China’s Role In Africa: Labor Competition
(Brooklyn, New York) “They live next to us, and then they go to the markets and they shop next to us and then they eat at the same restaurants and eat the same food that the Africans eat and the Congolese eat,” Eric Olander remembers his Congolese employee saying of the Chinese population in the Congo.
“Every step made their skin a little bit darker to the Congolese,” Olander continues. “When he saw the Chinese going to the bathroom in the same place he went to the bathroom,” Olander’s employee told him, “‘they became black, like me’.”
Olander is an Asia-based multimedia journalist and co-host of the ‘China in Africa Podcast’ that explores the PRC’s engagement on the continent. He estimates there are between 75,000 and 1 million Chinese immigrants in Africa, split into five different categories: unofficial migrants, those involved in state-owned enterprises, the managers of said state-owned enterprises, diplomatic and corporate elites and the entrepreneurs and small business people that have been in Africa on their own for 10-15 years.
China’s Role In Africa: Natural Resources
(Brooklyn, New York) Each year, the aid sent to Africa equals around 50 million USD. Conversely, the estimated value of resources coming out of Africa is in the region of 400 billion USD per year, after production costs, according to Jim Cust, Executive Director of the Natural Resource Charter and member of the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies.
“What that means basically in principle is if these revenues are captured by African governments and well managed on behalf of the citizens then the opportunities to break dependence on aid and to undertake transformative economic are very real,” Cust said.
A wave of new resource discovery taking place has created a new perception of Africa based on resource and possibility, rather than aid, according to Cust. He attributes this to investment and natural resources along with a commodity-price supercycle that has persisted through the financial crisis in the West - largely driven by what he calls China’s insatiable demand for mineral resources.
China’s Role In Africa: A Continent’s Growing Infrastructure
(Brooklyn, New York) After a decade or more of civil war, Angola suffered from what many have referred to as a “landmine hangover” - meaning that the country’s soil was so full of mines that farmers could not begin to know where it was safe to begin planting. Coupled with a lack of reliable roads, Angola’s desperate need for de-mining caused, among other things, a banana shortage within the country. Those living in the capitol city of Luanda were forced to purchase high-priced fruit imported from Brazil.
The Angolan government’s refusal to comply with certain ethical guidelines kept the United States from assisting the country in rebuilding their capacity for local farming. In the end, it was China that agreed to de-mine the Western province of Angola, along with rebuilding roads to connect Western Angola to Luanda so farmers could transport their crops and begin stabilizing the market.
“On one hand, the Angolan government is one of the most awful governments in the world,” said Eric Olander, an Asia-based multimedia journalist and co-host of “The China in Africa Podcast.” “On the other hand the people were really suffering by virtue of the fact that they were being held hostage by their own government and the fact that the West simply would not budge on this issue.”
Byline Beat’s Shanley Knox Sits Down With Evelyn Namara
Shanley Knox’s five piece series on ‘How Communication and Technology are Changing the Faces of Africa’ can be found on Byline Beat and you can also find her on Twitter at @ShanleyKnox.
Special thanks to Evelyn Namara who can be found online at http://EvelynNamara.com and on Twitter at @enamara.
Part 5: How Communication and Technology are Changing the Faces of Africa
(Brooklyn, New York) In 2009, the World Bank reported that for every 10 percentage-point increase in high-speed internet connections in developing countries there is a 1.3 percentage point increase in economic growth.
In Africa, this growth has risen in individual countries, both through progress in the technology sector and the political will to support it, according to Samuel Gebru, Chief Executive Officer for the Ethiopian Global Initiative.
“The economic growth speaks for itself,” Gebru said. “Be it in a liberalized digital economy like Uganda or a state-centered one like Ethiopia, investment in the ICT sector coupled with political will to support it has paid public dividends.”
Throughout Africa, mobile internet access is changing healthcare, agriculture and business. It is both boosting economies and changing the way people live out their everyday lives across the continent.
Part 4: How Communication and Technology are Changing the Faces of Africa
(Brooklyn, New York) At 18, Mambe Nanje began teaching himself web and software development, rather than beginning studies at a university in Cameroon.
“From my personal analysis, most people that went through to the university, no matter how smart they were, ended up no where,” Nanje wrote in an email interview. “I decided to get myself into something professional. I studied computer repairs at the Trustech Institute of Technology, and I started teaching myself web and software development. After my training, I was lucky to be employed by the same school, as they realized I could not only teach the computer repairs, but I could also teach Web Development. While at the job, I continued teaching myself programming and getting small clients as a freelancer.”
Nanje eventually made the decision to become certified as a macromedia professional, then quit his job and started his own company, AfroVisioN Group. There, Nanje said 60% of his company’s work comes from offshore projects such as the US-based companies insidesoccer, Chelsea FC, kreer.com and most recently, a dating network for a client in the UK.
Part 3: How Communication and Technology are Changing the Faces of Africa
(Brooklyn, New York) Lwando Mwila’s belief in Zambia’s agricultural future drove him to leave his job and begin working with small scale farmers. Mwila developed a passion for the small business sector while working as a business planning manager at Musaka’s Standard Charter Bank. After leaving the bank, he launched Vitality Business and Capital Solutions, a company with a focus on business advising and capital sourcing, where Mwila said he has quickly seen the potential of “mAgri,” a term used to describe mobile applications that further agricultural work.
“It is a place that has so much opportunity in the sense that if we position ourselves,” Mwila said. “Give it five years max and this agriculture sector is going to be the one that is most thriving world over.”
Mwila’s company exists to address issues of access to information, communication and education - three issues he feels are holding back Africa’s agricultural sector. To this end, Vitality Business and Capital Solutions recently partnered with a Zambian technology hub called BongoHive to begin developing a mobile application that Mwila believes will provide targeted solutions for all three core problems.
Part 2: How Communication and Technology are Changing the Faces of Africa
(Brooklyn, New York) For Chisenga Muyoya, software engineering is an art.
“It’s like being an artist,” Muyoya said. “You can come up with something from nothing. It’s very, very fulfilling.”
Muyoga’s art of choice, however, isn’t one that is easily achievable for women in her country. As a Zambian woman pursuing a career in technology, Muyoya worked against both cultural and personal challenges to arrive at her current position as software engineer at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDs Foundation.
“The role of a woman in society is just to have babies, take care of them, and that’s about it,” Muyoya said. “You’re never supposed to be the main breadwinner or be extremely successful.”
Series: How Communication and Technology are Changing the Faces of Africa
(Brooklyn, New York) “Africa is rising” is becoming an increasingly common saying among economists and development groups. But, for many of us in the West, this phrase is both vague and confusing. When we interact with a continent that many of us are only familiar with in terms of mass poverty, disease and war, it is difficult to understand why, for instance, we would pay attention to the development of mobile technology in Africa when so many are still lacking in basic necessities such as food and water. Beyond that, does a “rising” Africa have anything to offer Western markets and and industries?
The following series is an exploration of what the growth of information and communications technology in Africa is changing across the continent and the way this growth intersects with the priorities of the Western world.
Africa: My Journey In Uganda (Part 6)
December 3, 2011
(Uganda, Africa) Africa breaks you down. I see it in the Wazungu. It’s not the latrines or the bucket showers, and it’s not the electricity coming and going; it’s a soul thing.
I met a woman from Michigan who runs a guest house in the Nakasongola district, and she was rude to me. I wondered about her afterward. I knew that it wasn’t me she was yelling at, she was yelling at a discouragement she’d been handed, here. Some thing in her heart that never got filled, a person she thought she was helping that didn’t appreciate it or an ideology she’s holding onto, without realizing that it already fell through. Or maybe she’s yelling because she has what Patrick calls a “funny heart.”
“Some of the whites they come here and they don’t really come for the people,” he commented over yesterday’s breakfast. “What I am saying is, they come and they think that all Africans are stupid or poor or cannot be trusted. They come and they work over us to help us while saying they are ‘with’ the people. But, they are not. They look down on us – ‘Oh! That poor African.’ They do not become part of us.”
How does a person avoid seeing through people? How does a person become equal with a group that’s been marginalized by their economic status? How do I teach myself to view – and treat – a woman who I could hand a month’s salary to out of my pocket as exactly the same as me?
Africa: My Journey In Uganda (Part 5)
December 2, 2011
(Uganda, Africa) The beauty of Africa is in the way it pulls back the shroud we cover ourselves with and reveals humanity to us in a way we have never seen it before.
Sheila and I drove back to Wobulenzi today after finishing up our work in Kakooge, and we discussed the way we’ve been privy to things that have never happened before in these past couple of weeks. The moments and the experience range from mind blowing and impactful to being small in a way that only shows up in the way the moment fills my heart.
In Africa, you get to see things - like a woman getting the first paycheck in her life. In the same day you get to laugh as another gets her first taste of fresh french pressed coffee with cream, and affirms that “This is so very good!” That night, you might meet a twenty-something year old who tells you with pride that she’s planning on buying herself her first ever brand-new outfit for Christmas this year.
Africa: My Journey In Uganda (Part 4)
December 1, 2011
(Uganda, Africa) Africa pulls me from my comfort zone. Workaholism is hereditary, like any other addiction, and with my limited time, I want to make every moment count. I wake up in the dark, here, find my phone – what time is it?
It’s always before 6:00 am and usually before 5:30. This morning it was 4:50; lying awake, listening to the traffic on the Kampala to Gulu highway, the chickens – twenty minutes go by and there’s a rooster. And it’s time to write, to upload photos, to fill in inventory and do what I can before the sun rises. Then, we sit and wait for the water for the coffee, the water for the shower – buckets of water over my head in the sunshine, warm in the cold outside air on my back and legs. We sit and wait for breakfast. It arrives. We wait. Then finish and more waiting. A morning that began before 5:00 am never actually begins before 11:00. To me, the day begins with a mental clock-in – “We’ve arrived, we’ve begun work. It’s here.” But that is not the African way. The morning begins with your first greeting – “Ah! How did you sleep? How was the night?” It continues with the second, a few moments later. Every beginning is that way, twice over, sometimes three times. I struggle with the formalities of a culture with two greetings, two goodbyes, here and at the car –in the house and then outside again, a bow and then a handshake - a “How are you?” and then a second, “How do you find this place?” and then following that, a “Well done.”
I fight for balance. My mind is processing poverty – time wasted is money wasted, and the problems before me aren’t problems that will be solved while we are taking tea. And yet, if I am ever to solve these problems, tea must be taken, formalities must be met, and the second greeting must be given. If I do not move smoothly into the African way, there will be no understanding between us. And so, while the long tea and the sitting and the waiting and the greeting all eat up time for work, they are also an integral part of work.
Africa: My Journey In Uganda (Part 2)
November 29, 2011
(Uganda, Africa) I ran a 5k for Habitat for Humanity in high school. I have a tee from it – “I habadabadid the habidabado.” And, that was it. In 28.5 minutes and five kilometers, my Habitat for Humanity career began and ended in a morning. Afterward, I rewarded myself with TGI Fridays and moved on.
The next time I happened upon Habitat for Humanity I was disgusted with them. They were charging poor Ugandan women for their homes, and the women I met were having trouble meeting the loans for them. Why did Habitat for Humanity simply not help to create them shelters; nice, solid foundations and brick walls, and hand it over – gift like – and then move onward elsewhere?
Today, Habitat for Humanity resurfaced in my life in Kakooge. I came upon it several times and discovered that my work is in partnership with theirs, though I doubt that they will ever know my name or be aware of our mutual building up of African women in this village. Many times I heard the words, “I have paid back my loan on this home through the beads,” and as I sat and spoke with two women – first, Margaret, who, when I first met her, was having a tough time meeting payments for the loan on her home; and second, Scovia, who is from the Rwandan tribe Munyarwada but is first generation Ugandan. I discovered that Habitat for Humanity has a business model that is working. The requirement to pay for a home gives pride to a woman when she has accomplished it. She is motivated to work, to pay her bills and to do her best for an employer like myself when we present the opportunity to earn capital. And, in that way, Habitat for Humanity has partnered with me in Kakooge, and I am thankful.
“Through the beads” has become an anthem for my days in Africa. Through the beads they have money for a pig, school fees, vegetable stands, mortar and bricks for a home previously made of only mud. Through the beads they have new clothing, money to pay people to dig for me and “food for my children when before we had fallen so sick.”
Through the beads, support for Habitat for Humanity that I could not have planned myself. And, through Habitat for Humanity, homes for the women that partner with me in our livelihoods.
Africa: My Journey In Uganda (Part 1)
Photos from Uganda by Shanley Knox
Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday over the next six weeks, Byline Beat will publish Shanley Knox’s online journal of her experiences living and working with the women of Uganda.
Africa: My Journey In Uganda
Top: A meeting with Fatuma. She’ll be employed as an artisan, able to spend more time with her son and end life as a prostitute.
Middle left: Caroline hangs her bead work on an MTN tower fence to allow the finish to dry.
Middle right: Nakato shared that she was able to pay her own AIDS related medical bills from her salary through Nakate, and is healthier than she has been in years.
Bottom left: Jane rubs finish on one of her necklaces.
Bottom right: Hanging out in Wobulenzi, a neighboring village, with Morris, my translator and guide.
Photo Credit: (Shanley Knox)
Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday over the next six weeks, Byline Beat will publish Shanley Knox’s online journal of her experiences living and working with the women of Uganda.
