A New Book: Africa's Urban Revolution

By Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse

Zed Books, 2014 

The facts of Africa’s rapid urbanisation are startling. By 2030 African cities will have grown by more than 350 million people and over half the continent's population will be urban. Yet in the minds of policy makers, scholars and much of the general public, Africa remains a quintessentially rural place. This lack of awareness and robust analysis means it is difficult to make a policy case for a more overtly urban agenda. As a result, there is across the continent insufficient urgency directed to responding to the challenges and opportunities associated with the world’s last major wave of urbanisation. Drawing on the expertise of scholars and practitioners associated with the African Centre for Cities, and utilising a diverse array of case studies, Africa's Urban Revolution provides a comprehensive insight into the key issues - demographic, cultural, political, technical, environmental and economic - surrounding African urbanisation.


Table of Contents
1. Africa's urban revolution in context - Edgar Pieterse and Susan Parnell
2. Conflict and post-war transition in African cities - Jo Beall and Tom Goodfellow
3. Sub-Saharan African urbanisation and global environmental change - Susan Parnell and Ruwani Walawege
4. Linking Urbanisation and development in Africa's economic revival - Ivan Turok
5. Religion and social life in African cities - Carole Rakodi
6. Feeding African cities: the growing challenge of urban food insecurity - Jonathan Crush and Bruce Frayne
7. Transport pressures in urban Africa: practices, policies, perspectives - Gordon Pirie
8. Decentralisation and institutional reconfiguration in urban Africa - Warren Smit and Edgar Pieterse
9. The challenge of urban planning law reform in African cities - Stephen Berrisford
10. The education and research imperatives of urban planning professionals in Africa - James Duminy, Nancy Odendaal and Vanessa Watson
11. Filling the void: an agenda for tackling African urbanisation - Edgar Pieterse
12. Infrastructure, real economies and social transformation: assembling the components for regional urban development in Africa - AbdouMaliq Simone
13. National urbanisation and urban strategies: necessary but absent policy instruments in Africa - Susan Parnell and David Simon
14. Urbanisation as a global historical process: theory and evidence from sub-Saharan Africa - Sean Fox
Postscript: Building new knowledge and networks to foster sustainable urban development - Thomas Melin
LSE Review of Books - Reveiwed by Jonathan R. Beloff - February 7, 2014

Ben Affleck to Testify Before Congress as an Africa Expert

BY John Hudson        

Foreign Policy - FEBRUARY 20, 2014

 With a vicious spate of mass killings plaguing the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a Senate panel is calling on experts to appear before U.S. lawmakers next week. One of them is Hollywood actor and serial activist Ben Affleck, The Cable has learned.  Affleck is slated to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next Wednesday to discuss the troubled central African country of 75 million people. The Argo director has shown a keen interest in Congo in recent years through his philanthropic organization, the Eastern Congo Initiative. But not everyone thinks Affleck's resume qualifies him to testify on Capitol Hill. When the Seattle-based advisory firm working for Affleck, WilliamsWorks, tried to set up a similar event in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, Republicans did not accept, according to a Congressional aide familiar with the matter. "It was floated and turned down," said the aide.

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Manufacturing in Africa

An awakening giant If Africa’s economies are to take off, Africans will have to start making a lot more things. They may well do so

The Economist - Feb 8th 2014 | ADDIS ABABA

LESS than an hour’s drive outside Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, a farmer walks along a narrow path on a green valley floor after milking his cows. Muhammad Gettu is carrying two ten-litre cans to a local market, where he will sell them for less than half of what they would fetch at a dairy in the city. Sadly, he has no transport. A bicycle sturdy enough to survive unpaved tracks would be enough to double his revenues. At the moment none is easily available. But that may be about to change.
An affiliate of SRAM, the world’s second-largest cycle-components maker, based in Chicago, is aiming to invest in Ethiopia. Its Buffalo Bicycles look ungainly but have puncture-resistant tires, a heavy frame and a rear rack that can hold 100kg. They are designed and assembled in Africa, and a growing number of components are made there from scratch, creating more than 100 manufacturing jobs. About 150,000 Buffalo bikes are circulating on the continent, fighting puncture-prone competition from Asia.

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The Question of International Aid

 Chérie Rivers Ndaliko

Africa is a country | February 6th, 2014

In 2013, Alkebu Film Productions released a 34-minute documentary, Mabele na biso (Our Land), that profiles a community in the Isangi region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that has staunchly refused to be controlled by international aid. Within the matrix of extraordinary initiatives organized in this region, the film focuses primarily on the Mabele Community Radio, that not only offers local programming, but is powered by a generator fuelled by locally produced palm oil. Through its programs, the radio has made significant impacts in the domains of education, agricultural production, women’s rights, and health. As such the radio emerges almost as a character of its own in the film’s larger critique of international aid in Africa. Yet, while the radio is an admittedly inspiring example of community empowerment, the analysis of aid policy offered by key figures in the region is arguably the most compelling aspect of this project.
And this is precisely where things get complicated, for this is a project that both criticizes international aid and is–at least in part–funded by it. What follows is a brief reflection on this film and the ways in which the process of its creation and its potential future shed light on some larger questions of international aid. Here’s the film’s opening scene:

Read more and watch the short documentary.. ..

2014 APSA Africa Workshop CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

“Distributive Goods and Distributive Politics”
June 30 to July 11, 2014
Maputo, Mozambique

The American Political Science Association (APSA) and the Higher Institute of Public Administration (ISAP) are pleased to announce a call for applications from individuals who would like to participate in a workshop on “Distributive goods and distributive politics” in Maputo, Mozambique. The two-week workshop will be held from June 30th to July 11th 2014 at the Higher Institute of Public Administration in Maputo, Mozambique. The organizers, with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will cover all the costs of participation (including travel, lodging, meals, and materials) for up to 26 qualified applicants. This year's workshop will be conducted in English.

The workshop leaders are Anne Pitcher (University of Michigan, USA), Rod Alence (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa), Brian Min (University of Michigan, USA), Carlos Shenga (Higher Institute of Public Administration, Mozambique) and Sylvia Croese (Stellenbosch University, South Africa).

Workshop Theme
This two-week workshop will focus on the theme of distributive politics — the study of how governments allocate goods and services and how these allocations affect political outcomes. Some questions we will examine are: Why do governments offer such goods? What kinds of goods do they deliver? Do distributive strategies seek to reward supporters or win over opponents? How do such strategies vary with regime type and electoral institutions?

To understand patterns and outcomes of distributive politics, the course will combine discussion of classic and contemporary theoretical and methodological research on goods provision with hands-on statistical training in the use of R, a publicly available statistical package. Fellows will work with a range of datasets and strengthen their ability to analyze the distribution of public and private goods and their political impacts. In addition to the substantive elements of the course, students will have opportunities to share their work and to receive helpful comments on their research projects.

Follow this web link to the online Application Form. The application deadline is March 14, 2014. Follow this link to download a digital copy of this Call For Applications.pdf. 

Workshop Fellows
The workshop is targeted at university and college faculty in the social sciences residing in Africa who are in the early stages of their academic careers. APSA welcomes applications from scholars who have completed their Ph.D. as well as those who are working towards completion. Up to four advanced U.S. Ph.D. students will also be accepted. All Workshop Fellows must be actively engaged in a research project in political science or an area of inquiry related to politics. Fellows should be working on a manuscript, paper, book chapter, or article during the workshop that can be developed into an eventual publication. Preference will be given to scholars working on projects related to the theme of the workshop on distributive politics, but this is not required. All instruction will be in English and all participants should command a high level of proficiency in English. In addition, opportunities to converse informally in Portuguese will be available and Portuguese-speaking scholars are encouraged to apply.

Applications
To submit an application for participation in the workshop, first review the eligibility requirements on APSA’s Africa Workshop website and then follow this web link to the online 2014 Application Form: https://apsa.wufoo.com/forms/2014-apsa-africa-workshop-application-form/. If preferred, a copy of the Application Form in Microsoft Word can be e-mailed to you upon request. Complete applications, including all necessary supporting documents, should be sent to APSA electronically by March 14, 2014; please email all materials directly to africaworkshops@apsanet.org. The final list of selected Workshop Fellows will be announced in early April.

Applications must be submitted in English, and must include:

The completed Application Form (online at www.apsanet.org/africaworkshops).
A detailed, recent Curriculum Vitae/resume.
A 500-word statement that describes your current research plans or ideas and how it relates to the workshop theme.
The draft working paper or manuscript in progress that you propose to take with you to the workshop. This can be a work-in-progress drawn from your current research, or part of a paper, article, or chapter under development. At a minimum, this should be a 2,500-word document that includes: 1) a 150-word abstract; 2) a description of research design; 3) a one-page bibliography of literature most relevant to your paper.
Two letters of reference on official letterhead and scanned as electronic files. If you are a graduate student, one letter should be a letter of introduction from your supervising professor. If you are a researcher or faculty member, the letters can be from a former dissertation supervisor, a colleague or collaborator at your home institution or elsewhere, a university official, or an employer.
For questions, contact Andrew Stinson at africaworkshops@apsanet.org. Please do not contact the workshop leaders directly.

We may soon learn France's real role in the Rwanda genocide

In a milestone court case in Paris, unprecedented testimony could reveal the Elysée's links to the 1994 génocidaires

By Linda Melvern            

The Guardian, Wednesday 5 February 2014

The trial this week of a Rwandan genocide suspect in a Paris courtroom is a well-earned victory for the French human rights groups who lobbied so hard and so long for justice. The milestone trial signals the end of France as a safe haven for génocidaries. But more than this, the trial is likely to see intense public scrutiny of one of the great scandals of the past century – the role of France in the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi of Rwanda, which for 20 years journalists and activists have tried so hard to expose.
Pascal Simbikangwa, the defendant in Paris, is said to have been a member of an inner circle of power in Rwanda that devised genocide as a planned political campaign. Developed by Hutu ideologues, it was intended to prevent a power-sharing system of government that was to include the minority Tutsi. The genocide claimed up to a million lives.
A captain in the Rwandan gendarmerie until 1986, when he was paralysed in a car accident, Simbikangwa – a fanatic who hoped to create what was known as "a pure Hutu state" – worked for the security services in the capital Kigali. He was eventually found hiding out in the French department of Mayotte, an island group in the Indian Ocean, with 3,000 forged identity papers – more than enough for the hundreds of Rwandan fugitives still at large. He denies all the charges, and his lawyer says he is a scapegoat.

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80,000 South African Platinum Miners Strike For A Living Wage

By JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER

Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. 

The Real News - Feb. 3, 2014

In South Africa, miners have rejected a 9 percent wage increase offer from the platinum industry as their strike enters its second week. Tens of thousands of members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, or AMCU, walked off the job last week to protest harsh working conditions. They are also asking for a living wage that will double their current wages. Tensions have been high between the sides, with the media reporting several acts of violence in mining towns.  This is the largest strike in the mining sector since the Marikana strike in 2012. South Africa is the leading supplier of the world's platinum, and the strike is expected to take a toll on its economy.  Now joining us to discuss all this is Patrick Bond. Patrick is the director of the Centre for Civil Society and professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

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14 African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax For the Benefits of Slavery and Colonization

By Mawuna Remarque KOUTONIN

Silicon Africa - Jan. 28, 2014

Did you know many African countries continue to pay colonial tax to France since their independence till today!

When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the french administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which represented what they called the benefits from french colonization.
Three thousand French left the country, taking all their property and destroying anything that which could not be moved: schools, nurseries, public administration buildings were crumbled; cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments, tractors were crushed and sabotaged; horses, cows in the farms were killed, and food in warehouses were burned or poisoned.
The purpose of this outrageous act was to send a clear message to all other colonies that the consequences for rejecting France would be very high.
Slowly fear spread trough the african elite, and none after the Guinea events ever found the courage to follow the example of Sékou Touré, whose slogan was “We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery.”

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