By: Tseggai Isaac

Tseggai Isaac — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 21:16:58 +0000

Dear Maureen Coffey,
The points you raised are cogent, but, I feel, we also should be sensitive to the following realities:
1. To begin with, “Negritude” as a philosophical concept made ephemeral flashes in the postcolonial years of the 1960s. It quickly lost its glitter to the radical schools of thought, such as the “dependentista” and the radical Marxists. Furthermore, Negritude was never an ideology that had attempted to unearth, articulate, engage, and integrate the long forgotten African civilizational attributes. Those were and are still waiting for ransom and redemption. Negritude was a parochial concept with limited horizon to the sub-Saharan template of philosophical contestation. It, perhaps, was more French in its mode of thought than a genuine African political belief or thought/ideology.
2. Second, “Democratization, education, and good governance” are not exclusively “Western” constructs. They are universal. They had existed in African, Asian, and European societies in ways and means that were articulated to the conformity and adaptability of ethno-linguistic, political, and socio-economic contexts. In the Middle East, Islam caused the prospects of democratic birth short-lived, because, the Islamic text, according to Islamic scholars, is sufficient enough to render for naught any other confessional or political beliefs/ideologies.
3. You correctly noted in your reference to African markets: “if left relatively unperturbed, a national economy will generally develop on its own.” This is true, but bad governance exposes markets to the vicissitudes of bad deals with bad trans-border players who team up with predatory dictators to harvest African wealth, cause underdevelopment and prevent democratization. In my view, I feel democratization, education and good governance are indispensable political and social capital that can contribute to the healing African and other societies.
Best Regards,
Tseggai Isaac, PhD.
Associate Professor
Political Science
121 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
MS&T
Rolla, MO 65409

By: Maureen Coffey

Maureen Coffey — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 14:06:18 +0000

“Only democratization, education and good governance will resurrect Africa …” While this is entirely true, there are two obstacles: many ideologists, from “Negritude” ‘isolationists’ to Islamists etc., will “point out” that the “Western” model does not (bene)fit all and everywhere. By the superficial looks of it they seem to have reams of “data” on their side to “prove” it. But when we take a moment to contemplate that normally, if left relatively unperturbed, a national economy will generally develop on its own, we might look at the one thing that separates the “West” from the African “business model” and that is predatory pricing. The EU and to some extent the US (with grain and soybeans, the EU “across the board”) do have tariff structures and esp. export subsidies in place whereby agricultural produce is pressed into African national markets by virtue of subsidising it (at an overall loss!) to levels BELOW what a native laborer and subsistence farmer, often earning a dollar a day or even less, could match. Those undersold producers then leave their lands, which are then prey to desertification, and move to cities to get … food aid. which, once again, is mainly EU exports. Stop that vicious circle and within, say, thirty years, you would see the “Greening of Africa” to paraphrase a popular US book from the seventies.

Comments on: S&T author examines African civilization in new book

By: Tseggai Isaac

By: Maureen Coffey