Pan-African Identity

 Henry L. Gates on PBS points out there were 50 ethnic groups in the enslaved people brought to US.

From other reading I know Africa has more ethnic diversity than the other continents; I believe much more than the other continents put together.  That means if history had worked out differently we might now be discussing 10 races, 8 of which were African and 2 of which covered the rest of the world. 

I think ethnic diversity maps to some genetic diversity, although not on a one to one basis. But the key for most discussions is what I'd call "social diversity", meaning the way one's culture/society identifies ethnic/identity groups.  For example, in the US we lump Hispanics/Latinos together, sometimes differentiating white as a separate group, but lumping in groups which are relatively unchanged since before Columbus.

We're now in the process of redefining "Orientals" as "Asians".  (Meanwhile, in Britain "Pakistanis" seem to be a separate ethnic group.)  

In the colonies and early national period enslavers knew different African ethnicities, and thought there were cultural differences (perhaps physical as well). Some were valued more than others.  We--the US--created "African-Americans", partly by the process of intermarriage among African ethnicities and mostly because that's the way we deal with diversity--we can't handle a multitude so we stereotype until we get down to a manageable number.

The Wave of the Future

NYTimes reports on refugees from Africa coming to Portland, ME.  Part of the reason for their selection of Portland is prior immigrants have settled there and say it's safe and welcoming.  This is the sort of "chain" immigration pattern which has long been a feature of American life.

When you look at the world today, the countries with the highest birth rates and youngest populations are in Africa. Afghanistan looks to be the first non-African country in the ranking, and it's 23rd.  What that means to me is that Africa will be the primary source of migrants over the next few decades.  The migrants may go to Europe and the Middle East based on geography (although I saw a discussion of the Nigerian community in China today) but a good number are likely to come to the U.S., since we already have the connections, the first links in the chain.

I wouldn't be surprised in 20 years or so the children of today's Hispanic and Asian immigrants find African immigrants to be a threat. Maybe I'll live that long.

Import Brains (Continued)

Via Marginal Revolution an article on the amazing success of Nigerian-Americans. 

Some points which occur to me:

• importing immigrants who succeed is good foreign aid--they tend to return to the country of origin and/or send remittances.
• I wonder what happens to the children.  There's research, mostly I think on Hispanic immigrants, which show the children as losing the advantages of immigrants and gain the disadvantages of American children (obesity, crime, etc.)
• such success is complicating the task of American racism in finding support for their stereotypes.
• I write all this despite having had negative feelings towards African/Caribbean immigrants in FSA some 25 years ago--there were a couple with whom I had some interactions.  It was easy to doubt their ability to contribute when they had no background in US agriculture (though looking back on it I suspect I was being unfair.)

Kenya and Space

President Trump supposedly doesn't think much of African countries.  He might be surprised, as I was, at the news Kenya has its own satellite in space.

Even more surprising, Kenya's not in the list of the top five African space programs (Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Egypt, and Algeria.

Town Folk Taking Over

My mother had her prejudices; one of which was against town or city folk.  She knew they didn't understand farming, and therefore failed to recognize that farming was fundamental in the way that town folk's work was not.

Mom would be unhappy at the trend reported in this article, at least in one African country the available agricultural land is being bought up by townies, who often are adopting modern techniques.

BTW, her father was also a townie, having worked in the Wisconsin woods and New York carpentry after immigrating from Germany, before he moved the family to upstate NY and became one of the founders of the Farm Bureau.  Oh, and my father was also a townie, having been reared in cities and only forced to the farm by lead poisoning in the paint factory he worked in after college.

Feminists--Move to Rwanda

I was surprised by this: "Post-conflict Rwanda today has the highest rate of female legislative representation in the world – 63.8 percent of its legislators are women – and has held that spot since 2003"  A scholar argues that when African countries emerge from conflict their women gain power.

Surprise: African Immigrants More Educated than Asian

In an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Journal of Blacks in higher education, African immigrants to the United States were found more likely to be college educated than any other immigrant group. African immigrants to the U.S. are also more highly educated than any other native-born ethnic group including white Americans. Some 48.9 percent of all African immigrants hold a college diploma. This is slightly more than the percentage of Asian immigrants to the U.S., nearly double the rate of native-born white Americans, and nearly four times the rate of native-born African Americans.

From here, via Chris Blattman.

The Long Life of Established Wisdom

A long life can toss up instances where the established wisdom changes rather rapidly.  Here's one:

In its issue of May 13, 2000, The Economist magazine carried a banner headline calling Africa “The Hopeless Continent” because, it proceeded to argue, of its peoples’ predisposition to bloody civil wars, corruption, civil disorder and tyrannical rulers.  It wondered if all these were traceable to an African “inherent character flaw”. In its issue of March 2^nd 2013, the same magazine labeled Africa “The hopeful Continent” and proceeded, alongside Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal to feature the theme of “Africa Rising” as East Asia had done decades earlier.  Reforms in national governance, good macro-economic management and new technocratic leadership were the reasons advanced to explain the swift transition from the extreme of hopelessness to the one of a rising Africa. 

From World Bank

A Basis for Global Optimism

I'm optimistic on the U.S.; I'm even more optimistic on the world.  Remember I grew up when colonialism was ending, and the West was becoming aware of the sad state of affairs the ebbing of imperialism was leaving behind.  (And ignoring some of the benefits.)  And through much of the first half of my adult life we flailed around, struggling with how to help the Third World, finding that many of our prescriptions didn't work as we intended.  So that's the background when I read this in a  Technology Review piece:

But by far, the technology that is likely to be most transformative in the long term is the cell phone. The growth of this technology in sub-Saharan Africa has been phenomenal. By 2007, there were more cell-phone subscriptions than people with access to sanitation. Today, there are more than 850 million subscribers across the entire continent, bringing penetration to roughly 74 percent. Phone-based technology is already helping to create digital health records, track medical supply levels, improve supply chains, and map out areas already covered by vaccination.

Number of Tractors: 1920 US Versus 2000 Africa

The World Bank has a post on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.  Now I'm going by memory, which is that Prof. Pollan in Omnivore's Dilemma wrote that the US had 254 tractors on farms in 1920.  I doubted that, and found the Census report 254,000 tractors (Pollan had missed the unit of measure in the table).  So that figure sticks in my mind, although given my advancing age it should be taken with a grain of salt. 

But that's the context in which I read this:

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the trend has been rather different. In 1961, the number of tractors in use was more than in both Asia and the Near East (at 172 000).  After that the number increased slowly to peak at 275 000 by 1990 before declining to 221 000 by 2000.

 In other words, sub-Africa had fewer tractors in 2000 than the US had in 1920.  Further, the population of Africa was about 600 million, while the population of the US was about 100 million.

History Repeats: Kenya, Cellphones and I-Cow

Been doing some reading (and a little writing) in the history of USDA, extension, etc.  The theme I see there is that USDA worked for the most literate, most progressive farmers.  That's why I'm struck by this article in CSMonitor on I-Cow in Kenya; an app helps Kenyan dairy farmers manage their herds. 

Kahumbu’s iCow may not be the latest sensation on Wall Street, but experts say it is just the latest example of an innovative high-tech entrepreneurial culture that has started to take hold in Kenya. Following in the footsteps of major commercial successes such as MPESA – a mobile-phone banking application that now rivals Western Union – other Kenyan software developers are setting up shop in Nairobi, creating high-tech solutions for an African market that has long been ignored; universities and private companies are setting up labs and business incubators; and government officials are plotting strategies to transform Kenya into a high-tech hub for the continent.

I'd like to celebrate the progress being made, but we should also have a thought for those who will be left behind in the race to the top, to modernity.

The Perils of Blogging

From Chris Blattman, who's on vacation in Vietnam:

I only realized this by accident, when I peeked into my email Inbox for one measly second (I am still on vacation, dammit) and notice a gazillion comments and pingbacks on a post I wrote three years ago about Invisible Children. In the past three days, that post received roughly as much traffic as the entire blog in 2012.

GW Bush: Lifesaver?

Any faithful readers will know I rarely say anything good of any Republican, except my parents and they're dead.  But I was struck by the good news on AIDS in the media earlier this week.

At the end of last year, there were about 34 million people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. While that is a slight rise from previous years, experts say that’s due to people surviving longer. Last year, there were 1.8 million AIDS-related deaths, down from 1.9 million in 2009.

 Now my fellow liberals associate George W. Bush with the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Depending on how you view his decisions that's true enough.  Estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq have been in the 100,000  range; that's cumulative over the years 2003-2008.

So when you compare the 1 year reduction in AIDS deaths, it's roughly equal to the deaths GW could be considered responsible for.  Clearly, though,  one should compare the declining death rate with the death rate which would have been experienced if there were no intervention.  By that measure, the effects of foreign aid over 1 year have greatly exceeded the tolls of war.

It's true enough that GW doesn't deserve sole credit for the interventions in Africa.  But under the influence of Bono he did take the lead, both in ensuring our contributions and in getting help from other countries. [Updated: here's a Bono op-ed in the Times on the gains.  I can buy everything he says, but thanking Jesse Helms is really, really, really hard to swallow.]

So maybe we should give thanks for GW?

Cotton Price Supports

Back in the day, Oxfam was waging war against US cotton farm programs on behalf of the African cotton growers (in Burkina Faso, etc.). The argument was the program encouraged US farmers to produce at lower prices, making it impossible for African growers to make a profit.  This was when the cotton price was $.55 or so a pound.

Today, according to this piece by Philip Brasher (hat tip Farm Policy) Oxfam's man in Africa is seeing possibilities for African growers:

Cotton isn't a food crop, but farmers in places such as Mali or Senegal in west Africa could do quite well if cotton prices hold up, Hazard [Oxfam representative] said in a phone interview from Dakar, Senegal. A jump in world cotton prices last year came too late to really benefit farmers as much as it could have, because they have their crop under contract by the time they plant, he said. The world price of cotton shot from 90 cents in August to $1.68 in December, according to the National Cotton Council.
Some west African farmers may switch some of their land from food production to cotton to take advantage of the prices, Hazard said.

 Elsewhere in the piece Hazard notes high food prices may force the poor to cut back on their consumption.

Two observations, after I admit I'm no economist:

• Last I knew the US cotton program wasn't significantly changed.  Matter of fact Brazil won compensation from us via the WTO. So this big turnaround for cotton means there's other forces at work, stronger forces at work, than simply bad, no-good, unwise, even evil US farm programs.
• If the high cotton prices will elicit more cotton production from African growers, so eventually might the high rice, etc. prices elicit more rice production.

How Rich Is the Richest Black Person in the World

$10 billion. (He's an Ethiopean.) Hat tip: Chris Blattman

The Importance of Bureaucracy

Via Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution, this interesting discussion of the gains in human development (i.e., education and health) in northern Africa, especially Tunisia.  (A blast from the past--I can remember when Habib Bourguiba was the very model of the modern post-colonial leader.)  A sentence from the post:

The French colonial legacy and its emphasis on building a strong public bureaucracy may also have played a role here.

Good News from Africa

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution links to two studies suggesting Africa is doing better than we expect, poverty is falling and statistics understate real improvements.

Exaggerations With Respect to African Land

The headline on this piece, "50,000,000 Acres..." seems to be unsupported. It's carried over from the post to which it refers, but nowhere do I see any supporting figures which add up to 50 mill. 6 or 7 million seems more like it.

I'm skeptical these acquisitions will be terrible. It's not clear how they're going to be farmed. My prejudices say a big farm of 1,000,000 acres is not the way to go. I'd guess the Chinese aren't going to sell off 500 acre farms to Chinese farmers, although China has some recent experience with the problems of communally owned land operated as one enterprise. Assuming the countries can figure out how to manage the enterprises and the land effectively, things could work out. There would be an investment in infrastructure, which many places in Africa lack, and in equipment, fertilizer, and pesticides which African agriculture needs.

Of course the greens would argue organic agriculture in Africa has proven its ability to out-produce the methods currently used in African agriculture. The investments by the countries mean a different model of agriculture (I assume, but maybe the Koreans and Chinese are going for the organic model ;-). We'll see what works.