Guest blogger Imnakoya has been writing Grandiose Parlor, offering “cogitations on sociopolitical and economic issues in Nigeria & Africa,” for more than two years, and recently helped launch the African site aggregator and multi-author blog magazine AfricanLoft. His sites have been important voices in the post-TEDGlobal discussion — which is especially significant because he wasn’t actually in Arusha attending the conference. Following along with TEDGlobal from the United States via the blogs, he has helped to fuel the post-conference networking — and the early initiatives that have grown out of the conference.
As one of the missing-in-action Fellows who couldn’t attend the conference, the only rational thing I could do was plug into the mainstream media (MSM)-dominated information pipeline to follow the event. Well, this didn’t happen; the MSM dropped the ball — there was little or no coverage. Unexpectedly, the African bloggers stepped up to the plate, giving a comprehensive and almost hourly rendition of event. This is unprecedented in Africa. As I write this piece, African blogs are the only existing and extensive source of information on the TEDGlobal conference.
Just as no one would have thought some “ragtag bunch of unschooled bloggers” would become so relevant in broadcasting and amplifying what ensued in Arusha, no one would have deemed it possible to cull so much intellectual and entrepreneurial energy at one time in one remote location in Africa.
There is only one word for these scenarios: Revolution. I referred to the TED-Arusha conference as a revolution shortly after it closed, and I still stand by that statement.
TED brought out the cheetahs and left the hippos behind.
As conveyed by conference blogger Ethan Zuckerman:
[Economist George] Ayittey characterizes several of the conference speakers as “the cheetah generation,” fast-moving people who don’t accept corruption, and who demand that democracy and transparency lead to better governance. “Africa’s salvation rests on the back of these cheetahs.”
He contrasts them to “the hippo generation”, the ruling elites, stuck in their intellectual patch, complaining about colonialism and imperialism. “They won’t reform, because they benefit from the status quo.”
However, I feel the element that would have given this revolution a much bigger bang was missing or present in insufficient amount: The hippos. The absence of the hippos was reflected in the Economist, whose writer observed:
… there were notably few of the hard-knuckle African politicians who often run the interior or defence ministry or act as kingmakers, sometimes bankrolling rotten presidents…
While the over-representation of the cheetahs may have been strategic, the dearth of hippos in Arusha limited a face-to-face encounter and discussion between these two — the kind of interaction that is missing and needed in Africa.
Even though the impression in certain quarters is that the hippos are becoming irrelevant, I share a contrary view: The hippos are still of strategic importance given their influence in politics, within the general African society, and in the public sector, and it would have been blissful to have cheetahs impact some “good words” onto them in Arusha. After all, these are people who by choice have become “deaf and blind” and “locked up” within their rarefied positions of power and authority. Getting them to see and listen to the cheetahs’ ideas, accomplishments, triumphs and challenges could have generated some interesting reactions … among many earth-shaking meetings at TEDGlobal. (Who could have guessed Bono and Andrew Mwenda would have had such an interesting exchange?)
The conference is over, now what?
Great initiative comes with great challenges — and one such is getting the word out beyond the margins of the blog pages. As much as the TED initiative is driven by an out-of-the-box mentality, the success of any post-TEDGlobal initiatives in Africa will be dependent in great extent on the ability of the players to bridge the old and the new worlds. Although the blogs carried the day in Arusha, the mainstream media is still very relevant in Africa.
It’s also imperative that the cheetah generation aggressively seek ways to extend their footprints beyond the relatively comfortable entrepreneurial/NGO circles. One of the advantages of having access to political power is the ability to make things happen faster, and reach a wider audience. The sooner more cheetahs assume the control of strategic positions within the public sector, the quicker several of the excellent ideas showcased in Arusha will become mainstream in Africa.
Watch for the premiere of the first talks from TEDGlobal, next week on TED.com.