Associate Professor of Political Economy and Chair of the Social Sciences Department at
@theafricainst
; Non-resident Senior Fellow at
@tri_continental
. Lusakan.
In 1973, Lê Đức Thọ, the Vietnamese statesman and revolutionary turned down the Nobel Peace Prize because it was jointly awarded to him and to that peace unloving war criminal Henry Kissinger.
So
#Spain
has understandably nationalized all private hospitals as a response to the
#COVID19
emergency. Gosh the ridicule, insults & scorn tht African govts have endured in the past for simply suggesting the "N" word as a response to the twin emergencies of poverty & underdevt.
Massive respect, love & admiration to the people of Kenya for standing up to the IMF. Unfortunately in Zambia, the IMF has succeeded & has inflicted a historic cost of living crisis.
One of my favourite pictures in the world — Captain Thomas Sankara receiving the Order of Jose Marti from Comandante Fidel Castro.
Great picture to reflect on Sankara’s short but impactful life on his birthday.
I see that a lot of US econs have unfollowed me on this app after my & other comrades' critical take on econ experiments wreaking havoc across much of Africa, especially Kenya (& Malawi to a smaller extent). I must have struck a nerve. Good. Now repent from your bad ways.
One of the most frustrating things about being a southern scholar submitting work to northern journals is having to deal with reviewers who ask you to provide evidence for things that are common knowledge in your society.
So common that even children know.
When I was a postdoc in the US, a very well known economist who's done research on "Africa" asked me if there were any economists at the University of Zambia, my alma mater. Puzzled I asked him who he thought had taught me econ in my undergraduate studies.
#BlackInTheIvoryTower
This is super cool. The Zambian Ministry of Finance and National Planning has published detailed updated debt figures through June 2021 broken down by creditor. You can view here: .
This level of transparency and communication is exactly what we need.
One of my favourite pictures in the world — Captain Thomas Sankara receiving the Order of José Martí from Comandante Fidel Castro.
Happy Birthday Fidel!
“Practically everything in the British museum was stolen. Give Greece their Elgin marbles back. Return Egyptian antiquities. Doesn’t Britain have anything worthwhile from its own culture to display?”
— Comment by ML Mukherjee in reaction to this story
If you have to keep issuing an apology re your Africa coverage every so often, then know that something is structurally off in your organization. I wonder what that might be.
In the new Quincy Jones documentary on Netflix, there's a scene where Quincy asks Kendrick Lamar where rap music originated. Kendrick gives the usual response about it originating in the Bronx or something like that. Quincy tells him it originated in Africa with Praise Singers
Announcing the formation of the African Center for the Study of the United States at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (HT Achille Mbembe on Facebook)
.
@Ronelle_B
, myself and other colleagues have a new paper out in Applied Economics Letters! The paper is on the underrepresentation of developing country researchers in development research. Abstract below and url here: .
I have been remotely teaching a masters class at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo. Today I asked the class to tell me their biggest takeaway from the day’s assigned readings. “We didn’t realise that donors can serve as a barrier to development”.
Happy Teacher Moment.
Here’s my initial reaction to the conditions attached to Zambia’s imf deal. The conditions are grossly anti-poor. Sad to see the role that Zambian civil society played in giving credence to the IMF during this process
.
@StephanieKelton
’s new book is mind blowing & challenges much of what I thought I knew about how macroeconomics works. Teaching macro next year will be tough - intellectual honesty requires that I redo many of my lecture slides.
Congrats Prof Kelton on a great book!
The more I read work in other disciplines that is much more thoughtful & careful, especially in dealing with the marginalised and disempowered, the more I realise just how short-changed I was in my grad training as an econ. There's much "unlearning to relearn" for me to do.
"The only reason why the United States has never had a coup d’état, unlike most of Latin America, is that there is no US embassy in the US"
-- An old joke retold by Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile --
“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.”
— Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara —
Happy to share that my article “Does Economics have an ‘Africa Problem?’” is now available online at Economy & Society (
@EconSocJournal
): . This article really started out as a blog piece for
@africasacountry
5 yrs ago this month ()!
“Marielle’s murder reminds me of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Full of hope and ideas, Lumumba was just 35 years old when he was killed. He was the embodiment of hope and change in a country that desperately needed both.” —
@ShaunKing
I’ve been blocked yet again from seeing the tweets of an “Africa Bureau Chief” of a western newspaper. This is a horrible outcome because I so badly want to read their westsplainings of the African situation. Without it I am in totally in the dark. What am I doing wrong? 🤔
Real talk, Westerners - why are African names so hard on your tongues? I'm not being facetious. I really want to hear what the process is that makes them so hard to pronounce, especially as most of them are phonetic i.e pronounced exactly as they are written.
World Bank fears "lost decade" for sub-Saharan Africa. Its GDP per capita hasn't grown since 2015. Political instability, fragility, rising conflict & violence the main culprits of the slowdown. Sudan’s economy to shrink by 12% this year, amidst conflict
What in the world is happening to Zambia’s foreign policy under president
@HHichilema
?
Zambia just abstained from this important vote in the General Assembly calling for the “protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations” in the ongoing Gaza crisis.
Here’s an open letter to BlackRock asking them to cut Zambia’s crashing debt. BlackRock is the biggest single holder of Zambia’s Eurobonds.
I am a signatory alongside
@Jayati1609
,
@PhilipGAlston
,
@JeffreyASachs
,
@ksjomo
& others
Those countries that have gone ahead and effected nationalizations have had to endure crashing sanctions which have served to deepen their crises of poverty & underdevelopment.
Imagine if you will, what would happen if we imposed financial sanctions on Spain at this time.
Looks like we are about to get to that part where the IMF starts blaming the Zambian govt for the negative consequences of policies that the IMF recommended themselves!
Reconciliation is nothing if it’s not accompanied by Truth and Justice. We deserve to know what happened to the Zambian people’s resources over the last 10 years. Those responsible for the grand abuse, grand theft and grand squander have to be held to account.
Incredibly humbled that
@CODESRIA
has appointed me to the Editorial Advisory Board of Africa Development, the pre-eminent pan African social science journal. I’ve learnt a lot from reading Africa Development over the years. Excited to be formally associated with the journal 🙏🏿🙏🏿
60 years ago this week, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah gave his historic “Africa Must Unite Now Or Perish” speech in Addis Ababa. As true today as it was then.
Happy Africa Day Sisters and Brothers.
“It is estimated that about 100,000 expatriate technical-assistance staff work in Africa, meddling in every aspect of policy analysis, advise, policy-making, and implementation and gulping up $4billion per year.”
- Mkandawire and Soludo, African Perspectives on SAPs (1999) -
In 2012, the Tony Blair Institute had six British & American “experts”helping Pres Joyce Banda “strengthen democratic systems”
The Malawian taxpayer was paying $10,000/month for each one of the six. When Joyce Banda lost, the experts packed up and left.
But they are coming back
Happy 100th birthday to Kenneth Kaunda — a great Zambian, a great Pan-Africanist and a great human being!
Here he is speaking in 1986 at the memorial service of Samora Machel.
"When donors take the driver's seat, Africans move to the back seat. When donors try to do the same thing in Vietnam, Vietnamese get out of the car"
- Anonymous -
As quoted in the late Thandika Mkandawire's ASR piece Incentives, Governance, and Capacity Dev't in Africa
Asia is where all the actual "development" happens.
Africa is where all the "development experts" ply their trade.
When "international development experts" start congregating in your nation, be rest assured there will be no actual "development" for a very long time.
This is pure gold. Chinua Achebe interviewed by Wole Soyinka and Lewis Nkosi for National Education Television (NET) in 1964 in Lagos.
A big big Hat Tip to Chimwemwe Mphesa on Facebook.
cc
@africasacountry
The easiest job in the world is that of "All Round African Expert". They can explain *every* occurrence in every African country. If X didn't happen, it's *simply* because of Y. If X happened then it's *simply* because of Z. They're never wrong. It's the ultimate dream job.
@Fromagehomme
There’s no Malawi miracle - can we learn to give credit where it is due? Let’s not undermine people’s achievement just because it has gone against some theories about “African democracy”. I’m proud of what has been achieved in my country, and it’s not a miracle, please.
Growing up as a kid in Zambia, the elders told me about all the insidious manoeuvrings by rich countries to prevent the development of "poor" countries. They couldn't produce the smoking-gun evidence but they knew it. This covid moment has been producing the evidence from Day 1.
Vaccine makers have warned US officials that temporarily scrapping patents for Covid-19 shots would risk handing mRNA technology to China and Russia … you kind knew this was coming didn’t you! Last refuge of scoundrels etc.
So who’s been confounded? Right at the beginning some African experts, particularly those at the front lines, were optimistic. It’s the Western modelers of Africa’s trajectory who got it wrong( & the western press tht acted as vuvuzelas for the modelers)
The said study was conducted at a single hospital in Lusaka with a sample size of 372 and the
@FinancialTimes
is comfortable in reporting that this generalizes to the entire continent?
This s**t's bizarre.
"A study of corpses in a Zambian morgue suggests that deaths from Covid-19 may have been routinely undercounted in the country, and by extension possibly elsewhere in Africa," reports
@FT
. At the same time, the study "has not yet been peer reviewed."
If they used to give out prizes to experimental settings,
#Kenya
(or Kenyans?) would have shared in today's nobel prize in economics. Much of the RCT work that eventually won Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer their prize was set in Kenya, especially its western part.
#NobelPrize
Germany to ask for forgiveness and pay Namibia $1.3 billion as it formally recognizes colonial-era genocide in the southern African country more than 100 years later
Look, in most African countries there are daily covid briefings complete with covid stats. Most of us in our own countries are following local press coverage & local official reporting. So who the hell is the
@nytimes
writing for in those horrendous broad brush pieces of theirs?
Thank you
@africasacountry
. The Institute on Race & Political Economy is brand new and led by the very awesome
@DarrickHamilton
! I am lucky to be a part of his team and the important work the Institute will be doing in the near future.
We are happy to share the news that
@gchelwa
, contributing editor at Africa Is a Country, is the new, Inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute on Race and Political Economy at
@TheNewSchool
. We may as well recommend his pieces in our archive again:
Our recent paper on the under representation of developing country researchers made into
@Nature
News! Grateful to
@layallivs
for the generous quotes.
Some of our smartest people on the continent work for The Kanegi Foundation. They conduct the best research on poverty, disease & squalor in American villages. Listen to them.
#BREAKING
Report from Lusaka-based Kanegi Foundation warns that despite the democratic progress achieved by the American Spring revolution, the multi-pronged humanitarian crisis afflicting the poor, disease-plagued interior of the US is likely to get worse before it gets better.
We would be roaring with laughter at someone being called the "foremost expert on the US". Bcoz what would it mean? Expert on US nuclear physics? Biochem? Soil types? Country music? But Africa with 1+ bn people & 50+ countries is so simple tht 1 white person can understand it all
Much of Collier’s work on development, centered on the African continent, is just as confused and reprehensible as his thoughts on immigration in this clip.
One of my favourite ever exchanges from my
@AJHeadtoHead
show:
Me vs economist Paul Collier on who is or isn't an "indigenous Briton" and whether I count!
Have a watch:
Friends, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be speaking at the
@rethinkecon
Festival 2020: Reform the Present; Reimagine the future coming up this July 22nd -26th! I will speak during the plenary on Friday, July 24 on the topic: What Do We Mean By Decolonising Economics.
Western news coverage of African economies should be entered into competitions that recognise works of fiction. I just read another piece on
#Zambia
's debt & I can't recognize the country being described there. Do they get their most talented novelists to write these things?
What decontextualised crap is being spewed here? Reminds me of that black-on-black violence crap that the apartheid regime liked to spin as justification for their nonsense.
Imagine the kind of destruction of the minds of young people that this 'prof' has done over the years.
I fully support
#BlackLivesMatter
movement, but let's not forget that during the last 50 years most black lives have been lost at the hands of other blacks in Africa.
As my country celebrates the attainment of an IMF “deal”, I am reminded of this graph showing the evolution of Greece’s economy after the imposition of IMF-led austerity measures (source: )
@Nanjala1
LONDON, England -- Protesters took the streets outside the dilapidated legislature after the unelected Prime Minister requested the head of state -- whose son has recently come under fire for alleged links to a criminal sex ring -- to shut down the only elected chamber etc.
The World Bank (WB) recently published their Int'l Debt Stats book, eliciting interesting commentary on
#Zambia
|n social media regarding the "true" level of the country's debt. There's some confusion about the meaning of the WB's numbers. I clarify here 👉🏿
Today my first PhD student is graduating at
@UCT_news
. Sad to be missing his graduation owing to work travel commitments.
Please join me in congratulating Dr Abel Nyagwachi (
@Mr_msafo
). Up up Dr Nyagwachi, up up Kenya, up up Africa!
#UCTGrad2019
"When donors take the driver's seat, Africans move to the back seat. When donors try to do the same thing in Vietnam, Vietnamese get out of the car"
- Anonymous -
As quoted in Thandika Mkandawire's (
@tmkandawire
) ASR piece Incentives, Governance, and Capacity Dev't in Africa
It was an absolute pleasure and honour to speak with
@briebriejoy
on the
@BadFaithPod
about the significance of the historic protests in Kenya and the role played by the IMF in suppressing economic sovereignty in Africa
Worth pointing out that the (tiny) bit of research on developing countries, subsidised by the aid industry, is dominated by Northern researchers and is largely useless for local policymakers -- at least that's the evidence in econ.
Most research is about rich countries, even though 76% of the world's population live in middle-income and 9% in low-income countries.
This imbalance has important consequences for what tools, products and policies are available to decision-makers in the South.
My 2cents on the debates around reforming the IMF and World Bank:
I say burn them all down except for their statistics departments which do a damn good job of compiling & presenting data in a standardized form across many countries in the world.
There's a lot to dislike about the "Zoom Edge". But one good thing is that it has enabled a lot of direct "South-South" dialoguing without having to go through Northern intermediaries. And these dialogues are energising!
When I first started reading journal articles, I wondered why they were written so badly - sentences out of nowhere, weird paragraphs etc. I now realise that much of this is due to the review process & the authors' desperate attempt to satisfy the very egotistical reviewer
#2
.
At Kabulonga Boys High School in Lusaka to cast my vote in
#Zambia
’s general election. It’s about 5am and lines have formed as far as the eye can see. Polls open at 6am local time.
#ZambiaDecides2021
Why do people assume that people like me who call for rigorous evaluation are against reform? We can only evaluate things we have tried. So reform is a necessary first step.