Africa Political and Economic
Strategic Center (Afripol) is foremost a public policy center whose
fundamental objective is to broaden the parameters of public policy
debates in Africa. To advocate, promote and encourage free enterprise,
democracy, human rights, conflict resolutions, transparency and probity
in Africa.
Quotations of the Week
“As Jackson-Lee (US
congresswoman) brags about her closeness with the Clintons, there is
just one more issue that categorizes her as a political risk. She
may have a lot of explanation to offer her African ancestors on why
she did not convince her adopted benefactors the Clintons to
intervene in the Rwanda Genocide”
- Anthony Obi Ogbo,
Publisher International Guardian
“Unfortunately for them, Rwandans were
Black Africans who could neither vote for Bill or Hillary nor vote
against them and who were too poor to contribute to any Clinton
presidential campaign, and so it was of no interest to Bill or
Hillary Clinton as to whether they lived or died.”
- Pauline Park
"It was over 200 years ago that a group of
patriots gathered in this city to do something that no one in the
world believed they could do, After years of a government that
didn't listen to them, or speak for them, or represent their hopes
and their dreams, a few humble colonists came to Philadelphia to
declare their independence from the tyranny of the British throne."
- Senator Barrack Obama
“Corruption in developing countries is also
the result of an enabling and permissive global environment. All
countries are responsible for this environment, particularly those
with greater economic and political leverage.”
- Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
“The therapeutic failure and development of drug resistance to
anti-malaria is fueled by the problem of fake, counterfeit and
sub-standard drugs which are easily within the reach of the
under-privileged people.The current effort by the Federal Government
through the Roll Back Malaria programme and the implementation of
the National Anti-malaria/Treatment Policy, to eradicate the dreaded
disease is quite commendable and should be complimented by the
private sector, just as we are witnessing today.”
-The Director-General of the National Agency
for Food and Drug Administration and
Control, Prof. Dora Akunyili,
“If you’re white and you come here, people
expect that you carry yourself in a certain way, they expect that
you have money, they expect that you’re better than them. And I find
that so almost completely opposite to any idea that I grew up with.
I’m astounded when people call me ‘sir’, people that are three, four
times my age defer to me as if I’m an elder. That kind of mentality
is not very good. I think it’s a left over from the time when white
men were here and they actually did rule.”
- Lenny
Lantsman,US-based intern in Nigeria
“The tragedy of Africa is that the African
man has not sufficiently become part of history. The African
peasant, who has lived for thousands of years according to the
seasons whose idea of life is to be in harmony with nature, only is
familiar with the eternal return of rhythmic time by the repetition
without end of the same gestures and the same words. In this
conception, where everything always begins again, there is neither a
place for the human adventure nor for the idea of progress...the
problem of Africa is that it lives in the present in the nostalgia
of the lost paradise of childhood.”
- French President Sarkozy
"The world is getting better, but it’s not
getting better fast enough, and it's not getting better for
everyone. The great advances in the world have often aggravated the
inequities in the world. The least needy see the most improvement,
and the most needy see the least—in particular the billion people
who live on less than a dollar a day. There are roughly a billion
people in the world who don't get enough food, who don't have clean
drinking water, who don't have electricity, the things that we take
for granted. Diseases like malaria that kill over a million people a
year get far less attention than drugs to help with baldness. Not
only do these people miss the benefits of the global economy – they
will suffer from the negative effects of economic growth they missed
out on."
-Bill Gates
"It is absolutely fundamentally important
for African countries to gain market access ... not just to markets
of developed countries but also to the markets of rapidly emerging
developing countries, Brazil, India, China."
- U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab
"To Americans, bombarded with dire images
of Africa—starving Africans, diseased Africans, Africans fleeing
disasters or fleeing other Africans trying to kill them... Extreme
poverty is relatively rare in rural Africa, and there is a growing
entrepreneurial spirit among farmers that defies the usual image of
Africans as passive victims. They are foot soldiers in an agrarian
revolution that never makes the news."
- G. Pascal Zachary
"Even Hollywood’s global power is under
challenge. One rising competitor is “Nollywood” which churns out
Nigerian-made movies that up distinctively African themes and
issues. Filmed with cheap video cameras and sold for few dollars as
DVDs, Nollywood movies are gaining popularity throughout Africa."
- Martin Walker, Senior Scholar Wilson Center
"No amount of money can build the damaged
trust between a government and its citizens. Decades of defective
political and economic governance, and the failure by early
post-independence governments to deliver on the promises of
independence spun disillusionment and led to unfulfilled
expectations paving the way to undemocratic dictatorial rule, the
demise of the rule of law, ethnic strife, and economic and social
chaos. In extreme cases these conditions led to a string of very
weak or failed states."
-
-Dr. Donald Kaberuka
"Africa has enormous capital in the form of natural resources that
include oil, hydroelectric power, diamonds, uranium, gold, cobalt,
70% of the world’s Coltan and 34% of its cassiterite. Coltan and
cassiterite are strategic in the production of cell phones, laptops,
and other portable electronic products. If Africans employed the
power of reason, the global cell phone industry that churns out 25
cell phones per second would provide a huge source of revenue for
respective countries; thereby widening their menu of choices.
Focusing on the African human mind as capital will help translate
resources into wealth, thereby helping to solve Africa’s problems.
Money’s usefulness and value will only spring from rational
responses to the challenges that face the continent through exchange
of products and services at the village, national, continental, and
international levels."
-James Shikwati
"People either view Africa as a
backdrop for famine or AIDS. That's not what Africa is about. People
in Africa are regular, ordinary people who are crying and laughing.
They're people." -Author Ngozi
Adichie
"In
2002, the US gave $3 per sub-Saharan African. Taking out the parts
for US consultants and technical cooperation, food and other
emergency aid, administrative costs and debt relief, the aid per
African came to the grand total of perhaps 6 cents."
- Jeffrey Sachs
"Those who seek to defraud the government
and financial institutions in Nigeria through secret email and phone
correspondence with criminals in Nigeria are criminals in intent and
action. The question which never really gets asked by sensational
western journalists is: what if these western "victims" of "419"
fraud had succeeded in collaborating with the scammers to fleece the
government and people of a developing nation? This is the part of
the "419" scandal which western journalists and news media
conveniently choose to ignore." The message must be that people who
attempt to reap illegally where they did not sow should keep in mind
that there are consequences for every action" -Levi Obijiofor
"In terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest
continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the
world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent
of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the
manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland as well as other
natural resources.
Despite its wealth of resources, Africa is home to the world's
most impoverished and abused people.
Oppressive regimes have always exported their most talented and
ambitious people to freer and richer countries. Africans who migrate
to the United States do well. As an American, I love that but it's
especially devastating for Africa."
- Dr. Walter Williams of George Mason University
"Could it really be that Nigerians are the
happiest people on earth, and Americans the most unhappy? At least
the first of those suggestions seems absurd, and researchers have no
shortage of explanations to account for the comparatively lower
rates of depression reported in poorer countries. "It's all about
what people are willing to tell us," Harvard's Ronald Kessler, who
helped run the study, tells Forbes. "In Nepal, it's against the law
to be mentally ill. No surprise, nobody there admits to being
mentally ill." Other researchers suggest that doctors in poorer
countries may be quicker to diagnose depression not as a physical
malady but as a moral or spiritual one, best treated with some
bracing advice to the patient about how he should lead his life."
-Bret Stephens of
Wall street Journals
"Most
people forget that pre-industrial Europe was vastly poorer than
contemporary Africa and had a much lower life expectancy. Even a
relatively well-off country like France is estimated to have
suffered seven general famines in the 15th century, thirteen in the
16th, eleven in the 17th and sixteen in the 18th. And disease was
rampant. Given an utter lack of sanitation, the bubonic plague,
typhus and other diseases recurred incessantly into the 18th
century, killing tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands at a time."
- Dr. Andrew
Bernstein Of Pace University
"We are famously convinced that all people
are fundamentally the same—which may be true in the eyes of God or
biology—but Africans are quite different from us in profound ways.
Their traditional religious beliefs are fatalistic, not activist.
Their traditional communities are tribal, intolerant and homogenous,
not national, tolerant and multicultural. We abhor corruption, they
consider it an unavoidable element of leadership. We cherish human
life, they believe it to be Hobbesian in the extreme: nasty, brutal,
poor and short. And they act accordingly, as the several wars, and
the seemingly endless epidemics of ever-more virulent diseases
raging on the Dark Continent abundantly testify."
-Michael Ledeen, Freedom
Chair at the American Enterprise Institute
“But those who want reconciliation want to
avoid the truth of the exploitation. Africa is the foundation of
Europe and America's wealth. Africa is the creditor. Europe and
America are the debtors."
- Jesse Jackson
"In a number of places and in a number of
respects, the electoral system has failed the Nigerian people,"
Albright said in an interview in Abuja. "The trend line on elections
is not going the right direction."
A peaceful constitutional process must be allowed to unfold, and
there must be creditable avenues of redress. Over the last year,
Nigeria's Supreme Court and legislature have demonstrated an ability
to resolve important political disputes with independence and
integrity." -Madam
Albright, US Secretary of State
AFRIPOL organization's policy and financial
experts are working on a WHITE PAPER on how to avoid enormous
foreign debts among African nations, below are the salient points.
(coming soon)
HOW TO AVOID ENORMOUS FOREIGN DEBT :
STABILIZE THE NATION’S FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC
HOUSE: Balance the budget. Implement timely and appropriate
budget. Avoid budget deficit by spending within nation’s means, so
to avoid un necessary borrowing and check corruption.
A country cannot live beyond it means and this a hole that has
trapped many countries including nations with advance economies.
Those countries with sophisticated and diversified economies could
survive excessive spending and borrowing because they have
productive and stabilized economies. But these countries will at
long last will feel the pinch of their financial laxity.
United States of America has a large deficit and borrow heavily from
abroad especially from China and Japan but America has
SET UP NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON BORROWING AND DEBT MANAGEMENT:
This body will comprise of individuals and experts from the office
of the Presidency, legislature and from the public. They will
instituted transparency and probity policy to check mismanagement.
Broaden deliberations on borrowing and debt management to involve
tax paying citizens.
HIRE SEASONED EXPERT NEGOTIATORS:
Financial, economic and legal experts to negotiate on behalf of
nation seeking foreign loans. The experts can favorably negotiate
for reasonable interest rates and duration on the maturity of the
loans.
BORROWING/DEBT LEGISLATION: The
legislatures will enact a law, that will be a deterrent to
unnecessary and excessive foreign borrowing.
RAISE FUNDS INTERNALLY: Domestic
borrowing by the government will be promoted by the issue of bonds
and increase of revenue through fiscal and monetary policies.
AFRIPOL'S
NEWS
Umaru Yar'Adua has
been sworn in as Nigeria's president, succeeding Olusegun Obasanjo
who stepped down after eight years in office.'I Umaru Musa Yar'Adua
do solemnly swear that I will be faithful and hold allegiance to the
Federal Republic of Nigeria... That I will protect and defend the
constitution,' the new president said in Abuja. Umaru Yar'Adua, 56,
took the oath of office before Chief Justice Idris Kutigi, pledging
to uphold Nigeria's unity and pursue its best interests.
"I
did my best"
On Nigerian election
US:Press
Release
Bono:
On African aid 
The Independence Arch, Accra Ghana
Chief mediator Kofi Annan (R) passes by a bronze
statue from Benin as he arrives for a media briefing at a hotel in
Nairobi February 15, 2008. Kenya's feuding parties have agreed to an
independent review of the country's disputed December 27 election,
but have yet to agree terms for power-sharing. 
War against malaria
Africa:
Economic serfdom
Why
debt cancellation? 
G8
& AFRICA
