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“There came a point in my life … where I realized that almost every narrative, whatever it came from, that dealt with an African country was pretty much a rewriting of ‘Heart of Darkness.’”
The post A Forensic Level of Honesty: Aminatta Forna and Nicole Rizzuto appeared first on Public Books.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, born in Jamaica in 1887, created the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Committees League (UNIA-ACL) in 1914. Garvey and his supporters adopted Pan-Africanism, which advocated conscious identification with Africa, political and economic resistance to European domination and racism, and solidarity across the African diaspora with the African continent. Slavery, colonialism, racism, and discrimination in the Americas and across the diaspora shaped this philosophy.
The largest Pan-African organization of the 20th century, the UNIA connected the needs and interests of afrodescendant people in the diaspora to Africans on the continent because of their shared identity. Garvey’s philosophy also stressed the need for global economic interdependence to liberate Africans from European colonists. Women helped start and grow the UNIA. Women including Garvey’s wives, Amy Ashwood and Amy Jacques, Adelaide Casely-Hayford, and Henrietta Vinton Davis set the blueprint for Garveyite women as leaders in the UNIA.
The organizational structure of the UNIA, I suspect, contributes to its historical omission from discussions of Black feminism. Garvey established New York as the major seat of the organization in 1918, after arriving in the United States in 1916. The UNIA would eventually found local branches that spanned continents. Garvey was designated “Provisional President of Africa” at the UNIA’s First International Convention in August 1920, while the UNIA Constitution bestowed additional high official posts on a number of male signatories, including Gabriel Johnson, G. O. Marke, J. W. H. Eason, and R.H. Tobitt.
Local branches would reflect this structure by electing prominent men of their communities to the presidency. Similarly, men would dominate in the hierarchies for the UNIA’s other endeavors including the newspaper The Negro World, edited by people such as T. Thomas Fortune, and the Black Star Line, which was overseen by Garvey as its first president and Jeremiah Certain as its first vice president.
>>> Click Here to Listen to “Marcus Garvey: 20th Century Pan-Africanist” <<<
Nonetheless, despite the predominance of men in the organization’s senior echelons, Black women had a leadership role in the UNIA from the outset. For example, Amy Ashwood, Garvey’s first wife, is credited for the organization’s dual-gender structure of separate but parallel women’s and men’s auxiliaries such as the Ladies Division, which later became the Black Cross Nurses, and the Universal African Legions. Ashwood also was an editor for the Negro World.
Garvey’s second wife, Amy Jacques, transformed from his personal secretary into a vital leader within the organization. In her role as associate editor the Negro World, she introduced a page, “Our Women and What They Think,” through which she encouraged UNIA women to work both as political agents and helpmates to their men. When her husband was imprisoned, Jacques-Garvey edited and published two volumes of Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey to raise funds and salvage his reputation. However, Garvey’s wives were not the only women leaders in the UNIA and Garvey movement. Other influential women include Henrietta Vinton Davis and Maymie Lena Turpeau De Mena. Their leadership at the international level attests to the breadth of influence women had in early Pan-Africanism.
Women also made up the rank and file of some local chapters, however histories give more detail about their leadership responsibilities as chapter presidents or secretaries. Due to the UNIA’s gender-segregated structure, women influenced one another and their broader communities in the promotion of black pride, economic empowerment, and self-determination for afrodescendant individuals from within these organizations. One such group was the Women’s Universal African Motor Corps:
The Universal African Motor Corps was a female auxiliary whose units were affiliated with local divisions and associated with the paramilitary African Legion, the membership of which was exclusively male. While the head of the Motor Corps, who was given the title Brigadier General, was a woman, the officers and commanders of the units were men. Members of the Corps were trained in military discipline and automobile driving and repair.
The Black Cross Nurses were another women-led group that left a profound impact on the Black Atlantic. Similar to the Black club women of the U.S., this group of mostly middle-class women carried out social welfare programs centered on the uplift of the poor and working class.
While popular opinion regards Pan Africanism and feminism as incompatible, Garveyite women practiced community feminism, which focused on the collective needs and ambitions of women within their unique community. They highlighted women’s responsibilities as nurturers and caregivers as well as activists and leaders, adopting a vision of the self as communal, interdependent, and relational. Contrary to western feminist notions of women in patriarchal societies, community feminism contends the helpmate role benefits society and provides women the ability to exercise influence over men.
As “race women,” the UNIA’s helpmate-leaders occupied the traditional role of wives and caregivers while also participating as leaders in Pan African political and social movements. Nevertheless, despite their major contributions to the UNIA, women members often experienced marginalization or sexism from the Garvey movement’s male adherents. This sexism and misogyny resulted in part from the historical construction of women’s role within nationalist movements as one in which they must reinforce patriarchal power dynamics. Ultimately, this created atmosphere in which women had limited leadership opportunities in the UNIA due to the deprioritization of initiatives centered on them and their issues.
However, UNIA women did not accept sexist standards without push back, choosing to advocate for greater representation and equality within the larger organization, particularly through women’s divisions. For example, Amy Jacques Garvey emphasized equality between men and women. In addition, Jacques-Garvey confronted masculinist notions of the intellectual inferiority of women through her “Our Women and What They Think” column in the Negro World. Further, she took on a leadership role and maintained UNIA affairs during Garvey’s incarceration, including compiling and publishing volumes of his writing and speeches in Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.
The emphasis on militant masculinity propogated by Garvey indicates the tensions between centering Black nationalism and pursuing women’s rights. UNIA women navigated these challenges through open critique of the patriarchal aspects of Pan Africanism. For example, during the Fifth Pan-African International Congress in 1945, Amy Ashwood Garvey, along with fellow Jamaican Alma La Badie, were the only two women presenters. Garvey used the opportunity to call out the absence of women’s issues and voices. Additionally, the resolutions proposed by the West Indies delegation were the sole clauses propositioned about women’s issues including equal pay for equal work, employment opportunities for married women, and raising the age of consent.
Despite the patriarchal structure of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, women played a crucial role as leaders in the organization and as advocates for women’s issues. Women like Amy Ashwood, Amy Jacques, Adelaide Casely-Hayford, Henrietta Vinton Davis, and Maymie Lena Turpeau De Mena set the blueprint for Garveyite women as leaders in the UNIA.
While sexism and misogyny persisted within the organization, UNIA women pushed back against these attitudes through open critique and advocacy for greater representation and equality. The community feminism practiced by Garveyite women emphasized the collective needs and ambitions of women within their unique community. Ultimately, the contributions of UNIA women to the organization and to the broader Pan-African movement demonstrate the importance of recognizing the diversity of leadership roles and perspectives within social and political movements.
The post Women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association appeared first on Blackfeminisms.com.
Guest post by Patricia L. Sullivan
During her recent trip to Africa, US Vice President Kamala Harris announced a $100 million commitment over ten years to West African Nations to fend off the increasing threat of extremist groups. The announcement followed President Biden’s pledge of $55 billion to the continent for the next three years. While these promises reveal a US commitment to greater engagement with African states, the often-dodged question is whether citizens of these states will benefit. Will US security aid improve human security in fragile and conflict-affected African states? How is US security assistance likely to affect governance and state repression for citizens that often suffer at the hands of both extremist groups and their own security forces?
The empirical record is mixed. Between 2002 and 2019, the US spent almost $300 billion on security assistance and trained at least one million foreign military personnel. In some countries, such as Ukraine, these programs have improved both the capability and professionalism of the state’s armed forces. In others, they escalated human rights abuses and increased the risk of coups d’état. Take the example of Kenya—one of the largest recipients of US military training and equipment in East Africa. The state’s security forces have been found to engage in torture, extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, and forced disappearances. Or the Philippines, where President Duterte employed the country’s military—armed and trained by US aid programs—in a brutal war on drugs that took the lives of thousands of civilians.
Although some studies have found that security assistance can reduce civilian targeting by state security forces, there is mounting evidence that it often fuels human rights violations. Recent research suggests that the risk of civilian harm is greatest when donors transfer weapons to postconflict states or provide aid to states with fragmented, “coup-proofed” security forces. On the other hand, effective institutions to constrain executive power in recipient states, and the provision of some forms of “nonlethal” security assistance—like military education for officers and defense institution building—appear to mitigate the potential for civilian harm.
As the War on Terror spread from Afghanistan to the African continent, the US greatly expanded the use of security assistance—funding, weapons, equipment, and training provided to a state’s security sector by external actors—to build the capacity of weak states to take on the counterterrorism mission without sacrificing American troops in ground combat. According to data collected by the Security Assistance Monitor, funding to train and equip foreign security forces increased more than 300 percent in the ten years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Over the past two decades, the US has provided security sector assistance to more than two-thirds of the sovereign states in the world. Between 2015 and 2020, $4.8 billion in security aid went to sub-Saharan Africa.
While the goal is to reduce the threat posed by violent non-state actors, Kristen Harkness at the University of St. Andrews points out that most aid went to “repressive, heavily coup-proofed authoritarian regimes,” even though boosting military capacity in non-democratic states can fuel grievances that drive recruitment to extremist groups and increase political violence.
When “lethal” aid—weapons, military equipment, and combat skills training—reaches countries that lack effective institutional constraints on executive power, as in many autocratic and anocratic regimes, the risk of extrajudicial killings at the hand of security forces spikes, according to data that follows low- and middle-income recipients of US security force assistance between 2002 and 2019.
In the absence of effective legislative or judicial constraints, leaders can use military aid to buy the loyalty of their security forces and incentivize compliance with orders to repress dissent. Of course, lethal aid also directly increases the capacity of state security forces to quell civilian threats to the regime with force. Security assistance signals that a foreign patron is invested in regime survival. While soldiers ordered to use deadly force against the civilian population might experience moral conflict, or fear facing consequences for targeting civilians if the regime is overthrown, foreign security aid increases the odds that repression will succeed, the regime will survive, and soldiers will be rewarded for their loyalty.
One way to avoid the risk that US assistance increases human rights violations is to provide aid only to countries with effective legislative and judicial institutions. But many regions where extremist groups are active would offer a limited menu. An alternative is providing safer forms of aid.
Separating “non-lethal” security aid—a broad category encompassing professional military education, security sector reform, defense institution-building, and a variety of other types of assistance—from “lethal” aid—which includes material aid, direct combat assistance, and combat training—reveals divergent effects on state violence. While increasing lethal aid significantly raises the risk of extrajudicial killing, non-lethal aid appears to have a dampening effect. The exception is authoritarian states in which leaders have created overlapping and competing security institutions to “coup-proof” their regime. In these states, all forms of security assistance are associated with civilian harm. In post-conflict countries, one study shows that while weapons transfers and military aid increase human rights abuses, levels of Official Development Assistance (ODA) are associated with improved human rights protections.
Moving forward, as the US promises a new wave of security assistance to African states, it has a choice. Considering the recipient country’s institutional context, the state of its security forces, and the type of military aid, can decrease the risk that those resources are used to commit human rights violations.
Patricia Lynn Sullivan is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies.
Guest post by Brandon Bolte
On April 15, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) surprised many Western observers when it launched an assault against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Khartoum. Led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemeti”), the RSF previously fought for the Sudanese regime against rebels for years. In 2019, it participated in a coup alongside General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the SAF that ousted Sudan’s long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir. Both generals have since been on a transitionary council meant to shape a new government before popular elections take place. In the 11 days since the violence in Khartoum began, over 400 people have been killed, thousands are trying to flee the capital, and there are signs of the conflict spreading to other parts of the country.
Transitions to democracy are usually rocky, but coups can lead to democratization when coupled with the kind of popular mobilization seen in Sudan. The irony of the current situation is that at one point the RSF was considered by al-Bashir as his “praetorian guard,” meant to deter the SAF from staging a coup. Coup-proofers aren’t usually successful coup-perpetrators. Moreover, the current rupture was caused by a disagreement between the two generals over how the RSF might be integrated into the army’s command structure. Why is the proposed merging of forces so contentious? What do we expect the long-term outcome of this conflict to be?
In a study published in International Studies Quarterly, I unpack the politics of how governments try to manage, regulate, and contain militias like the RSF. I describe how and why states and professed pro-state militias compete for power at one another’s expense. Viewed in this light, the outbreak in Khartoum is part of a predictable, if not inevitable, vicious spiral of poor militia management politics over the course of the last two decades.
Pro-government militias are commonly defined as organized armed groups allied with the state but are not formally part of the official security forces. These groups range from well-equipped paramilitaries designed to supplement the regular army to localized civil defense forces meant to hold territory and extract local information about insurgents. Sometimes they are tasked with carrying out human rights violations like mass killings or genocide, allowing the government to evade accountability. Professionalized militias are also used by certain types of dictators to counterbalance the official military in order to prevent coups d’état.
The challenge for governments employing militias is that militias themselves are perfectly aware the state could eliminate them once they are no longer needed. This is why governments often keep their auxiliaries contained in some way, by actively monitoring them or restricting their capabilities. Otherwise, these militias could switch sides in a conflict, restart a war, be more difficult to disintegrate or integrate, or otherwise undermine the state’s long-term ability to govern.
Weak states facing capable rebellions, however, are usually unable to regulate and contain their militias. Instead, they have to focus on short-term threats from insurgents, allowing militia allies to have free reign. The consequence is that militia groups have incentives to take advantage of these windows of opportunity to “bargain” with the state for resources that they can eventually use to stave off their own future demise.
The RSF is a reorganization of disparate Arab militias called the Janjaweed, which were remobilized from scattered murahileen groups after a coalition of rebel groups shocked Khartoum by seizing an air force base in 2003. The SAF and Janjaweed militias then perpetrated a genocidal campaign in Darfur, leading to over 200,000 deaths.
Over time, the combination of weak state capacity and a significant rebel threat drove al-Bashir’s regime to become dependent on militias for survival. Militia leaders knew this and pursued their own interests unabated. Many leaders profited from looting and extortion during the war, so when the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) was signed in 2006 with a provision to disarm the Janjaweed, many, including Hemeti’s faction, revolted against the state. Eventually, Khartoum weakened Hemeti enough to force him to negotiate. There the government again co-opted Hemeti by providing his militia more weaponry, financial rewards, and eventually legitimacy by reorganizing it into the RSF. Al-Bashir soon brought the RSF out from under the command of the National Intelligence and Security Services, ensuring the group’s independence from the constraints of the state.
In the end, al-Bashir’s failure to contain these militias was part of a vicious cycle of his own doing. His growing dependency on militias like the RSF afforded Hemeti multiple windows of opportunity to increase his own capabilities, which he then used to resist his group’s demobilization. Now, even integration is worth resisting for Hemeti, since it would effectively represent the dissolution of his autonomy and influence.
A durable resolution can only occur if the RSF loses its bargaining power. This may require immediate international commitments by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to stop supplying weapons to the RSF and/or the SAF suppressing Hemeti’s forces to a point where the latter has incentives to negotiate but not retreat to remobilize for large-scale war. Unlike the immediate post-DPA period, however, appeasement cannot come in the form of greater autonomy, resources, and capabilities if the end goal is political stability. Al-Burhan knows this, and given the SAF’s own involvement in repression and mass killing, the military will resist appeasing Hemeti in an effort to signal to the pro-democracy movement a desire to turn a new leaf.
The problem is that the RSF is situated with considerable bargaining leverage and has every incentive to use force to preserve the status quo. “Power is as power does.” Temporary ceasefire efforts notwithstanding, until the RSF is demobilized or neutralized, Sudan’s pro-democracy advocates will be sidelined while military strongmen violently compete to fill the void in Khartoum.
Brandon Bolte is a 2022–23 Peace Scholar Fellow with the US Institute of Peace and a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Penn State University. He will start as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois Springfield in the fall. The views expressed in this commentary are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Institute of Peace.
Africa contributes less than 3% of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions but the continent will be one of the most impacted by the adverse effects of climate change. Some explanations for Africa’s vulnerability include poor diffusion of technologies and information relevant to supporting adaptation, usually provided by clean or climate tech companies.
Despite the precise role that technologies such as renewable energy, recycling and green transportation play in improving the world’s environmental footprint, raising venture capital has proved chiefly hard for the companies behind them in years past. However, investor appetite has been enhanced in recent times. In 2021, climate tech startups raised over $60 billion, about 14% of VC dollars raised that year; in Africa, clean tech accounted for 15% to 18% (about $863 million) of the total funding that venture capitalists poured into the region last year in companies such as Sun King, making clean tech second only to fintech.
Development finance institutions (DFIs), including the British International Investment (BII), FMO and Norfund, are active investors in the clean tech space, as are clean tech–focused funds such as All On, Ambo Ventures and Catalyst Fund. In the latest development, Equator, a climate tech venture capital firm focused on sub-Saharan Africa, has reached an initial close of its first fund with $40 million in commitments. Its limited partners include BII, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), the Shell Foundation and impact investor DOEN Participaties, according to the company’s statement.
Equator backs seed and Series A startups across energy, agriculture and mobility sectors. On a call with TechCrunch, managing partner Nijhad Jamal said the firm is interested in these sectors because of numerous untapped market opportunities. He also noted that deploying capital at seed and Series A stages allow Equator to act as a bridge between startups’ earliest checks (at the pre-seed stage) and growth capital, which could come from its limited partners.
“The challenge for many of those larger funds and international investors is that they tend to come in when things have already been de-risked and proven out. At the seed and Series A stage, there is a shortage of capital and institutional investors supporting companies at that stage of their life cycle and journey,” commented Jamal. “The hope is that by investing at these stages, we can mobilize capital at Series B and growth equity stages from large regional funds, global climate tech funds, and corporations excited about the sector and region.”
Jamal, before joining Equator, had several stints with asset manager BlackRock and impact investment Acumen Fund, where he managed the firm’s clean tech group. At Moja Capital, a personal fund he founded, Jamal made seed and Series A investments across several sectors, including those central to Equator’s strategy: clean energy, agriculture and mobility. SunCulture, a Kenya-based off-grid solar tech for smallholder farmers, was one of Jamal’s investments. Equator made a follow-on investment in SunCulture and other startups backed by the firm’s operators, including Morgan DeFoort, partner at Equator and founder of Factor[e] Ventures; Apollo Agriculture; Odyssey Energy Solutions; and Roam.
L-R: Nijhad Jamal and Morgan DeFoort. Image Credits: Equator
According to Jamal, Equator wants to back tech-enabled ventures that bring some element of technology, whether hardware or software or business model innovation, to bear in a region where innovation might be lacking. As such, the fund will pay attention to technical founders with domain expertise who are building solutions around clean energy, agriculture and mobility, and who ultimately address the impact of climate change on income inequality in Africa.
“Climate change and income inequality are proven to be directly correlated. Data shows that the gap between the economic output of the world’s richest and poorest countries is 25% larger today than it would have been without global warming,” Jamal remarked. “So climate change has worsened global income inequality and we’re seeing that very acutely in sub-Saharan Africa. And the ventures and innovation that we’re investing in is a material component to addressing some of these challenges.”
Equator, hoping to make up to 15 investments throughout this fund’s life cycle, says it participates in round sizes of $10 million or less, which is typical for pre-Series B clean tech startups in sub-Saharan Africa. For seed stages, the clean tech VC invests between $1 million and $2 million; for Series A stages, it cut checks between $2 million and $4 million. The firm, which has teams in Nairobi, Lagos, London and Colorado, will also leverage support from Factor[e] Ventures, an organization of venture builders and pre-seed investors. While both companies operate independently, Equator and Factor[e] collaborate on sourcing deals and undertaking due diligence, and they share a post-investment support platform to provide value to portfolio companies as they scale.
“The reality is that capital alone is only part of the problem. Ventures also need highly active and engaged investors to help them reach the growth stage of their trajectory,” added DeFoort.
In all, Equator will be expecting to leverage the current shift in the global narrative about climate tech’s importance and its impact on climate change. The investments coming into the sector, despite lagging fintech by a mile, are progressively being funneled into reducing the cost of technologies such as solar systems and batteries while enabling better access for individuals and businesses with pay-as-you-go models. Jamal says these trends could make the sector more investable and, in many ways, more exciting. “We’re optimistic about the role that we have to play in this ecosystem. I hope this is the first of many funds that continue to follow in these footsteps because more capital, talent and innovation are needed to develop more holistic solutions to the challenges in the climate space.”
Equator secures $40M in commitments for fund targeting climate tech startups in Africa by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch
I’m very happy and honored to be the Keynote Speaker to the 38th Annual Kickoff Brunch for the University of New Mexico’s celebration of African American History Month. I want Read more
The post *The South*: The Past, Historicity, and Black American History (Part 1) first appeared on Society for US Intellectual History.
Rice University’s Academic Quadrangle will undergo a major redesign that will include moving the Founder’s Memorial statue of William Marsh Rice to a new location within the quadrangle.
William Marsh Rice was an oil and cotton tycoon, who when he died was said to be the richest man in Texas. He left the bulk of his estate to establish the Rice Institute for Literature. His will stipulated that only White students were allowed to enroll. From its founding in 1912 to 1965, no Black student was permitted to enroll. The university eventually won litigation allowing the educational institution to overrule the “Whites only” stipulation in its founder’s last will and testament.
The board of trustees of Rice University has decided the relocated statue will be presented with historical context and information about the university’s founder, including his ownership of enslaved people. A new monument of similar prominence will commemorate the beginning of the university’s integration a half-century after its opening.
“The board believes that the founding gift of William Marsh Rice is an essential landmark in our history, and the philanthropy of William Marsh Rice should be recognized,” the board’s statement said. “In addition, we acknowledge our founder’s entanglement with slavery, which is in stark contrast to the modern vision and values of our university.”
“We intend for the Academic Quadrangle to both fully acknowledge the history of our founding and founder, and to mark and celebrate the important evolution and growth of our university over time,” said Rob Ladd, chair of the board of trustees. “We believe the redesign will allow us to move forward as a community.”
The university has already implemented another recommendation that the Founder’s Memorial statue “should no longer be used as an iconic image of the university in its publicity.”
Myrlie Evers-Williams, the long-time civil rights leader and former chair of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is donating her personal archives to her alma mater, Pomona College in Claremont, California.
A native of Vicksburg, Mississippi, she attended what is now Alcorn State University in Mississippi, where she met her future husband Medgar Evers. After Medgar Evers was appointed field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi in 1954, the couple worked together on voting rights campaigns and efforts to end school segreation. In 1962, their home was firebombed. On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was assassinated while standing in the driveway of his home.
After two all-White juries failed to reach a verdict in trials of the suspected murderer of her husband, Myrlie Evers moved to California. (Medgar Evers’ murderer later was convicted of the crime in 1994.) She earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Pomona College. Myrlie Evers ran unsuccessfully for Congress and then worked in advertising and directed community affairs for the Atlantic Richfield Inc. She later served on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. In 1995, she was elected chair of the NAACP.
Now 90 years old, Evers-Williams has donated her extensive archives to Pomona College. The collection focuses on her life after moving to California in 1964; the Mississippi state archives are home to the Medgar Wiley and Myrlie Beasley Evers Papers, covering their early years in that state.
The collection, consisting of more than 250 linear feet of documents, ephemera and artifacts, contains thousands of items. Included are photos of her with presidents ranging from Kennedy to Carter to Clinton; buttons, pamphlets and photos from her own 1970 run for Congress; transcripts and correspondence from her 2007 testimony before Congress; and correspondence related to her preparation for the second Obama inauguration, where she gave the invocation. Personal items include her Pomona College ID card, a hardhat from her time as a Los Angeles Public Works Commissioner and the dress she wore while performing piano at Carnegie Hall, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
Pomona College will preserve the collection for both academic and, in time, public access through The Claremont Colleges Library, where archivists are organizing and cataloguing the material spanning six decades.
Enlarge (credit: James Wakibia/Getty Images)
Kenya is in the middle of its worst drought in 40 years. In the parched north of the country, rivers are running dry and millions of livestock have perished due to lack of food. Around 4.4 million Kenyans don’t have enough to eat, and the situation will worsen if the coming rainy season fails like the previous five. “I’ve never seen it so bad. There’s nothing in the farms, the drought is too harsh,” says Daniel Magondo, a cotton and maize farmer in central Kenya.
The record-breaking drought is forcing Kenya to confront a controversial topic: whether the country should grow genetically modified (GM) crops. These are plants that have had genes from another organism inserted into their DNA to give them a new trait, such as disease or drought resistance. Although GM crops are completely safe to eat and are widely grown in the US, Canada, Brazil, and India, governments in many parts of the world, including Europe and East Africa, have pushed back against them.
Nancy J. Jacobs explores the thought-provoking, tragic relationship between enslaved Africans and the African grey parrot in eighteenth century European portraiture.
The post The Boy and The Bird appeared first on Edge Effects.
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York has announced that it will acquire the archives of Tania León, the noted composer, conductor, and educator. Her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in celebration of the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
A native of Havana, León left Cuba in 1967 and settled in New York. She found work at the Harlem School of the Arts as a substitute pianist for dance classes and later became the music director of the Dance Theater of Harlem. She has been visiting professor at Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Kansas, Purchase College, and the Musikschule in Hamburg, Germany, among others.
Alejandro L. Madrid, who has written her biography Tania León’s Stride, A Polyrhythmic Life (University of Illinois Press, 2022), writes: “I have no doubt that Tania León is one of the most important and accomplished composers of her generation. Her music has influenced several cohorts of composers in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe, while also serving as a bridge to positively acknowledge and accept the music and culture from Latinx composers as a serious interlocutor in European and American concert halls. At the same time, her advocacy and commitment to the advancement of marginalized communities of people of color has led to her pioneering work as a musical activist.”
This year’s Race & Justice Imperative—a series of conversations with Black political leaders put on by the DC-based newspaper The Hill—came at an auspicious moment for Black power. More Black Americans were elected in 2022 than ever before, and the Congressional Black Caucus now boasts 57 members, a record. But the overwhelming consensus from the people who spoke, a mixture of Congresspeople, academics, and advocates, was that representation is not enough. It is crucial, they said, to keep up the momentum, even when an election isn’t right around the corner.
LaTosha Brown, cofounder of the Black Voters Matter Fund
“There’s no such thing as an off year,” said Brown. “It is going to take us literally being relentless.”
Brown and Albright described the waves of voter suppression bills that they said have been introduced in 49 states and passed in 20 as important threats to counter—Albright described them as a “slow-motion insurrection.” They said that the bills were a response to Black strength at the polls.
DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, agreed. He compared the current political climate to the backlash that occurred in the second half of the 1800s when the newly won right of African Americans to vote was made subject to various unfair limitations in an attempt to suppress the group’s newfound political power. He also agreed that mere representation was not enough.
“It’s good that we’re getting people into positions at higher levels of government,” he said. “But the policies that get created [are] also critical.”
The nature of what these policies could be was discussed by Alicia Garza, principal of the Black Futures Lab and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. One of the Black Futures Lab’s projects is the Black Census, which she described as the largest survey of Blacks in 158 years. She said that for many of its respondents, it was the first time they had been asked what policies they wanted to see enacted.
According to Garza, the Census’s findings paint a very different picture of Blacks than the one that she says was publicized during the 2022 midterm elections, when Blacks were often portrayed as highly concerned about crime, which led to overly punitive public policy. Garza said that the survey showed that Blacks were actually predominantly concerned about the economy, then white nationalism, then voting rights, and then abortion rights. When the full Census is finished, Garza’s group plans to release a Black Agenda legislative road map that will impact policy. And although she’s happy to see more Black people in political roles, she said that it was important that they serve the actual agendas of Black people.
Another area where policy is being highly contested is education, particularly in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has cracked down on Critical Race Theory, DEI positions at universities, and the College Board’s proposed curriculum for an Advanced Placement African American Studies class. Adriane Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, traced the fights back to Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 campaign for the governorship of Virginia and argued that the damage is deeper than ignorance—it deprives younger people of a chance to develop empathy—empathy that will surely be necessary for the cause of racial justice to advance.
Dr. Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at the New School and founding director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Power and Political Economy discussed economic plans that could help close the racial wealth gap. He emphasized that no one plan was a silver bullet, but that a combination of forward-looking policies, like baby bonds, which would give newborns a nest egg that they could later use to pay for college, purchase a home, or start a business, and backward-looking policies, like reparations, could make a difference.
Ultimately, however, the speakers emphasized that without continued energy and involvement, little progress is likely to be made, even with more Black representatives than ever.
“We do a disservice,” said Shropshire, “by focusing on Election Day as if it’s the only day when democracy happens.”
Jon Edelman can be reached at [email protected].
Don’t question Angela Davis’ manuscript, Toni Morrison warned her publishing colleagues. Davis was not “Jane Fonda” but, rather, “Jean d’Arc.”
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"He regarded with skepticism and clarity the temptations to make racial identity the foundation of our humanity."
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Black students have lower six-year completion rates for degrees or certificate programs than any other racial or ethnic group, according to a recent Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2023 State of Higher Education study.
Dr. Courtney Brown
These outcomes are a result of racial discrimination, high higher education costs, and several external responsibilities, the study found. Black student enrollment as a whole has fallen over the last decade.
A minority of Black Americans (35%) have associate degrees or higher, which may be an issue for career mobility and general well-being because even the well-paying jobs that do not require a degree may still require certification and training.
Black students in less racially diverse programs are more likely to feel discriminated against, physically and psychologically unsafe, and disrespected, which prompts them to abandon higher ed, the study found.
Black respondents in short-term credential programs (32%) reported feeling discriminated against at least occasionally compared to those in associate’s (16%) and bachelor’s programs (14%). And Black students at private for-profit institutions are more likely (34%) to report discrimination than those at public (17%) or private, not-for-profit institutions (23%), according to the study.
“The data is sad and distressing, but the fact that we now have the data, we can’t hide and say we don’t know anymore,” said Dr. Courtney Brown, vice president of strategic impact and planning for the Lumina Foundation.
As for external responsibilities, the study found that Black bachelor’s students are twice as likely (36%) as other bachelor’s students (18%) to have roles as caregivers or full-time workers.
The study also contains recommendations to help remedy such issues, such as offering campus childcare, increasing financial aid and scholarships, providing more coursework flexibility, appointing more people of color in leadership positions, and making sure policies have zero tolerance for discrimination.
Brown praised Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) as institutions with leaders who look like their students and provide a sense a belonging.
“But it’s not just up to HBCUs – it’s up to all institutions to ensure that they are inclusive, that they don’t discriminate against any individual, that they provide a welcoming environment, and that they’re working to ensure the success of every single student that they enroll,” Brown said.
SunFi, the Nigerian clean tech startup that connects people and businesses who want solar energy access to payment plans that match their needs, has raised $2.325 million in seed funding.
The self-described energy financial tech platform received backing from lead investors Nairobi-based Factor[e] and SCM Capital Asset Management and participating investors such as Voltron Capital, Norrsken Impact Accelerator, Ventures Platform and Sovereign Capital.
On a call with TechCrunch, CEO Rotimi Thomas said the investment will help SunFi grow its operations and improve its capabilities to recommend the best systems at the lowest cost to customers.
SunFi isn’t Thomas’ first rodeo at the helm of an energy startup. In 2018, he co-founded Aspire, a solar installation company based on the knowledge he acquired in college on renewable energy and working in several roles relating to energy, gas and power projects across Nigeria and other African countries, including a five-year stint at Siemens as head of market development. Though this business morphed into SunFi three years later, launching Aspire was the first of a lifelong journey that Thomas had envisioned in trying to fix the electricity issues individuals and businesses face in Nigeria, he said on the call.
Nigerian households and businesses have little or no access to affordable and reliable solar technology, which reduces their reliance on grid-based power that suffers from insufficient generation capacity and fails to serve most of Nigeria’s 200 million people who live in rural areas. Turning to off-grid solutions that use solar energy is an option for these people who need electricity for simple necessities like lighting, heating and communication. And that’s what Rotimi’s previous upstart did. Aspire ran a power-as-a-service business model that helped install more than 500 solar systems for individuals and businesses. But despite being marketed as a cheap option, rural electrification in the form of microgrids and solar systems can be expensive to these sub-consumers because of their low spending power.
“Customers would always ask us if there was a way for them to pay for the solar systems in installments,” Thomas said. “Because of that, we went to the banks and tried to work with them to finance this kind of payment, but we realized that banks also had a problem: they couldn’t dash out credit to customers to finance retail solar systems when they didn’t understand the technical risks involved in owning them.”
Further market research revealed that other solar providers faced the same issue of customers requesting to pay in installments. Thomas and his co-founders — COO Tomiwa Igun and CTO Olaoluwa Faniyi — decided to provide credit and began leasing these systems in what later became SunFi. They believed that as an outfit, they could manage the technical risk involved with solar systems and that it was highly likely that customers would pay because they valued solar systems and saw them as critical pieces of power infrastructure.
Think about it. Retail solar systems are marketed via word of mouth, but with distribution being fragmented and minimal avenues to provide financing, platforms like SunFi that act as aggregators become appealing to customers.
“The challenge customers face with solar providers is that they want solutions they can pay small for; however, these solar platforms can’t offer. Because banks are afraid of the technical risk involved, they need something in between to talk with good solar providers and do the installation work while providing good capital to customers looking for the right solution. We’re the guys in the middle of all this,” Thomas said.
SunFi creates value for these clean energy investors by de-risking the technical and credit risk involved in financing portfolios of solar solutions, opening avenues for lending as a service play for clean energy providers. Since its official launch last February, SunFi has onboarded over 40 solar system vendors to its platform at various stages of vetting; 10 are its core providers, which have served more than 129 customers. Within the past year, the one-year-old energy startup has deployed more than $600,000 to these customers via its partnerships with financial institutions.
The Nigeria-based energy company provides customers with two payment methods: a lease to own, where after an initial deposit, customers make payments in installments before owing the solar system, and a subscription model, where customers pay to use the solar system monthly. SunFi’s revenues are from the margin on the lease-to-own model and subscription fees from the latter. The company said it is working on a third revenue stream where it will assist solar providers with inventory financing.
Some startups already finance solar systems with one or multiple entities, such as Carbon. But Thomas doesn’t regard them as competitors; the same goes for solar system providers. Instead, most of these platforms are partners since they already fill a need in the market and SunFi’s job aggregates them. “Because we have a unique experience having been a solar provider initially and seeing the frustration and challenges of installations in Nigeria, we’ve taken all that technical and credit knowledge to build a system that hopefully works for customers, solar providers and banks,” said the chief executive.
“SunFi also has a portal for the solar provider to log in, track and manage their business of building several types of products to market to customers and get access to financing. Investors have their dashboard to manage their portal to track how their money is spent in terms of being deployed to manage portfolios or retail customers. So we’re built as a fintech for the clean tech space, which doesn’t exist in Nigeria.”
The SunFi team. Image Credits: SunFi
The clean tech with fintech features will be looking to enhance its platform over the next 12-18 months with this financing. It also intends to convert more than 4,000 customers within that same time frame as the 29-person team continues to grow. The clean tech is in talks to raise additional third-party capital, most likely debt, from commercial banks and other financing partners to channel that money through the system and finance all the energy platform’s demands to take care of this year.
“SunFi has the ability to transform the way clean energy is accessed by households and businesses across Nigeria by creating a marketplace of clean energy products combined with flexible payment options — all of which are personalized to the customer’s financial and energy needs,” said Lyndsay Holley-Handler, partner and chief venture builder at Factor[e] on the investment. “Platforms like these have unlocked access to clean energy in other markets but don’t yet exist in Africa. This type of innovation and disruption is why we decided to be part of SunFi’s journey…”
SunFi aims to be the fastest way for Nigerians to find, finance and manage solar by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch
In 1937, a newspaper trumpeted two speculative fiction stories—“Black Internationale” and “Black Empire”— as dramatically as if they were news.
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