London Calling

What reforms need to be made to the global political and economic order to promote global equality and intergenerational equity? Do intellectuals and policymakers from the ‘South’ or ‘Third World’ advance perspectives on the changes necessary to advance these principles that are fundamentally different or even at odds with the views that empowered development elites from the rich countries articulate? If so, what are the specific points of divergence and the barriers to the advancement of ‘Southern’ perspectives? How can Southerners realize their visions for change?

This weekend, The North-South Institute is holding a conference at Wilton Park, GB that aims to address these questions in great detail. The participation of several dozen high level people in the development business ensures that this will be an intellectually stimulating and enriching event. I am writing a report on the proceedings and look forward to sharing my more informal thoughts here. En route to another wonderful and challenging learning experience....

----

Pictured (l to r): Wilton Park's Roger Williamson, Professor Samuel Wangwe, Richard Manning, Chair of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Development Assistance Committee, and Dr. Alejandro Bendaña. The Southern Perspectives Wilton Park Conference Report is now available on The North-South Institute website.

Networking Cotton

I have lost count of just how many times during my grad school years someone has admonished me to remember the old colloquialism that it is “not what you know, but who you know.” While I was at York and early on at McMaster, each time I heard this phrase expressed I would get a little hot under the collar. It seemed to me to be a cliché that was essentially anti-intellectual. In my slightly anger-laced political rejoinders I typically asserted that knowledge production should have priority over networking. However, as time went on my responses mellowed somewhat and I often found myself grudgingly agreeing with the sentiment. My slow acceptance probably had quite a bit to do with the fact that despite my idealism and my doubts I was transforming myself into a major networker. I had learned that competence in contact building was necessary for self-preservation and self-advancement even in an academic context where, as the story goes, knowledge is supposed to be pursued as an end in itself. The development of my thinking on the latter subject also influenced my perspective on networking. I came to believe that as far as the social sciences go, the idea that research can somehow be ‘value-free’ or disinterested is more often than not a myth. As the relationships or institutions that social scientists did not question in their writing became more apparent to me I took on board a lesson that many professors had imparted over the years: if the status quo is problematic, push to change it. This notion became my political rationalization for networking. If principled young thinkers did not engage in such efforts I came to believe that another old chestnut – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – would certainly apply within the ivory tower and beyond. That being said, I was not prepared for just how much value networking could also add to my fieldwork. The raw material inputs I am collecting here in Sénégal will help me to construct an academic finished product, and it is only through a truly golden cotton network that I have been able to access these resources.

On my second full day in Dakar I met with Eric HAZARD and Sally BADEN, two well-known Oxfam UK experts on the West African cotton industry and the world cotton trade. After passing along a bag of Rwanda’s finest coffee to Eric as a token of my appreciation for the many letters of recommendation he had written over the past year for my various scholarship applications and for McMaster University Ethics Board approval, he made a few brief phone calls on my behalf to industry insiders. Eric subsequently turned to me and in English that is much better than my French explained that there was a truck heading to the hub of the cotton zone on Saturday morning that I could catch a ride with. Happy to have a stroke of luck so quickly I headed back to my new office at ENDA Tiers Monde with Barry ALIMOU, Eric’s old research partner and another cotton expert. After a lonely evening with my language learning software I arrived refreshed Friday morning at the office to find Alimou waiting for me outside. He informed me that Amdiatou DIALLO, the Directeur exécutif of the Fédération Nationale des Producteurs de Coton (FNPC), and Moussa SABALY, the FNPC Président, were departing for Tambacounda in one and a half hours and that I had a seat in their truck. Alimou flagged a taxi and we raced through the morning traffic to collect my things and find a bank machine. Three out of service ATMs later we found one that was operating and proceeded to enter a heavy traffic jam en route to the rendezvous at the offices of SODEFITEX, the cotton company. As we neared the meeting point screams of agony pierced through the murmur of running engines and the occasional horn blasts. As we approached I surveyed the scene and ascertained that moments before a young boy on a motorized bicycle had apparently been run over by a large transport truck. The tire marks were clearly embedded in his shattered lower left leg. It was a gruesome sight and fortunately for the boy quite a few people had already made haste to offer assistance. Sadly, such efforts cannot be counted on in other places I have visited this year. When we finally reached SODEFITEX I was still a little shaken. To escape a bit I pulled out my camera to take a few pictures of the street scenes around the place when a guard appeared from nowhere and informed me that I should not be taking photos of private property. Not being exactly in the best of spirits I demanded to know the reason. He offered none and I was left wondering if he had taken action just because I was white and had a camera. The issue of my whiteness was at the forefront of my mind as perhaps a dozen young boys had wandered by during the previous minutes making the inevitable demands: give me your bottle or give me your money, white man!

After meeting Moussa and Amdiatou we proceeded inland. The temperature gradually became more oppressive as we left the Atlantic behind and traversed a baobab-filled landscape. During our 3pm lunch stop I learned that our destination was not Tambacounda and that we were bound for the town of Vélingara instead. To save time we were to pass through the salt mining area around the Saloum River riparian zone and then cross into The Gambia. At the border immigration stamped my passport for 72 hours and as I walked back to the truck the first thing I noticed was that the kids were asking me for things in English instead of in French. As we traveled on into The Gambian countryside I learned that the shortcut plan is always a gamble. Each village on the highway has its own police check point. We passed through four such roadblocks unscathed but had a problem on the fifth go as the local cop demanded to be paid what he termed a “customs fee.” His issue was with the validity of the FNPC paperwork and not with my passport. Even so, since I was the best English speaker available I took it upon myself to resolve the situation. I looked him in the eye and asked if I could see his customs identification. In hindsight it seems like a slightly testosterone-jacked question to have asked a guy with a big gun. However, I was wearing a t-shirt that read “Kiss me, I’m Canadian,” and figured at the time that only the fashion police would take it upon themselves to shoot someone wearing a t-shirt like that. After a few moments he relented by informing us that if he ever saw us again he would arrest us on the spot.

We zoomed along and arrived at the first of two ferries that would take us across The Gambia River. The second was notable as it was powered by hand. All the men lined up along the Eastern side of the ferry and pulled a cable moored to both sides of the crossing. I tried to snap a picture of the President pulling in unison with everyone else but he ducked out just in time and I had to settle for a picture of him with Amdiatou in profile. On the ferries people also continued to ask me for things and I found myself recalling passages on the topic that really frustrated me in a book named “The Masked Rider” by a notable Canadian rock star and drummer about a bicycle trip he took through the region. He equated the phenomenon of kids asking for things with a “socialist” mentality in West Africa. While this particular author’s well known libertarian agenda was a problem for me, I also was not happy with the way he seemed to nonchalantly describe his dismissive treatment of the kids. Now I found myself in The Gambia behaving in a similar fashion and my annoyance with these occurrences somewhat overwhelming. Luckily, my benefactors woke me up with a random act of kindness. They invited three people without a ride to hop into the back of the truck and we rode for the border as twilight descended.

In Vélingara the following day I found myself perched atop a bale of cotton lint in the SODEFITEX yard reading my French dictionary while the FNPC leadership met with Bachir DIOP, the Directeur Général of SODEFITEX, and his team. It was a marathon meeting. While I waited I tried out my French with a few of the workers and had some success. Driving to Tambacounda with Bashir and Amdiatou after the gathering adjourned I witnessed first-hand the convivial relationship between the producers’ organization and the sole buyer of cotton here. The contrasts with Tanzania were stark save for one commonality: the excellent hospitality. Networks rule!

Inaction Reflection

Sitting in relative solitude at the heart of Senegal’s cotton growing zone after a whirlwind week of travel, the problems of conducting academic work in Sub-Saharan Africa remain at the forefront of my mind. It seems to me that the payoff from university-based research, reading, reflection, writing and re-writing for people and the planet is certainly only ever realized in the long run, if it is at all. I think that intellectuals engaged in such work here must have a zealous faith in the future value of their output. I believe strongly in my project, but also worry sometimes that my forward orientation can be encompassing to the extent that it desensitizes me to my surroundings. For example, everyday on the ‘cotton trail’ (as an old friend from Queen’s likes to call it) I pass amongst some of the poorest and most exploited people on Earth without engaging substantively in efforts to assist their conditions of life. It is not like I put on a pair of Bono’s rose-coloured glasses each morning as I venture out, but I do find myself gazing at the problems of the people I am not researching much like a tourist. The immediacy of poverty and despoliation in this place is hard to square with a multiyear project to inform policy or the next generation of thinkers. Even though I find it hard to rationalize inaction in the present, I remain committed to the ideal of academic inquiry and the objectives of my dissertation. That being said, I sometimes have skeptical moments about those things too. Occasionally I recall the fact that the pace of poverty eradication and economic redistribution measures is glacial even though libraries around the globe are stuffed full of studies on the factors that impoverish this region and its relationships with the rich countries. Keynes famously noted that in the long run we are all dead, and a lot of insights on those dusty shelves have gone unutilized while many African bodies have piled up over the years. Nonetheless, I see light in his quote. I read it as a call to action or an incentive to get busy. Keynes himself bridged the divide between action and reflection. Like him, I believe that there must be a space for both, and though I regret that I have lacked the former during my current research phase, I know that abstaining from action now serves a higher purpose. The results of reflection can inform debates about the formulation, adoption, implementation and evaluation of governance reforms and policy alternatives that aim to advance the principles of global equality and intergenerational equity. I look forward to the time when I will be able to engage as a public intellectual in those spaces with my findings in hand knowing that my inputs can help people.

----

As I waited outside Jomo Kenyatta International Airport last Monday for the Kenya Airways bus to take me to my hotel for the night, the first thing I noticed was that immigration had failed to stamp my passport. I had a receipt for my in-transit visa and figured that since I was in the hands of the airline there would be no problem. As our little group piled into the minibus I had some interesting discussions with a Chinese national off to peddle anti-malarials in the DRC, and an Ethiopian IT manager for Shell bound for Mauritius. An aged white Zimbabwean woman interrupted the latter conversation when she shrilly demanded that the driver take us to the Hilton. Much laughter ensued, followed by even more from me when my new Ethiopian friend noted that our destination was located next to one of East Africa’s biggest mattress factories. After arriving, expecting the worst at the register, I took note of a sign in capital letters: THE SKATING RINK CLOSES AT 11PM. At that point not even the 200 noisy French safari goers or ‘overlanders’ in the lobby could dampen my amazement. There I was at a hotel where from the top of the tower it was possible to wear a pair of skates while viewing African wildlife in the distance or the nearby industrial park. The mattress itself was fantastic and my good luck continued at the airport the following morning as I made it through immigration without a hitch. However, as there is no stamp in my passport and I seem to have misplaced my visa receipt – the only official proof I was there – it is possible that the entire experience was a figment of my imagination. All I can say for sure is that access to such luxury remains a dream for 80%+ of the people that call Kenya home.

Seated next to the window on the plane the following morning I bit into a cherished, fresh copy of the FT and tried to focus as the crew of Chinese labourers in the adjacent seats laughed it up. I stole occasional glances at the landscape below and was lucky enough to see Lake Edward and the Congo rainforest stretching into the distance. I took note of the time and a little under an hour later, after flying over an incredibly flat stretch of seemingly pristine forest, I looked again and saw the Congo River itself. The thing that struck me about the scenery around the river was that the forest seemed to have disappeared. Humanity was omnipresent. Subsequently I found myself putting down my French dictionary and thinking about the importance of the Congo’s trees for the planet and the well-known facts that forest is really not that big and is under pressure. My friends here in Africa know that I have been talking a lot about trees recently. Having planted a lot of them in the boreal forest back home – somewhere around 800 000 over the years – they are often in my dreams. Of late I have been considering ways of bringing them into my future work. Just to be clear, I have already rejected one such idea: the notion of going back to Northern Canada and digging up all 800 000. The findings of a recent “study” that The Economist saw fit to highlight can be used to argue that I should do just that to help prevent climate change. Scary stuff….

Later, after winging over the Niger and Volta watersheds and stopping briefly at Bamako to load up on carbon, copious quantities of beef were served with a pasta dish. As I ate it occurred to me that the Rift Valley Fever scare was much reduced. The story of the bovine and human outbreaks of the fever had been consistently in the news since my arrival in East Africa in January, and the meal drew my attention to the passing of time. At the airport, however, I realized that I apparently had not been here long enough to remember to bring essential disease-related things with me when I traveled, such as my international vaccination certificate. It was safely stowed in Kigali and I was next in line to explain my business to the authorities. Previously, possession of the little booklet had saved me from getting jabbed by a questionable needle filled with Yellow Fever vaccine when I re-entered Kenya from Uganda in 2004. Luckily immigration waved me through and in doing so gave me a great International Labour Day present. Keba Faty, the logistics coordinator for ENDA Tiers Monde and head of the household where I would be staying greeted me outside the airport. We embarked for his place near the market in the suburb of Ouakam and as I breathed in the fresh Atlantic air I soaked up West African sights for the first time. Bakeries and images of marabouts – leaders of Islamic brotherhoods – were everywhere and a new chapter in my research adventure had commenced.