african politics and policy · 2019. 12. 8. · another example is the [8], chale wote street art...
TRANSCRIPT
Editorial
For the folks of African Politics and Policy, 2017 was a very
good year: we have made thousands of posts, a dozen APP
newsletters, several newsletters of cultural news, hundreds of
original articles, many original interviews with some emerging
African leaders.
We have reached thousands of readers from hundred of coun-
tries. At the beginning of 2017 we had readers in 142 coun-
tries, while now we are read in 175 countries. In the past 12
months we had readers from 166 countries.
We were able to appeal to readers from a growing number of
countries and to a growing number of readers. The USA is our
fastest growing market: we have nearly tripled our average
number of daily readers from the USA and the USA was AP-
P’s biggest market in the past 12 months.
While in the first two years of APP, Nigeria, Kenya and
South Africa had been our biggest African markets, in the
course of the past 12 months Tanzania became our biggest
and fastest growing African market.
We have also been able to increase the number of readers
from Asia and Latin America, where we have enjoyed an un-
precedented success.
More articles, more newsletters, more readers from more
countries and of course more contributors. There is no doubt
about the fact that the success that APP has enjoyed in the course of 2017 is due primarily to its
growing, very committed contributors, from Ivory Coast, the Gambia, Togo, Nigeria, Tanzania,
Zimbabwe and South Africa. They have contributed to diversifying the content of APP, to in-
creasing the quality of our original articles, to appealing to wider and more diverse readership.
As Frank Sinatra once sang, it was a very good year. It was good for us, it was good for APP, and
it was pretty good for Africa as well.
We hope that 2018 is also going to be a very good year-for us, for APP, for our
readers, and above all for Africa.
Riccardo PELIZZO
This issue:
Editorial P.1 Politics is finding a reason P.2
Let’s make things clear P.3 Interesting article P.3
Art&culture and cities P.4 How to boost tourism P. 6
McKinsey’s report P. 7 Congresses and conventions P. 8
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, the
leading international contemporary art
fair, has announced 17 galleries participat-
ing in its inaugural Marrakech edition, tak-
ing place on 24-25 February 2018.
Six galleries are from Africa: Art Twenty
One (Nigeria), Galerie Cécile Fakhoury
(Côte d’Ivoire), LouiSimone Guirandou
Gallery (Côte d’Ivoire), L’Atelier 21
(Morocco), Loft Art Gallery (Morocco) and
VOICE Gallery (Morocco).
Exhibitors
Announced
African Politics and Policy
Newsletter n.33 Christmas Issue
Whenever an organization becomes dysfunctional
people immediately say that its dysfunctionalities
are just politics.
Whenever people are asked to describe politics, peo-
ple generally say betrayal, lies, backstabbing, im-
morality, corruption…
For some political theorists from the polemological
school, such as Julien Freund, politics is war, poli-
tics is conflict –a point that they support by saying
that politics has the same root of polemos, which, in
ancient Greek, means war.
For Carl Schmitt, the ontological opposition be-
tween friend and enemy is the fundamental catego-
ry of the political.
For Marx, politics is class struggle and class struggle
is politics.
Democratic politics is implicitly conflictual. It is
said to have replaced bullets with ballots. But it is
not said to have neutralized conflict.
Conflict is implicit in Rokkan and Lipset’s treat-
ment of cleavages and cleavage structure.
Conflict, like Derrida’s monster, seems to be lurking
everywhere.
But, one may add, this understanding of politics as
conflict is only one way to understand politics.
Politics is also finding a reason to be, to stay and to
remain together.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan after
two, long, devastating conflicts. It gained independ-
ence and immediately found itself trapped in a new,
bloody conflict.
There was some point some talk about breaking
South Sudan into smaller and more homogeneous
state entities on the assumption that homogeneity
will prevent conflict. But that’s clearly not true.
The conflict between Dinka’s sub-clan in Western
Lakes makes it clear that if South Sudanese people
do not manage to find a reason to be/stay/remain
together, no state entity, however small or homo-
geneous it may be, will be able to secure peace.
Nyerere knew it. We know it and it be good if the
South Sudanese people embraced this simple truth
too.
More importantly we need this second notion of
politics to prevail on the notion of politics as con-
flict. Otherwise, the South Sudanese crisis will nev-
er end.
By Riccardo PELIZZO
Politics is Finding a Reason
In times of confusion, it’s at time necessary to make
things clear. So let’s make things clear.
This article by Philip Roessler argues that the AU
not have allowed to coup in Zimbabwe to take place
because the AU is expected to have “zero tolerance
for unconstitutional changes of government ”
An unconstitutional change of government occurs
when a democratically elected government, that is a
government chosen by the people in free and fair
elections, is removed from power. When this hap-
pens the constitution is breached and the change of
government (and the change of regime) is unconsti-
tutional.
Given the nature of Mugabe’s rule, the unfairness of
the electoral process, the low level of good govern-
ance, it is not entirely clear whether and to what
extent the Mugabe administration could be regard-
ed as an example of ‘democratically elected govern-
ment…chosen by the people in free and fair elec-
tions’.
If the coup breached something, it breached a
breach in the constitution. Hence the government
change should be regarded not, as Roessler incor-
rectly believes as change against the constitution,
but as a change outside the constitution. For both
the status quo ante and the new regime were outside
the constitutional dispositions. And while the AU
has to sanction unconstitutional changes of govern-
ment, it is not clear whether its is mandated to sanc-
tion extra-constitutional changes.
So the criticisms against are misdirected and mis-
leading.
It is an interesting article [1] that not only ar-
gues that Africa is at the Crossroads, but that
explains Africa’s recent developmental success on
the basis of commodity boom, aid and so on.
This analysis is in many ways very similar to
how we have analyzed Africa’s success. But it
departs from our analysis in significant way.
This article argues that Africa’s economic success
depends on industrializing in an environmentally
friendly and inclusive way.
Great.
But migration, climate change, and population
growth are not the only challenges for Africa.
Africa is also challenged by epidemics, the trans-
formation of the world system, the amount of
wealth that International Organizations can
commit to development and, last but not least,
investments.
In factm without investments, without foreign
direct investments, there is no industrialization,
there is not growth, and there is no inclusive
growth.
Hence, Africa’s first priority is to remain and/or
become increasingly more appealing for inves-
tors.
This is the real lesson that African leaders should
learn.
References:
[1] Li Yong (2017). “Africa’s Must-Do Decade”, AllAfrica, 15
December, http://allafrica.com/stories/201712150554.html
By Riccardo PELIZZO
Let’s Make Things Clear Interesting Article
By Riccardo PELIZZO
The great cities of the world have an interest peculiarly
their own. They mark the progress of mankind in arts,
commerce, and civilization, and they form a sort of in-
dex to the rise and fall of national greatness. In exam-
ining their condition in different epochs of history, we
learn lessons of wisdom and experience, and pass over
a field of observation replete with subjects of study and
reflection.
John Frost, “Introduction” in Great Cities of the
World (Auburn: Alden, Beardsley & Co, 1852).
Taking into account the tremendous increase of ur-
ban population in Africa – 200 million in 2000, 360
million in 2015 and expected 900 million in 2050[1],
it is evident that sustainable development of the
cities is becoming one of the vital issues for Africa.
One of the popular concepts in the sustainable ur-
ban development now is the ‘creative city’ pro-
gramme. African governments in partnership with
international organisations are investing in design-
ing and implementing urban development policies
with a focus on the arts, culture and creativity.
Just to name few examples: five cities – Kinshasa
(DRC), Lubumbashi and Brazzaville (Congo), Da-
kar (Senegal) and Cape Town (South Africa), have
joined recently the UNESCO Creative City Network
[2]; this year Arterial Network has launched African
Creative Cities programme in Harare (Zimbabwe),
Pointe-Noire (Congo-Brazzaville), Victoria Mahé
(Seychelles) and Nouakchott (Mauritania) [3]. In
this light, it is very interesting to see what actually
culture can offer.
Urban development policy is critically intertwined
with cultural heritage policy that traditionally re-
ferred to the discovery, protection, classification,
preservation and promotion of the past, primarily
monumental structures. These days, however, cul-
tural heritage policy is broadened to the extent to
discover, protect, classify, preserve and promote
contemporary heritage, or community’s living ex-
perience.
If well-developed, cultural heritage policy not only
glorifies the beauty and achievements of the past,
not only gives to citizens sense of common history,
sense of community, plays some educational role,
but moreover, performs its nowadays essential new
function: it creates jobs, favours economic growth
and sustainable urban development, contributes to
city’s tourist attractiveness and engages citizens
into the dialogue and informal practices of urban
cultural governance.
In other words, as was stated by Mbaye and Di-
nardi (2017), there is an idea to create a ‘cultural
polis’ where not only cultural and creative prod-
ucts used for boosting tourism and rebranding,
but, moreover, which “emphasizes the subjects of
transformative processes and integrates communi-
ties in the conception and production of arts and
culture for the wellbeing of citizens”[4].
In Africa, there are several success stories that
demonstrate how powerful the culture that gets
endogenous local support is in urban regeneration.
One of the most discussed examples is the city of
Segou in Mali, also known as the capital of the
Bambara kingdom. With approximately 65% pov-
erty rate against 49% nationwide, Segou is rapidly
changing its face thanks to an innovative entrepre-
neurial model for culture-based urban regenera-
tion. The urban cultural policy is built around the
Festival sur le Niger[5] launched in 2005, which
“unlike the internationally famous photo biennial
in Bamako, which many Malians consider to be an
event for the elite, is a true folk
festival [that] exceptionally and
enthusiastically greeted by the
audience”[6].
By Kristina BEKENOVA
Art&Culture and the Cities: Africa in Focus
According to the
UNESCO report,
“the festival has been
a major catalyst for
the local economy
and has structured
the arts and crafts and agricultural sectors”: around
30,000 visitors per year, 150 local enterprises in-
volved, contributing to 140 direct and 2,000 indirect
jobs, 2 cultural centers created – the Kore Cultural
Centre (to train cultural professions) and the Ndo-
mo Centre (to produce traditional Bogolan weaving
and targeting unemployed youth)[7].
Another example is the [8], Chale Wote Street Art
Festival in James Town neighborhood of Accra,
Ghana, launched in 2011. The neighborhood that
was always before categorized as slum, now is inter-
nationally known platform with wide cultural prac-
tices and whose cultural heritage and artistic poten-
tial from year to year attract an increasing number
of visitors – 20,000 people in 2015 and 30,000 in
2016.
Third example where festival plays a crucial factor
is annul Amani Festival in Goma, the Democratic
Republic of Congo. As Belamu Paluku, the organiz-
er of the festival, noticed in his interview
with African Politics and Policy, this event brings
33,000 visitors, involves 60 NGOs and local associa-
tions, 600 volunteers from and out of the city[9].
And the fourth example that also shows the im-
portance of social movements in re-creating the im-
age of the city and engaging the audience into the
dialogue is #AnaTaban campaign in Juba, South
Sudan. However, in these two last examples I
should mention that Amani Festival as well AnaTa-
ban are the large scale events where the topic is of
urgent concern of political stability, peace and rec-
onciliation, as their names indicate – ‘Amani’ means
‘peace’ in Kiswahili, and ‘Ana Taban’ means ‘I’m
tired’ in Juba Arabic. The Festival as well as vari-
ous artistic activities organized within #AnaTaban
campaign put art in core of promoting and achiev-
ing peace, and of educating youth/citizens to seek
own solutions for the problems.
So, all these four examples of the festivals that to
some extent are iconic symbols for cities’ cultural
life are also emblematic in some other respects.
First of all, the festivals are the community pro-
jects launched on the basis of do-it-yourself princi-
ple. Second, the creation of job opportunities, the
reconfiguration of public places, the reconstruction
of the city (and country) image, the cultivation of
the sense of community and personal responsibility
are achieving by relying on and nurturing arts and
culture, by showing community’s cultural tangible
and intangible heritage, its living experience, by
creating a new urban cultural narrative, by giving
an opportunity to everybody to express them-
selves.
Of course, without data I cannot evaluate the ef-
fectiveness or success of these festivals for the cities
in terms of, for example, created average per capita
income of city residents, average expenditures of
visitors, but if measuring the effectiveness with
other indicators, certainly I can say that the festi-
vals are rooted in local needs, involve community
in the programme development and implementa-
tion, and created a continuous dialogue between
various-level organisations involved and the city
residents. Thus, the modern understanding of the
city as place of transit was overcome and trans-
formed into a place where cultural memory was
created together.
References:
[1] UNESCO (2015). Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Ur-
ban Development, p. 32
[2] UNESCO. Creative Cities Network, https://en.unesco.org/
creative-cities/home
[3] Arterial Network (2017). “Creative Cities| Programme Launch
2017”, http://www.arterialnetwork.org/article/
launch_creative_cities
[4] Mbaye, J. & Dinardi, C. (2017), “Ins and outs of the cultural
polis: Informality, culture and governance in the global South”,
Urban Studies [Forthcoming], http://research.gold.ac.uk/20042/1/
PDF_Proof.PDF, p. 6
[5] http://www.festivalsegou.org/
[6] http://www.powerofculture.nl/en/current/2009/february/festival-
niger
[7] UNESCO report, p. 36
[8] http://accradotaltradio.com/chale-wote-
street-art-festival/
[9] http://www.africanpoliticsandpolicy.com/?
p=4596
According to the World Bank in 1995 there were
196 million international tourism arrivals in the Eu-
ro area, while only 13 million international tourism
arrivals in Sub-Saharan Africa.
By 2015, the number of international tourism arri-
vals had reached 351.2 million in the Euro area and
36.8 million in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The number of tourism arrivals in the African conti-
nent has nearly tripled in 20 years and yet it is a
small fraction of the number of tourists arriving in
Europe.
This is obviously a major problem for Africa. Tour-
ism could create employment and wealth, could
stimulate and sustain economic growth and be one
of the drivers of socio-economic development in the
continent.
But tourism has to grow. And Africa does not have
to become more beautiful or more diverse or more
rich to attract more tourists. It has to become a bit
safer and, more importantly, it has to become more
reachable.
As the press mentioned recently bad flight connec-
tivity and strict visa rules deter tourists. They dis-
courage tourists.
Tanzania with its strict visa rules loses a lot of tour-
ists.
According to the data from the Ministry of Natural
Resources and Tourism, Tourism division, the num-
ber of international tourist arrivals from Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Djibuti, Madagascar, Zambia, Cameroon,
Gabon, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Maurita-
nia, Senegal, Equatorial Guinea, from several Carib-
bean countries (Antigua, Bahamas, Dominica, Ja-
maica, other Caribbean), Costa Rica, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Colombia,
Ecuador, South Korea, Brunei and form several
Eastern European and Central Asian countries has
decline.
In some cases the decline was massive.
In 2016 Tanzania received only 2 per cent of the
Kazakhstani tourists it had attracted in 2012, it
attracted slightly less than 2 per cent (1.96) of the
Gabonese tourists, 1.65 per cent of the Nicaraguan
tourists who had come in 2012. The most shocking
decline concerned the tourists from Brunei: in 2016
only Tanzania attracted 0.2 (zero point two!) per
cent of the number of tourists who went to Tanza-
nia in 2012.
There are of course markets that remained stable
and some from which Tanzania was able to attract
more tourists, but if it had managed not to lose so
many tourists from so many countries, the tourism
industry would have experienced a stronger
growth, it’d have created more wealth and employ-
ment and would have made a greater contribution
to the country’s socio-economic development.
Similar conclusions hold for other countries in Sub-
Saharan Africa and policy makers, so called lead-
ers, and high ranking officials should perhaps elim-
inate an obstacle to development that they have
created.
By Riccardo PELIZZO
How to Boost Tourism
McKinsey & Company believes that Africa is rising,
that its combined GDP will reach 2.6 trillion by
2020, that growth has become more sustainable,
that governments have become more stable, that
wealth is concentrated in a few hands and that Côte
d’Ivoire, Benin, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal and To-
go are the most appealing countries for investors.
Some of these claims are correct. There is no doubt
that wealth has been growing but that it has be-
come increasingly concentrated in a few hands—as
we have previously and repeatedly reported.
It is also correct to say that stability is an im-
portant pre-requisite for growth.
It is such less clear whether African governments
have become more stable, whether political stabil-
ity in the continent has increased and will contin-
ue, and it is also hard to believe that four of the 6
most appealing countries for investors are in West
Africa—especially if one recalls that earlier this
year many analysts had predicted that East Afri-
can economies had outperformed and would con-
tinue to outperform pretty much anybody else in
the continent. And that some East African coun-
tries, such as Mauritius, would continue to outper-
By Riccardo PELIZZO
Some observations on a McKinsey’s report
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Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, USA, Uzbekistan,
Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, Zimbabwe
The last report issued by the International Con-
gress and Conventions Association (ICCA) noted
that the number of congresses and conventions
has literally skyrocketed in the course of the
past decade. In 2006 there were 6000 association
meetings, in 2016 there were 12212.
The cities that held the highest number of meet-
ings were Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin and
London. SIngaopre is sixth, Prague is 11th,
Rome is in 20th position, while Milan is 43rd–
which is a bit worse than Cape Town which
landed in 39th position.
The countries that held the highest number of
such meetings were the USA, Germany, the
UK, France and Spain. Italy was sixth, Singa-
pore was 28th.
What about Africa? Africa did well in some re-
spects, less so in others.
For example, 16 African countries are among
the top 100 countries in the global ranking (that
captures the number of meetings per country),
but except for South Africa, that hosted 125
meetings, so only 26 fewer meetings that Singa-
pore, all the other countries hosted only a little
more than a handful of meetings.
Morocco to be fair hosted 37 meetings, Egypt,
Kenya and Rwanda hosted 18 each, Ghana
hosted 13 meetings, Ethiopia 12, Nigeria 11,
Tanzania and Uganda 10, Tunisia 8, Algeria,
Botswana, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Zimbabwe
7.
This means Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Ethiopia,
Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, Tunisia, Algeria,
Botswana, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Zimbabwe
combined hosted as many meetings as South
Africa. which hosts only one-quarter of the
meetings that Italy hosted, which, in turn,
were one-half of the number of meetings hosted
by the USA.
Clearly Africa can do better than this. And,
more importantly, it has to do better than this.
Conventions can boost the number of tourism
arrivals, stimulate the growth of the tourism
industry, create wealth and employment op-
portunities and contribute to curbing poverty–
which is why we do not think that Africa can
afford to overlook the possibility to host and
organize international congresses and conven-
tions.
By Riccardo PELIZZO
Congresses and Conventions
Job Openings
REPOA, Tanzania’s leading research institution, is look-
ing forward to recruting a re-searcher.
Further details about the va-cancy can be found
here: http://www.repoa.or.tz/repoa/careers
APP Newsletter
ISSUE 33, Christmas 2017
Kristina BEKENOVA, correspondent African Politics and Policy.
Riccardo PELIZZO, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarba-
yev University, Astana, Kazakhstan
Collaborators
of the Newsletter of African Politics and Policy
African Politics and Policy
Smith Gallery is presenting its summer exhibition
“Salad” that includes “contributions from 28 artists,
including choice pieces from all seven of the artists who
staged solo shows at the gallery in 2017.” The exhibi-
tion is running until 20th January 2018.
56 Church Street, Cape Town, South Africa
http://www.smithstudio.co.za/salad