quote: Debates on Slave Trade Overlook the Role of Technology by Philip Emeagwali emeagwali.com According to history books, gun-wielding European slave traders kidnapped one in five Africans and transported them across the oceans to the Americas. A less visible, but no means less drastic technological tool of suppression, is the compass, a device used worldwide for navigation. In the same way that Britain used its maritime knowledge and the US harnessed its intellectual capital to rule the world, the early slave traders used the simple compass to wreak havoc on civilization. It is a sad fact that the innocuous navigation tool originated during and was fuelled by the Atlantic slave trade. The technological development of the innocent compass, invented in China for religious divination 2,000 years ago, allowed Africa to be ravaged in unspeakable ways. It was the compass that created the Atlantic slave trade, enabling the early colonial navigators — and their blood merchants — to chart an accurate course from Gorée Island, off the coast of Senegal, to Brazil; paving the way for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which began on August 8, 1444. This trade in human merchandise covered four continents and lasted four centuries, and serves as a shameful beacon for the depravity of human greed and conquest. The compass became the de facto weapon of mass destruction, which led to the de-capitalization and decapitation of Africa. It created the African Diaspora with one in five people taken out of the motherland. It was the largest and most brutal displacement of human beings in human history. Today, it is hard to imagine that such destruction and the wholesale abduction of a race could result from a tool as common as the compass. Yet, as a people who survived the slave trade, we must draw our strength from lessons learned from the past and draw our energy from the power of the future. And the power of the future lies in “controlling” technology and harnessing it for the benefit of mankind, not for his destruction. The people of Africa must take note that the Internet is our modern-day compass, and within it resides our own clay of wisdom. As we prepare for our great journey into the cyberspace of the future, with its technological promise — its clay of wisdom — we must understand the strategic value and potential of this all-important tool. Our image of the future inspires the present and the present serves to create the future. Africa’s lack of substantial technological knowledge of the Internet and its. potential may lead it to be assaulted or manipulated in unexpected ways, just as it was devastated generations ago for the lack of a simple compass We didn’t recognize the power of the compass then; the danger is that we don’t recognize the power of technology today. While Africa merely contemplates the future, the West, the quickest off the mark to wield technology’s weapons, actually makes the future. This fact, and how the power of technology can be wielded against the poor, was brought home to me clearly when I received the following email recently: “About a year ago, I hired a developer in Africa to do my job. I am paying him $12,000 a year to do my job, for which I am paid $67,000 a year,” the sender wrote. “He’s happy to have the work and I’m happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day. Now I’m considering getting a second job and doing the same thing.” Technology in the hands of others has been used to exploit Africa for centuries. But now it's time for Africa to grasp technology and finally embrace the modern age’s clay of wisdom and advancement. Africa has the chance to show the world how technology can be used for good, not evil. And the people of Africa can use today’s technology, not to mimic their own exploitation, but to right the wrongs of the past and empower themselves with the same tool that has been used to oppress them in the past. Africa can provide a shining example for the world in using technology for its own upliftment and the benefit of mankind. This time, it is our choice. Nigerian-born Philip Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, the Nobel Prize of supercomputing. He has been called “a father of the Internet” by CNN and TIME; extolled as “one of the great minds of the Information Age” by former US president Bill Clinton; and voted history’s greatest scientist of African descent by New African. Excerpted from a keynote speech delivered by Philip Emeagwali at the African Diaspora Conference in Tucson, Arizona on September 29, 2007. The entire transcript is posted at emeagwali.com. @ EMEAGWALI.COM 2007 General permission is granted for the publication of the above transcript.
Note: I might unfortunately have to do this a few times due to argyle intentionally making postings on other threads (to reduce the visibility of this one).Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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2. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He's a fool. Whites weren't going around kidnapping helpless Africans.
3. Most Africans were not slaves and there were more slaves at that exact same time period that were not African than who were African.
4. Should we get rid of water, boats, wood, food, clothing as well as the compass since they too were apart of his so called "slave trade"?
5. The boy needs to quit whining and grow the hell up. Nobody gives a damn about him crying like an infant.
Posts: 3085 | Registered: Jan 2008
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Thank you for the pleasant introduction as well as for inviting me to share my thoughts on turning “brain drain” into “brain gain.”
For 10 million African-born emigrants, the word “home” is synonymous with the United States, Britain or other country outside of Africa.
Personally, I have lived continuously in the United States for the past 30 years. My last visit to Africa was 17 years ago.
On the day I left Nigeria, I felt sad because I was leaving my family behind. I believed I would return eight years later, probably marry an Igbo girl, and then spend the rest of my life in Nigeria.
But 25 years ago, I fell in love with an American girl, married her three years later, and became eligible to sponsor a Green Card visa for my 35 closest relatives, including my parents and all my siblings, nieces and nephews.
The story of how I brought 35 people to the United States exemplifies how 10 million skilled people have emigrated out of Africa during the past 30 years.
We came to the United States on student visas and then changed our status to become permanent residents and then naturalized citizens. Our new citizenship status helped us sponsor relatives, and also inspired our friends to immigrate here.
Ten million Africans now constitute an invisible nation that resides outside Africa. Although invisible, it is a nation as populous as Angola, Malawi, Zambia or Zimbabwe. If it were to be a nation with distinct borders, it would have an income roughly equivalent to Africa’s gross domestic product.
Although the African Union does not recognize the African Diaspora as a nation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledges its economic importance. The IMF estimates the African Diaspora now constitutes the biggest group of foreign investors in Africa.
Take for example Western Union. It estimates that it is not atypical for an immigrant to wire $300 per month to relatives in Africa. If you assume that most Africans living outside Africa send money each month and you do the math, you will agree with the IMF that the African Diaspora is indeed the largest foreign investor in Africa.
What few realize is that Africans who immigrate to the United States contribute 40 times more wealth to the American than to the African economy. According to the United Nations, an African professional working in the United States contributes about $150,000 per year to the U.S. economy.
Again, if you do the math, you will realize that the African professional remitting $300 per month to Africa is contributing 40 times more to the United States economy than to the African one.
On a relative scale, that means for every $300 per month a professional African sends home, that person contributes $12,000 per month to the U.S. economy.
Of course, the issue more important than facts and figures is eliminating poverty in Africa, not merely reducing it by sending money to relatives. Money alone cannot eliminate poverty in Africa, because even one million dollars is a number with no intrinsic value.
Real wealth cannot be measured by money, yet we often confuse money with wealth. Under the status quo, Africa would still remain poor even if we were to send all the money in the world there.
Ask someone who is ill what “wealth” means, and you will get a very different answer than from most other people.
If you were HIV-positive, you would gladly exchange one million dollars to become HIV-negative.
When you give your money to your doctor, that physician helps you convert your money into health - or rather, wealth.
Money cannot teach your children. Teachers can. Money cannot bring electricity to your home. Engineers can. Money cannot cure sick people. Doctors can.
Because it is only a nation’s human capital that can be converted into real wealth, that human capital is much more valuable than its financial capital.
A few years ago, Zambia had 1,600 medical doctors. Today, Zambia has only 400 medical doctors. Kenya retains only 10% of the nurses and doctors trained there. A similar story is told from South Africa to Ghana.
I also speak from my family experiences. After contributing 25 years to Nigerian society as a nurse, my father retired on a $25-per-month pension.
By comparison, my four sisters each earn $25 per hour as nurses in the United States. If my father had had the opportunity my sisters did, he certainly would have immigrated to the United States as a young nurse.
The “brain drain” explains, in part, why affluent Africans fly to London for their medical treatments.
Furthermore, because a significant percentage of African doctors and nurses practice in U.S. hospitals, we can reasonably conclude that African medical schools are de facto serving the American people, not Africa.
A recent World Bank survey shows that African universities are exporting a large percentage of their graduating manpower to the United States. In a given year, the World Bank estimates that 70,000 skilled Africans immigrate to Europe and the United States.
While these 70,000 skilled Africans are fleeing the continent in search of employment and decent wages, 100,000 skilled expatriates who are paid wages higher than the prevailing rate in Europe are hired to replace them.
In Nigeria, the petroleum industry hires about 1,000 skilled expatriates, even though we can find similar skills within the African Diaspora. Instead of developing its own manpower resources, Nigeria prefers to contract out its oil exploration despite the staggeringly high price of having to concede 40% of its profits to foreign oil companies.
In a pre-independence day editorial, the Vanguard (Nigeria) queried: “Why would the optimism of 1960 give way to the despair of 2000?”
My answer is this: Nigeria achieved political independence in 1960, but by the year 2000 had not yet achieved technological independence.
During colonial rule, Nigeria retained only 50% of the profits from oil derived from its own territory. Four decades after this colonial rule ended, the New York Times (December 22, 2002) wrote that “40 percent of the oil revenue goes to Chevron, [and] 60 percent to the [Nigerian] government.”
As a point of comparison, the United States would never permit a Nigerian oil company to retain 40% of the profits from a Texas oilfield.
Our African homelands have paid an extraordinary price for their lack of domestic technological knowledge.
Because of that lack of knowledge, since it gained independence in 1960, Nigeria has relinquished 40% of its oilfields and $200 billion to American and European stockholders.
Because of that lack of knowledge, Nigeria exports crude petroleum, only to import refined petroleum.
Because of that lack of knowledge, Africa exports raw steel, only to import cars that are essentially steel products.
Knowledge is the engine that drives economic growth, and Africa cannot eliminate poverty without first increasing and nurturing its intellectual capital.
Reversing the “brain drain” will increase Africa’s intellectual capital while also increasing its wealth in many, many different ways.
Can the “brain drain” be reversed? My answer is: yes. But in order for it to happen, we must try something different.
At this point, I want to inject a new idea into this dialogue. For my idea to work, it requires that we tap the talents and skills of the African Diaspora. It requires that we create one million high-tech jobs in Africa. It requires that we move one million high-tech jobs from the United States to Africa.
I know you are wondering: How can we move one million jobs from the United States to Africa?
It can be done. In fact, by the year 2015 the U.S. Department of Labor expects to lose an estimated 3.3 million call center jobs to developing nations.
In this area, what we as Africans need to do is develop a strategic plan – one that will persuade multinational companies that it will be more profitable to move their call centers to nations in Africa instead of India.
These high-tech jobs include those in call centers, customer service and help desks – all of which are suitable for unemployed university graduates.
The reason these jobs could now emerge in Africa is that recent technological advances such as the Internet and mobile telephones now make it practical, cheaper and otherwise advantageous to move these services to developing nations, where lower wages prevail.
If Africa succeeds in capturing one million of these high-tech jobs, they could provide more revenues than all the African oilfields. These “greener pastures” would lure back talent and, in turn, create a reverse “brain drain.”
Again, we have a rare and unique window of opportunity to convert projected American job losses into Africa’s job gain, and thus change the “brain drain” to “brain gain.”
However, aggressive action must be taken before this window of opportunity closes. India is a formidable competitor.
Therefore, we need to determine the cost savings realized by outsourcing call center jobs to Africa instead of India. That cost saving will be used as a selling point to corporations interested in outsourcing jobs.
A typical call center employee might be a housewife using a laptop computer and a cell phone to work from her home. As night settles and her children go to bed, she could place a phone call to Los Angeles, which is 10 hours behind her time zone.
An American answers her call and she says, “Good morning, this is Zakiya.” Using a standard, rehearsed script, she tries to sell an American product.
Now that USA-to-Africa telephone calls are as low as 6 cents per minute, it is economically feasible for a telephone sales person to reside in Anglophone Africa while virtually employed in the United States, and – this is important - paying income taxes only to her country in Africa.
I will give one more example of how thousands of call center jobs can be created in Africa.
It is well known that U.S. companies often give up on collecting outstanding account balances of less than $50 each. The reason is that it often costs $60 in American labor to recover that $50.
By comparison, I believe it would cost only $10 in African labor (including the 6 cents per minute phone call) to collect an outstanding balance of $50.
Earlier, the organizers of this Pan African Conference gave me a note containing eleven questions.
The first was: Do skilled Africans have the moral obligation to remain and work in Africa?
I believe those with skills should be encouraged and rewarded to stay, work, and raise their families in Africa. When that happens, a large middle class will be created, thereby reducing the conditions that give rise to civil war and corruption. Then, a true revitalization and renaissance will occur.
The second question was: Should skilled African emigrants be compelled to return to Africa?
I believe controlling emigration will be very difficult. Instead, I recommend the United Nations impose a “brain gain tax” upon those nations benefiting from the “brain drain.”
Each year, the United States creates a brain drain by issuing 135,000 H1-B visas to “outstanding researchers” and persons with “extraordinary ability.”
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), working in tangent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), could be required to credit one month’s salary, each year, to the country of birth of each immigrant.
Already, the IRS allows U.S. taxpayers to make voluntary contributions to election funds. Similarly, it could allow immigrants to voluntarily pay taxes to their country of birth, instead of to the United States.
The third question was: Why don’t we encourage unemployed Africans to seek employment abroad?
Put differently, if all the nurses and doctors in Africa were to win the U.S. visa lottery, who will operate our hospitals?
If we encourage 8 million talented Africans to emigrate, what will we encourage their remaining 800 million brothers and sisters to do?
The fourth question was: Should we blame the African Diaspora for Africa's problems?
Yes, the Diaspora should be blamed in part, because the absence it’s created has diminished the continent’s intellectual capital and thus created the vacuum enabling dictators and corruption to flourish.
The likes of Idi Amin, Jean-Bedel Bokassa and Mobutu Sese Seko would not be able to declare themselves president-for-life of nations who have a large, educated middle class.
The fifth question was: Should we not blame Africa’s leaders for siphoning money from Africa’s treasuries?
It becomes a vicious circle: the flight of intellectual capital increases the flight of financial capital which in turn increases again the flight of intellectual capital.
Leadership is a collective process, and “brain drain” reduces the collective brainpower needed to fight corruption and mismanagement.
For example, the leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria did not call a news conference after Sani Abacha stole $3 billion dollars from it.
The bank’s Governor-General did not go on a hunger strike. He did not report the robbery to the police. He did not file a lawsuit.
Had they the intellectual manpower to counter corruption, the results would have been very different.
The sixth question was: Is it possible to achieve an African renaissance?
Because by definition, a renaissance is the revival and flowering of the arts, literature and sciences, it must be preceded by a growth in the continent’s intellectual capital, or the collective knowledge of the people.
The best African musicians live in France. The top African writers live in the United States or Britain. The soccer superstars live in Europe. It will be impossible to achieve a renaissance without the contributions of the talented.
The seventh question was: For how long has the “brain drain” problem existed?
A common misconception is that the African “brain drain” started 40 years ago.
In reality, it actually began ten times that long. Four hundred years ago, most people of African descent lived in Africa. Today, one in five of African descent live in the Americas. Therefore, measured in numbers, the largest “brain drain” resulted from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Contrary to what people believed, Africa experienced a brain gain during the first half of the 20th century. Schools, hospitals and banks were built by the British colonialists. These institutions were the visible manifestations of brain gain.
At the end of colonial rule, skilled Europeans fled the continent. Skilled Africans started fleeing the continent in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The result was the widespread rise of despotic rulers.
The eighth question was: Is "brain drain" a form of modern slavery?
By the end of the 21st century, people will have different sensibilities and will describe it as modern day slavery.
In the 19th century, which was an Agricultural Age, the U.S. economy needed strong hands to pick cotton, and the young and sturdy were forced into slavery.
In the 21st century, which is an Information Age, the U.S. economy needs persons with “extraordinary ability” and the best and brightest are lured with Green Card visas. Africans who are illiterate or HIV-positive are automatically denied American visas.
The ninth question was: Do you believe that the “brain drain” can be reversed?
As I stated earlier, “brain drain” is a complex and multidimensional problem that can be reversed into “brain gain.”
India is now reversing its “brain drain,” and turning it into “brain gain;” I believe Africa can do the same. But unless we reverse it, the dream of an African renaissance will remain an elusive one.
The tenth question was: Can we blame globalization as a cause of brain drain?
Globalization began 400 years ago with the trans-Atlantic slave trade that brought the ancestors of 200 million Africans now living in the Americas. It has accelerated because the Internet and cell phone now enable you to communicate instantaneously with any person on the globe.
Overall, globalization is a force that is denationalizing the wealth of developing nations. Economists have confirmed that the rich nations are getting richer while the poor ones are getting poorer.
We also know that the globalization process is increasing the foreign debts of developing nations, accelerating the flight of financial and intellectual capital to western nations.
The economics of offshoring will force multinational corporations to outsource to developing nations where lower wages prevail.
To remain competitive and profitable, companies will be forced to reduce costs by hiring five-dollars-an-hour computer programmers living in Third World countries and lay off expensive American programmers that demand $50 an hour.
In the long term, offshoring will reverse the flight of financial and intellectual capital from western nations to the Third World.
The eleventh question was: Why have I lived in the United States for 30 continuous years?
Africa has bitten at my soul since I left. My roots are still in Africa. My house is filled with Africana - food, paintings, music, and clothes - to remind me of Africa.
I long to visit the motherland, but I must confess that when Africa called me to return home, I couldn't answer that call.
The reason is that I work on creating new knowledge that could be used to redesign supercomputers. The most powerful supercomputers cost $120 million each and Nigeria could not afford to buy one for me. I created the knowledge that the power of thousands of processors can be harnessed; this knowledge, in turn, inspired the reinvention of vector supercomputers into massively parallel supercomputers.
New knowledge must precede new technological products and the supercomputer of today will become the personal computer of tomorrow.
And so to answer your question: even though I reside in the U.S. the knowledge that I created is now materializing into better personal computers purchased by Africans.
Finally, millions of high-tech jobs can be performed from Africa, but may instead be lost to India. We must identify the millions of jobs that will be more profitable when transferred from the United States to Africa.
Doing so will enable us to create a brain drain from the United States and convert it to a brain gain for Africa.
Thank you again.
BIOGRAPHY Emeagwali helped give birth to the supercomputer - the technology that spawned the Internet. He won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, which has been dubbed the “Nobel Prize of Supercomputing.” [Visit emeagwali.info for complete biography]
Note: I might unfortunately have to do this a few times due to argyle intentionally making postings on other threads (to reduce the visibility of this one).Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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@ YH. I am all for the development of the motherland.. . . . but do you think a "call center" is a high tech job. LOL.
These guys read from a script. It is a pain dealing with the call center based in India and the Phillopines(sp?). They display no independent thought on trouble shooting.
Dell, Intuit turbo tax. - the people at the centers are clueless. Tech Job my . . .
At least with HP/Compaq which seems to be national we get better service.
Posts: 12143 | From: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable | Registered: Jun 2007
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How can Africans put an end to an economic system which has excluded them from accumulating wealth for the last 500 years? They must first be aware that they are still living and working under the same racially divided economic system as their enslaved ancestors.
Today, China and India are threatening the hegemony of the West. They have understood how the game is played and are no longer satisfied with simply transforming raw materials into finished goods (secondary sector), a task they were assigned by the West. They now want control of the tertiary sector, the most lucrative, which whites had reserved exclusively for themselves. It was because Asians had the right knowledge that they were able to plan, then implement their strategy. They intentionally targeted the Western high tech industries in order to dominate the tertiary sector and have achieved their goal. Sharing the tertiary sector with Asians was certainly not what the West had in mind when they set up their racially segmented economic system, but that’s what the right information can do. It can trigger change.
The root of the present conflict between China and the West is precisely the racial division of labor in the economic system. The West has slowly been transferring the secondary sector to Asians since colonization. With the invention of the internet, the West hoped to transfer the entire secondary sector to Asia and concentrate wholly on the tertiary sector. However, their plan backfired as firstly, Asians are no longer satisfied with just looking after the secondary sector. They want a larger slice of the cake and are targeting the tertiary sector. Secondly, the number of jobs that the West hoped the new technologies would create has not materialized. As a result, both the West and the Asians are encroaching on each other’s sector.
Unlike Africans, Asians are capable of not only competing with whites in the secondary sector, but can even surpass them in their own sector, the tertiary sector. This creates conflict and explains the propaganda campaigns about tainted food and dangerous toys among others, that are being mounted against China in the West. When you understand that China dominates 94% of the world toy market, a very lucrative market, then you can understand why the West would like to take it back for their own toy manufacturers.
Many people do not understand that the underlying cause is the repositioning of both groups in the economic racial hierarchy as they fight for market share. This is why Lakshmi Mittal, an Indian magnate, was greeted with tremendous hostility in his bid to take over Arcelor, a French steel company, in 2006. Europeans were so enraged that Jacques Chirac, who was still president at the time, tried to stop the deal. Of course, most people did not understand the underlying stakes here as they are totally unaware of the racial makeup of our economic system.
Africa must understand that its richest resource is its people. Again propaganda has made Africans believe that foreign investors are absolutely essential to their economy and that Africa cannot survive without them. This is the type of propaganda they bombard Africans with all the time. It is totally false to assert that while Africa is not very important to the world economy, the world economy is very important to Africa, as illustrated by trade flows and trade policy. Africa has a population of 600 million people and an absolute advantage in the resources that the whole world needs. The rest of the world cannot do without Africa. That is why all the races on the planet are in Africa today. The quicker African people understand this, the quicker they can stop focusing on non Africans and start focusing on themselves.
Africans must begin to produce goods that their people use. Mahatma Ghandi brought an end to British domination in India by encouraging his people to stop wearing imported clothes from England but to wear their own. Africans must follow the advice of the Ivorian economist, Nicolas Agbohou, Le Franc Cfa et L’Euro contre l’Afrique (the French franc and the Euro against Africa) who explains why Africans must create a common currency. Africans from the Diaspora must increase their commercial ties with the continent by setting up more joint ventures in the motherland but be especially careful that the company they are doing business with in Africa is truly African owned, and not just a ‘front’ company. These are quite widespread in Africa as they have been created in order to prevent wealth falling into African hands.
Everything must be done to reduce conflict in Africa. Our people must be made to understand that all wars in Africa are used to generate trillions of dollars for Western companies through sale of arms and rebuilding of roads, bridges, schools and hospitals among others (secondary/tertiary sector) that Africans destroyed in their folly. Africans must develop their own defense system without buying weapons from the West, in order to keep their military strength secret. This was Saddam Hussein’s mistake. They knew exactly what his planes and his rockets could do because western companies had supplied him with all his military material.
Africa must move in the same direction as the Bolivian and Venezuelean presidents who have taken steps to secure their resources for the indigenous population. This is the reason the West hates Chavez. If Africans continue to send their wealth to enrich other people, how can they expect to end their poverty? It is no longer acceptable to hear African governments say they do not know how much money western oil companies take out of their countries every year. The time has come to put an end to this kind of laxism. African people are partly responsible for the horrendous deaths that have occurred on this planet, since it is our resources that were used to create the most deadly weapons (atomic and nuclear) on the planet today.
African governments should do much more to support local entrepreneurs, researchers, and inventors among others, to stop the brain drain from the continent. Also, our young people should be encouraged to master the new technologies so that they can be used for the benefit of African people.
Instead of always begging the West to reduce their debt and subsidies to Western farmers, Africans must demand that the West prove that they really want to “empower Africans.” This would give Africans ample reason to retake control of their mineral resources, develop their own domestic market and introduce their own common currency. We must seriously begin to challenge the rules of international commerce which keeps Africa locked into poverty.
Racial division of labour also operates domestically. We can find its replica in every part of the world. Take the USA for example, the people who live in the ghettos, mainly people of African descent, represent the primary sector of the economy. As the “tillers of the soil” they do all the menial and backbreaking work necessary as construction and factory workers, maids and security guards. While Africans blame their political leaders for their plight, it is the parents and young black males who are held responsible for the problems in the American ghettos. The real culprit- a racially segregated economic system which excludes the ghetto from creating wealth is not even vaguely suggested. Black men have been intentionally removed from the workforce by imprisonment and replaced by black females. As a result, many African American households have now become single headed female households.
According to Dr Claude Anderson, promoting the black woman is simply a strategy to ensure that wealth in the US remains in the hands of the white population since to truly lift most African American families out of poverty, they need households earning not one, but two salary incomes. The Asians as the “race of workers” are involved in textile distribution, restaurants, retail shops and people of European descent, “the race of rulers and soldiers,” are involved in banking, insurance and media among others.
I hope that African Americans now have a better understanding why Koreans control the black hair care industry in American inner cities and why their government prefers to bring in Asian immigrants rather than invest in improving their lives, although they have been there as long as and even longer than people of European descent. These are the same reasons why other industrialized countries continue to foster poverty in their midst.
Another strategy they use is to promote people like Rama Yada or Condoleeza Rice to high positions, to appease the people in the primary sector who are excluded from society, by giving them the false illusion that they too have a fair chance of escaping from the ghetto. It is important for our people to understand that it is only African people that can change their situation.
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It's doubtful that 1 in 5 Africans were transported across the Atlantic during the Triangular Trade era. Over a 300 year period some 15 million people were landed in the Americas out of an approximate 90 million to 100 million initial captives. That reduces to about 300,000 per year. Actual survivors would them be about 50,000 per year.
On his other comment Emeagwali claim that there are some 10 million post-colonial Africans living in the West. The number is more like 2.5 to 3 million.
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The quaternary sector of the economy is an extension of the Three-sector hypothesis of industrial evolution. It principally concerns the intellectual services: information generation, information sharing, consultation, education and research and development. It is sometimes incorporated into the tertiary sector but many argue that intellectual services are distinct enough to warrant a separate sector.
This sector evolves in well developed countries and requires a highly educated workforce.[citation needed]
The quaternary sector can be seen as the sector in which companies invest in order to ensure further expansion. Research will be directed into cutting costs, tapping into markets, producing innovative ideas, new production methods and methods of manufacture, amongst others. To many industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, the sector is the most valuable because it creates future branded products which the company will profit from.
According to some definitions, the quaternary sector includes other pure services, such as the entertainment industry. There is also the notion of a "Quinary Sector" which would encompass health, culture and research.
The quaternary sector consists of those industries providing information services, such as computing and ICT (information and communication technologies), consultancy (offering advice to businesses) and R&D (research, particular in scientific fields).
The quaternary sector is sometimes included with the tertiary sector, as they are both service sectors. Between them, the tertiary and quaternary sectors are the largest part of the UK economy, employing 76% of the workforce.
Should *Diaspora* Africans focus on this sector to help drive development/demand in the other sectors?Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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What exactly is the relationship between the Yorubas and their neighbours, the Igbos?
quote:
The new head of the Christian church, the Reverend James Smith, possesses nothing of Mr. Brown’s compassion, kindness, or accommodation. He despises the way that Mr. Brown tried to lead the church. Mr. Smith finds many converts unfamiliar with important religious ideas and rituals, proving to himself that Mr. Brown cared only about recruiting converts rather than making them Christians. He vows to get the church back on the narrow path and soon demonstrates his intolerance of clan customs by suspending a young woman whose husband mutilated her dead ogbanje child in the traditional way. The missionary does not believe that such children go back into the mother’s womb to be born again, and he condemns people who practice these beliefs as carrying out the work of the devil.
Each year, the Igbo clan holds a sacred ceremony to honor the earth deity. The egwugwu, ancestral spirits of the clan, dance in the tradition of the celebration. Enoch, an energetic and zealous convert, often provokes violent quarrels with people he sees as enemies. Approaching the egwugwu, who are keeping their distance from the Christians, Enoch dares the egwugwu to touch a Christian, so one of the egwugwu strikes him with a cane. Enoch responds by pulling the spirit’s mask off, a serious offense to the clan because, according to Umuofian tradition, unmasking an egwugwu kills the ancestral spirit.
The next day, the egwugwu from all the villages gather in the marketplace. They storm Enoch’s compound and destroy it with fire and machetes. Enoch takes refuge in the church compound, but the egwugwu follow him. Mr. Smith meets the men at the church door. Then the masked egwugwu begin to move toward the church, but they are quieted by their leader, who belittles Mr. Smith and his interpreter because they cannot understand what he is saying. He tells them that the egwugwu will not harm Mr. Smith for the sake of Mr. Brown, who was their friend. Mr. Smith will be able to stay safely in his house in Umuofia and worship his own god, but they intend to destroy the church that has caused the Igbo so many problems. Through his interpreter, Mr. Smith tries to calm them and asks that they leave the matter to him, but the egwugwu demolish his church to satisfy the clan spirit momentarily.
Commentary
Throughout the book Achebe gives his characters names with hidden meanings; for example, Okonkwo’s name implies male pride and stubbornness. When Achebe adds British characters, he gives two of them common and unremarkable British names, Brown and Smith. His third British character, the District Commissioner, is known only by his title. The choice of names, and lack thereof, is in itself a commentary by Achebe on the incoming faceless strangers.
Achebe portrays Mr. Smith as a stereotype of the inflexible Christian missionary in Africa. He is a fire-and-brimstone type of preacher, who likens Igbo religion to the pagan prophets of Baal of the Old Testament and brands traditional Igbo beliefs as the work of the devil. Achebe suggests that the issue between Mr. Smith and the local people may be more than one of religion: “[Mr. Smith] saw things as black and white. And black was evil.”
Mr. Smith preaches an uncompromising interpretation of the scriptures. He suspends a woman convert who allows an old Igbo belief about the ogbanje to contaminate her new Christian way of life. He labels this incident as “pouring new wine into old bottles,” an act prohibited in the New Testament of the Christian Bible—”Neither do men put new wine into old bottles” (Matthew 9:17).
Achebe implies that strict adherence to scripture and dogma produces religious fanaticism. Enoch’s unmasking of an egwugwu is portrayed as a result of unbridled fanaticism. In traditional Igbo religion, the ancestral spirit communicates through the mask in which it speaks. The Igbo believe that during this time, the human underneath the mask is not present; the mask is transformed into the spirit. Thus, unmasking the egwugwu kills the ancestral spirit. Enoch’s action exposes the non-divine nature of an egwugwu, just a man beneath a mask, another sign of “things falling apart.” Ironically, the outcome of Enoch’s fanaticism must surely cause some clan members to question their long-held, sacred beliefs regarding the egwugwu.
Consistent with his high-energy radicalism, Enoch is disappointed that his action and its consequences do not provoke a holy war against the Igbo nonbelievers. “Holy war” was the term applied by zealot Christians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to the Crusades against the infidels, nonbelievers in Christianity.
The reference to the Mother of Spirits is another foreshadowing of the decline of the Umuofians. Her wailing and crying signals the death of “the very soul of the tribe.” Enoch’s unmasking of the egwugwu and the subsequent destruction of the church by the Igbo represent the climax of confrontation between traditional Igbo religious beliefs and British colonial Christianity, and, to a great extent, these events symbolize the broader cultural confrontation. Even the egwugwu leader acknowledges the cultural standoff between them: “We say he [Mr. Smith] is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his.” Such an acknowledgment seems an indication that the Igbo are becoming resigned to their “new dispensation”—that they are moving toward a collective surrender to becoming civilized under the onslaught of forces far more organized and powerful than themselves.
Glossary
• about sheep and goats / about wheat and tares Two frequently quoted teachings of Jesus relate to the need for separating the good from the bad. In one, he refers to separating the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:32); in the other, separating the wheat from the tares, or weeds (Matthew 13:30). Mr. Smith was obviously much concerned about dividing the community between the good (the Christian converts) and the bad (the traditional Igbo believers). Not coincidentally, his suspension of a convert is also based on a quotation from Matthew (9:17).
• prophets of Baal Mr. Smith is comparing the pagan worship of the warrior god Baal, mentioned in the Old Testament (I Kings 18) to the Igbo religion. The Israelites saw the worship of Baal as a rival to their worship of God, causing the prophet Elijah to challenge the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.
• bull-roarer a noisemaker made from a length of string or rawhide threaded through an object of wood, stone, pottery, or bone; a ritual device that makes a loud humming noise when swung rapidly overhead.
• ogwu medicine, magic.
• desecrated to have taken away the sacredness of; treat as not sacred; profane.
• The body of the white man, I salute you. The egwugwu speak indirectly, using a formal language of immortal spirits.
Their "ogwu" seems to mean the same thing as our "ogun". Is this just the same word spelt differently due to "slight" difference in pronounciation?
Just how widespread is the Religion of the Orisas? Is there a known older spiritual system it derives from?
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Herukhuti: What exactly is the relationship between the Yorubas and their neighbours, the Igbos?
quote:
The new head of the Christian church, the Reverend James Smith, possesses nothing of Mr. Brown’s compassion, kindness, or accommodation. He despises the way that Mr. Brown tried to lead the church. Mr. Smith finds many converts unfamiliar with important religious ideas and rituals, proving to himself that Mr. Brown cared only about recruiting converts rather than making them Christians. He vows to get the church back on the narrow path and soon demonstrates his intolerance of clan customs by suspending a young woman whose husband mutilated her dead ogbanje child in the traditional way. The missionary does not believe that such children go back into the mother’s womb to be born again, and he condemns people who practice these beliefs as carrying out the work of the devil.
Each year, the Igbo clan holds a sacred ceremony to honor the earth deity. The egwugwu, ancestral spirits of the clan, dance in the tradition of the celebration. Enoch, an energetic and zealous convert, often provokes violent quarrels with people he sees as enemies. Approaching the egwugwu, who are keeping their distance from the Christians, Enoch dares the egwugwu to touch a Christian, so one of the egwugwu strikes him with a cane. Enoch responds by pulling the spirit’s mask off, a serious offense to the clan because, according to Umuofian tradition, unmasking an egwugwu kills the ancestral spirit.
The next day, the egwugwu from all the villages gather in the marketplace. They storm Enoch’s compound and destroy it with fire and machetes. Enoch takes refuge in the church compound, but the egwugwu follow him. Mr. Smith meets the men at the church door. Then the masked egwugwu begin to move toward the church, but they are quieted by their leader, who belittles Mr. Smith and his interpreter because they cannot understand what he is saying. He tells them that the egwugwu will not harm Mr. Smith for the sake of Mr. Brown, who was their friend. Mr. Smith will be able to stay safely in his house in Umuofia and worship his own god, but they intend to destroy the church that has caused the Igbo so many problems. Through his interpreter, Mr. Smith tries to calm them and asks that they leave the matter to him, but the egwugwu demolish his church to satisfy the clan spirit momentarily.
Commentary
Throughout the book Achebe gives his characters names with hidden meanings; for example, Okonkwo’s name implies male pride and stubbornness. When Achebe adds British characters, he gives two of them common and unremarkable British names, Brown and Smith. His third British character, the District Commissioner, is known only by his title. The choice of names, and lack thereof, is in itself a commentary by Achebe on the incoming faceless strangers.
Achebe portrays Mr. Smith as a stereotype of the inflexible Christian missionary in Africa. He is a fire-and-brimstone type of preacher, who likens Igbo religion to the pagan prophets of Baal of the Old Testament and brands traditional Igbo beliefs as the work of the devil. Achebe suggests that the issue between Mr. Smith and the local people may be more than one of religion: “[Mr. Smith] saw things as black and white. And black was evil.”
Mr. Smith preaches an uncompromising interpretation of the scriptures. He suspends a woman convert who allows an old Igbo belief about the ogbanje to contaminate her new Christian way of life. He labels this incident as “pouring new wine into old bottles,” an act prohibited in the New Testament of the Christian Bible—”Neither do men put new wine into old bottles” (Matthew 9:17).
Achebe implies that strict adherence to scripture and dogma produces religious fanaticism. Enoch’s unmasking of an egwugwu is portrayed as a result of unbridled fanaticism. In traditional Igbo religion, the ancestral spirit communicates through the mask in which it speaks. The Igbo believe that during this time, the human underneath the mask is not present; the mask is transformed into the spirit. Thus, unmasking the egwugwu kills the ancestral spirit. Enoch’s action exposes the non-divine nature of an egwugwu, just a man beneath a mask, another sign of “things falling apart.” Ironically, the outcome of Enoch’s fanaticism must surely cause some clan members to question their long-held, sacred beliefs regarding the egwugwu.
Consistent with his high-energy radicalism, Enoch is disappointed that his action and its consequences do not provoke a holy war against the Igbo nonbelievers. “Holy war” was the term applied by zealot Christians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to the Crusades against the infidels, nonbelievers in Christianity.
The reference to the Mother of Spirits is another foreshadowing of the decline of the Umuofians. Her wailing and crying signals the death of “the very soul of the tribe.” Enoch’s unmasking of the egwugwu and the subsequent destruction of the church by the Igbo represent the climax of confrontation between traditional Igbo religious beliefs and British colonial Christianity, and, to a great extent, these events symbolize the broader cultural confrontation. Even the egwugwu leader acknowledges the cultural standoff between them: “We say he [Mr. Smith] is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his.” Such an acknowledgment seems an indication that the Igbo are becoming resigned to their “new dispensation”—that they are moving toward a collective surrender to becoming civilized under the onslaught of forces far more organized and powerful than themselves.
Glossary
• about sheep and goats / about wheat and tares Two frequently quoted teachings of Jesus relate to the need for separating the good from the bad. In one, he refers to separating the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:32); in the other, separating the wheat from the tares, or weeds (Matthew 13:30). Mr. Smith was obviously much concerned about dividing the community between the good (the Christian converts) and the bad (the traditional Igbo believers). Not coincidentally, his suspension of a convert is also based on a quotation from Matthew (9:17).
• prophets of Baal Mr. Smith is comparing the pagan worship of the warrior god Baal, mentioned in the Old Testament (I Kings 18) to the Igbo religion. The Israelites saw the worship of Baal as a rival to their worship of God, causing the prophet Elijah to challenge the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.
• bull-roarer a noisemaker made from a length of string or rawhide threaded through an object of wood, stone, pottery, or bone; a ritual device that makes a loud humming noise when swung rapidly overhead.
• ogwu medicine, magic.
• desecrated to have taken away the sacredness of; treat as not sacred; profane.
• The body of the white man, I salute you. The egwugwu speak indirectly, using a formal language of immortal spirits.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Excellent article by Emeagwali in that it shows how the tools of domination and oppression need not be so overt.
quote:Herukhuti wrote to Argay: How Do We Reverse the Brain Drain?
LOL Is such a thing (especially in the case of Argay) even possible?!
Don't think so. I presume there would have to be a brain there in the first place.
He's an automaton racist parasite at best with **** for brains. He once told he was conceived in a test tube. You can just imagine what those depraved scientists did to his embryo...
Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006
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