Traditional African Rituals and Contemporary Times.

two children talk about different tribes in Kenya and some of the
beliefs and rituals of their own tribe.

The Continent of Africa is made up of diverse ethnic groups

and culture that if we were to demarcate a boundary for each group
they will be so compacted together making it hard to read. Each of
the groups had its own unique set of believes and traditional culture
dated far back before the European rule in Africa. The different
Socio-cultural believes system within Africa today explained how a
group of people were socially connected through their beliefs system
in many years ago.

The significance of various African decent groups could trace

from such during the foragers era about 10,000 years ago. When man
was a food gatherer and hunter for his survival and a way of live
hood.

During this period man was not only limited, to the activities
of gathering and hunting. He as well socialized by performing his
spiritual ritual with his kin group. Different multifunctional activities
were performed by different kin group which became the basis of
recognition by many decent groups in Africa. The traits of various
activities during the forages period were carried on to the
horticultural period, when crops were grown using bare hands, feet
and sticks then on to agricultural period when animal domestication
was common in assisting on the cultivation process. .

Many former African kingdoms and Empires traced their

origin from such kin group and Decent that tied them with same
cultural bond and believes system. For example the former Mali
Empire with its capital city as Timbuktu, was made of the
Mandingoes speaking people who claimed from Shounthiata Kiata.
the Songhai Empire which is the day the Nigeria , Ghana Togo was
dominated by the Hausa Yoruba and the Sine Saloum region which is
made of today the Senegambia region was made of the Wolof who
also claimed a direct decent from (Bourba Saloum ) meaning the
Saloum chief.
default image for post

FEBRUARY 28, 2011 | BY BRENNEN JENSEN

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1. How firmly has democracy taken root in Africa?

The United Nations reports that Africa currently has the greatest
number of countries with democratic governments since the 1960s,
though its far from accurate to call the continent a bastion of free
and fair elections.

Democracy has a foothold; its more than just a toehold, says

William Zartman, professor emeritus at the Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies and former director of the schools African
Studies program. In 50 years of independence, the idea of
democracy as the legitimizer of African regimes has pretty well
penetrated, though this doesnt mean that the idea of democracy is
well practiced.

Indeed, over the last couple of years, elections in Ivory Coast, Guinea,
Zimbabwe, and Mauritania, among others, have been disputed,
disrupted, or mired in fraud charges. Still, Zartman says, the idea of
democratic participation in elections has stuck, and men and women
vote with some enthusiasm across the continent. Regimes now feel
they have to claim they are democratic in order to be legitimate,
Zartman says. The idea of democracy is there, and once the
principles are there, then you can nail people to them. Then the
question becomes not, are there democratic practices, but is
democracy being implemented and enforced. Thats progress.

2. What should we make of Chinas surging interest in Africa?

Although the roots of a Sino-African relationship can be traced back

to the 15th century, its only recently that Chinawith its booming
economy, brimming coffers, and hunger for oil and other resources
has seen its relationship with the continent bloom into a multi-
billion-dollar proposition. Last year China replaced the United States
as Africas second-largest trading partner after Europe. Chinese
investment in Africa tops $9 billion.

Carla Freeman, interim American co-director of the SAIS Hopkins-

Nanjing Center, led a group of students to Ethiopia and Ghana last
August to discuss the issue with experts and policy-makers in those
countries capitals. She found that many Africans admire Chinas
ability to quickly lift so many of its own people out of poverty.

Chinas deep pockets are appreciated, too. In Ethiopia, the Chinese

have invested heavily in roads, cell towers, and other infrastructure
improvements that have helped the poor countrys economy
experience double-digit growth. China has drawn attention to
Africas economic potential, and thats a really good thing for Africa,
Freeman says.

However, one concern is whether African admiration for Chinas

economic approach will lead to a similar appreciation of its hard-line
political system. With the United States and Europe mired in a
protracted economic downturn, Freeman says, many of the Western
political and economic models are being called into question.

And then theres Chinas less-than-stellar environmental record.

Chinas reform has come at a tremendous cost to the environment,
and from that perspective its a terrible model, Freeman says. But
one African the student group met said that Africans were still
looking for their own way forwardnot interested in copying the
economic tiger so much as learning how to become new lions.
3. What are some of the misconceptions American college students
have about Africa?

Patrick Bassey, a senior from Lagos, Nigeria, studying economics and

psychology at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, has received
some curious questions from fellow students once they learn hes
African. The most ridiculous thing anyone asked me, Bassey recalls,
was when I said I was from Nigeria and someone said, Oh, do you
know my friend in Zimbabwe?

Bassey has learned to consider such ill-informed queries as teaching

moments. And he is president of the Johns Hopkins African Students
Association, which also aims to educate people about Africa. The
group, with some 40 members representing more than half a dozen
African nations, holds monthly public meetings to discuss African
customs and culture with occasional dances and field trips to local
African restaurants or stores.

There are some people who still have the misconception that all of
Africa is like a safari, Bassey says. We do have houses, not huts. I
talk about my life. How I went to a Jesuit high school and did some of
the same things as a teenager that they do over here. Bassey likes to
talk about Africas cultural festivals, cinema, music, and close-knit
families. Im not trying to tell people there isnt poverty, he says.
But in Africa, the story is more complex.

4. What was the ancient Egyptian festival of drunkenness?

Courtesy of Betsy Bryan

Courtesy of Betsy Bryan

In short, a bibulous religious event dating to 1500 B.C. or earlier

where participants pounded beer and tried to score face time with a
goddess.

Since 2001, Betsy Bryan, a professor in the Krieger Schools

Department of Near Eastern Studies, has led excavations at Temple
Mut, an ancient Egyptian site that is part of the sprawling Karnak
Temple complex near the modern-day city of Luxor. Uncovered was
an area where this annual festival is thought to have taken place, as
well as new clues to its age and activities.
The festival recalls several myths, including one in which an angry,
lion-shaped goddess is killing her way across Egypt. To save mankind,
the gods send down a flood of red-tinted beer, which the
bloodthirsty deity consumes until passing out.

Kiosks were set up with large vats of this alcohol, Bryan says of the
boozy, myth-inspired ritual. There was very little eating, just more or
less inebriation and passing out from lots of alcohol. Then, in the
wee hours of the morning, drummers would besiege the out-cold
celebrants, making a huge racket to wake them. In the resulting hazy
moments of hung-over consciousness, statues of the lion goddess
would be brought forth. There would be this moment of connection,
this epiphany when the celebrants could speak directly to her and ask
for something, Bryan says.

Perhaps theyd request an aspirin or an Alka-Seltzer?

I know, says Bryan. Can you imagine being woken up by drums at

3 oclock in the morning with that kind of headache?

5. Are Western celebrities such as Bono really doing much good

when they support African causes?
African Picture / The Image Works

African Picture / The Image Works

When you are using terms like genocide, my experience is you

need all the help you can get to try and get the point across, says
Michael Evans, SAIS 90. I say, more power to them.

Last October, Evans was named the national director of Jesuit

Refugee Service/USA, a charity focused on the humanitarian needs of
displaced people. He spent the previous 20 years living in Africa as
the organizations director for Eastern Africa. Hes experienced
mortar attack, gunpoint imprisonment in a mud hut, and other
hardships and violence.

Nevertheless, Irish rocker Bono, who is outspoken on a range of

African topics including the need for debt relief, has earned Evans
respect. Hes been consistent, he says. Africa has not just been a
drop-in, fly-by-night cause for him. Hollywoods George Clooney,
too, earns accolades, both for his visits to Darfur refugee camps and
trips to Washington asking legislators for additional support for the
war-torn Sudanese. I think there is a value for someone like a
George Clooney raising the issue of Darfur, especially when no one
else was doing it, Evans says.

6. How has Western literature presented an incomplete image of

Africa?

Africa is an incredibly vast and varied continent teeming with

cultures, languages, and lifestyles. Except, that is, in the pages of
Western fiction, poetry, and drama up through the early 20th
century, says Hollis Robbins, professor of humanities at the Peabody
Institute. For a long time the Western literary tradition didnt take
Africa seriously, Robbins says. Africa only existed as a kind of trope,
a literary metaphoryou can think of Heart of Darkness. It wasnt a
place with distinct geo-political divisions and cultures.

Whereas writers easily and readily differentiated between England,

Scotland, and Irelandindeed all of EuropeAfrica was just Africa,
the cultures of Kenya indistinguishable from those of Senegal or
Egypt. Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alexandre Dumas, and
even Shakespeare employed the now-archaic terms Nubian or
Ethiop as literary shorthand for African, residents of a place,
Robbins says, depicted largely as uncivilized and scary.
Robbins likes to expose her students to Victorian writer H. Rider
Haggards She: A History of Adventure, which involveshowever
improbablyan Englishmans search for a white queen in central
Africa. Africans become the constitutive other of heroic white
Western heroes, Robbins says. Things had improved by the 20th
century. Isak Dinesens 1937 Out of Africa, though dealing primarily
with white colonials in Kenya, does refer to native Kikuyu culture.
However, Robbins credits Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe and his
1958 novel Things Fall Apart for ushering in the modern and more
realistic era of African literature.

7. How is Facebook being used to slow the spread of HIV in Uganda?

The HIV infection rate is on the rise in Ugandanot so much among

traditional at-risk groups, such as sex workers or migrants, but for
people who are married or cohabiting. When individuals in such long-
term relationships seek what are colloquially called side dish sexual
partners, they place themselves and their domestic partner at risk for
HIV.
In 2009, the Bloomberg School of Public Healths Center for
Communication Programs launched the Get Off the Sexual Network
campaign to promote mutual monogamy, using TV, radio, and
billboards. And starting in June of last year, Facebook became part of
the effort.

The campaign targets Ugandas urban, educated, and better-off

populationjust the folks most likely to have access to the social
networking site. Nearly 11,000 people have become members of the
campaigns Facebook group, where they can participate in
discussions about at-risk behavior and the benefits of mutual
monogamy. Facebook allows dialogue to happen outside of the
technical experts, says Leanne Wolff, program officer at the Center
for Communication Programs. Peers talk to peers, which is helping
to move the process.

8. What is a ram pump and how has it helped South African

grandparents and orphans?

Photo: David Colwell

Photo: David Colwell

When you need to get water up a hill, one of the most
straightforward mechanical devices you can employ is a ram pump,
which harnesses the power of water flowing downhill to pump some
water back up. Since 2006, the Johns Hopkins branch of Engineers
Without Borders (EWB), a nonprofit that sends volunteer engineers
around the world to tackle community-based engineering projects,
has installed eight such pumps in rural South Africa. The pumps are
used to bring water to community gardens, improving yields while
lessening the work required of their tenders.

We got to see people trying to get water to their gardens before a

pump was installed, says Imbi Salasoo, a junior mechanical
engineering major in the Whiting School of Engineering who visited
South Africa last August as part of the Johns Hopkins EWB team.
They used plastic petrol tanks and a wheelbarrow, and it was quite
the physical burden going up and down a hill. Making matters
worse, in some of the communities where student engineers have
worked, many of the able-bodied adults have died of AIDS, leaving
the elderly and children to raise the crops.

Although the pumps are built in South Africa, the students have to
figure out how best to install them and then lay the necessary pipe.
Eight Hopkins students went on last summers three-week trip,
visiting the countryside northwest of the city of Durban. They
installed one pump and checked on several others installed earlier.

Its a great way to apply what youve learned in books and see the
benefits of how it helps people, Salasoo says.

9. What can the scratches on million-year-old African teeth tell us

about human evolution?

Mark Teaford examines teeth, but he is not a dentist. Indeed, his

patients have been dead for more than 2 million years. Teaford is a
professor of functional anatomy at the School of Medicine; he studies
the dental abrasions of our primitive ancestors to gain new insight
into their diets and evolution.

Teaford has visited museums in Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South

Africa to bring back detailed dental molds of early human teeth in
their collections. He then examines their surfaces using a computer
analysis system he helped develop employing advanced microscopy
and detailed 3-D modeling.
The degree of dental abrasion is related to the hardness of foods
routinely eaten, and Teafords studies have shaken up some
conventional evolutionary thinking. Take Paranthropus boisei (aka
Nutcracker Man), an early human species from East Africa thought
to have evolved a prominent jaw in response to the significant
presence of hard foods in his diet. Teaford found very little abrasion
when he examined the creatures teeth. So he wasnt just going
around eating nuts, Teaford says. Our ideas about his anatomy are
either way off base, or more likely, he occasionally ate something
hard and that was what was driving the evolutionary changes in his
anatomy.

10. What is life in Rwanda like 16 years after the genocide there?

In 1994, 800,000 people were murdered in this landlocked nation

when the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, waged bloody attacks on
the rival minority group, the Tutsis. The brutal genocide shocked the
world. And today? Rwanda is actually one of the safest countries in
Africa, says Jon Rosen, SAIS 09, a freelance journalist based in the
Rwandan capital, Kigali, whose writings have appeared in Global Post,
USA Today, and World Politics Review. You can walk around the
streets of Kigali at night and not really worry about getting mugged.
The nation now has great economic ambition, aiming to become the
Singapore of east-central Africa, Rosen says. Whereas some 90
percent of the population is involved in small-scale agriculture,
government plans call for transforming the country into a regional
hub of information technology and education. The fact that stability
and promise have come to the country is due in large part to
President Paul Kagame. The lanky, bespectacled leader has done
much over the past 10 years to root out corruption, and he counts
Tony Blair and Pastor Rick Warren among his Western admirers. Still,
though Kagame was re-elected last year with more than 90 percent
of the vote, questions remain about the openness of his Tutsi-led
regime and the degree to which credible opposition candidates had
access to the ballot.

Hes a dictatortheres no question about that, Rosen says. The

debate is more on whether hes a benign dictator whos good for the
country, as many say, or whether ultimately hes dangerous.

And although Rosen is optimistic about Rwandas economic future,

he says deep divisions remain between Hutu and Tutsi that people
are not allowed to talk about. Foreigners who make brief visits to
the scrubbed capital might not discern these tensions. If you are
here long enough, he says, you begin to feel like there are still a lot
of fundamental problems that really havent been addressed.

11. What is your vision for the future of Johns Hopkins relationship
with Africa?

Last June university President Ron Daniels made a two-week, three-

country trip to Africa for a firsthand look at some of the in-country
health programs affiliated with the Bloomberg School, including the
Rakai Health Sciences program in Uganda and Zambias Malaria
Institute at Macha. The experience left a deep impression on the
universitys new leader, then barely a year on the job.

I had read and had been briefed on a number of different

dimensions of Johns Hopkins work in Africa, Daniels says. But you
really need to be there on the ground to understand how genuine
and enduring the ties are between Hopkins and the continent.

Even before his trip, last spring Daniels sought to increase the
number of students traveling to Africa for research and fieldwork
opportunities and launched the Johns Hopkins global health awards
program85 new grants of as much as $3,500 each for students in
all divisions to pursue international public health experiences. The
idea is to enable students to see firsthand the challenges Africa faces
and how research can help resolve them.

A lot of institutions can talk about sending more students abroad to

Africa on exchange programs or internships but dont have the
capacity to draw on the deep research networks and faculty
commitments that Hopkins has made over the decades, Daniels
says. What wed like to see is a very dramatic enhancement of the
level of interaction and collaboration with Africa across our triplicate
mission of research, teaching, and service.

Adds Daniels, Hopkinsnot just in words but also in deedhas long

had an institutional commitment to the development of the
continent. Im anxious for us to build on that, and on the strong
moral imperative that we continue to be part of the solution for
Africas many challenges.

12. How did an American born of Swiss parents come to write a

novel about Africa and Africans?
Susi Wyss, A&S 04 (MA), an editor with Jhpiego, a global health
nonprofit affiliated with Johns Hopkins, released her debut novel,
The Civilized World, in March. Billed as a novel set in stories, its
nine interconnecting tales ramble across Ivory Coast, the Central
African Republic, Malawi, Ghana, Ethiopia, and the United States. At
the books core are two characters, a Ghanaian and an American
expatriot living in Africa, and their reactions to a shared tragedy.

The author says she caught the African bug at age 7, when her
family moved from Washington, D.C., for a three-year stay in Abidjan,
Ivory Coast. A career in public health followed, with opportunities to
visit and live in a dozen African countries, first with the Peace Corps
and then for 11 years as a program manager with Jhpiego (a position
she left to work on her novel). There is such a large population here
that doesnt have any concept about what Africa is like, and I wanted
to give them a window, Wyss says of her move into fiction. My
agenda was to establish a human connection and show day-to-day
life, not the things you usually read about Africathe headlines of
civil war and despots.
13. Whats the most promising new strategy to curb the spread of
HIV in Africa?

Four years ago a team of Bloomberg School researchers completed

clinical trials in Uganda showing that circumcision can prevent the
male-to-female spread of HIV by as much as 60 percent. It was Time
magazines No. 1 medical breakthrough of 2007.

Ron Gray, a professor of epidemiology and one of the leaders of the

circumcision study, says he and his colleagues are now hopeful about
a trial completed last summer at South Africas University of
KwaZulu-Natal involving a microbicide vaginal gel. When applied
before or soon after sex, it was shown to reduce a womans chances
of contracting HIV by nearly 40 percent.

The gel contains the antiretroviral drug tenofovir, widely used as an

HIV treatment but here being applied as a preventive. Trials involving
oral doses of the drug taken to prevent male-to-male HIV
transmission are also under way, though Gray sees the gel as having
special appeal. Weve been very desperate to develop female
control methods, Gray says. This gives women something that they
can use to protect themselves.
Generic forms of the drug reduce costs, which is crucial in Africa,
where high drug costs can be an obstacle in the war on HIV/AIDS.
Gray says plans are already in the works to bring the gel to Uganda,
pending the outcome of several ongoing trials. We already use these
drugs for treatment anyway, so its just a matter of getting them
formulated for a microbicide.

14. How do you get 25,000 used books to Gambia?

The short answer: in a shipping container, which holds about that

many titles.

Amassing such libraries and sending them off to West Africa is the
work of the Wings of the Dawn International Institute for Children, a
Fort Worthbased charity where Jaracus Copes, Ed 10 (MS), has
served as an adviser and volunteer since 2007. Having access to
books can make a real difference in someones life, Copes says. In
Africa, were talking about off-the-beaten-path villages that dont
have the infrastructure for the Internet.
To date, Copes has had a hand in shipping five book-filled containers
across the Atlantic to Gambia, Nigeria, Ghana, and other countries
where English is a principal language. Copes, who runs after-school
programs for middle- and high-school-age kids in Montgomery
County, Maryland, solicits his charges to help with book drives. He
also seeks donations from school systems and libraries, which
sometimes decommission books. Another challenge is raising the
$6,500 it takes to ship the containers.

What kind of books does he seek? All typesfrom Dr. Seuss titles to
textbooks to Tom Clancy thrillersproviding they are in decent
shape. I think just the power of readingto be able to escape where
you are and go to an imaginary worldis the greatest thing, Copes
says. We try to help bring literacy to where it might not have a
chance.

15. Whats being done to ensure that human medical research

projects in Africa are conducted ethically?

Africa is awash in human medical research, as scientists and doctors

from around the world strive to confront the continents daunting
health challenges. In the United States and other developed nations,
laws codify the ethical oversight of human research, with
independent review boards looking at, among other aspects, each
studys fairness, validity, and the informed consent of participants.
Across much of Africa, however, a framework for bioethical oversight
is less established.

Since 2000, the Johns HopkinsFogarty African Bioethics Training

Program, a joint project of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of
Bioethics and the Bloomberg School, with funding from the National
Institutes of Health, has trained more than two dozen African
scientists, scholars, and government officials in the principles of
bioethics. We had one trainee from the Democratic Republic of
Congo who created an ethics committee in the Congo, a place where
there had never been one of these committees before, says Nancy
Kass, a professor of bioethics and public health in the Bloomberg
School and director of the African bioethics program. More recently
the program has begun forming yearlong partnerships with African
universities to help them develop localized bioethical training
programs. In 2010, the University of Botswana participated; this year
its Ugandas Makrere University.

Its not really for me, a Johns Hopkins professor, to figure out the
best way to resolve ethical research issues in Africa, Kass says.
What we want to do is equip Africans to be able to make their own
decisions.

16. Is it true that many Africans have poor diets because their farms
are stagnant and inefficient?

Agricultural practices and challenges vary when talking about an

entire continent, and although hunger is a problem in parts of Africa
(often as a result of drought or civil unrest), many Africans enjoy a
bounty of fresh, varied, and healthful foods. And they do so mostly
without relying on the heavily industrialized mega-farms that exist in
the West.

People think of Africans as being malnourished, but when you visit

West Africa, you encounter people who are muscular and strong
looking with beautiful teeth, says Jane Guyer, a Krieger School
anthropology professor who has been doing research in rural farming
areas in Nigeria and Cameroon intermittently for 40 years.

Whereas the foodie fad in the United States touts seasonal

produce grown locally, that kind of eating has long been the norm in
places like Nigeria. And it seems to be working well: Food markets in
Lagos brim with goods that are largely the product of a network of
small farms in the hinterlands, Guyer says. Its an agricultural system
that not only feeds the cities but also provides employment
opportunities.

Over the years, Guyer has seen the range of farm size in western
Nigeria grow wider, from about four or five acres to 12 acres and
beyond. That growth has not been the result of an aid scheme or
government program. Rather, commercially minded Africans
developed tractor rental programs to provide smaller farms with
affordable access to mechanization.

This notion that African agriculture is stagnant creates an invitation

for someone else to come in with a different idea altogether, Guyer
says. My work on agriculture suggests that Africans themselves have
developed the resources to grow their economies and generate a
varied diet.

17. What surprised you the most about America?

Anita Okoh was born and raised in Accra, Ghana, and is a member of
the first class in the Carey Business Schools new Global MBA
program, which launched last fall. She first arrived in the United
States in 2001 to attend Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where
she earned a bachelors degree in biology and health sciences.

Moving from a bustling West African city of nearly 2 million people to

a small Pennsylvania town certainly provided opportunities for
culture shock, but one thing that struck her was how little her fellow
students knew about her homeland and the degree to which they
took their ready access to information and education for granted.
People in my classes in college probably grew up with computers in
their rooms and could surf the Net 24/7, and they didnt think they
could type in Ghana and learn something? Okoh says. That was a
shock.

Things were different for Okoh growing up in Accra. Although she

attended one of the countrys premier high schools, her access to the
Internet was sporadic at best. Students would huddle over computers
for the one or two hours a day they might be online and connected
with the wider world. As school-age children we had a thirst for
knowledge, Okoh says. You learned beyond the classroom, took
any opportunity to read books or talk to people who may be from a
different country or culture.
18. What is Johns Hopkins doing to address the nursing shortage in
South Africa?

Photo: David Colwell

Photo: David Colwell

Nurses are in short supply in much of Africa, and the shortage is

acute in South Africa. School of Nursing professor Phyllis Sharps
recently read a report indicating that Western Cape alone, just one of
the nations nine provinces, needs another 1,000 nurses to address
its health care needs.

South Africa, with its epidemic levels of HIV infection and vast rural
areas, can be a challenging place for nurses to work, prompting some
to leave their homeland for better pay and opportunities in Europe or
the United States. Still, Sharps has seen some heroic nurses during
her numerous trips to the country. They will fill a small SUV with all
the supplies they need to provide hospice care in rural settings and
drive as far as the road will go and then walk the rest, she says.
One key to dealing with the shortage is to increase nursing programs
and the number of instructors at South African universities. For
several years, the School of Nursing has run a program in which
doctoral nursing students at South African universities spend a
semester or more studying at Johns Hopkins. Ten nurses have
participated to date.

These nurses are going to become faculty members [in South Africa]
and theyre going to become leaders in health departments and be
able to influence health policy and the delivery of care, Sharps says.
People are realizing that nurses prepared at the graduate and the
doctoral level are going to be critical to meet the challenges of
increased health care demands.

19. Are there really more doctors of Ethiopian descent in Chicago

than in the entire nation of Ethiopia?

Yes, according to estimates made by the International Organization

for Migration, a Swiss group that examines migration issues. This is
just one of the eye-opening statistics Richard Cambridge, SAIS 79
(PhD), likes to employ to highlight the urgency of his work as director
of the World Banks African Diaspora Program. Launched in 2007, the
program aims to harness the skills and resources of the millions of
people of African descent living around the world. Its not that Africa
doesnt have the talent; its just that a lot of it isnt resident in the
continent, Cambridge says.

Beyond expat talent, there are also finances that could be tapped.
Cambridge estimates that the diaspora from sub-Saharan Africa
sends as much as $40 billion a year back to the continent in the form
of remittances, or cash transfers to relatives. The World Bank
recently helped the African Union, a collaborative organization of 53
African nations, form the Africa Institute of Remittances to examine
ways in which the diaspora can be encouraged to channel at least a
portion of these billions into development projects. Cambridges
program has also helped 25 African nations develop a Ministry of the
Diaspora to create policies and mechanisms to help their far-flung
citizens give time and/or money back to the homeland.

Bottom line: The bank decided that the diaspora is an important

part of any strategy to deal with development on the continent,
Cambridge says. Every discussion and analysis about challenges to
development in Africa starts with this notion of a lack of capacity
the countries dont have the people, they dont have the institutions
they need. But then heres this cadre of well-educated people with
resources that can be brought into the mix.

20. How has the election of Barack Obama affected U.S.-Africa

relations?

Bob Daemmrich / The Image Works

Bob Daemmrich / The Image Works

The election of the first U.S. president of African descent was a

milestone event, but its impact on the nations relationship with
Africa is hard to determine, says Floyd Hayes, senior lecturer in the
Krieger Schools Political Science Department and coordinator of
programs and undergraduate studies in the Center for Africana
Studies. Im just not quite sure yet what significance his
administration will have on economic and political relations with
Africa. America is still in an economic crisis, and it would be difficult
to justify a lot of new aid to anyone these days.

Certainly nowhere in Africa has Obamas rise been as closely watched

as in the East African nation of Kenya, where Obamas father was
born. This is a change of sorts. More East Africans are paying
attention to whats going on with the United States and with the
presidency, Hayes says. This area has generally been more distant
from the United States because most black Americans are
descendants of West Africa.

If an Obama-led United States enjoys a stronger connection to Africa,

its certainly not showing in Ivory Coast, where efforts to resolve a
deeply conflicted presidential election have so far been fruitless.
Hayes, however, is hopeful that a more serious relationship will
develop. But as Obama is mired in a pressing domestic agenda, says
Hayes, his presidency has so far been more symbolic than substantive
when it comes to deepening connections.

Baltimore-based freelancer Brennen Jensen is a former senior

reporter for The Chronicle of Philanthropy.