As we begin final preparations for our October gathering in Stellenbosch, I wanted to bring you up to speed on some of the people who will be joining us for our three day festival, from Oct. 22-25, and some of the conversations we expect to be having.
The outline of this year’s program is beginning to come into view and, without having started out to do so, what has become clear is that we are trying to answer the question, What Now?
What now that the global environment is being willy nilly reengineered, shaking up established patterns in ways that will have (and is in fact already having) a profound effect on Africa? What now that the modern era of globalization, so rapturously birthed in the Clinton era with the admission of China to the World Trade Organization, now seems to be coming to a close?
What now, when USAID, literally and figuratively, has been savagely dismantled? The United States, through its agencies and its behemoth foundations, has been singularly important in Africa to the funding of programs to prevent people from starving to death, from dying from AIDS and malaria, and for trade in everything from agricultural produce to automobiles at favorable rates. Even the relatively free movement of people is affected, with US president Donald Trump seemingly determined to severely constrain immigration, particularly from African countries. Other traditional migrant destinations, Europe chief among them, are responding to domestic politics and pulling up the drawbridges.
In this new world, everyone, to use a Nigerianism, must now answer to his father’s name.
With or without the American shocks, it has long been clear that African countries have got to become more economically integrated, instead of a longstanding balkanization that has constrained trade and resulted in the unique absurdity of not a single major African economy having another African country among the top five of its trading partners. And in many cases it is easier for an American or a European to visit another African country than it is for Africans.
Perhaps fewer people understand this ongoing stupidity more than Africa’s most prominent industrialist and wealthiest businessman, Aliko Dangote. After a bit of arm wrestling he called me the other night to confirm he will deliver a keynote on the obstacle crossing that doing business across Africa has been, and what we must do to get on the road to economic health.
Some of the best labs in the world for monitoring and managing pandemics and other public health disasters are located around the continent. Many of these labs get much of their funding from US institutions. Reverberations from Trump’s pulling the plug is forcing our best scientists and public health administrators to find new pathways to funding cutting edge science and public health. The eminent scientist and virologist Amadou Sall of Senegal, who until recently led the Pasteur Institute in Dakar and is now at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), will engage in conversation with Ntobeko Ntusi, president of the South African Medical Research Council, whose role puts him in the eye of the funding storm. Their conversation will be moderated by the disease hunter Tulio de Oliveira, one of Africa’s brightest younger scientists and founder of the Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation at Stellenbosch University.
Since there’s no cavalry riding to rescue, more than ever Africans have got to find their own way now, as will be argued by the journalist and leading historian of Africa, Howard French, whose latest book on the continent, ‘The Second Emancipation,’ has just been published.
Some (and definitely including your correspondent) will argue that the core challenge we face is how to create systems that allow the best among us to rise to positions of political leadership on the continent. We are a continent of young people led almost exclusively by the old and the infirm. Lists of the oldest political leaders in the world are dominated by Africans, with the very oldest, Paul Biya of Cameroon, announcing a few weeks ago his intention to seek reelection yet again at age 92, though he now lives part-time in France. (Cameroon’s median age, by the way, is 19, same as the rest of the continent’s.)
An exception to this unhappy rule is David Sengeh, the chief minister of Sierra Leone, who will be one of our keynote speakers. David, 39, a tech innovator and MIT PhD was only 32 when his country’s president appointed him minister of innovation. From there he was named education minister, until finally President Julius Bio appointed him chief minister two years ago. David is the very picture of the modern African political leader, exceptionally well educated, inventive— and hip. He is a talented rapper and only recently cut his gigantic dreadlocks, which one hopes does not signal a Samson Effect. Relying on his experience of the past seven years, David will talk about how to transform African governments to function more effectively in the modern world.
In the same vein, the Nigerian minister of trade, Jumoke Oduwole, is demonstrating how committed (and modern) political leadership can move the needle even in intensely challenging environments. And Trevor Manuel, possibly South Africa’s best ever finance minister, will speak on inspired political leadership, and the lessons learned when something that was working ceases to do so reliably. Trevor will be joined on stage by Dare Okoudjou, originally from Benin, a fintech impresario who was inspired to return home from France after a fortuitous dinner in Paris years ago with the then finance minister, who had asked to dine with a handful of African students while in town on business.
Inspired leadership makes good things happen.
We will have plenty of surprises and delights. Some will force us to confront ways of escaping the chains of history, notable among them a conversation with a surprise guest to be conducted by the Stellenbosch academic Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, author of the landmark book on South Africa’s great trauma, ‘A Human Being Died That Night,’ and winner of the Templeton Prize.
As usual we will have prominent innovators on the frontiers of artificial intelligence, and bankers and educators, philosophers, philanthropists and poets, evangelists and skeptics alike. Those in the invitation-only audience will be, if anything, at least as interesting and overachieving as those on stage— a regular characteristic of Africa In the World.
We appeal in equal measure to the intellect and the soul. Both attributes are to be found in overabundance in one of our continent’s most prominent artists, William Kentridge, who is not uncomfortable with imperfection and incompleteness, and whose works range across drawings to film, sculpture to opera and theater. William will bring his formidable intellect to bear on the contours of life and art and society.
A few months ago you heard from me about the artist Ibrahim Mahama, with whom I visited back in April in his northern Ghana redoubt of Tamale. Yes, Ibrahim will be with us in Stellenbosch, speaking about ‘Home Is Where the Art Is.’ He will be joined in conversation by the eminent critic Siddhartha Mitter.
While our daytime is spent in far reaching dialogues and performances, as has become tradition our evening will be surrendered to music, dining and wining— this being the very heart of the South African wine country, after all. Each day closes at the shebeen, live music in the background, where new connections are made and old ones renewed at the bar, around the pool or by the warmth of the fireplace.
For those who have been invited, and have confirmed their attendance, we look forward to hosting you. For those not with us in person, we will be sharing full conversations, interviews, and extracts from the dialogue sessions on our various social platforms.
Warmly,
Dele
Founder & Host
