Psyche: You want people to do the right thing? Save them the guilt trip

 It’s important to distinguish here between guilt that arises internally, and guilt that’s externally induced. If we feel guilty about failing to recycle our plastics or adopt a vegetarian diet, we might be motivated to engage in reparative action. But if someone buttonholes us over dinner and tries to make us feel bad about our lifestyle choices, the picture might look very different; we might become defensive and try to justify our actions, which drives us further away from changing the way we behave. These scenarios then raise doubts about whether negative self-directed emotional appeals will be effective at promoting prosociality. [...]

The potential of positive self-directed emotions has largely not been embraced by activists. The worry could be that it might make those engaging in the cause appear self-satisfied or selfish. But these studies suggest that, instead of focusing on ‘doom and gloom’ messaging that zooms in on people’s shortcomings and risks alienating them, policymakers and strategists might find that positive messaging, speaking to people’s positive sense of self, might be a more powerful lever of behavioural change.

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Reuters: Economic 'game changer'? African leaders launch free-trade zone

It is hoped that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) - the largest since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994 - will help unlock Africa’s long-stymied economic potential by boosting intra-regional trade, strengthening supply chains and spreading expertise. [...]

Africa has much catching up to do: its intra-regional trade accounted for just 17% of exports in 2017 versus 59% in Asia and 69% in Europe, and Africa has missed out on the economic booms that other trade blocs have experienced in recent decades. [...]

Members have committed to eliminate tariffs on most goods, which will increase trade in the region by 15-25% in the medium term, but this would more than double if these other issues were dealt with, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates. [...]

The zone’s potential clout received a boost on Tuesday when Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa, agreed to sign the agreement at the summit. Benin has also since agreed to join. Fifty-four of the continent’s 55 states have now signed up, but only about half of these have ratified. [...]

The vast difference in countries’ economic heft is another complicating factor in negotiations. Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa account for over 50% of Africa’s cumulative GDP, while its six sovereign island nations represent about 1%.

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Quartz: The fallout from a church rape scandal shows the harsh reality of being a woman in Nigeria

On Sunday, June 30, Nigerian women organized a protest against sexual violence in the church following recent allegations by the wife of a popular singer that the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly (COZA) general overseer pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo raped her when she was 17 years old. [...]

Nigerian women have had a lot to protest lately. In May, there were significant protests after mass arrests of women in clubs and bars at night for alleged prostitution in Abuja, the federal capital city. It’s worth noting none of the men who were apparently being solicited shared the same fate. Soon after their release some of the women shared grim stories of rape and extortion at the hands of the police. The police promised an investigation but not before the assistant superintendent of Police in an interview justified the mass arrests because women “are not supposed to be hanging around outside clubs.” [...]

Beyond these recent happenings, Nigeria’s statistics on women’s well-being don’t make for pleasant reading. Up to19% of Nigerian girls have already started childbearing by the age of 15. By the age of 19, the number rises to 37%. Nigeria’s adolescent fertility rate in Nigeria is 120 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19 years. In its last jobs report of 2018, the National Bureau of Statistics showed that 26.6% of women – compared to 20.3% of men – able and willing to work are unemployed, which marks a 5.4% year-on-year increase from what it was in 2017.

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The Guardian: Should museums return their colonial artefacts?

Macron’s pledge and Killmonger’s heist had context. The preceding decade had brought growing demands for the restitution of artefacts taken from Africa by European colonists during the 19th century. If the case for the restitution of human remains to indigenous communities had been, by and large, acceded, the new frontier was works of art. The UN kickstarted the conversation in 2007 with article 11 of its declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, which urged states to restore “cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property” taken from indigenous people without their “free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs”. With that aim in mind, the Benin Dialogue Group was established the same year as part of an effort to get European museum curators talking to key representatives in Nigeria. [...]

A core objective of the Benin Dialogue Group was the creation of a permanent display in Benin City of objects once belonging to the former kingdom and now in continental hands. Last year, Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, called for international guidelines akin to the Washington principles (which address the restitution of Nazi-confiscated art to descendants of dispossessed, predominantly Jewish families) to help museums handle provenance research and repatriation of illegally acquired artworks in public collections. It is no coincidence that much of this thinking coincided with growing calls for western European nations to apologise for various “crimes” of empire, from the Germans in Namibia and the Dutch in Indonesia to the British in Kenya and India and the French in north Africa. [...]

At the same time, an exciting wave of new museums was announced across Africa. The Museum of Black Civilisations in Dakar, Senegal, was opened in 2018, with capacity for about 18,000 objects, alongside a clear demand for some of that space to be filled by items currently housed in European museums. New projects are also scheduled for the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria, the Museum of National History in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the JK Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in Lagos. The opening of the Benin Royal Museum in Benin City is scheduled for 2021.

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openDemocracy: Attacks on women's ministries are a threat to democracy

This experience is not unique to Brazil. Many countries with women’s ministries face right-wing and religious attempts to eliminate or downgrade their influence – and in some cases, to change their mandates altogether. When this happens, it’s a strong signal that other democratic structures may also be at risk.[...]

Protecting women’s human rights was an issue for new democracies, and more established ones. The United States had legalised abortion in 1973, yet marital rape was exempt from the criminal code, women could be fired for being pregnant, and they couldn’t apply for a credit card. Irish women weren’t allowed to sit in pubs; women In Nigeria didn’t have the right to vote; divorce was illegal in Brazil, Chile, and South Africa.[...]

This was a groundbreaking step and a critical necessity to ensure the health, security, and basic human rights of women and girls. It was also well-received by countries internationally. At the end of the World Decade for Women in 1985, 127 UN member states had some kind of national institution focused on women. By 2010, all but four countries had an office like this.[...]

Rising populist movements with regressive social agendas are widely seen as threats to democracy. They are often defined by their anti-free press, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim positions, but they also share an open hostility to women’s human rights.

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Quartz: Economists are severely underestimating the amount of trade between African countries

However, a large part of cross-border trade between African countries is informal. It either avoids customs entirely, or goes through official posts but is not recorded. Informal trade is difficult to measure. Most studies have relied on estimates based on partial surveys, or on accounting exercises. They concluded that a substantial share of Africa’s regional trade was informal, on the order of 30% to 40%. [...]

Using this data, our study confirms that informal trade is, in effect, a vital part of the trade system. For example, informal trade makes up the major part of trade in domestic products between Benin and Nigeria. Official statistics underestimate total trade by 50% for imports, and by about 85% for exports. [...]

Our study also shows that formal and informal trade differ by product composition. Informal trade isn’t restricted to livestock and a few agricultural goods. Product and sector diversity is high. For example industrial products, such as textiles, agro-food, and transportation equipment are traded heavily on this channel. [...]

Reducing tariffs should help formalize some of this informal trade. But it is difficult to predict by how much. It’s possible that incentives to go informal remain high for many traders, even under the continent’s proposed free trade agreement, especially if preferential treatment is costly or difficult to obtain.

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The Guardian: As a system, foreign aid is a fraud and does nothing for inequality

he five poorest countries in the world, measured by GDP per capita, are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan and Haiti.

One might imagine, then, that these countries are among the top recipients of UK aid. Wrong. The main beneficiaries are, in fact, Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Not one of the five poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of British aid. [...]

Nor is it any different with multilateral aid (funds channelled through international organisations such as the World Bank rather than directly between donor and recipient). Again, not one of the poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of multilateral aid. [...]

Half of all international development aid is “tied”, meaning that recipient countries must use it to buy goods and services from the donor nation. As the USAid website used to boast (until the paragraph became too embarrassing and was deleted in 2006): “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development’s contracts and grants go directly to American firms.” Aid has “created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans”. Long before Trump entered the White House, USAid was “putting America first”. [...]

Aid not only boosts the economies of rich countries but also promotes their foreign policy aims. As a 2014 report by the US Congressional Research Service put it, aid “can act as both carrot and stick and is a means of influencing events, solving specific problems and projecting US values”.

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statista: The ten countries where it's worst to be female

A new study from the Thomson Reuters Foundation has found that India is the most dangerous country in the world for women. The research was based on a survey of 550 experts on women's issues and criteria included healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual/non-sexual violence and human trafficking.

Ending violence against women in India was made into a national priority after a student was raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi five years ago. Experts have now said that the country is not moving fast enough to eradicate danger to women with rape, sexual harassment/harassment and female infanticide still continuing at alarming levels.

The war-ravaged countries of Afghanistan and Syria came second and third in the study while number 10 is certainly a surprising addition. According to experts, the United States makes the top-10 list of the most dangerous countries for women due to the #MeToo and Time's Up campaigns dominating newspaper headlines and media coverage for months. 

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Quartz: The unseen hand of China in Africa’s largest economy

It is not hard to come by data showing the scale of China’s investments and influence in Africa—the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University estimates that, from 2000 to 2015, the Chinese government, banks and contractors extended $94.4 billion worth of loans to African governments and state-owned enterprises. From a few million dollars in 2000, the amount of loans topped $16 billion in 2013 alone. Whether or not these loans are value for money or just a flow of money from the Chinese government to Chinese companies via Africa remains a matter of debate. A $600 million Chinese loan to fund the installation of CCTV cameras across the Nigerian capital Abuja has since been mired in corruption and scandal. It is hardly an isolated story.

But there is another part of the Chinese story in Africa that is rarely documented. That of the ordinary businesses who head to Africa, often without state backing, seeking to make a fortune. These businesses have mostly been careful to remain outside the spotlight and rarely ever speak to local media. A surprising McKinsey report from June 2017, based on extensive fieldwork, estimated that there were more than 10,000 Chinese owned firms operating across Africa, nearly four times what the numbers from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) showed. No one can say for sure—not even the Chinese government—how many Chinese businesses are in Africa, never mind what they are doing there. [...]

A broad pattern to these businesses can be sketched out—a Chinese business finds business increasingly hard to do in China, mostly due to rising costs and fierce competition. The business owner embarks on an exploratory trip to an African country and makes a decision to invest on the spot. In short order, they are pouring millions of dollars into building a factory in the African country. Beyond the narrow sectors of the economy in which they decide to operate, the Chinese businessmen remain almost completely out of sight to the local population. When Chinese businesses get reported on in the local newspapers, it is almost always about the maltreatment of local workers or a racist incident (often borne of misunderstanding).

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Vox: How Islamist militant groups are gaining strength in Africa

Islamist terrorist groups have found a new home and it's not in the Middle East -- it's in Africa. Specifically, the Sahel, a band of territory in West Africa between the Sahara desert and the savannah.

Since the early 2000s, Islamist extremist groups have increasingly strengthened their base here -- training fighters, raising money, and launching a massive number of attacks.

Some are linked to al-Qaeda and other Islamic State. This is throwing these already weak countries into crises and making the region one of the most dangerous in the world. 

Quartz: Africa’s quiet LGBT revolution

It is routine. And sometimes borders on the absurd. As Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, the deputy speaker of the Ghanaian parliament did when he recently claimed homosexuality is worse than an atomic bomb. [...]

In South Africa, they may have laws protecting all—and legalizing same-sex marriage—citizens but still some want to silence anything perceived as gay. Earlier this year when the acclaimed South African film Inxeba (The Wound) was released, local censors fought to keep it out of movie theaters. The film tackles Xhosa manhood rites and is a tender love story that depicts wonderfully complex African men on screen.

It was controversial because it displays homosexual love in a heterosexual, hyper-masculine rural mountainside setting. I beamed with pride when this film—shortlisted for an Academy Award, and the first South African film to stream on Netflix—was allowed back in regular theaters, after the courts sided with the filmmakers’ legal challenge. [...]

In Tanzania, the brutal onslaught by the government continues as they bully prominent activist—even as it impacts their own society’s health needs, particularly around HIV/AIDS.

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Quartz: Europe’s black population has increased by at least a million over the last decade

There were nearly one million asylum applicants from sub-Saharan Africa in Europe between 2010 and 2017, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from Eurostat. While Pew Research Center isn’t able to speculate whether the inflow of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa will rise at the same pace in the coming years, a separate 2017 Pew Research Center survey conducted in six sub-Saharan countries found that many respondents said they would migrate to another country if they had the chance.

Sub-Saharan migrants in Europe arrive from a diverse set of origins. More than half of migrants who sought asylum in Europe in 2017 were born in Nigeria, South Africa, Somalia, Senegal, Ghana, Angola, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cameroon. Pew Research Center notes that the total number of Somali migrants in Europe increased by 80,000 people between 2010 and 2017. Over the same period, the total population of Eritreans living in Europe increased by about 40,000. [...]

It’s difficult to quantify the overall black population in Europe, simply because many European countries refuse to collect racial data on their citizens. Instead, some European countries collect data on the country of origin of its migrant population and the number of citizens who are children of migrants. With a pan-European black identity starting to emerge in recent years, there are calls for the EU to begin collecting racial data.

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Quartz: President Buhari’s stumbles have opened the door for another major shift in Nigerian politics

President Muhammadu Buhari, 75, will have the advantage of incumbency which, in Nigeria, is not to be taken lightly. Since 1999, when Nigeria returned to civilian rule, a sitting president has lost at the polls only once. It happened in 2015 when Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC), succeeded in defeating then-incumbent Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). It was Buhari’s fourth run for the presidency and snagging that election win was far from easy. It required a complex and uneasy marriage of several political parties and interests. [...]

But while the president seems undecided, he’s already facing high-profile opposition. In a 3,500-word open letter published in national dailies, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s president from 1999 to 2007, pointedly asked Buhari not to seek re-election citing his weakness in “understanding” the economy as well as foreign and internal affairs. Some of the opposition to Buhari’s re-election bid has come from within his party. Even closer to home, Aisha Buhari, the first lady, has retweeted messages which criticized the president and suggested he’s not in control of his government. [...]

Buhari’s popularity in the north is such that if he chooses not to contest, he will still play a pivotal role in the elections by throwing his weight and popularity behind APC’s candidate. But with his plans for the election still under wraps, presidential hopefuls in the party are keeping their cards close to their chest. Should he choose not to contest however, there’s a slim chance vice-president Yemi Osinbajo might be the party’s ticket-bearer. He’s already won plaudits (paywall) during his stint as acting president while president Buhari was away on medical leave.

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Al Jazeera: Nigeria migrants who escaped Libya restart their lives

Joshua, 32, is one of the 6,000 Nigerian migrants the International Organization for Migration (IOM) repatriated to Nigeria on a chartered flight from Libya after reports of endemic abuse and modern-day slavery. [...]

Regardless of their status - either as economic migrants or victims of the dangerous trafficking business - these migrants are all escaping grinding poverty and a high rate of unemployment, which push irregular migration across the Sahara to Libya.

A recent report from Nigeria's Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said about 16 million people out of a total active labour force of 85 million were unemployed in the third quarter of 2017. [...]

In Nigeria, it was launched in May 2017 with the aim of helping stranded migrants in Libya. As part of the reintegration and support programme, IOM organised a workshop on business skills and cooperatives for returned migrants in Lagos state. Returnees were invited to Lagos and lodged in a hotel for the four-day training course.

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Quartz: Nigeria is preserving the wrong kind of history with plans for a Boko Haram “museum”

But in a curious move, the government of Borno state, the worst affected by the Boko Haram insurgency, says it wants to turn the home of Yusuf Mohammed, the late founder of the sect, into a museum. The government says everything “relating to the insurgency will be archived” at the house so future generations can “have first-hand information.” [...]

Mohammed started the sect back in 2002 peddling radical views about opposing western education but the group’s operations markedly turned more violent in 2009 after Mohammed died in police custody in controversial circumstances. Following his death, which Mohammed’s followers claimed was an extra-judicial killing, the crisis escalated under Abubakar Shekau, Mohammed’s successor. Shekau has proven more slippery for the government despite several claims that he’s been killed. [...]

The Borno government also says it plans to restore Sambisa forest, a former Boko Haram stronghold, as a game reserve as the state continues a slow recovery from the insurgency. Since taking office, president Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has stepped up efforts to crush Boko Haram and has successfully recovered swathes of territory previously occupied by the sect.

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Quartz: As Robert Mugabe finds a new home, here’s where other African dictators went to retire

In Saudi Arabia, Amin received a monthly stipend and the respect of still being called “Mr President.” Until his death in 2003, Amin was often spotted wandering through grocery stores, going to the health club, and praying at his local mosque. It was a life far removed from one the world’s most brutal dictatorships, during which about 300,000 were killed under Amin’s regime.

Saudi Arabia continues to offer a comfortable retirement to Africa’s strongmen. Ousted Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Jeddah after the 2011 revolution that ended his 23-year rule. Ben Ali’s retirement has not been as tranquil as he may have imagined, with Tunisia’s new government continuously calling for his extradition.

Until now, Mugabe himself has provided a safe haven for fallen autocrats. In 1991, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the capital Addis Ababa and into safety in Zimbabwe. His departure brought an end to his Marxist-leaning government, which for 14 years was bedeviled by war, famine, failed economic policies, and a mass crackdown on enemies known as the Red Terror. [...]

Until now, Mugabe himself has provided a safe haven for fallen autocrats. In 1991, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the capital Addis Ababa and into safety in Zimbabwe. His departure brought an end to his Marxist-leaning government, which for 14 years was bedeviled by war, famine, failed economic policies, and a mass crackdown on enemies known as the Red Terror.

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Quartz: The agony and joy of being gay in Africa

This assertion was so off the mark that the American ambassador at the time, Samantha Power, described it as patently false. She would later assert that violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity are “well established,” and have been referred to repeatedly in UN statements and resolutions, including in the General Assembly and Security Council. “In reality, this amendment has little to do with questions around the definition of sexual orientation and gender identity,” she said. “Instead, this amendment is rooted in a real disagreement over whether people of a certain sexual orientation and gender identity are, in fact, entitled to equal rights.”

During my presentation, I posed the same question to the scholars and participants in the room that Botswana, on behalf of the African group of nations, had posed to the UN General Assembly: “Should sexual orientation and gender identity be included in broader issues of human rights concerns?” Then I gave them the unsatisfying response that Botswana’s ambassador, Charles Thembani Ntwaagae, gave to the UN: “Those two notions are not, and should not be, linked to existing international human rights instruments.” [...]

His words give me hope. And back home in Nigeria I am filled with hope when a leading Nigerian online publication, Pulse.ng, calls out Nollywood, our robust film industry, opining that the ‘representation of homosexuality in most Nollywood movies is at best a caricature attempt at bad comedy.’ I have to admit that I used to be of the mindset that, even if it is a poor depiction, at least there is one, especially since many habitually say we gay people do not exist in Nigeria, and in all the years that Nollywood has been churning out films – movies that are sought after all over the continent – we have rarely been seen. But the depiction of Nigerian gay men as bearded effeminates sporting bright red lipstick and making exaggerated arm movements is not funny, nor is it remotely the norm, and I now feel that if Nollywood is going to depict us, then they had better do it right. We are not going to be the butt of their jokes. And clearly the editors at Pulse don’t recognize the caricatures on screen either.

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Maps on the Web: Polio-free countries by year of last recorded case of indigenous wild poliovirus

Most of the world is free of indigenous transmission of wild, or naturally-occurring, poliovirus. Only six cases of polio caused by the wild virus have been reported so far in 2017. Polio remains endemic in three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Until poliovirus transmission is interrupted in these countries, all countries remain at risk of importation of polio, especially vulnerable countries with weak public health and immunization services and travel or trade links to endemic countries.

This is different from vaccine-derived polio, which happens if a population is seriously under-immunized and an excreted vaccine-virus spreads in the immediate community. This is a very rare occurrence, as it happened in Israel and Palestine during 2013-2014, and in Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo during 2017.

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Salon: World hunger is increasing thanks to wars and climate change

Between 1990 and 2015, due largely to a set of sweeping initiatives by the global community, the proportion of undernourished people in the world was cut in half. In 2015, U.N. member countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which doubled down on this success by setting out to end hunger entirely by 2030. But a recent U.N. report shows that, after years of decline, hunger is on the rise again. [...]

Around the world, social and political instability are on the rise. Since 2010, state-based conflict has increased by 60 percent and armed conflict within countries has increased by 125 percent. More than half of the food-insecure people identified in the U.N. report (489 million out of 815 million) live in countries with ongoing violence. More than three-quarters of the world’s chronically malnourished children (122 million of 155 million) live in conflict-affected regions. [...]

Globally, the number of refugees and internally displaced persons doubled between 2007 and 2016. Of the estimated 64 million people who are currently displaced, more than 15 million are linked to one of the world’s most severe conflict-related food crises in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia. [...]

In many places, one of the best ways to bolster food security is by helping farmers connect to both traditional and innovative social networks, through which they can pool resources, store food, seed and inputs and make investments. Mobile phones enable farmers to get information on weather and market prices, work cooperatively with other producers and buyers and obtain aid, agricultural extension or veterinary services. Leveraging multiple forms of connectivity is a central strategy for supporting resilient livelihoods.

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The Atlantic: Why Was Chad Included in the New Travel Ban?

Chad’s inclusion on the list of countries deemed security risks to the U.S. is additionally difficult to explain given its role over the past 15 years as a key counterterrorism ally. In April, U.S. forces participated in annual counterterrorism exercises with their counterparts from around the world in Chad. Chad’s inclusion in the list was met with astonishment in the country, and not only because this close counterterrorism partnership: The country has mostly managed to avoid the kinds of terrorist attacks that have afflicted its immediate neighbors like Nigeria and Mali.

“Chad sits in a very tough neighborhood,” Lauren P. Blanchard, a specialist in African affairs at the Congressional Research Service, told me. The country is a relative oasis of stability. It hosts French and U.S. forces, is engaged in fighting al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, was critical in pushing back Boko Haram in Nigeria, and plays host to the Multinational Joint Task Force, the regional military effort to fight Boko Haram. [...]

The U.S. State Department, in its most recent country terrorism report from 2016, acknowledged Chad’s financial challenges in providing “external counterterrorism assistance in Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria,” but noted that Chad “engaged in major external military operations in … neighboring countries,” as part of the Lake Chad Basin Multinational Joint Task Force, which includes Benin, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria. Chad, the State Department reported added, was also contributing to the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali. Additionally, the report pointed out that terrorist incidents in the country had fallen due both to “proactive security force presence” and a split within Boko Haram. [...]

Terrorism aside, Chad certainly has its problems. These include an authoritarian government under President Idris Déby, politicization of the armed forces, and widespread poverty despite the country’s oil wealth. But the country—and the wider region—remains a key focus of Western counterterrorism efforts. Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, who until recently was commander of American Special Operations Forces in Africa, called the Lake Chad Basin, which encompasses Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria, “ground zero” of the war on extremism in Africa. Blanchard told me “Chad is very important in figuring out movement between ISIS elements in Libya and Nigeria—they have to go through Chad or Niger.”

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