NEWS POST: Colonial Borders Still Influence How Academics Write About Africa

Pick a country. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

Africa is not a country—but a continent with one billion people, living in 55 different countries, and speaking more than 2,000 languages.

Yet a relatively narrow coverage of Africa and its people exists not only in mainstream media, but as a new research paper shows, in academia as well. Virginia Tech University analyzed 20 years of research articles published in two major journals about African politics, namely African Affairs published by Oxford University and The Journal of Modern African Studies by Cambridge University.

The paper investigated whether by reading Anglophone scholarship on sub-Saharan politics between 1993 and 2013, one could actually learn more about the region’s political reality and complexity.

In his paper, published this month, Ryan C. Briggs, an assistant professor at the department of political science, notes that studies around sub-Saharan Africa cluster heavily on a small number of wealthier, more populous, and English-speaking nations.

Fewer than half of all the countries in the region—46 in total—were written about more than 10 times, with the majority of them being former British colonies like Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. Former French colonies were the focus of about 5 papers on average, while those colonized by Britain had about 27 articles written about them. Population size also mattered a lot: for every 5% increase in a country’s populace, the number of articles in every four-year period increased by about 3%.

If this shows us anything, Briggs writes, it is that Anglophone research does not represent regional politics, but rather uses “broad generalizations” deduced from specific countries to produce “a skewed image of sub-Saharan Africa” that is then applied to other countries.

The cartogram on the right shows the same map after it has been distorted so that the area of a country is approximately proportionate to the number of articles written about it between 1993 and 2013. Light grey countries were British colonies and dark grey countries were French colonies. (Ryan C. Briggs)

Briggs doesn’t absolve himself from this practice: he told Quartz that his own work often focused on Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi. He also said that he was prompted to undertake the project after seeing how his students picked certain countries when they had to research about African politics. Testing political theories broadly, Briggs argues, will go a long way in solidifying research results and narrow the scope of generalization.

“I also think this uneven coverage matters in theory, because sometimes research ideas ‘travel’ and so something that is tested well in one place may be applied to a different place and then fail,” he said.

This bias in case selection is driven mostly by researchers who are keen on getting easy access to a country, collecting information fast, and publishing those results in good academic journals. And speaking of Sub-Saharan Africa, the term itself is also problematic—given that it is as geographically confusing as it historically loaded. Yet these biased, generalized claims are ultimately important because they trickle down from academic halls into newsrooms, social media, and ultimately into the hands of policymakers and thinkers.

One way to remedy this, however, is to engage researchers in institutions based on the African continent. In a 2016 paper, Briggs and Scott Weathers found that authors based out of the continent were more likely than those living in Africa to do specific country studies and use the results to generalize about conditions on the continent.

Originally published on QUARTZ AFRICA

GUEST BLOG POST: To Power Its Future, Africa Needs ‘Wall Of Money’ By Noluthando Crockett-Ntonga

The hundreds of delegates pouring into the glittering Marriott Marquis hotel for this month’s Powering Africa Summit were experiencing a stark, if unstated, contrast. On a good day this year, Nigeria – the largest per capita of Africa’s 55 countries, produced enough electricity to operate around five ‘eco-friendly’ hotels, the size of the three-year old Marriott.

The market opportunities are massive, participants agreed; the challenges equally large. By the end of two days of discussions, a consensus emerged around three themes:

1) There is a ‘wall of money’ available to electrify Africa with bankable projects

2) There is hopeful optimism that U.S. President Trump’s administration might be supportive, and

3) There are enormous opportunities for those with ideas, stamina and, most of all, patience to make money while doing good – on and off the grid.

“To unlock that wall of money,” says Standard Bank’s head of power and infrastructure, David Humphrey, “Africa has to grow, develop, and become a place where that wall of money is happy to invest, and can take and understand the associated risks.”

Mr. Humphrey’s assessment is underpinned by 150 years of African experience by Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by asset.

Power Africa, an initiative to‘light up’ Africa launched by President Barack Obama during a visit to three African countries in 2013, aims to see 60 million newconnections and 30,000 megawatts (MW) “of new and cleaner power generation.”

Nigeria, Africa’s most populace nation, is key to meeting those goals, Andrew Herscowitz, the Power Africa coordinator, told attendees. “If we succeed in Nigeria, we can be successful anywhere in the continent,” he said.

Nigeria has some 12,000 MW of installed generation capacity and can transmit 7,000 MW on the existing grid, he said. Typical output ranges from 3,000 to 4,000 MW, of which only about 2,000 MW is being paid for.

Investors and developers new to Africa often need reminding that there are 55 countries on the continent, which compares in land area to the United States, China, Japan, Mexico, India and eastern and western Europe combined. There are tremendous variations by region and often within individual countries. Some countries have policy, regulatory and community frameworks already in place which make it easier to do business. But ‘easier’ is still not ‘easy’ compared to more developed regions, conference participants noted.

“In economic terms,” says Mr. Humphrey, “Africa is at the crossroads.”

“We’ve seen a lot of progress with democracy and democratic institutions, whether in Nigeria, Uganda, even in The Gambia where [a recent coup attempt] was peacefully resolved. There have been peaceful transitions in Zambia and in Ghana.” Those trends, he says, have made a difference in investor interest.

“Twenty years ago an investor might ask why would I go to Africa”, he says.” Now we’re having interesting conversations at the individual government level and individual client level about how you unlock that potential.”

There’s a lot at stake for Africa’s people. More than 620 million live without electricity. The people of Gbarnway, Liberia, a rural community about 100 miles from the capital Monrovia, illustrate the problems and opportunities. The Liberian government estimated that it could take at least 10 years for the national grid to reach Gbarnway and other rural areas – and that was before the setbacks brought on by the Ebola crisis of 2014-16.

Power Africa’s more than 100 private sector partners have committed to develop some 16,000 MW of generation. These include a number of non-profits focusing on delivering ‘off-grid’ power to Africa’s rural population.

One of these, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), has committed $400,000 to bring reliable and affordable electricity to Liberia with a solar-diesel hybrid system. The fifty-four-year-old not-for-profit U.S. organization has helped Liberians launch three electric cooperatives and has provided training in maintenance, service provision and financial management.

Gbarnway now enjoys electricity with solar panels that NRECA supplied. Korto Gizzie, a resident, says “We were living in darkness, and living in this place was hard. The houses were dark for the children. But now, we have light here, and this place is just like a city. I am so happy to see a town like this.”

Gizzie’s power came as part of USAID’s Power Africa “Beyond the Grid” project. The Obama administration launched the Power Africa initiative in 2013 with the goal of connecting 60 million people to power by 2030 through public/private partnerships.

One of the questions buzzing among delegates in between panels, round tables and keynote addresses, was the future of the initiative under the new U.S. administration. Power Africa, the initiative housed at USAID, involves many options including development finance and Independent Power Producers (IPPs)—all of which are favourable to businesses. The hope is that President Trump, with his background, might see a good opportunity for U.S. business.

Republican Congressman Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a Summit keynote, extolled the chance “to create technology and long term power deals while increasing global security and social stability.”

He said that for American companies who maintain their competitiveness, opportunities abound as Africa’s economies grow.

“You can’t run a factory on a generator,” he said, referring to the private generators that currently provide much of the electricity to African homes, schools, clinics, offices and businesses, including banks.

Mr. Royce was lead sponsor of the Electrify Africa Act of 2015, which supports and broadens the Power Africa initiative.

African consumers are driving an accelerating process of renewable energy installations, while African governments and big utility companies are often stuck in the grid paradigm, some delegates said. Almost everyone wants the ability to be connected to a reliable electricity grid. But as a result of Africa’s sheer size, the number of rural residents, and the lack of existing generating and distributing capacity, it is likely that many millions of people will get electricity from emerging, clean technologies including solar, wind, hydro and biogas, before a grid reaches them.

The cost of these technologies is dropping, making off-grid and mini-grid renewable energy affordable, even for the very poor. Some require little upfront capital investment and have the advantage of delivering energy quickly, replacing costly and unhealthy fuel sources like firewood and kerosene.

Noluthando Crockett-Ntonga is a contributor to AllAfrica.

Originally published on PREMIUM TIMES BLOG