms supplying everything from bigger towels to bigger beds and, alas, bigger coffins’ into ‘an early grave’[7]. Everywhere, bulk seems to be winning over slimness, with global estimates rising from 200,000,000 adults in 1995 to 300,000,000 in 2003. Whether motivated by culture or by gene, Americans, like everyone else, are, to quote The Economist [8] once more, ‘constantly trying to pack away a few more calories just in case of a famine around the corner’. The same is true of communities and cultures, hence the resilience of relationships and responsibilities even amongst those individuals, communities and cultures most rigorously committed to shedding the burdens of life.

Barbie may well not be anyone’s reality after all, even as she is projected, celebrated, appropriated, and aggressively marketed as an icon. Indeed, those who most passionately pursue the Barbie ideal, quite paradoxically, never really become Barbie at the end of the day. If they don’t simply grow into a muscular Ken as global gendarme high off imperial dogma, they become sickly (as in the case of anorexia, for example) from all the sacrifices they have made, and are hardly, at a closer look, worth all the investments, torture and deprivations endured [9]. The pursuit of Barbie is at best a mirage, at worst a consumer misadventure. If Barbie epitomises consumer capitalism, obesity is to be likened to the community of ties, which individuals are under sustained pressure to break in order to realise consumer success. But since individuals, even in the worst of circumstances, are social beings above all else, shedding relationships and responsibilities is seldom an easy option, and very few succeed in being happy when their ties with others are dead and buried.

Barbie democracy in Africa

What lessons has Africa learnt from its encounters with the Barbie import labelled ‘liberal democracy’? It is commonplace to claim that liberal democracy and Africa are not good bedfellows, and how apt! Implementing liberal democracy in Africa has been like trying to force onto the body of a well-built, well-fed person, truly rich in bulk and all the cultural indicators of health Africans are familiar with, a dress made to fit the slim, de-fleshed Hollywood consumer model of a Barbie-like figure. But instead of blaming the tiny dress or its designer, the tradition has been to fault the popular body or the popular ideal of beauty for emphasising too much bulk, for parading the wrong sizes, for just not being the right thing. Not often is the experience and expertise of the designer or dressmaker questioned, nor their audacity to assume that the parochial cultural palates that inform their peculiar sense of beauty should play God in the lives of regions and cultures where different criteria of beauty obtain. This insensitivity is akin to the behaviour of a Lilliputian undertaker who would rather trim a corpse than expand their coffin to accommodate a man-mountain, or a carpenter whose only tool is a huge hammer and to whom every problem is a nail. The history of difficulty at implementing liberal democracy in Africa attests to this clash of values and attempts to ignore African cultural realities that might well have enriched and domesticated liberal democracy towards greater relevance. And this call for domestication must resist the ploy by opportunistic agents that have often hidden behind nebulous claims of African specificities to orchestrate high-handedness and intolerance.

The greatest shortcoming of liberal democracy is its exaggerated focus on the autonomous individual, as if there is anywhere in the world where people can exist outside of communities or in total absence of relationships with others. Losing the weight of community, solidarity and culture is not an easy feat even to the most dedicated disciples of the Barbie model. By investing so much rhetoric in the rights of the independent, liberal democracy is left without a convincing answer pertaining to the rights of the dependent. Although in principle liberal democracy promises rights to all and sundry as individuals, not everyone who claims political rights is likely to have them, even when these are clearly articulated in constitutions and guaranteed legally. The American democratic system for instance, which champions the Barbie model, offers some interesting examples of how Americans, assumed to be autonomous individuals by law, find themselves bargaining away their political, cultural and economic freedoms in all sorts of ways under pressure from the consumer capitalist emphasis on profit over people.

Notwithstanding the Barbie rhetoric, The American Dream does not come true for everyone who embraces it. The citizenship and consumer sovereignty promised all Americans, can in reality be afforded only in degree and by those who manage to harness the limited economic, cultural and social opportunities that translate into reality, legal and political rights or abstract notions of the autonomous individual. The rest, to get by, must negotiate themselves various levels of subjection and alienation, often with devastating costs to their humanity and that of their dependants or others. Being a rights-bearing individual ceases to be as automatic in reality as is claimed in principle. For those who succeed after hard struggle, the tendency is to monopolise opportunities, since it is, quite paradoxically, only by curbing the rights of others that advantages are best guaranteed in effect. Like with fighting obesity, the majority are those who struggle on a daily basis to fulfil themselves, with varying degrees of failure. This is an effort which, under consumer capitalism, is blamed on the individual to the extent that he or she has failed to sacrifice others through the sacrifice of history, memory, relations or community. Most acquire few advantages despite the profound alienation, inequality, violence, cultural and social malaise, psychic and emotional disorders and exploitation taking place in America today (and increasingly elsewhere) linked to consumer capitalism’s suffocating grip on human imagination and creativity. These limitations of Barbie democracy in the American context may well appear a more palatable form of subjection to some Africans by comparison, but the need to address the rights of the casualties of independent success is no less compelling in America.

Since Barbie democracy appears uncomfortable with salient relationships, community and creative diversity, Africans who subscribe to its rhetoric as leaders find themselves reduced to a Jekyll-and-Hyde democracy: tolerant in principle but muffling in practice. Such African leaders, whether in government, the opposition or civil society, are forced to keep up appearances with Barbie democracy in a context where people are clamouring for recognition and representation as cultural, religious and regional communities. The competing claims for their attention by internal interest groups and external forces explain the apparent contradictions, hypocrisy and double standards that ensue when their actions are appreciated exclusively from the standpoint of Barbie democracy.

Africa’s alternative to Barbie democracy

Despite the noted shortcomings of Barbie democracy, the quest for the missing cultural link in African democracy requires serious negotiation and flexibility, to avoid throwing the Barbie baby out with the bath water. It requires a creativity and nuance that emphasise interdependence between the individual and the community, and between the state and the various cultural configurations that dwell within it. The vision should be a democracy that guarantees not only individual rights and freedoms, but also the interests of communal and cultural solidarities, big and small.

A compelling argument can be made to the effect that the problem in Africa has been undomesticated Barbie democracy, not democracy as pursued in broader forms and possibilities. For democracy to be meaningful in the new millennium, there is a need for honesty about the limitations of the Barbie model, and for recognition of the complex realities, interconnections, and diversities that animate the lives of social actors everywhere. The direction and quality of democracy in the new millennium would depend on an open marriage or conviviality between individual aspirations and community interests, since individuals continue to belong to solidarities despite attempts at conversion by Barbie. It is a fact of life that most people are committed to primary forms of belonging, to which state and country are only secondary, and promoters of Barbie democracy ought to be more honest about this, to avoid opportunism. It is by acknowledging and providing for the reality of individuals who straddle different margins of identity and belonging, and who are willing or forced to be both ‘citizens’ and ‘subjects’, that democracy stands its greatest chance anywhere. If harvesting rights and entitlements requires the denial of rights and entitlements, the only democracy that would make sense in the new millennium is one that reconciles autonomy with dependency, citizenship with subjection. And as the most subjected continent where opportunism has blossomed, Africa should play a leading role in bringing about a democracy more in tune with the rights of dependants.

REFERENCES

This is an updated version of an earlier paper in Dutch published in Internationale Samenwerking (Publication of Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Development Cooperation), No.12, December 2003, pp.28-30.
1] December 13, 2003, p.11
2] I would extend it beyond people to include communities and solidarities of various kinds.
3]
4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/features/obesity_surgery.shtml
5] The Economist, September 27, 2003, pp.68-69
6] December 13, p.11, 2003
7] The Economist, September 27, 2003, pp.68-69; December 13, 2003, p.11.
8] December 13, p.11, 2003
9] Just by way of a quick example, the UK Daily Mail of October 22, 2003, pp.24-25, carried the confessions of five women who tried celebrity diets for six weeks, and all complained about the disturbing unseen effects on their bodies. One found the diet a nightmare that didn’t seem healthy, made her feel nauseous, and gave her stomach pains all the time. To another, her diet was horrible, tiring and difficult to follow because too prohibitive. A third branded the diet an expensive hassle, and a fourth, who was ‘incredibly tired and desperately missed tasty, easy food such as pasta and rice’, wondered if ‘anyone could live like this for long’

* Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Associate Professor and Head of Publications and Dissemination with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Email: [email][email protected], Website: www.nyamnjoh.com

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

APC-Africa-Women, in partnership with Women'sNet, invite you to submit an application to participate in a digital storytelling workshop. This workshop is aimed at women who document (as content developers, librarians, archivists, journalists, mediators, translators, information activists etc.) the lives of women affected by violence in Africa.

Deadline 19th July

For more information see the APC website at:

Last week Atlanta, Georgia hosted the first US Social Forum. Sokari Ekine provides some reflective thoughts on the gathering.

10,000 people came together last week in Atlanta to celebrate grassroots activism across the United States (US). This was the first social forum to be held in the US. That it was held in Atlanta Georgia, home of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King was not lost on many participants. On the downside, there was the overbearing presence of the Market Place; exclusion of some citizens; over-representation of the Latino community and under-representation of other immigrant communities. However as good opportunities to network and some valuable issues emerged, such and the need to be less self-congratulatory and more reflective.

The opening march was attended by about 10,000 people. It was an uplifting experience to be amongst so many mainly African American and Latino activists from across the US. The main focuses were Katrina/the Gulf Coast, immigration, sexuality and social justice. In contrast to the World Social Forum (WSF), the US forum was not hijacked by the large NGOs, though there were a fair number of smaller US based ones present. Still, the majority of participants appeared to be from truly grassroots community organisations.

Logistically the forum was spread out across various hotels as well as the main Civic Center. This made it difficult to move from one workshop to another, with only a 30 minute break allocated between each one. It also felt very strange to be discussing neoliberalism and anti-imperialism in downtown Atlanta hotels, such as the massive phallic design of the Westin, where the only food available was provided by Starbucks. Atlanta is a city dominated by Coca Cola, the headquarters of Coca Cola with its own museum round the corner from the downtown hotels. Similar to the WSF, the issue of exclusion, cost of hiring space for organisational tents (as high as US$1000), exorbitant cost of food and the excessive Forum Marketplace were all features of the USSF. To enter the Civic Center you had to pass through not one, but a group of ‘guards’ who demanded to see your pass, thus preventing local Atlanta citizens, including a large homeless population, many of whom where just round the corner, from participating. Rumour had it that there had been a discussion over searching people’s bags but fortunately this idea was abandoned.

The $15 minimum entry fee also added to the exclusion of the homeless. You had the ironic situation of activists supposedly working with the marginalised communities having to walk past the homeless everyday as if they were a group of invisible men and women. Close by there was a sign reading ‘Commercial solicitation prohibited. No direct verbal address allowed’, presumably aimed at preventing the homeless from engaging with the rest of the public.

Three notable sessions were the on Gulf Coast reconstruction in the post-Katrina era, ‘Race and Immigration – Immigration Rights’, and from the Africa Tent, ‘Zimbabwe: The Way Forward?’. The Gulf Coast panel brought the house down with reports and moving testimonies from all the activists working on the ground. The main issue was that of the ‘Right to Return’, the right to land and housing as per pre-Katrina, and the struggle against developers and forced removal of local people.

Like the Gulf Coast session, these sessions were well attended. However it was clear that the US immigration activists’ movement is very Latino-centric and even within the Latinos it is very ‘Mexican’ centric. This is something that seriously needs to be addressed, as large numbers of immigrants are being marginalised and made invisible within the movement. African Latinos from across South America, people from all parts of the Caribbean, African and Arab immigrants were very much under-represented. A number of participants felt they had no voice whatsoever. Despite their speaking out, one still left wondering whether or not there needs would be addressed.

The discussion on Zimbabwe was excellent, though very polarised between those who supported the Mugabe regime and those that felt Africans and African Americans needed to condemn Mugabe and other dictators across the continent and work towards democracy and human rights, with social movements and civil society groups taking a lead. There was an assumption amongst some people that because Mugabe was condemned by America and the West that Mugabe himself was the victim; rather than of the reality, which is that the ordinary people of Zimbabwe are the victims of Mugabe’s repression and face resultant daily economic misery.

I missed the People’s Movement Assembly but attended the closing ceremony which was basically a couple of hours of self-congratulatory speeches around the forum with very little reflection and self-critique. I spoke with many participants. There were complaints that too many of the workshops were like lectures with short question and answer sessions and not solution orientated and participatory enough. The real success of the forum was outside the workshops, and the networking that took place between groups and individuals. For many grassroots groups this was the first opportunity to meet with people from other parts of the US working on similar issues. If contact between the various movements can be maintained, then there is hope that the forum will be the beginnings of a strong grassroots opposition to mainstream America, neoliberalism, racial oppression and criminalisation of the poor and immigrant population.

Future social forums must seriously address the issue of exclusion whether through the cost of participation, or as in Nairobi and Atlanta, the physical prevention of sections of the local community being refused entry and by virtue of being economically challenged, prevented from eating, let alone having access to water. Water was being sold outside the Civic Center at the USSF for $1 for a small bottle of water – people would not have had to buy this if sufficient water barrels were available. Two friends of mine who had applied for ‘camping space’ from the list of accommodation provided by the USSF website. On arriving they were told by the ‘commune’ that they had to pay $10 each per night – an amount they could not afford. They were then in the position of having to look for alternative space to stay. Eventually they found a household that agreed for them to stay in their backyard but refused them the use of any of their facilities. Thus to use the toilet they had to sneak into the ‘commune’ and use the bathrooms in the Civic Center. This is not acceptable at a social forum whereby so called progressive peoples take advantage of their comrades by adopting the very same market principles that they claim to object to.

Despite all this, I did however feel privileged to have met many US grassroots activists working on a range of issues and from across the country. It is important to know that there are people living in the ‘belly of the beast’ that are fighting from within and are aware of the impact of that beast on the people of the global South.

* Sokari Ekine is online editor of Pambazuka News

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

FEATURES: Francis Nyamnjoh interrogates 'Barbie doll democracy'
COMMENT AND ANALYSIS:
- Marie Huchzermeyer on anti-poor legislation in KwaZulu Natal
- Stephanie Kitchen discusses Chinua Achebe and the Man Booker International Prize
- Sokari Ekine reflects on the US Social Forum
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Tajudeeen Abdul Rahameem – Another wasted opportunity at the Africa summit in Accra
LETTERS: on the removal of African agency by David Soori
BOOKS AND ARTS:
- Review of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
- Review of 'Migritude' - an oral poetic performance by Shailja Patel

WOMEN AND GENDER: Egypt bans female circumcision
CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Consolidating the peace in Congo
HUMAN RIGHTS: Ethiopian crackdown punishes civilians
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: South African slum dwellers oppose bill
REFUGEES AND FORCED MIGRATION: Funding sought for hungry refugee children
ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: Nigerian party rejects coalition
AFRICA AND CHINA: China to search for oil in Sudan
DEVELOPMENT: Africa in the new millennium
HEALTH AND HIV/Aids: Algerian imams join in fight against Aids
EDUCATION: Higher education drives Uganda’s development
LGBTI: Radio show back on South African airwaves
ENVIRONMENT: Why Uganda hates the plastic bag
LAND & LAND RIGHTS: Reducing poverty in rural Uganda
MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: Gabonese publisher jailed
NEWS FROM THE DIASPORA: African Americans celebrate Lumumba’s birthday
INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY: Rwanda leads Africa in ICT revolution
PLUS: e-newsletters and mailings lists; courses, seminars and workshops and jobs

*Pambazuka News now has a Del.icio.us page, where you can view the various websites that we visit to keep our fingers on the pulse of Africa! Visit

Issa Shivji has long been one of the most articulate critics of the destructive effects of neoliberal policies in Africa, and in particular of the ways in which they have eroded the gains of independence.

In two extensive essays in this book, he shows that the role of NGOs in Africa cannot be understood without placing them in their political and historical context. Aid, in which NGOs play a significant role, is frequently portrayed as a form of altruism, a charitable act that enables the wealthy to help the poor. As structural adjustment programmes were imposed across Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, the international financial institutions and development agencies began giving money to NGOs for programmes to minimise the more glaring inequalities perpetuated by their policies. As a result, NGOs have flourished – and played an unwitting role in consolidating the neoliberal hegemony in Africa.

If social policy is to be determined by citizens rather than the donors, argues Shivji, African NGOs must become catalysts for change rather than the catechists of aid that they are today.

Issa Shivji is one of Africa’s most radical and original thinkers and has written frequently for Pambazuka News. He is the author of several books, including the seminal Concept of Human Rights in Africa (1989) and, more recently, Let the People Speak: Tanzania down the road to neoliberalism (2006).

ISBN: 978-0-9545637-5-2. 84pp, July 2007, Oxford: Fahamu
Price £7.95

For further information and details of how to order, please see For review or inspection copies, or any additional information, please contact Stephanie Kitchen, Publications Manager, [email][email protected]

Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua's list of 35 proposed ministers was announced on Thursday and political insiders said it was a tentative break with the era of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. The portfolios were not specified, prolonging the suspense over who would get the key oil and finance jobs.