Stephen W. Smith · Nodding and Winking: Françafrique · LRB 11 February 2010. ‘Sorry, but it’s no longer the way it used to be. There’s nothing more I can do for you. Under Bongo Senior, this would have been unthinkable. But Bongo Junior doesn’t have the same grip on the situation – and nor do I, nor does France. We go through the motions but we’re no longer in control.’ I received this text message on 9 August 2009 from Robert Bourgi, known in Paris as ‘the attorney of la Françafrique’.
Bourgi, the legatee of France’s notorious African networks – les réseaux, as they’re known – had tried to help me. ‘Do you really think Ali could lose the election?’ In the view of Bourgi and others, Ali’s electoral success can no longer be attributed to the powerhouse known as Françafrique. Before he was elected, Ali Bongo was seen by some in the French capital as a liability. Sarkozy did nothing of the kind.
In 1960, Senghor became the poet-president of Senegal and was happy to maintain close ties with France. The private sector has retreated in tandem with the state. Downward-accountability-to-beneficiaries-keystone-study.
What does Gaddafi's fall mean for Africa? "Kampala 'mute' as Gaddafi falls," is how the opposition paper summed up the mood of this capital the morning after. Whether they mourn or celebrate, an unmistakable sense of trauma marks the African response to the fall of Gaddafi. Both in the longevity of his rule and in his style of governance, Gaddafi may have been extreme.
But he was not exceptional. The longer they stay in power, the more African presidents seek to personalise power. Their success erodes the institutional basis of the state. The African strongmen are going the way of Nkrumah, and in extreme cases Gaddafi, not Nyerere. Whereas the fall of Mubarak and Ben Ali directed our attention to internal social forces, the fall of Gaddafi has brought a new equation to the forefront: the connection between internal opposition and external governments.
More interventions to come The conditions making for external intervention in Africa are growing, not diminishing. Africans have been complicit in this, even if unintentionally. Sahel Blog. Kenyan Pundit. India's Independent Weekly News Magazine. An Africa That Talks Back Africa is being reimagined. One of the most striking things at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) this year was the onrush of young writers from the continent, writers who want to drop the colonial hangover and tell stories of and explain their own local experiences.
Young Ghanian writer Taiye Selasi set out some of the anticipations of this new identity and endeavour in her influential 2005 essay Bye-Bye, Babbar, where she coined the term ‘Afropolitans’ to refer to this cosmo poli - tan ised breed of young people. In their JLF sess ion, titled The Afropolitans, Selasi, Teju Cole and Ben Okri discussed their writing eff - orts to cut through the prevailing romanticism and see their home afresh. Selasi is from Ghana and Nigeria and has lived all over the world, Okri was born in Nigeria and now lives in the UK, while Cole was born in the US and raised in Nigeria. ‘A rich text like Conrad’s can only be countered by good writing’ Poorva Rajaram. John Weeks Reviews: Africa’s Odious Debts (African Arguments) – By Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce.
Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, Africa’s Odious Debts: How foreign loans and capital flight bled a continent (London: Zed Books, 2011) Among the public and the media in developed countries, and not absent from the work of professional economists, is the perception that the countries of sub-Saharan Africa received large amounts of development assistance over the last three decades. This perception has been journalistically fostered by Dambisa Moyo (Dead Aid) and with more superficial respectability by former World Bank economist William Easterly (The White Man’s Burden). The message of these polemics is that “trillions” in aid dollars have been “squandered” in African” to no benefit, with the lack of benefit typically attributed to corruption in “African” governments.
This mini-industry of anti-aid polemics represents such a gross distortion of the truth that calling it propaganda is an extreme understatement. More appropriate would be ‘gross and willful distortions of the truth’. The exploitation of Africa’s land and people. By Ashahed M. Muhammadand Brian E. Muhammad | Last updated: Feb 24, 2009 - 9:58:00 AM What's your opinion on this article? Printer Friendly Page (FinalCall.com) - While images of Africa’s poverty and disease are regularly shown in western media, the corporations responsible for the continuous exploitation of the land’s mineral and human resources resulting in Africa’s dreadful condition see the world’s largest continent as the land of opportunity.
Emira Woods, director of Foreign Policy in Focus for the Washington D.C. based Institute for Policy Studies says the strategic resources coming out the African continent are the prize, the African people are the victims and multinational corporations driven by excessive greed are the culprits. “The corporations use the labor and land, the people pay the price. As an example, Ms. In a recent column, Nicole C. Africa and the Obama administration Long-time Pan-Africanist Dr. Ms. The advent of the U.S. Observers say Amb. The African Union.