Today’s QOTD is from Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, former Privatisation Bureau Chief, former Minister of the Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, preeminent “ruffler of feathers”, and what the men in the Presidential Palace would gleefully refer to as a ‘Yesterday’s Man’.
“So who is [Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati] referring to as yesterday’s men? Is it [Oby Ezekwesili] that left the government and went to the World Bank and made a name for herself and came back and still has a decent job? Before Segun Aganga was offered Minister of Finance, it was Oby that was offered. President Jonathan offered her the job and I am putting it out in the public for them to deny it. It was Oby that suggested Segun Aganga and another young man in Africa Development Bank. And that was how Segun Aganga became finance minister when Jonathan became acting president. And after he was elected as president, they still followed Oby to South Africa to offer her the minister of power. Does that sound like yesterday’s men? We chose not to be in this government. I can speak for myself and Oby. It’s not because of anything, but you can’t sit back and your country is being ruined by people and you don’t say anything. And when you say something, their response is to smear you.”
“Fixing the financial system doesn’t fix much. How many people are employed in the financial system compared to the number of people employed and the impact you get from the agricultural sector, manufacturing? Financial services sector cannot be the engine for growth. I have had this debate over and over again about bank workers being sacked. The banking industry is not set up to create jobs within itself; it is set up to provide capital to people who create jobs. By the time your biggest employers become the banks and the government, you have a problem. The government and the banks are supposed to build the rest of the economy.”
“Stop the theft is a campaign to raise awareness about the scale and consequences of the illegal theft of oil in the Niger Delta and to work with partners and other interested parties to propose and advocate for long term and tangible solutions. The campaign is led by Ambassador Dr Patrick Dele Cole, the former international relations advisor to President Obasanjo and an indigene of Abonnema in Rivers State which has been affected by the illegal trade for many years.”
“Think of 234Give as a tunnel. On one end are all those who want to help. On the other end are all those who need it. 234Give is the connection to link donors and fundraisers with deserving charities and needy projects. In other words, we help you make an impact!”
“The objective of this initiative is to secure a vote for each Nigerian in the Diaspora. To achieve this objective, it is my desire that every Nigerian in the Diaspora will rise up and support the initiative. It is also my desire that every Nigerian living at home will also support the initiative. Nigeria belongs to all of us and we need to build it together. This initiative does not seek any monetary contribution from you to support it. All I want is for you to register your support and get your friends and family to do the same. There’s power in numbers and the support of everyone is needed.”
“At GAPS (Grow, Advance, Produce, Succeed) Academy, we aim to empower everyone to learn, share and bridge the gaps in their knowledge and experience. Our mission is to enable everyone to teach and mentor at least someone in Africa. We are crowd sourcing the learning process! We are using collaborative technology to bridge the knowledge gap in Africa.”
“BudgIT is a creative start-up driven to retell the Nigerian budget and public data in a finer detail across every literacy span. We aim to stimulate citizens interests around public data and hence trigger discussions towards better governance.”
[originally published in Ongoing Concerns, a weekly column in NEXT newspaper, May 2011)
In one corner is John Campbell, diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria between 2004 and 2007, and now a Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
In the other corner is Jeffrey Sachs, economist, Director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and a Special Adviser to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
I have chosen to name the Campbell camp “The BRINKS” – coined from the title of Mr Campbell’s unambiguously-titled book, “Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink” (2010).
The Sachs camp I will refer to as “The BRINCS.” In a May 30 New York Times op-ed, Sachs wrote: “In practical terms, Nigeria would like to make the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — the BRINCS by the end of the decade. To those who only know Nigeria as a country that squanders its oil wealth, this ambition might seem outlandish. But for those of us who have had the chance to work with its leadership, this goal seems fully within reach.”
Weeks before Sachs’ piece (May 2), Mr Campbell wrote an op-ed piece for the same paper, titled: “Nigeria: The Morning After” (which I somehow keep misreading as “The Mourning After”).
Coming from the author of “Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink”, it is not a piece that will surprise many. When Campbell writes that “the elections have polarized Nigeria and resulted in likely underreported bloodshed in the northern parts of the country”, he unwittingly gives the impression that until April 2011, Nigeria was polarisation-free and the North was a haven of peace.
The pre-eminent weakness of Mr Campbell’s position, in my opinion, is his insistence on viewing Nigeria – and interpreting his observations – through a “predominantly Christian South versus predominantly Moslem North” frame.
I find that perspective utterly misleading, ignoring, for example, the fact that the not-insignificant south west (which includes the uber-populous Lagos) is almost evenly split between Christians and Muslims.
Mr Sachs’ perspective is refreshingly different. In the opening paragraph of his piece, titled “Nigeria’s Historic Opportunity”, he declares:
“This country of nearly 160 million people, about one in five of sub-Saharan Africa, is on to something historic. The people feel it. After a sometimes agonizing half-century since independence, Nigeria is on the verge of a takeoff.”
He goes on to list “five solid reasons for optimism” (I’m sure you could easily pick “five solid reasons for pessimism” from any Campbell article).
Perhaps aware that those comments make him liable to accusations of being overly-optimistic, Sachs adds: “Of course, Nigeria still faces very real risks. The country’s population is enormously diverse, with sharp regional and religious divisions. Violence continues to flare…”
This helps create a much more balanced and nuanced picture than Mr Campbell’s jeremiad.
Nevertheless, you can’t help thinking that perhaps Sachs is still guilty of misreading the situation in some way, even if not as grievously as Campbell.
Sachs writes: “The president’s senior adviser on the Millennium Development Goals, working with the National Assembly, has been leading a bold mechanism to transfer federal funds to state and local governments in a robust and accountable manner. All over the country, schools, clinics and water points are being built.”
While there may be no doubt about the impressive work Amina az Zubair is doing with the MDGs (she has been publicly commended by Bill Gates, and NEXT columnist Jibrin Ibrahim recently wrote a tribute in which he referred to her as “a shining star”), I’m curious about that “bold mechanism to transfer federal funds to state and local governments in a robust and accountable manner.”
And which National Assembly is Sachs referring to? The same loan-and-allowance-and-contract-loving House-of-Bankole? I’d also like to know more about those schools and clinics being built “all over the country.”
While I essentially share Sachs’ optimistic stance, I am tempted to dissociate myself from some of his pronouncements. My own optimism is, at the moment, founded less on concrete achievement than on the ordinary, yet powerful possibilities for change that a relatively fresh beginning offers. (Hope-for-the-sake-of-hope is how I described it in a recent column).
Anyway, there we have them: Sachs versus Campbell. Two influential Americans, putting forward their thoughts about Africa’s most populous country and one of the leading exporters of crude oil to theirs.
One thinks Nigeria is falling apart (and his voice is unfailingly loudest whenever signs emerge that the end is near), the other thinks Nigeria is coming together.
Let’s make one thing clear: sentiments will always be involved in the business of argument and debate. From his article we get a hint of Sachs’ closeness to Nigeria’s corridors of power, and specifically to Goodluck Jonathan.
Mr Campbell on his own part is closely associated with Jonathan-opponent Atiku Abubakar, and is a member of the board of Abubakar’s American University of Nigeria in Yola.
Perhaps that partly explains where both men are coming from.
So, back to the ring. Where do you belong? Are you a ‘BRINK’ or a ‘BRINC’? Is Nigeria coming together – or falling apart?
In 2015, which of these two Americans – Jeffrey Sachs and John Campbell – will say: “I told you so!”?
And, most important question of all, what role will President Jonathan play in the ring: Bricklayer – or Demolition Man?
Charles Robertson (@RencapMan on Twitter) is Renaissance Capital’s Global Chief Economist and Head of Macro-strategy Unit. He was in Lagos recently for Rencap’s 4th Annual 1:1 Pan-Africa Investor Conference in Lagos, from February 11 to 13, 2013. I didn’t attend the conference itself, but got a chance to meet Mr. Robertson at a cocktail that Rencap hosted on the evening of Day 1, at Avenue Suites in Victoria Island.
It was my first time meeting him – in person. We’d previously exchanged a couple of emails in the past, and engaged in Twitter debate.
So it was a pleasure to finally meet the lead author of THE FASTEST BILLION: The Story Behind Africa’s Economic Revolution, launched November 2012, and with foreword written by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy. (I’m going to be reading and reviewing it in March – watch this space).
We talked about Nigerian data, the ease of accessing it. He was impressed by the quality of statistics available online from Nigeria’s Central Bank (CBN) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). According to him it’s much better than the data he had access to when he covered Greece as an analyst in the late 1990s.
Minister Akin Adesina came up in our conversation – I consider him one of the few inspiring, optimism-sustaining faces in the Goodluck Jonathan cabinet. [In my opinion it's a tragedy that the phones-for-farmers scheme played out the way it did. My feeling is that the Minister needs to pay as much attention to his communication strategy as to his reform agenda].
We also discussed the Nigerian government’s reform programme – originating of course in Obasanjo’s 1st term as President; clearly Nigeria is in a better place today – in terms of creditworthiness and investor perception – than ever before. Robertson pointed out that the fact that international markets will today lend to Nigeria at 4% interest rates is “remarkable.”
He said something quite interesting about the “penalty of success” that tends to accompany reform programmes: that a time comes when “the people creating success are [no longer] seen as necessary to sustain it.” Food for thought, definitely!
The African Middle Class
The question I most wanted to ask Robertson about was to do with Rencap’s report on the Nigerian Middle Class. I’ve always thought it unrealistic, saccharine. Rencap’s benchmark is of course much more realistic – and Robertson made sure to point it out in his response to me – than the ones put forward by the African Development Bank’s report, which considers $2 per day disposable income as the baseline for measuring the African Middle Class.
In that report, The Middle of the Pyramid: Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa, the AfDB defines the African Middle Class as individuals with “per capita daily consumption of $2-$20 in 2005 PPP US dollars.”
The study classifies that middle-class into 3:
a ‘“floating class” with per capita consumption levels of between $2-$4 per day…’
a ‘“lower-middle” class with per capita consumption levels of $4-$10 per day…’
an ‘“uppermiddle class” with per capita consumption levels of $10-$20 per day’…
Do you, like me, find that ridiculous? A Lagos or Nairobi upper middle class surviving on $20 a day?
Rencap is more realistic, but even then, I still have issues with their assumptions. [Now, as a disclaimer, I'm not an economist, and not the most comfortable person in the presence of numbers. I did however enjoy, and if I recall correctly, excel in, secondary school Economics].
Rencap’s Middle Class report is based on a survey of only 1,004 Nigerians, in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
Now, here are some highlights of Rencap’s “findings”:
Their average monthly income is in the range NGN75,000-100,000 ($480-645, or roughly $6,000-7,000 pa).
Educating their children well is a top priority, and over half send their children abroad to complete their education.
A sizeable 76% of our sample work in the public sector; of those working in the private sector, 38% run their own businesses.
Put those two together, and you’ll be forgiven for being confused. How do you send a child abroad on an annual salary of $7,000 (less than N1.2 million per annum) – in LAGOS or ABUJA? Where’s the rest of the money coming from, o thou civil servant?
The findings above raise a lot of questions. $7,000 in salaries is Lagos is less than what a young entry-level employee in banking or telecoms or oil & gas will earn. It’s barely enough to pay for BOTH an apartment (minimum rent one year, Lagos-style, two in many cases) AND a car (which is a necessity for the Lagos middle-class, in the absence of mass transport services targeted at the middle-class). How does a middle-class male Lagosian afford accommodation, a car(s), fuel a generator, pay school fees (including at least one denominated in dollars or sterling), on N100,000 per month? Obviously we’re not getting the real picture.
Robertson acknowledged the fact that the Rencap survey is not flawless – assembling data / statistics in a country like Nigeria is a tough and thankless job, and usually happens with minimal or no support from the government bureaucracy. But it is at least is a starting point in the direction we need to be heading.
I have a couple of thoughts on the Middle Class.
1. No doubt there is a growing middle class in many African countries. The evidence is all around us. Compared to the late 1990s, when dictator Sani Abacha was in power. Civil service salaries have since risen appreciably (credit for this goes to President Obasanjo’s government), the country is awash with more money, on the back of rising oil prices, and over the last decade the explosive growth in sectors like telecommunications and entertainment (music, Nollywood) and ecommerce have helped create wealth. Nigeria is today a significant (sometimes the ‘leading’) growth market for a good number of consumer companies, from PZ Cussons to Diageo to Unilever, and for luxury brands like Hennessy and Porsche. [Robertson told me about an Economist Africa conference at which he spoke in January, in London, alongside Strive Masiyiwa, Founder and Chairman of Econet Wireless Holdings and President Diageo Africa, Nick Blazquez, on a panel focusing on the African Middle Class. There is clearly a lot of excitement about a "rising" African Middle Class and consumer spending.]
2. One of the oft-told stories about China and Brazil is one to do with how their governments have managed to lift millions of people out of poverty, into the middle class. Brazil’s happened under the watch of President Lula (2002 – 2010). I’m fascinated by these stories, and wonder why a country like Nigeria is failing to replicate that, despite the proliferation of schemes like NAPEP and PAP. (I’m assuming those were aimed at nudging people out of absolute poverty into a post-poverty-but-not-yet-middle-class class). Why is Nigeria spectacularly failing to achieve a mass uplift of its citizens into the middle-class, the way China and Brazil have done / are still doing?
Which leads me to my next point:
All the optimistic reports and the excitement aside I do not think - and I may be mistaken – Nigeria is creating a statistically-significant new cadre of middle-classers. Emphasis on statistically-significant and new. No doubt there’s a growing middle class in Nigeria, but I suspect that this growth can be attributed mainly to 2 classes of individuals:
1. Ex-members of a once-thriving middle-class that was decimated by the mismanagement, Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), and all-out military repression of the 1980s and 1990s; and who are now being readmitted into the M-club (this would include civil servants ie school-teachers, University staff, Government health professionals; and Entrepreneurs/businesspersons/service-professionals ie tailors/fashion designers, shop-owners, private-practice lawyers, accountants, architects, doctors, etc).
2. Young people who are leaving University and finding jobs in banking and telecoms and technology and construction and e-commerce and oil & gas, and earning salaries decent enough to sustain a comfortable life in Lagos: a car, an apartment, regular clubbing, summer holidays, etc. These people move from their student budgets to expenditure levels that are several multiples of the student budgets. I wish we had numbers for this class – I estimate it’ll be something in the region of the tens of thousands annually (no more than that), a negligible number placed against the size of the unemployed youth market.
These young people are not a NEW middle-class, as far as I’m concerned. They are tertiary institution graduates already set up to belong to the middle-class. The new middle-class I’m looking for – and which I fear does not exist to any appreciable extent – is the one in which people are rising – in large numbers – out of poverty into middle-class wealth without the benefit of middle-class upbringings or a tertiary education starting point. I’m thinking of examples like the following:
a. A subsistence farmer in a rural area who graduates into mechanized farming, and sees a significant rise in his income (this is very important considering that agriculture is the largest employer of labour in Nigeria).
b. A young Nigerian with limited formal education who succeeds at a vocational entrepreneurial venture — plumbing, carpentry, welding, trading (succeeds enough to rise into middle-class and have the opportunity to give his children a life far better than the one he enjoyed). I’m thinking of a street-hawker who somehow graduates into owning a proper shop in a proper market. I’m thinking for example of all the young traders in Alaba International Market who go on to gain their “freedom” after years of apprenticeship and then set up thriving businesses of their own.
I did try to explain the POV above to Mr. Robertson (he told me he came out of a working-class English background), and he seemed to agree with me.
I’d like to know what readers think of this African Middle Class concept. The AfDB report. The Rencap report. The unbridled optimism regarding the growth of an African Middle Class. Is this for real, or are there serious cognitive biases at play here? Do you agree with my argument – or have a different one?
Originally published in NEXT newspaper on September 5, 2010
NO EVIDENCE NIGERIA IS BROKE.
By Tolu Ogunlesi
In 2004, as part of a reform programme embarked upon by President Obasanjo, which included the liquidation of much of the country’s external debt, a special account – the Excess Crude Account (ECA) – was created outside constitutional provisions, for the purpose of saving all oil revenues in excess of a benchmark price set in the annual budget.
When President Obasanjo left office in 2007, the account held $20 billion. The funds stayed intact until the end of 2008. In 2009 alone, $12 billion was withdrawn. As at August this year, the account held only $460 million.
The bulk of the withdrawals have been shared amongst the three tiers of government, to make up for shortfalls in the national budget. The 2010 budget, worth 4.6 trillion naira, a 50 per cent increase on the 2009 figure, is one whose scale has alarmed analysts.
“Earlier reforms in Nigeria had helped to establish the country’s reputation for a substantial saving of its oil windfall, boosting its external creditworthiness. The 2010 budget, with the magnitude of increased spending that is envisaged, will go some way towards undoing that reputation,” Razia Khan, Standard Chartered Bank’s Regional Head of Research for Africa said in a March 2010 report.
The government’s defence is that expansionary spending is needed in the light of the global recession. “The 2010 budget is based on government’s determination to stimulate the economy out of the recent global economic crisis through targeted fiscal interventions,” Iyiola Omisore, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations announced last February.
The Excess Crude Account, into which the windfall that Ms. Khan alludes to went, is now at the centre of heated debate about the management of the country’s wealth, the bulk of which is derived from oil and gas revenues.
“The excess crude revenue has been used over the years for different reasons that hardly served the nation’s interest,” Minister of Finance Olusegun Aganga admitted in July, while canvassing for the establishment of a Sovereign Wealth Fund in line with global best practices.
In May, when it became obvious that the government had to depend on the Excess Crude Account to fund the monthly allocations to the states and local governments, the Minister of State for Finance, Remi Babalola, described Nigeria’s expenditure plans for 2010 as “unsustainable.”
“We may thus be constrained to consider amending the revenue profile of the 2010 budget or re-negotiate with all relevant stakeholders the monthly distributable amount pending improvements in the budgeted revenue profile,” Mr Babalola said.
Since then the government has asked ministries and agencies to cut their 2010 budgets by almost fifty percent. But even that has not made a significant dent on the projected expenditures. “In spite of the recent budget cuts, capital expenditure for this year still comes in at about N1.5 trillion, which is more than double what was spent last year,” Mr. Aganga told NEXT on Wednesday.
The size of the budget means that Nigeria is projected to record a budget deficit of more than 5 percent of GDP for 2010.
Quantity versus quality
Bismarck Rewane, analyst and CEO of Financial Derivatives, a Lagos-based economic research consultancy, says that a deficit is not the problem. “The strategy to get out of a recession is to have a deficit budget,” Mr. Rewane said, adding that the global recession means that most countries have to resort to deficit budgets until the economic climate improves.
He added that the real issue is not so much the “quantity of spending” as the “quality”, and that the question that should be asked is “What have we achieved with our spending?”
Echoing this view is Olufemi Awoyemi, financial analyst and Managing Director of Proshare, an investment advisory consultancy. For Mr. Awoyemi, the crucial question is: “How much is going [towards] infrastructure?”
Those arguments are in line with statements made by Mr. Aganga during his screening by the Senate. “I know there has been an increase of about 50 per cent in the budget and we are running a budget deficit of between 5-6 percent of GDP,” he told the Senate. “That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. What is more significant is that money is allocated to projects that will deliver strong social and economic returns which means that the emphasis is going to be now on implementation, making sure that the quality and efficiencies of spending are looked at strictly.”
Nigeria is not broke
Analysts say that national insolvency – as in the case of Greece – is closely tied to debt levels and the ability to meet interest payments and that Nigeria’s current debt levels do not warrant the level of alarm about its financial situation, especially bearing in mind foreign reserves of $36 billion ($5 billion less than a year ago).
Mr. Rewane insists that the issue of the management of Nigeria’s finances should not be sensationalised, and that there is no evidence that the country is broke. “I think we should be cautious about jumping to conclusions,” he said.
“Nigeria is not broke in the sense in which it is being described,” says Mr Awoyemi. “I have never heard the Minister of Finance say that Nigeria is broke.” He says the country actually deserves credit for “[doing] better than most in dealing with the global recession.”
He however highlights two major problems in the way the Nigerian economy is currently being managed: a challenge “in terms of (spending) prioritisation” and the fact that the country “does not have a budget plan that goes beyond twelve months.”
Commenting on the implications of the depletion of the Excess Crude Account, Obadiah Mailafia, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, said: “If there were to be any sudden external shock in terms of petroleum prices, on which we depend for much of our earnings, it means we’d have no cushion.” He added that the depletion of the Excess Crude Account may negatively affect the country’s credit rating.
A lengthy shopping list
The latest of the disbursements from the Excess Crude Account was $2 billion withdrawn in July and shared to the three tiers of government. Before this was the $4.8 billion withdrawal for the same purpose in March, while President Jonathan was still Acting President.
Of the almost $20 billion in withdrawals since 2007, only a quarter has gone on specific infrastructure projects: $5.34 billion withdrawn in 2009 to fund the construction of new power plants as well as a transmission and distribution system. The rest has been shared by the Federal, State and Local governments.
“A significant part of our budget is going into wasteful expenditure,” Awoyemi says. Prominent on the government’s expenditure list for 2010 are 50th anniversary celebrations, the purchase of three new jets for the presidential fleet, and the conduct of the 2011 elections. Close to $1 billion dollars will be spent on these projects alone. A salary increase for civil servants and the military and police will cost the government 267 billion naira this year. Federal legislators are also seeking doubling of their quarterly allowances. In July the Senate passed a supplementary budget worth $4.3 billion, from which the wage increase will be funded.
To meet the persistent shortfalls in distributable oil revenues the government has, apart from the Excess Crude Account, also turned to the international markets for borrowings. More than $5 billion dollars of foreign debt will be taken on this year, more than doubling the current debt level, apart from a $500 million international bond that will be launched before the end of the year.
What shall it profit a country if its musicians amass a dozen KORAs and Grammys, or its banks overrun West Africa and Wall Street, or its soccer teams monopolize FIFA’s trophies – while its citizens continue to import light-bulbs and toothpicks from China?
How truly great is a land whose roads are devoid of locally-made automobiles, because, like the ghost workers in its civil service and the invisible power plants that dot its territory, the Made-at-Home automobile remains a ghost invention; a sheaf of mildewed sketches filed away in long-forgotten frustration.
At least twice since its inception, the NLNG-funded Nigeria Prize for Science has gone un-awarded because of the low quality of entries. One year the Judges found home-made bottles of wine among the entries.
Yet, every year thousands of people bag basic and advanced degrees in the technological sciences in our universities; their diplomas certified by Professors who own two sets of notes – yellowed, dog-eared notes for their longsuffering students; and PowerPoint 2010 files for their foreign fellowships and lecture circuits.
We talk confidently of Vision 20/2020 – taking our place in the world’s top 20 economies by the year 2020 (as a replacement for the ill-fated visions of the past), and go on to make noise about owning the world’s second-largest movie industry; failing to realise that India’s status as an emerging global power depends far less on Bollywood than on Bangalore. For while culture and the arts certainly have a role to play in positioning a country in an increasingly contested global economic space; depending solely on them without making any effort to exploit our technological capacity will be akin to seeking to win a soccer game without leaving your own goal area.
Somehow we miss the fact that what will count the most for our reputation and our economy will be what we can contribute to the global(ised) production pool – in braindrain-free human talent, and in tangible, useful, technological resource. Philip Emeagwali explains it in his “Africa must produce or perish” speech: “A $100 bar of raw iron is worth $200 when forged into drinking cups in Africa, $65,000 when forged into needles in Asia, $5 million when forged into watch springs in Europe. How can this be? European intellectual capital – the collective knowledge of its people – allows a $100 raw iron bar to command a 50,000-fold increase!”
The Asians are competing head-to-head with the West in the area of innovative technology. China is busy creating and exporting new technology. We depend on them for our power generators, our standing fans, and our affordable brand-new cars. The Indians have made history with the cheapest car in the world, the “Nano”built by Tata Motors, an Indian company that in 2008 acquired from Ford two British icons: the Jaguar and Land Rover brands. Someday, very soon, the Nano will swarm our streets and, in the hands of Nigeria’s ‘let-us-buy-now-for-tomorrow-we-may-be-gone’ masses, become the mobile equivalents of ‘I better pass my neighbor’ generators.
The same Indians are busy establishing their country as the outsourcing capital of the world, unsettling the Western IT establishment. Brazil is leading the ethanol revolution and becoming a biofuel superpower – more than half of its cars now run on ethanol. Iran, Pakistan, Korea –and even Libya – are (even though controversially) trying their hands at nuclear technology. Every country that wishes to be taken seriously is busy; creating, producing, fine-tuning.
We are also busy, but waiting; for the rest to produce so we can consume. “Relax o compatriots; Importers’ call obey!” might well be the new opening line of the Nigerian national anthem. In the long wait for the ports to discharge their treasures we remember to entertain ourselves: Speeches, Slogans, Schemes and Strategies a-plenty. Unfortunately we will not wake up in 2020 to find that we have become a superpower. We will realize too late that superpowers jettison faith in the false comforts of rhetoric; and instead stay awake and at work. We will also realize that superpowers need super-leaders; visionaries who can see beyond Abuja’s next ‘allocation’.
On May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy shared, before a joint session of the United States Congress, his vision of having the United States put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” he said.
Two and half years later Kennedy was dead. But not his dream. Because, depending on the country, dreams don’t have to die when dreamers do. Ask Martin Luther King.
In July 2009 a group of people gathered in Accra, Ghana to launch an “African Grantmakers Network” – “a continent-wide network of African grant-making organizations that facilitates networking and experience-sharing among established and emerging African philanthropic institutions.”
Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, then the Executive Director of the African Women’s Development Fund (and now the First Lady of Nigeria’s Ekiti State), is quoted as saying, “The story of Africa’s development has been told many times over with great reference to the disasters but little if any to the contributions of Africans who work to create change, to shape a new historical narrative of hope, dignity, peace and prosperity to all of the continent’s citizens. The AGN is born of these efforts. It seeks to build on the rich tradition of philanthropic giving in Africa.”
It’s a new face of Africa, no doubt. The helpless, hopeless continent determined to send a strong message regarding the agency of those who call it home.
African agency
I think that somehow, the Oxfams of this world get so carried away by the salvation they bring to the helpless peoples of Africa, that they lose sight of the concept of African agency. Once you realise this you understand why Oxfam appears trapped in that irritatingly paternalistic mode of thinking. Saving Africa’s starving children (by providing food) and saving Africa’s saddening image (by providing images of epic landscapes) have this in common is this: they both rely largely on an obliteration of a sense of African agency.
And herein lies my argument: what is required for Oxfam is for it to first of all acknowledge the agency of African governments and individuals (acknowledging is the all-important prelude to employing international pressure to nudge these governments into becoming more responsible). Without this acknowledgement, the embarrassing campaigns will continue.
The idea behind that the African Grantmaking Network is obviously for Africans themselves to take charge of the do-gooding around the continent – a venture that has typically been left in the hands of outsiders. From Biafra to Ethiopia to Darfur to Congo.
Oxfam needs to hear this: the money required to ‘save’ Africa is available, right here, right now, on the continent. We only need to find innovative ways to locate that wealth, and tap into it. There are pockets of substantial African goodwill to be drilled into with the same enthusiasm with which the continents oil-wells are being drilled.
My suspicion is that African monies — whether stolen or earned legitimately – now have greater reason to stay behind on the continent and do interesting things. Unlike the days when the only viable option was the Swiss banking industry.
Afro-capitalism
Pan-African businesses are emerging in a manner that was unimaginable a decade and half ago.
Nigeria’s UBA now has branches in 19 African countries. Nigeria’s Oando Plc is now quoted on the Johannesburg and Toronto Stock Exchanges. And Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote is currently expanding operations to almost a dozen African countries. Mobile phone company Globacom has pushed out from Nigeria into Benin and Ghana, and is preparing to launch in Cote d’Ivoire.
Africa’s richest persons and biggest businesses are extending their spheres of influence beyond their home countries - South Africa invading Nigeria, Nigeria invading everywhere else. Much of that influence is of course currently commercial – business interests taking root in new markets, creating more wealth – but there’s no doubt that the philanthropic impulse is not far behind.
Three years ago Theophilus Danjuma, a retired Nigerian Army General, decided to put $100m of his money (reportedly part of the proceeds from the sale of an oil block) into a brand new charity, the TY Danjuma Foundation.
Dangote, who already spends millions of dollars annually within — and outside — Nigeria on everything from women empowerment to flood relief to polio eradication and job creation will no doubt soon start extending his corporate social responsibility to all of those countries in which he operates (if he hasn’t already).
Here’s my idea: How hard can it be to convince these billionaires, and others like them across the continent, to extend their charitable giving in a manner similar to the way their business ambitions are expanding?
This is where the Oxfams of this world could consider stepping in.
Oxfa-middleman?
Instead of focusing its energy on selling images of starving children (which are apparently supposed to be necessary for convincing Western citizens), and instead of burdening itself with the task of selling landscapes as atonement for decades of selling suffering), perhaps Oxfam might be more useful building partnerships and alliances with these African billionaires, with the aim of helping them use their money to bring change across the continent.
So, instead of obsessing itself with what Brits think of Africa, Oxfam should use its considerable clout (and there’s no doubting the fact that Oxfam’s decades of working on the ground in trouble-ridden spots gives it experience and clout which may be unavailable to local operators) to connect these businessmen with the challenges that require their wealth. My most recent job was with the British Council in Nigeria, and I know how influential British organisations can be on the continent — in terms of gaining access to the people that matter, in terms of goodwill capital.
And, come to think of it, donating to philanthropic causes in South Sudan might actually make it easier for him to get a foothold when he decides that the country needs a Dangote cement factory.
There should be no shame whatsoever in mixing capitalist and philanthropic ambitions. The West has been doing that forever, no?
So that’s my challenge to Oxfam. Forget about the images. Drop the corel-drawn pretensions. Forget about those British-public-perceptions-of-Africa that alarm you. Spare the weary Brits, thank them for all their help thus far (and I wholeheartedly acknowledge the generosity of the British public) and let them save their pennies and pounds. A struggling Britain too needs all the help it can get. The energy spent hounding Brits to donate should be spent instead sweet-talking Africa’s billionaires into building philanthropic empires. The continent desperately awaits its own Rockefellers and MacArthurs and Gates.
So, dear Oxfam, reach out to Africa’s richest men and women. Seek to build partnerships with them. Sell yourselves as the experienced-players-in-trouble-situations that you are.
Everyone will be happy. You’ll get your work done, they’ll get the satisfaction that comes from doing good with their considerable wealth. And expanding their influence across a continent that offers the considerable business opportunity everywhere they turn.
And, now that I think about it again, it is not only Africa’s billionaires who can make a difference! Late last year a friend of mine launched a crowd-funding site in Nigeria. It is based on the belief that Nigerians, like other Africans, are never too oxfamished to give generously.
This is my challenge to Oxfam: Like the African Grantmaking Network, make every effort to “build on the rich tradition of philanthropic giving in Africa.”
Oxfam, the UK charity, recently released an updated version of the Book of Lamentations. Something about how “the relentless focus on ongoing problems at the expense of a more nuanced portrait of [Africa], is obscuring the progress that is being made towards a more secure and prosperous future.”
That’s Chief Executive Barbara Stocking, as quoted by the BBC. Apparently the charity’s been doing some polling recently (in the UK), and coming up with interesting results. In one poll half of the respondents confessed that Africa conjured for them images of hunger, famine and poverty. In another poll, almost half of the 2,000 respondents thought Africa’s biggest challenge was hunger. Three out of four were suffering from ‘Africa-fatigue’ – that debilitating condition that afflicts well-meaning foreign philanthropists exposed to an endless stream of images of suffering and torment originating from the dark continent.
A distressed Oxfam has since gone ahead to launch its latest Africa campaign, in a desperate bid to shift the world’s attention from African Hunger, to African-Hunger-Backdropped-By-Stunning-African-Landscapes.
That’s, in a nutshell, the story.
It left me a tad puzzled. A w-t-f puzzlement. As in: is Oxfam for real?
Let’s even forget, for a moment, the unforgettable fact that Oxfam has probably done far more than any other organisation in propagating these images.
Let’s focus on something else that struck me about the story: the way blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of The Images.
Oxfam appears to be saying: Put All The Blame On The Images. Not the people hanging on stubbornly to those images in the face of alternative evidence.
Am I alone in thinking Oxfam’s lamentations suggest a British public that is at the mercy of what they are fed.
Helpless Brits who somehow cannot — despite all their efforts — rise beyond the bombardment of pity-evoking images of Africa,
One might as well rephrase Dame Stocking as follows:
Oh poor helpless people of Britain, all they’re being fed is harrowing, unhelpful images of Africa. We need to stop that. We need to feed them something different. We need to change their diet.
That’s the summary of the Oxfam Lamentation. It’s
In whose interest?
The whole set-up suggests that Britain is now guilty of the sort of intellectual laziness once associated (almost solely) with America (er, sorry). Clearly the surveys say far more about the British mind than they do about the African condition. Now we know, courtesy of Oxfam, that all along we’ve been depending on a bunch of wallet-opening puppets to deliver us from ourselves.
Now the puppets are growing weary, the strings fraying, the wallet-opening mechanisms aging. Now we have to refurbish the puppets, oil the creaking joints with a new, more positive type of ‘communication’. Landscapes, not Hunger!
A mindset that elevates what the British public thinks of Africa, over and above contemporary reality, and that suggests that it is in Africa’s interest for that thinking to change, is not only faulty but dangerous as well.
To put it less mildly, who — apart from Oxfam, obviously — really cares, in 2012, what the British public thinks about a continent from which they fled in varying stages of undress a half-century ago? What’s that proverb about crying more than the bereaved?
In the 21st century are people still allowed to be zombies gobbling up everything they’re fed by a collaboration of powerful media and NGOs?
I seriously doubt that it is in Africa’s interest for Brits to change their perception of Africa. Instead I think it is totally in Britain’s interests to change its perceptions of Africa. That problem, is Britain’s, and no one else’s. If the Brits insists on seeing Africa primarily through the lens of philanthropic intervention, in 2012, good for them.
Granted that those starving-children-and-dying-mothers images form a sizable part of African exports to the West. There may be little we can do about that, as long as we have a West obsessed with delivering Africa from itself. But what about the the tens of thousands of kwashiorkor-free, English-speaking, pocket-money-receiving African students who flock to the UK annually, to study (with a good number actually returning, to continue with the lives they left behind in Lagos and Nairobi and Accra and Freetown and Johannesburg etc).
How the British public fails to permit these alternative images to displace some of the “old stereotypes” (quoting Dame Stocking) should alarm many right-thinking people, and perhaps inspire an industry of academic theses on national delusions and epidemics of ostrich-in-sand-syndromes.
If those flesh-and-blood representations of contemporary Africa somehow don’t succeed in serving as a useful counterbalance to the stereotypes, then nothing will.
“We want to make sure people have a really better balanced picture of what’s happening in Africa. Of course we have to show what the reality is in the situations in those countries. But we also need to show the other places where things are actually changing, where things are different,” Dame Stocking says.
I wish her and Oxfam the very best. Must be awful to have to take on that job of saving people from self-inflicted ignorance. In an age in which Google, Twitter and the news media lie at most fingertips, delivering, alongside stories of African suffering, narratives of determined recovery from tragedy and technology-driven change and emboldened youth and rising political awareness and growing intolerance for tyranny – is there still room for getting way with blaming with fixating on photos of begging bowls and the oxfamished children attached to them?
It’s important that the Oxfams of this world do not allow themselves to get overly caught up in the myth of their impact. In the larger scheme of things, perhaps they’ve been overestimating their messianic abilities. Consider this: In his posthumously published collection of essays pan-Africanist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem says, of Nigeria’s 2006 debt relief deal: “What kind of success is debt relief that sees Nigeria paying back over three billion dollars to Britain alone, a figure more than the total aid budget of Britain in the same year?”
I’m also somewhat surprised we’re still having this ‘African aid’ argument at the end of 2012, after the eloquent arguments of books like Dead Aidand The Fastest Billion. And after the Economist already publicly regretted its silliness.
Shame.
Is Oxfam stuck on a planet that no longer exists?
Oxfam Capital, anyone?
*
Watch out for Part 2 of this piece, focusing on how Oxfam can shift its focus from cajoling donation-weary Westerners and tap into African wealth to fund its Africa-transformation drive (not kidding).
Forget all evidence and gossip to the contrary; this present Government loves Nuhu Ribadu! And contrary to reports that they want to “finish” him, I am pleased to let you know that they will do no such thing!
All that the Yar’Adua administration was interested in (and which they have succeeded in doing) was redeploying Mallam Ribadu from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (and by extension, the Nigeria Police Force) to the newly-created National Distraction Commission (NDC), where they have since found him immensely useful as a ‘Brand Ambassador.’
This Commission is charged with (according to the bill that created it) “creating, regulating, reinforcing and institutionalizing significant National Distractions with a view to ensuring that citizens and the mass media are kept occupied to such an extent that they are left with no time or energy to ask relevant questions about the future of the country.”
The Government created this Commission in 2008, when it realized that the Obama Season would not last forever.
I know you’re now thinking: What the hell does Obama have to do with a newly-created Nigerian government parastatal?
Simples. As long as Obama remained a ‘leading contender’ for the most powerful office in the world, the Nigerian Government did not need to unveil a National Distraction Commission. No! All through 2008, as Bro Barack ‘inspired’ his way towards the White House, people the world over forgot their problems. Hunger and AIDS and Global Warming all took the back seat. Nigerians, ever in need of reasons to jollificate, organized Obama-themed parties. They stayed glued to CNN and BBC, mesmerized by Obamagic. In their vicarious identification with America they consigned Yar’Adua to the dustbin of irrelevance. Good riddance, eh? They stopped allowing themselves to be disappointed by him. They unhitched their expectations from a green-and-white babanriga and instead affixed them to a purplish-blue designer tie.
Was Yar’Adua happy? Of course he was. He no longer had to carry the burden of his people’s foolish, unrealistic, unfair, nonsense expectations. He could disappear for three weeks confident that only a few people would miss him, because the bulk of his subjects had relocated to a virtual estate somewhere in suburban Obamaland, free from the terrorism of PHCN and armed robbers.
Yar’Adua could add PLC to Nigeria’s name for all Nigerians, sorry, Naimericans, cared.
But, as they say, whatever goes up must come down. It dawned on the Nigerian Government that all those millions of virtual visas that Obama had issued to Nigerians earlier in the year contained an expiry date. November 5, 2008.
They realized they would need new ‘Weapons of Mass Distraction’. And in a fit of proactive and creative thinking the (in)famous kitchen cabinet decided that a new parastatal, devoted solely to this all important task, was the answer.
Yar’Adua’s government is one that understands the importance of ‘Distraction’. Which is why it is Number 4 on the 7-point agenda, behind Abdication, Banality and Confusion (in that order).
Ergo the National Distraction Commission. The commission has since been busy. Its first official action was to unveil Nuhu Ribadu as “The Face of Distraction 2009”. The Mallam has since gone on to grace the agency’s many billboards and print and news media advertisements.
And Nigerians are now busy talking. Ribadu this, Ribadu that. Why shouldn’t they talk, when the NDC is flooding the streets with original copies of its bestselling ‘Ribadu’ action movies – “No Induction”, shot in Kuru; “The Dismissal” and “No Going Back” shot in Abuja. And we hear more are currently in production. (“The Handcuff”?)
The months ahead are going to get even more interesting. If past performance is any indicator of the future, our government is cooking exciting surprises.
Don’t say I revealed this to you: I hear that if the NDC had had its way, Prof Dora Akunyili would not have been appointed Minister of Information and Communications. Their reason: “she was not controversial enough”. In other words, her appointment would not generate enough “opinions and counter-opinions necessary for the purposes of grand distraction” across the country.
Their recommendation?
Igwe Dapo Oyebanjo. Also known (by a few people) as D’Banj.
Brilliant stuff! Just imagine how cool it’d have been, to have Government press releases issued as hit singles. To enter Swe Bar and find a band of half-tipsy upwardly mobile young men and women dancing yahoozee to the lyrics of the 2009 budget.
To watch the NTA network news on a Wednesday and see D’Banj emerge from the Executive Council Chambers, harmonica in hand, and declare: “My name is D’Banj. My Jamaican friends call me Ski’banj. The President calls me ‘Minister Banj!’”
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