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What Africa Can Teach the World:
An Academic Symposium in Honor of President Spar's Inauguration
10.24.08
New York, NY — On the morning of Friday, October 24, in honor of President Debora Spar’s inauguration as the College’s seventh president, Barnard College held an academic symposium entitled “What Africa Can Teach the World.” The program brought together distinguished individuals who are active in African business and economics to discuss the past and future of African economies, their trade policies and practices, and future challenges for the continent.
African economics and industry are areas in which President Spar has researched extensively. She has closely examined Africa’s diamond industry, the AIDS crisis, the democratization of South Africa since apartheid, and the emergence of Botswana as an economic success story. President Spar introduced the panel by explaining that she hoped the participants would break away from “the mold of what tends to be a typical American discussion of Africa, which often suffers from a negative cast, and to instead ask what we can learn from the continent.”
The panel was organized by Barnard history professor Abosede George, and moderated by Mamadou Diouf, Leitner Family Professor of African Studies and Director of Columbia University’s Institute of African Studies. The other participants hailed from around the world: Jonathan Cook, Senior Lecturer at the Gordon Institution of Business Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Malik Fal, Business Marketing and Operations Group Leader for Microsoft Corporation in West, East, and Central Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands; and Una Okonkwo-Osili, Associate Professor of Economics at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.
Professor George opened the discussion by describing a film she had recently seen as part of an exhibition on contemporary African art and textiles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The film recently won the Walter Mosley prize and depicts women in Mauritius decorating the exterior of their houses with intricate relief painting in celebration of Ramadan. “In the West, an artist acquires value by separating herself from the ordinary world, the everyday, but Africa teaches us about a different kind of artist, one who is deeply rooted in her community,” Professor George explained. For her, a more apt title for the symposium might have been: “How can the world finally learn to learn from Africa?”
Professor Diouf agreed that to learn from Africa, the West must first overcome its inherent biases. “What I have learned as a teacher is that when you are a student, you have to learn to unlearn,” he said. Professor Diouf stressed the importance of opening our minds and hearts to African lessons by citing the “demographic revolution” underway. Today, two-thirds of all Africans are under the age of 25, an astonishing statistic. The population of the continent is growing rapidly, and “over the next 50 years, we will see the urbanization of Africa,” he said. And yet, Professor Diouf suggested, “with the vast majority of Africans under the poverty line, Africa is growing in multiple directions at the same time, making its growth difficult to grapple with.”
Jonathan Cook evoked something different that we stand to learn from Africa: that justice can be “a means of reconciling, of making a future where people can live together – rather than a means of punishment.” He described how through trials and tribulations, Africans have learned the importance of inclusivity, that one group need not repress another in order to thrive. Cook recalled the African concept of ubuntu, which essentially means “humanity” or “people come first.” “Inequality is unsustainable: it will always lead to civil unrest,” he said. As a South African, he can relate to the “joy of challenge.” “What enables us to survive is having a reason to survive,” he said. “Life in Africa can be hard but the continent is home to some of the happiest people in the world.”
Malik Fal agreed. Suicide rates in Africa are among the lowest in the world, he noted. Despite their apparent lack of material wealth, Fal said, “Africans are happy.” According to Fal, the grounds for happiness can be broken down into five components: material wealth, and social, moral, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Most Africans’ lives are richly endowed in the four latter categories. Perhaps, he wondered, we in the West should spend less time seeking material wealth and more time focusing on the other four necessary components of happiness.
Una Okonkwo-Osili, offered the economist’s perspective: in our current debate over what role the state should play in regulating markets, the West would do well to look to Africa, “where we have seen a range of experimentation.” Despite its poverty, Okonkwo-Osili said, “Africa is the region with the fastest growing economy.” Okonkwo-Osili, who grew up in Nigeria, said that a strong value of generosity, too, was central to African economics. She cited the drought in Mali and civil war in Nigeria as times when friends and neighbors banded together to help each other get by. Another positive result of the myriad natural disasters and social conflicts in Africa’s recent history is significantly increased gender equality. After fighting alongside men in times of need, she asserted, African women today for the most part enjoy equal rights.
During the Q&A session, a recent Barnard graduate asked whether being a feminist was antithetical to being an African woman. Okonkwo-Osili argued that gender parity in Africa is at the same level, or perhaps even greater, than that in the Western world. She cited the facts that women grow 60 percent of all food grown in Africa, and that Nigeria, for example, now has a fixed requirement for the minimum percentage of ministerial positions that must be held by women. Thus, not only did the panel speak to President Spar’s passion for African business and industry, but also to her passion for women’s rights worldwide. The deeply engaging symposium was a fine tribute to Barnard’s new president.
—Johanna Smith
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