Loomnie

1. Charitable giving and volunteering decline in England

2. Amartya Sen on the great misreading of Adam Smith

3. More Amartya Sen on Adam Smith (Planet Money podcast)

4. China’s first black news anchor

5. Angola’s biggest bank opens an office in Johannesburg

Sorry, don’t have much time to analyse it right now. Let me refer you to A Bombastic Element’s analysis.

More here.

Keith Hart writes:

The contrast between Zuma and Mbeki could hardly be greater, a tribal chieftain in the mould of Bolingbroke or Henry Tudor against Mbeki’s Othello, a man happy to be photographed dancing in Zulu warrior gear versus the austere western intellectual with his stiff suits and goatee beard. The number of Zuma’s wives, lovers and children is uncountable. He was once tried for raping an HIV-positive woman who was the daughter of a trusted political aide; claimed that it was his duty to satisfy any woman who appeared to want him; and took a shower after the act so as not to catch the disease. Jacob Zuma epitomises the image of African male sexuality that Thabo Mbeki tried so desperately to counter. Yet Zuma appointed a leading progressive medic as Minister of Health; and he has pushed through drastic changes in government AIDS policy, winning singular praise from AIDS social movements for having committed state resources to the fight. Only recently Zuma made public his own HIV status (negative after four tests). Political leaders like this make nonsense of the stereotypes that pass for analysis of South Africa’s trajectory.

Now at last many more South Africans have access to the most effective sources of prevention and treatment known to normal science, although this is still highly unequal and plagued by Christian and traditional beliefs affecting the use of condoms, for example. The whole story is mind-boggling. You couldn’t make it up. Because of or despite all this, South Africa has stimulated a number of compelling book-length studies by leading anthropologists which, taken individually and together, offer a remarkable chance to reflect on how our discipline might illuminate a tragedy that has implications for how we all live in today’s world. Here I will briefly consider three: Didier Fassin’s When Bodies Remember (2007), Robert Thornton’s Unimagined Community (2008) and Ida Susser’s AIDS, Sex, and Culture (2009).

Read the whole article, including his review of the three books, here.

6.3% growth rate, but inflation may reach 12.6% in 2010.

Here.

BBC:

The chairman of Nigeria’s governing party, Vincent Ogbulafor, has been charged with fraud.

Mr Ogbulafor is accused of fraudulently awarding $1.5m (£1m) in federal funds when he was a government minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo.

He denies the charges but if convicted, Mr Ogbulafor would have to resign.

Correspondents say the case is being seen against the background of a struggle for control of the leadership of the People’s Democratic Party.

Let the game intensify!

I just read this on the Nigerian Village Square:

The literary world is abuzz with the news that Achebe in 2010, on the fiftieth anniversary of Nigeria’s independence, and the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Biafran war; is working on a major opus – Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War 1967-1970.

It will cover a chronological history of events that led to, occurred during, and took place immediately after one of the bloodiest wars in history that claimed about 2 million lives. Because the work will be about his life in the milieu of the tragedy, it will not be a strictly historical but autobiographical work. He envisions a book of over 300 pages.

Now, that is something to look forward to.

The scheduling has done this documentary series no favours. Welcome to Lagos has coincided each Thursday night with an event, the TV debate between the three party leaders, which has not only turned this election on its head, but which may have changed politics in this country forever. If you can ignore history being made on the other side, a treat awaits you on BBC2. The producer Will Anderson has spent four months in the least salubrious spots of Lagos, one of Africa’s mega-cities – the main dump Olusosun, Makoko a floating slum, and the beach which is home to squatters. Thankfully, he was not on a quest for yet another extreme environment. Nor was he out to produce another derivative of Slumdog Millionaire. The stars of this world do not wallow in self-revelation, but are ordinary, resourceful people who get by. Meet Joseph, who burns the PVC coating off copper wire by night and proclaims that his business is just like the stock market. The price of metals he sells fluctuates with the price of the dollar. In fact, he goes on, the only difference between him and city slickers are suits, ties and fine shoes. One can think of a few others, as he leads you back to his one room apartment, but there is no cause for hand-wringing. No hearts bleed in this series, except those of the cattle slaughtered in the market. Nor is anyone pretending that life in the dump or the floating slum is another other than it is. If you can see it on iplayer, do. Otherwise this series is worth, dare one say it , a repeat.

Here.

Some Nigerians are complaining about the BBC documentary Welcome to Lagos because, they say, it is not balanced.

I have not seen the second in the series so I can’t really say much about that. The first, though, in my opinion, does not leave any gap that needs to be filled by any fair and balanced reporting.

It is a story about a dump and its dwellers, and how they manage to eke out a living, create a semblance of a government, and work towards achieving much more than they already have.

I would actually find it distasteful if the documentary had brought a bit of the Lekki side of life in order to show that there is more to Lagos than dumps. That would indeed smack of tokenism, and most likely remove from the main thrust of the documentary by drawing attention to the things that the dump-dwellers do not have. It might also end up portraying them as victims, something that the documentary was very careful not to do.

The other question here would be whether the story would in any way be advanced by showing those other sides. I doubt it.

The documentary depicts an important part of Lagos that is almost never talked about. For that, we should be grateful.

Britain
I would assume that it is an insult to the British audience – for whom the documentary is primarily intended – to believe that they do not know that there is more to Lagos than dumps. Really.

There are complaints that there are Brits who live on garbage. Oh yes there are, and I could almost bet that there are documentaries on them. Probably prepared by or for the BBC. But that is not the issue here.

The issue here is that this is the story of Olusosun and not a documentary comparing it with dumps in other parts of the world. I am sure that anyone who is interested in doing a documentary on that topic – a comparison – would be able to get some funding for that.

This documentary is one that I am the better for having watched.

Libertarianism
One take on this that I find really interesting is the description of life on the dump as libertarianism in action:

Not only did the scavengers sell on any rubbish of any value, but a market arose to satisfy their own needs; the tip had a café and even a manicurist. And at the nearby cattle market, every part of the cow except the hair was used for profit; even the blood that would otherwise drain away was scooped up and turned to chickenfeed.

In this sense, we saw the free market in its perfect form: sole traders exploiting every tiny profit opportunity; the minute division of labour; hard work, energy and entrepreneurship; the lack of any waste.

We also saw that the market policed itself. The scavengers claimed that they trusted each other – though whether this was because market transactions bred bourgeois virtues, or because they threatened to burn to death suspected thieves, was unclear. What was clear, though, was that they didn’t need the state to solve their disputes.

Interesting.

1. Is China a developing country?
2. Swedish think tank wants to clean up relief deliveries with a new ethical aid tool
3. Why cycling in Berlin is a dream
4. The corrupt reign of Emperor Silvio
5. Don’t cry for Wall Street
6. Towards a new world economy
7. Why some Egyptians are becoming vegetarians