For-Profit Schools the New Shape of Structural Adjustment in Africa?

There is a battle brewing on the African continent.  For decades Africans fought against Structural Adjustment Programs and the devastation they wrought across the continent.  The HIV/AIDS crisis, inability to contain Ebola, Malaria, and the many other ways that African governments are unable to respond to the needs of their people have largely been blamed on the legacy of Structural Adjustment which dismantled the public sector.

Today it seems the public sector across Africa is facing the same challenges and same battle lines are drawn, this time with Education as the bone of contention:

The World Bank will not end poverty by promoting fee-charging, for-profit schools in Kenya and Uganda

Published on Thursday, 14 May 2015

Written by  education in crisis

Response to President Jim Kim’s speech from concerned communities and organisations in Kenya and Uganda:

In his speech of 7th April 2015 titled “Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030: The Final Push” delivered ahead of the 2015 World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings, the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, praised the for-profit, fee-charging chain of private primary schools based in Kenya and Uganda, Bridge International Academies (BIA)(1) . He argues that thanks to these academies, where nearly 120,000 pupils are enrolled, “[a]fter about two years, students’ average scores for reading and math have risen high above their public school peers”. And these results, he said, are achieved for “just” $6 dollars a month.

The figure given of $6 is not accurate. Schools fees at BIA range from about $6.5 to $9, depending on the grade(2) . To this should be added the cost of uniforms, sold by Bridge, which cost about $18.5 per year, the equivalent of another $2 per month over 9 months, and exam fees of $2 to $3 per term. Other costs for textbooks, payment transfers, or other items may be added, and so a conservative estimate of the real monthly amount received by BIA for each child ranges rather between $9 and $13 a month – excluding food, which BIA provides for an additional $7 per month. The total monthly bill including school meals thus ranges between $16 and $20.

Nevertheless, even assuming a cost of $6 per month, the speech reveals the World Bank’s profound lack of understanding of the reality of poor people’s lives. When President Kim argues that schooling at Bridge costs “just” $6, the underlying message is that $6 a month is a small amount of money worth paying for schooling, even in contexts of great poverty. Such a statement is ill-informed and dangerous, especially coming from a world leader with the power to influence directions in global development. It is alarming that charging poor people school fees—something that the global community has worked particularly hard to abolish over the last two decades due to their negative impact on the poor—is being promoted as a means of ending poverty.

We, civil society organisations and citizens of Kenya and Uganda, are appalled that an organisation whose mandate is supposed to be to lift people out of poverty shows such a profound misunderstanding and disconnect from the lives and rights of poor people in Kenya and Uganda. We, who live in Kenya and in Uganda, can testify that $6 per month is much more money than most of our families, friends, and community members can afford without making huge sacrifices. If the World Bank is serious about improving education in Kenya and Uganda, it should support our governments to expand and improve our public education systems, provide quality education to all children free-of-charge, and address other financial barriers to access.

Comments and concerns from Kenya

According to the most recent Demographic and Health Survey in Kenya released in 2015(3), women from poor families record higher birth-rates compared to their counterparts from wealthier families. The poorest families in Kenya today have three times as many children as a wealthy one. Nationally, women from the poorest families were found to have an average of 6.4 children although those aged 19 to 49 had an exceptionally higher fertility rate at an average of 9.4 children each.

Data from the latest 2012/2013 household survey in Kenya show that half of the households in Kenya earn KES 7,000 ($75) or less(4). Thus, for half of Kenyan households, even assuming a cost of $6 a month, sending 3 children of primary school age to a Bridge Academy would cost at least 24% of their monthly income. Taking into account more realistic monthly costs of about $17 that include school meals, sending their children to a Bridge Academy would cost half Kenyan households at least 68% of their monthly income. But it’s often more. 47% of Kenya’s population live below the poverty line, and for some counties in the rural areas the poverty rates escalate to as high as 70%(5). This means that for 47% of the population, any expenditure to access education, even $6, means sacrificing another essential right for their survival, such as health, food, or water.

A recent study commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented in 2012 – 2014 by Concern Worldwide Kenya further shows that in five urban informal settlements where BIA has schools, households spend on average 63.8% of their income on food. Thus, for most people living in slums, any expense towards education, even $6, is a threat to their food security. This particularly affects women-headed households, which have lower income, and up to 74% of which are severely food insecure.

In addition, these figures hide large disparities. Household income of people living in informal settlements varies greatly, from 2,371 KES ($25) to 25,081 KES ($267) a month. Households in the lowest income quintile in slums – a fifth of people – report spending over 100% of their 4-week income on food. They cannot afford any expense towards school fees without making themselves hungry. Thus, not only does a household sending a child to Bridge International Academies make a substantial sacrifice, but only a few households, relatively less poor, have the financial means to send children to Bridge. The result is that, “just” $6 a month is enough to entrench inequalities and create deep educational segregation.

These statistics correspond to the research that Hakijamii has conducted in a number of informal settlements. Monthly household income for the residents Hakijamii interviewed ranges from 4,000 KES ($42) to 12,000 KES ($128). Yet, monthly rent is around 3,000 KES, to which should be added 500 KES for toilets, electricity and water. Parents of children who go to Bridge schools interviewed by Hakijamii regularly have to pull their children out of school because they cannot pay the fees (2 to 3 months a year).

In Kenya, as in other developing countries, costs remain a primary barrier to basic education. With, as of 2012, nearly one out of 6 of Kenya’s primary school-aged children not enrolled in primary school, mostly due to cost factors(7), charging school fees will not help reach these 1,000,000 out-of-school children(8).

Comments and concerns from Uganda

Uganda is documented to have one of the highest total fertility rates in the world with an average of 6.06 children born per woman. According to the World Population Data Sheet, 2013, Ugandan women from the poorest fifth of families have twice as many children as those from the wealthiest fifth.

According to the 2012/2013 Uganda National Household Survey(9), 48% of households earn 200,000 Uganda Shillings (Ush) – about $68 – per month, or less. And 21% of households earn less than Ush 100,000 ($34) per month. In Uganda, 20% of the population cannot afford even enough food to live.

Thus, for the 48% of families earning less than Ush 200,000, assuming three children of primary school age, the total cost of sending their children to Bridge Academies would be at least 26% of their monthly income (assuming a cost of $6 a month), and more likely around 75% (taking the more realistic figure of $17 a month). For the 21% of households that earn less than Ush 100,000 a month, sending 3 children to Bridge would represent at least 52% of their monthly income, and more likely around 153%. Such an amount is inconceivable for this part of the population which already lives below the poverty line – meaning that they cannot afford even minimum food requirements.

Requiring $6 a month is thus either expecting poor Ugandan families to borrow in order to keep all their children in school or to choose which child goes to school. The latter will disproportionately affect girls, whose enrolment rates had improved thanks to the removal of tuition fees under the Universal Primary Education System. Charging fees will also not help the 9% of children who currently remain out of school in Uganda(10) and is bound to result in more school dropouts – as research shows that fees are the most common educational barrier cited by parents whose children drop out or never enrol in school.

A lot of money, for a lot of profit

$6 is therefore a lot of money for the millions of poor people in Kenya, Uganda, and across the world who are denied their right to education.

Of course, some relatively poor families – though not the poorest – put their children in Bridge Academies. But this is always a substantial sacrifice for them, at the expense of the realisation of other essential survival rights, such as food, health care, or water. They do so because they aspire to a better life.

But what they may not know is that they are making this sacrifice to put their children in classrooms with teachers that are trained for only 5 weeks and in schools that have never been externally inspected. What they may not know is that they are making this sacrifice to support a for-profit enterprise, where “just” $6 a month is going to a multinational company and its investors. There is no circumstance under which such sacrifices from poor people to enrol their children in poor quality, for-profit schools can be justified.

Better results—on what evidence?

The World Bank did not disclose the source of evidence on which President Kim based his argument that Bridge Academies have better results than public schools. However, as there is to-date no academic study available on Bridge, it appears that the World Bank borrowed its data from a study conducted by Bridge itself(11).

If this is the case, this raises deep concerns. A study in which the researcher is itself the focus of the research question is clearly non-objective, invalidating its conclusions. Just by way of example, this study conducted by BIA appears on the outset to be problematic as it compares two (anonymous) public schools to 26 BIA schools. It is inconceivable that a leading global development institution such as the World Bank (one that further prides itself as a rigorous “knowledge bank”) would use such biased data not only to inform its own strategies but also to promote Bridge on a global platform as a means for governments, development banks, and other partners to work together to end extreme poverty by 2030.

World Bank support to private but not public education

The World Bank, through its private sector investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), has invested $10 million in Bridge Academies. The investment, made in 2014, is to be used to increase the number of Bridge schools in Kenya and expand to three countries, including Uganda, where seven schools recently opened in February 2015 (the other two being Nigeria and India). The IFC also approved a loan of $4.1 million to Merryland High School, a private, fee-charging secondary school in Entebbe, Uganda in December 2014.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has no active or planned investments in either Kenya or Uganda’s public basic education systems. The International Development Association (IDA), the arm of the World Bank that provides concessional loans and grants to the world’s poorest governments and serves Kenya and Uganda, has no active commitments to basic education in Kenya or Uganda — and neither does it have any such future commitments in the pipeline. IDA has not financially supported Kenya’s public basic education system since 2010, and Uganda’s IDA program that benefited its public basic education system closed last year.

It is alarming to see the World Bank supporting private but not public basic education in Kenya and Uganda, and given the World Bank’s power to influence the development landscape, it is a worrying indication of future trends. With the IFC’s investment of $10 million alongside those of Pearson, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Pierre Omidyar, combined investments in Bridge Academies have reached over $100 million. Meanwhile, active support to Kenya’s public education system from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE)—the world’s only multilateral funding initiative exclusively devoted to basic education—only totals $88.4 million. Uganda’s current GPE grant totals $100 million.

This is clearly out of balance given that the greatest gains in education provision have historically been through free public education systems, which will continue to offer the greatest hope of reaching the remaining out-of-school children. In April, UNESCO released its annual Education for All Global Monitoring Report, largely attributing educational gains made from 2000 to 2015 to the abolition of school fees in public education systems around the world.

Public primary education in Kenya and Uganda is, in law, free and mandatory. International human rights standards require these countries to provide free quality education for all. The World Bank should work towards supporting countries such as Uganda and Kenya to put the laws into reality, and support public education systems.

The World Bank is not listening to civil society

This is not the first time that civil society has shared its concerns about the World Bank’s investments in the expansion of fee-charging primary schools and about Bridge Academies in particular. Only a month before Jim Kim’s speech, several members of civil society from around the world, including Uganda, met with senior education officials of the World Bank to specifically discuss the rise of fee-charging, private primary schools, the World Bank’s support to them, and Bridge Academies in particular. These civil society representatives were not just isolated voices but part of a global movement with united positions on these issues, illustrated by such actions as a recent call by 190 education advocates from 91 countries for governments to stop education profiteers, and the Marrakesh call from 70 global and African organisations to the African Development Bank and United Nations agencies.

Jim Kim’s promotion of Bridge Academies a month after civil society’s meeting with the World Bank precisely on this issue indicates either a disregard for citizen concerns or a breakdown in communication between World Bank education officials and the Office of the President. It also seems to be contradictory to what other World Bank education officials are saying in public forums about the importance of public education. We believe President Kim’s dedication to listening to civil society to be sincere and welcome the opportunity to work with him to clarify the World Bank’s position on this issue.

We also recognise that “Citizen Engagement” is currently the lowest performing area of institutional reform in Jim Kim’s President’s Delivery Unit (having achieved only 4% of its target and bearing the status of “Needs Improvement”). We likewise welcome the opportunity to provide input and lessons learned from our side as to how the World Bank may more effectively reach its target for citizen engagement.

Moving forward

We, concerned organisations in Uganda and Kenya, call on the World Bank Group to:

• Stop promoting the model used by Bridge International Academies and other fee-charging, private schools, and publicly re-commit the World Bank to universal, free and compulsory basic education.
• Cease investments in Bridge International Academies and other fee-charging, private providers of basic education
• Re-establish World Bank investments in Kenya and Uganda’s public basic education systems.
• Refrain from basing its views on self-produced evidence from corporate providers of education, and instead base its policies on independent, rigorous studies assessing the impact of education models on the totality of the right to education, including on discrimination and segregation.
• Listen to and respond to the concerns of civil society, including by seriously taking into account their views when assessing and considering models such as that of Bridge International Academies and other fee-charging, private providers of basic education.

Download Full Statement and list of 119 signatory organisations

Download Joint open letter to President Kim

——

Notes

1- See http://bit.ly/1NR4wH8.

2- Prices communicated by parents during interviews and officially communicated by BIA.

3- Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) report released on 2/4/15 conducted by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

4- http://www.knbs.or.ke/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&download=710:housing-survey-report-2012-2013&id=123:kenya-national-housing-survey&Itemid=599.

5- Kenya Economic Report, 2013.

7- Helpdesk Report: Barriers to Enrolment in Kenya http://www.heart-resources.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Barriers-to-Enrolment-in-Kenya-June-2010.pdf.

8- Data from http://data.uis.unesco.org/.

9- Uganda National Household Survey, 2012/2013, accessed on http://www.ubos.org/onlinefiles/uploads/ubos/UNHS_12_13/2012_13%20UNHS%20Final%20Report.pdf.

10- Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2011.

11- The paper is available on BIA’s website on http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Bridge-International-Academies_White-Paper_The-Bridge-Effect_Nov-2014_Website.pdf

Boys Dancing

I am Feminist because I love men.

I believe that if we can fix the world for boys and men, then we will also have fixed it for all of us.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about men and masculinity recently. I have been thinking about masculinity especially from my perch as the mother of two boys.  I am furiously angry at the horribleness that the world throws my boys. At all little boys.  I’m angry at the assumption that boys will inherently be violent and mean just because they are born boys.

Yet WE are the ones who take innocent, generous, happy little boys and contort them into the dehumanising cages of what we think men should be.  We have made the world not a kind place for boys and I believe that repairing the damage is very much part of the feminist project. Not its entirety, but a critical component.

One of my absolute favourite videos is this one of Sergei Polunin gracefully dancing to Hosier’s ‘Take me to Church”  The song and this video by David LaChapelle open the floodgates for me in ways few things do.

The combination of Sergei’s life story, the violence he has had to endure in his short life, and his renegade existence as the ‘bad boy’ of ballet, together with the heart rending lyrics of Hozier’s song about the violence that gay men have to endure because they do not fit into our narrow definitions of masculinity make me angry.

I remember my son’s kindergarten when he and the other little boys were not allowed to join in on ballet class because, has he announced at home one day after school, “boys don’t do ballet, ballet is for girls!”  We found out that the little boys had been pressing their noses against the windows outside the classroom watching the little girls dance to the music inside.  The teachers wouldn’t let the boys in to participate.

His father and I promptly took the matter up with the school, signed him up for ballet class, and every day he came home from school he and his father watched YouTube videos of famous male ballet dancers.

A week later he came home and announced that boys can be pilots but girls can’t fly airplanes.  So of course we pulled out pictures of Kenya’s own Koki Mutungi among others.  And the week after he declared …

We thought we were stemming the tide. Turns out we had only put a finger into they dyke. The world is a deluge of what boys and girls can and can’t do.

Sigh.

Of Boys and Masculinity

I am feminist because I love men.  A revolutionary kind of love.

The kind of love bell hooks talks about when she writes that “the soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion”

As a feminist I believe that if we fix the world for boys then we will have also fixed it for all of us.

I am the mother of two sons.  Daily I struggle with what it will take to raise boys who are strong AND gentle. To not continue framing the world as one where boys need to be strong strong BUT gentle.

Chimamanda tells us that “by far the worst thing we do for males, by making them feel like they have to be hard, is we leave them with very fragile egos”.  In our framing of masculinity “we teach boys to be afraid of fear”.

The Representation Project talks about the mask we make boys wear. Boys who have to swallow their feelings and who are dying on the inside. How we drive boys to homicidal or suicidal violence.  It makes me weep what we do to boys.

As a feminist mother with the overwhelming responsibility of raising boys into men, how can I raise my sons to not feel the need to be ‘hard’ but rather to embrace the full spectrum of their humanity?  And in a world determined to force them to prove their masculinity in narrowly defined terms.

How do I raise sons who will be disgusted by the Mollis rape affair (trigger warning!) ?  How does one raise boys who would also have the character to not just walk away from a scene of violence, but actually stand up to stop the violence?

Does that gentleness I seek to retain in my boys mean that they can’t be strong?  Surely we still need men who will deploy their strength and power to stand and defend the vulnerable.

Oh, and how do I do this without being a helicopter parent?!

This thing feels rigged against me!

Of Coats and Hoods

Its taken me years to tell two stories whose pain went too deep.

But now I’m ready to so here goes:

During my senior year at Whitman College I purchased a used winter coat from an online military supply store.  As soon as winter hit I donned my ‘new’ coat and wore it everywhere.

One cold night, as I walked home from the library, I approached a couple with young baby in a stroller. We drew close on the dim sidewalk, and the man suddenly wielded a baseball bat and took a protective stance in front of his family. Shocked at the immanent attack I scurried across the street, terrified for my life. Describing the scene to my roommates we agreed: that man had seen me, a tall black figure in a heavy coat, as a menace. This was rural Washington, where a grocery clerk had once reacted to my skin color by asking if I planned to use foodstamps to pay for my purchases…(I was too dumbfounded to offer a response)

After college I earned a scholarship to pursue a Ph.D. in Political Science at the U. of Minnesota.  My trusted coat was a frequent shield against the insanely cold Midwest winters.

One night, again after a late night of studying on campus I donned my old coat and stepped into the elevator. A senior faculty member was there already; she shrank away, clutching her bag tightly. Three silent floors later, her quivering voice demanded why I was on campus. Stunned silent for a minute, I explained myself.  “I’m one of the new grad students.”

But this met only dubious silence. Apparently a black person in an old coat was unwelcome here at night. Explanation and justification were needed for my black body occupying such hallowed, ivory tower space.  It was so painfully obvious that I did not belong.

Years later, that same coat kept my mother warm as she watched my Ph.D. hooding ceremony, and induction into the academy (by a different woman professor 🙂  I marvel at the fact that where that old coat had so often marked my exclusion, this hood announced my belonging.

Or so I thought…

Why African Women Scientists Matter

I had an opportunity to share my thoughts on why investing in African women scientists matters with the Sci Dev community. SciDev.Net is the world’s leading source of reliable and authoritative news, views and analysis on information about science and technology for global development.

My interview on my work with African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) was part of the Africa’s PhD Renaissance series funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Check out my full interview on Sci Dev here

AWARD fellows from Mozambique: fun fearless leaders of Africa’s agricultural transformation

Nothing About Us, Without Us: Placing African women at the centre of conversations about the African agricultural revolution

In October  2014 UN Women with the African Union (AU), IFAD, FAO and WFP co-hosted an exciting regional Sharefair for Rural Women’s Technologies  at the UN Compound in Gigiri, Nairobi- Kenya. The innovations showcased have tremendous potential to improve the lives of African women smallholder farmers.

I got to address the plenary session and focused my attention on African the loud silence of women’s missing voices in the African agricultural sector.  Below is the full text of my speech:

Nothing About Us, Without Us

As a young girl I remember my parents taking me to what was then the Nairobi ‘show’ put together by the Agricultural society of Kenya. I was mesmerised by all the products on offer, the balloons, the toys, and, as always, the junk food.

Those early days going to the ‘show’ bred in me a passion for agriculture that has surprised even my parents. Brought up in the concrete jungle that is Nairobi’s Eastlands, nobody expected me to care about agriculture.

Yet here I am. My favorite thing is grow my own food and whenever I can, I like to take my son to agricultural fairs. Its our special bonding time.

Agriculture has the power to connect the spirit and the body in powerful ways. Agriculture has the power to inspire a young generation.

A young generation who, like my unborn child, are facing an uncertain food future in Africa.

We are facing a serious challenge; Africa needs to increase food production by 260% by the year 2050 if we are to feed ourselves and our children.

Even as we focus on increased food production its important that we focus on HOW we do this.

If we are not careful we might end up increasing food production to feed the world as African children die of hunger.

Its important that this increase in food production not just be for export but that we increase food production so that we feed Africans.

As some of you know, I am new to the Agriculture sector, having taken the helm of AWARD only seven months ago. Before that I served as an Asst Prof of Political Science at the university of San Francisco and the director of Akili Dada, a young women’s leadership incubator.

In the seven months since I have joined the agriculture sector I have heard a lot about how we are going to need to innovate so as to meet the challenge of feeding Africa.

We have also been told that African women are a critical component in unlocking Africa’s agricultural potential.

I must admit, however, that, even as we talk about how important African women are to the agricultural revolution at hand, I have been surprised at how often African women are talked ABOUT rather than occupying the podium and actually speaking to the issues.  It is, in some spaces, perfectly ok to have a panel about African women in Agriculture without any African women present!

That is why I’m thrilled to be here with you. At an event that places African women’s voices at the center of the agriculture conversation.

From my prior background in academia and then working in women’s rights I know that if we are not intentional in our focus on women they get forgotten.

Today I would like to share with you three key areas that I believe are critical to pay particular attention to women and for women’s voices to be heard:

Nutrition:

It is surprising to me that its only recently that the key players in the agriculture sector have began talking about the critical links between agriculture and nutrition.

Indeed I believe the decades-long silence and failure to connect the dots between agricultural production and human nutrition is a direct result of the marginalization of women’s voices within the larger agricultural ecosystem.

If we had been listening to women’s voices all along we wouldn’t just now be discovering how important nutrition is in the conversation about increasing food production.

Mechanization: There is a strong argument that for African Agriculture to really take off, we need to mechanize. I have heard it said that we need to relegate the hoe to the museums of history. That my unborn son will need to go to the Nairobi National Museum to see what a jembe or a panga used to look like and how they were used. Right next to the primitive stones that pre-historic humans in this region used to hunt those millions of years ago.

Unfortunately, Too often conversations about mechanization of African agriculture are conversations about big tractors to farm massive trackts of land.

And that is where we need to be careful. Because if we refuse to see African women, if we refuse to acknowledge the conditions under which African women farm, we will fail to connect the dots between women’s lack of access to land, and the proposed mechanical tools.

In being enamored by the big shiny new tractors, we can fail to see the ways that most African women engaged in agriculture farm smaller tracts of land and don’t have access to the financing it takes to purchase the big machines.

I am heartened to be here and to see the focus on accessible technologies and machines. Modern tools that women can use and use now. We must make sure that investments in these tools continue.

Access to finance: There is emerging conversations about how to improve African farmer’s access to finance so as to ensure that they can participate effectively in markets.   Again reforming our financial sectors to address the needs of farmers is critical.

But we must also be careful that we pay attention to where women farmers are located in this space. We risk serious failures if we create farming finance systems that don’t pay attention to the ways that patriarchy functions in our communities. It is critical, as we design farming finance, to set aside funds that specifically target women and that help women leverage on their particular assets, be it social connections, labour, or small animals. Farming finance that requires title deeds as collateral will, from the beginning, be designed to marginalize women.

Women at the table:

We also know that for women not to fall out of these critical discussions, women MUST be at the decision making table.

We also know that in Africa today only 1 in 4 agricultural scientists is a woman and the numbers are even worse when it comes to leadership where only 1 in 7 is a leader. If you have a room of 7 core leaders making decisions on what new seed varieties should be developed, what new methods of financing we should adopt for rural agriculture, only one of those decision makers will be a woman. That is where we must drive change.

AWARD’s work is critical in driving change. We are working to ensure that African women scientists have the advanced science skills, the professional networks, the mentoring, and the leadership skills they need to make a real difference in the African Agricultural ecosystem.

But the task ahead does not just belong to AWARD.

Its critical that we invest in girls and young women to ensure that they make it to the agricultural sciences, to agribusiness, and to agricultural financing.

That is why experiences like the sharefair are critical. I guarantee you that there is a girl or a young woman who has passed by here today whose life has changed. Who has become inspired to pursue agriculture as a passion.

She may be the next winner of the World Food Prize, the next minister of agriculture in any of our countries, or the next president.

African Agriculture Rising: Prosperity for a select few or will ALL of Africa rise?

I got the exciting opportunity to address the 2014 AGRF held at the Nelson Mandela hall of the African Union.  Coverage of my speech included:

• This article that captures some of my provocations about who will benefit from Africa’s new prosperity
• Coverage by AWARD which I now lead
• Video of my entire speech

The full text of my speech is below:

Five months ago I left academia as well as the young women’s leadership incubator that I had founded 10 years prior to accept a position as Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD).

I was drawn to AWARD and the agricultural sector in particular because of my big-eyed wonder at the potential that agriculture has to be the driver of Africa’s transformative growth. Trained as a Political Scientist, I’ve grown perhaps skeptical of expectations that we have any hope of transforming a continent that is still hungry. I am optimistic that agriculture filling Africa’s hungry bellies and nourishing her stunted children is the place we must first start if we are to drive the transformation that we all dream of.

I have received many warm welcomes including this tremendous opportunity to stand in the hallowed halls of the African Union. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to address you, many of you my elders.

So allow me to come to you as a younger sister and even as a daughter. A beautiful thing about out African cultures is the tremendous space each of them allows for young people to ask questions in the process of learning. It is this opportunity that I seek to take. Allow me thin to come to you as a young woman with questions that are at once naïve, but that are, at the same time, hopefully provocative.

The first question that I have for you, and for all of us really, is: Why is it that Africa must increase food production?

I realize how simple this question sounds but it does honestly come from a place of confusion out of the many difference answers I have received to the same question since coming into the agricultural sector.

It seems to me that, as Africans, we are at an urgent crossroads and facing a critical decision. We must decide whether increased food production will be part of what H.E. the Minister of Agriculture from Nigeria called a ‘prodigal agriculture’. An agriculture that follows previous paths of extraction and export of Africa’s natural resources but serves only to grow our poverty.

That is one fork in the road.

Instead, it seems that we must increase Africa’s food production so that we can feed Africans and build African wealth and prosperity.

What at first seems a simple question is suddenly steeped in a bitter history and continued threat of the extraction & appropriation of African resources that does not build African prosperity.

Clarity about WHY we must increase food production then becomes an important as we continue these conversations.

Once we establish what I heard called ‘an adequate consensus’ about why increased production is important, then we have increasing clarity on why we must build agricultural value chains that are inclusive.

Because even as we celebrate Africa’s rising, we must maintain a commitment to ALL of Africa rising. This is a call that H.E. the chair of the African Union reminded us so eloquently about during the opening plenary.

Allow me here to invoke that famed reggae musician, Bob Marley, who reminded us that when it rains, it does not rain on one man’s house alone.

You are not wealthy when your brother sleeps hungry and lays in waiting ready to pounce on you at the gate of your mansion as you drive out in the morning. That is not wealth.

True African prosperity must see ALL Africans rise. To achieve that, inclusivity is imperative.

The second question, perhaps a naïve question, but I think a critical one still is: HOW do we build this inclusivity into our work?

And here allow me to lean into my training as a Political Scientist and ask a question I learnt to ask often. Which ‘others’ are we seeking to include? Which women are we including? Which youth are we including?

In conversations about inclusiveness we often talk about categories of people at the margins of our societies as if they are a monolithic whole. We often use lenses that do not allow us to capture the complexities of real life.

Intersections of identities are important.

None of us here fits neatly into just one category of identity. You may be male but come from a marginalized pastoralist community. You may be female but come from a family of wealth and power.

Our identities are complex.

African identities are complex.

Commitment to building inclusive agricultural value chains will recognize the complexity of the identities of those we seek to include.

This has real implications for our work, our daily work.

For example, when discussing question of inclusiveness in access to land for agricultural production, we must make sure that women are part of the equation. But we must also ask ‘which women?’, avoiding the temptation to conflate all women into one monolithic group.

Many of us here know that in our families, the relationship between the mother in law and the daughter in law is often a complicated power dynamic. A dynamic which impacts young women’s access to land.

Which women?

And this is not just a women’s issue. Because often when it’s a women’s issue, its easier to slip it under the carpet and forget it.

We know that as sub-divisible plots of arable land are decreasing and that young men also have increased challenges accessing land and are forced into urban poverty.

So questions of land and land access must have at the center issues of inclusiveness.

A second example, technology in agriculture, offers tremendous promise. But we also know that infrastructure imbalances place rural populations at a disadvantage compared to urban ones when it comes to taking advantage of the opportunities offered by technology is revolutionizing African agriculture.

These complexities don’t mean that we stop addressing issues of land access or technology in agriculture. It means we must constantly be reminded of WHY we are doing this work. We are doing it so that ALL Africans may rise.

My third and final provocation is to challenge us to address the issue of inclusiveness not as an issue of charity. As if, by including those at the margins of our societies, we are doing them a favor. The question of inclusivity is not about charity; it is about building Africa’s prosperity.

Two examples come to mind:

It has not made sense to me that as a continent, we continue to deny ourselves the talent and the brilliance of women who comprise 50% of our population. Why is it that we we are ok to leave behind 50% of our potential leaders, innovators, women who may hold the solutions to the biggest challenges facing this continent? Why is it that, through systems that leave women outside of decision making, outside of the rooms where critical decisions are made, we do not access for ourselves, as a continent, the tremendous resources that these women represent?

The youth bulge in Africa. We have an opportunity in Africa. We can either see the increased number of young people on this continent as a threat, as a destabilizing force, or we can look over to Europe, look over to Japan and see they way they look at our young population with envy as their own population ages. We have tremendous power with the labor force that is coming up. Including young people, having young people present at the table when we set policies, when we have these conversations is going to be critical to whether young people are a threat or an opportunity for Africa.

I want to close by reminding us that a generation ahead of us fought hard for Africa’s independence. This year many of our countries are celebrating 50 years of independence.

But unfortunately we can agree that even with independence, African prosperity has remained somewhat elusive. Many of the aspirations that our fathers and mothers had at independence have not yet been realized.   Some have, but too many of our people remain poor.

I firmly believe that we, those of us in this room, are the generation charged with bringing about Africa’s prosperity. Our fathers, our mothers brought independence. It is on us who are alive 50 years from independence to secure Africa’s prosperity.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

But even as we work towards a prosperous Africa we have a set of tough set of urgent question that we must answer first: Prosperity for who? Is it going to be prosperity for a select few who won’t be able to sleep comfortably at night or will ALL of Africa rise?

Africa is Rising and the United States is late showing up

I recently had a great opportunity to participate in a panel conversation analysing the impact of President Obama’s recent visit to Kenya and Ethiopia for a show on National Public Radio.  The actual show starts at about minute 8.

Fellow guests on the KRCW show To the Point were:

Heidi Vogt, Wall Street Journal (@HeidiVogt)
Alex Perry, Newsweek (@PerryAlexJ)
Bronwyn Bruton, Atlantic Council (@BronwynBruton)

Among some of the tough topics we discussed were the democratic struggle in Ethiopia as well as the state of Gay Rights in Africa and Kenya specifically.  I think I left the host a bit out of breath at the end there 🙂  Take a listen.

On the whole I believe President Obama’s visit will continue to have great impact, certainly in Kenya. At minimum, his focus on empowering women and girls, and securing rights for all citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation, is wind at the backs of human rights activists who are advocating for social progress.  His speech and its reception by the Kenyan people was electrifying.

Change: On joining African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD)

After making the decision to leave Akili Dada I had to decide whether to return to my tenure-track faculty position at the University of San Francisco, or to stay on the African continent and chart a new path.

I chose the later and was honoured to be selected, out of a pool of amazing women candidates, to serve as Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD).

Hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre and a part of the CGIAR community, AWARD is a career-development program that equips top women agricultural scientists across sub-Saharan Africa to accelerate agricultural gains by strengthening their research and leadership skills, through tailored fellowships. AWARD is a catalyst for innovations with high potential to contribute to the prosperity and well-being of African smallholder farmers, most of whom are women.

AWARD’s mission so closely aligns with my vision on the need for continent-wide gender transformation in driving Africa’s prosperity.  I also believe that Agricultural transformation is absolutely fundamental to ending poverty in Africa.  AWARD combines these two passions beautifully.

The CGIAR posted this announcement of my joining the AWARD team:

NAIROBI, KENYA — African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) today announced the appointment of Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg as the program’s new director.

AWARD is a career-development program that equips top women agricultural scientists across sub-Saharan Africa to accelerate agricultural gains by strengthening their research and leadership skills, through tailored fellowships.  To date, 325 scientists have benefited from the successful program and are better equipped and empowered to develop agricultural innovations contributing to the prosperity and well-being of African smallholder farmers. 

Dr. Idah Sithole-Niang, Chair of AWARD’s Steering Committee and Professor of Molecular Biology and Virology at the University of Zimbabwe, congratulated Kamau-Rutenberg and noted that AWARD is now well positioned to further advance its mission.

“Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is internationally renowned for creating an innovative, transformative model of leadership development for women and girls in Kenya,” said Sithole-Niang. “She is an accomplished, dynamic leader herself, who brings outstanding experience to AWARD, coupled with a passionate vision for its critical work.”

Prior to joining AWARD, Kamau-Rutenberg served as Founder and Executive Director of Akili Dada, an award-winning leadership incubator that invests in high-achieving young Kenyan women from under-resourced families, who are passionate about driving change in their communities.

Kamau-Rutenberg also served as an assistant professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and a lecturer in International Relations at the Jesuit Hekima College, a constituent college of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. Her academic research and teaching interests center on African politics, as well as the politics of philanthropy, gender, international relations, ethnicity, and democratization, along with the role of technology in social activism.

Born in Kenya, Kamau-Rutenberg holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics from Whitman College in Washington, U.S.A.

She has received widespread recognition for her work investing in women, including being honored as a 2012 White House Champion of Change, named one of the 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine, recognized as a 2012 Ford Foundation Champion of Democracy, and awarded the 2011 Yamashita Prize and the 2010 United Nations Intercultural Innovation Award, among others.

Dr. Tony Simons, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre where AWARD is housed, said, “Dr. Kamau-Rutenberg’s experience in the academic and development sectors makes her well qualified to enhance AWARD’s strong reputation for excellence and to scale up its relationships with African partner institutions, such as universities and institutions of agricultural research.”

Kamau-Rutenberg is married to Dr. Isaac M. Rutenberg, Director of the Center for Intellectual Property in Information Technology at Strathmore University Law School, and they have a 5-year-old son.

She will assume her duties as director on March 24, 2014 and will be honored at a welcome reception on March 27 in Nairobi.

For further information visit AWARD

Change: On Resigning from the University of San Francisco

As part of my transitions in 2014 I also resigned from my tenure-track faculty position at the University of San Francisco.  This was a heart-rending decision made even harder by the fact that the University had bent over backwards to support my passion for growing Akili Dada first with a sabbatical then by extending my employment with two years unpaid leave.  I really struggled with the decision to leave a well paying job with fantastic colleagues, great benefits, in a city that I love.

The resignation letter I wrote to my then Dean from Kenya came from the heart:

Its with a very heavy heart that I share with you my intention to resign from my tenure-track faculty position at USF.

After months of agonising I have come to the conclusion that I’m no longer going to be able to remain on a tenure track at USF while pursuing what I feel is my life’s calling to return to the African continent and be a part of the ongoing social transformation here.

As you know, for the last 10 years I have been at the helm of Akili Dada.  You have supported me in this work and because of your encouragement Akili Dada has grown to reach over 20,000 people in communities across Kenya by investing in young women social changemakers like 13 year old Elyne and Akili Dada fellow Caroline.

You had generously allowed me a leave of absence so that I could come to Kenya and devote my efforts to getting Akili Dada ready to outgrow me, its founder.

After 2 years of hard work I’m proud to say that this week was my last week of actively heading Akili Dada.

We have a strong Board of Directors and a dedicated staff team who are passionate about Akili Dada’s mission. After a rigorous interview process the Board of Directors has appointed our own Purity Kagwiria to be the next Executive Director and to ensure that Akili Dada’s work will continue and outgrow its founding vision.  I am excited, and I consider myself lucky that this work chose me. I have given my all and I’m ready to move on.

So, if not Akili Dada then why not return to USF?

The process of deciding to move on from Akili Dada has had me thinking deeply about my life’s calling.  I live an incredibly fortunate life and have had access to privileges and opportunities that so many of my fellow Africans, and especially African women, never get to access.  I started Akili Dada to create opportunities African women whose class backgrounds and life herstories reminded me of my own.  That work is not yet complete.

My years in the U.S., first at Overland High School,  Whitman College, then in grad school at the University of Minnesota, at USF and with Akili Dada have helped me earn skills that are much needed here on the continent.

I love USF, I have grown tremendously at USF. I am deeply drawn to the USF mission and the ways that rigorous academic analysis is rooted in a commitment to create a more just world all while having fun.  These are the things that brought me to San Francisco and they are the things I will miss the most.  And of course you, who have nurtured and supported me and taught me what true leadership looks like.  I will remain in deepest gratitude for the ways you have mentored me, advocated for me, and invested in me.

THANK YOU!

Change: On leaving Akili Dada

Its been more than a year since I decided to make the transition from leading Akili Dada, an organisation that I founded and still love.  The decision was a difficult and emotional one but one also based in my belief that leaders must practice what they preach:  Akili Dada is a young women’s organisation and it must continue to be run by young women. I had aged out 🙂

Also important is that successful leadership transitions must be modelled and become more common as they are critical to effective social change for Africa.

Its been a while but in case you missed it, below is the message that I sent out to friends and supporters of Akili Dada:

Dear Akili Dada Community,

Over the past decade, I have had the tremendous blessing of working with you to build Akili Dada’s vibrant and joyous community. Together, we have built a home for young African women that nurtures them as they grow into strong, vibrant, dedicated leaders. Together, we have transformed what began as a small scholarship fund into the leading girls’ leadership incubator in Kenya and on the African continent.

I know that you understand the strength of Akili Dada and the abundance of leadership in our ecosystem. Because I, too, know and trust that strength, I have decided that it is time for me to move on from the position of Executive Director of Akili Dada.

My decision to step down as Executive Director is one that we have been working toward for quite some time, in open conversation with Akili Dada’s staff and senior leadership. This transparency has allowed us to plan accordingly to strengthen the organization to withstand my transition. Among other actions taken, my family and I moved to Nairobi two years ago, so that I could be more present in developing the infrastructure of Akili Dada.

The past two years have seen a tremendous amount of growth for Akili Dada. Our Board of Directors, which includes both new faces and old, provides strong leadership from women who are passionate about Akili Dada’s mission today and who carry a powerful vision for Akili Dada’s future. They are truly my dream team. We also have an incredible staff team comprised of the best, brightest, and most passionate advocates for young African women’s futures. Working in a synergy that can only be drawn from shared passion and sense of mission, we have led Akili Dada to numerous international awards including recognition from the U.S. White House. Although many of these awards recognized me as the face of Akili Dada, they were never about me as an individual; they were about the work that the Akili Dada community has and will continue to perform. I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked with such an amazing community and have full confidence that they will thrive even in my absence.

I have given my all to Akili Dada and feel that the strongest and most innovative ideas I’ve had for us have been shared, implemented, or added to our future plans. An organization’s strength is best proved by its ability to outlive its founder, and I know, beyond the measure of doubt, that Akili Dada will grow far beyond me. I feel it is my responsibility to take a step back and watch it flourish under new leadership. I believe that the best founders know when to hand over leadership.

I am especially confident in a smooth transition because the Board of Directors has already appointed my successor. It is our very own Purity Kagwiria! I feel so fortunate to be able to hand over leadership of Akili Dada to such an incredible woman, whose mind and heart are devoted to this work and who knows first-hand the struggles that African women face. For the next two months, I will be on leave and Purity will serve as interim Executive Director, assuming full responsibilities upon my official departure at the end of March.

Purity knows this organization, community, and the landscape of our work better than anyone. In the three years since she joined Akili Dada, I have been keen to prepare her to take on increasing levels of responsibility. From the start, I knew that she had a bright future in global leadership. We are incredibly lucky that she has chosen to stay with Akili Dada.

Over the past six months, I have been even more intentional in sharing every part of the Executive Director role with her in order to prepare her to lead this organization.

Still, this is not leadership bequeathed to her. Akili Dada’s Board of Directors undertook an intense and rigorous two-day interview process to satisfy themselves that Purity is the best next leader for Akili Dada. Throughout that process, Purity’s passion for working with young women, her extensive knowledge of the organization, and her fresh vision for Akili Dada’s future shone through.

As I pass the torch to Purity, I invite your active support of her as the new Executive Director. The strength of this community lies in our shared dedication to nurturing the next generation of African women leaders. Purity is a sterling example of the type of leader that Akili Dada seeks to send forth into the world. We are lucky that she has chosen us.

Even as I step down from my official position at Akili Dada, I remain committed to this institution’s growth, and I hope you’ll join me in celebrating what Akili Dada has been and will become. Indeed, I shall remain a vociferous advocate and ambassador of Akili Dada’s work, even as I work hard to give Purity the time and the space she needs to develop her own leadership style and vision for Akili Dada’s future.

Akili Dada’s greatest asset is the community of women and men who have worked so hard to make Akili Dada into what it is today. I will always be a proud founder of Akili Dada, and I am confident that together we shall propel Akili Dada to the next level of its spectacular growth.

With love and in deepest gratitude for an incredible decade, 

Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg
Founder and Outgoing Executive Director
Akili Dada

Interview with Sheila Mwanyiga on NTV AM Live

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to meet Sheila Mwanyiga on this NTV interview.

Among the highlights:

• I think there is a difference between the terms “Going back” to help those in your community vs “Paying it Forward” Posture maters.
• When you walk through a door, hold it open for others
• Agricultural innovation is  key to Africa’s prosperity
• Africa needs to re-think our definitions of leadership
• On gender roles: need to raise boys and girls who can both nurture and serve as well as defend and protect
• It’s not true that ‘women are their own worst enemies’

 

Kenyan Women’s Tech Agenda

What happens when you put women at the center of examining Kenya’s booming technology scene?  Specifically, what should Kenyan women’s agenda for the ongoing tech revolution look like?

I believe that Kenyan women’s technology agenda should focus on freedom.  But not freedom in the conventional sense; the women’s agenda for technology should focus on both freedom ‘from’ and freedom ‘to’.

Conventional understandings of freedom center on freedom from oppression: freedom from others harming us.  An innovative approach to women’s participation in the tech space should focus on both women’s freedom ‘from’ current impediments but it should, more importantly, also focus on women’s freedom ‘to’ use technology and to transform the way tech is used in Kenya.

To explain, Kenyan women’s tech agenda should focus on three key elements of freedom that are critical in the current context in Kenya: Access, Security, and Empowerment

Access

Traditional understandings of women’s access to technology rely on just counting the numbers of women using technology.  Indeed numerous reports and studies have focused on how many Kenyan women own mobile phones and how many women are regularly online.  The question of access has been reduced to bean counting.

A cutting edge agenda for Kenyan women and technology must also be concerned with ‘which’ women are coming online and conversely which ones are being left behind.  It is not enough to merely count female bodies in the tech space.

Concern for the issue of women’s access to technology needs to ensure that technology does not remain the preserve of wealthy women.  Indeed if we’re not careful, imbalanced access to technology can exacerbate existing Kenya’s class, ethnic and other differences between women.

When we think about access as an important component of women’s access to technology, we must pay attention to the wealth differences between women.  For women to have true freedom ‘to’ be online we must fight for poor women’s access and knowledge of technology.

If we don’t ensure poor women’s access to technology we risk a situation where wealthy women take over speaking ‘for’ poor women with dire consequences for democracy.

Indeed the biggest promise of technology is in enhancing Kenya’s burgeoning democracy is arming the voting public with tools to keep their elected officials and governments accountable. Access to technology is key to this and women’s access particularly so. We cannot then afford to turn this promise on its head for poor women who end up lacking the tools and who are then unable to participate in critical democratic conversations.

Security and Safety

A second element of women’s agenda for technology is safety.  Conventional understandings of safety and security in the tech space often focus on viruses, terrorism, and identity theft.

Kenya women’s agenda for technology needs to look beyond these conventional understandings to again embrace issues of both freedom ‘from’ and freedom ‘to’.

The most critical agenda item for Kenyan women when it comes to security in technology is actually creating safe spaces for women and girls.  Indeed even as we struggle for all women’s access to the web we must continue the struggle to secure safe spaces for women and girls both online and offline.

A recent study of Internet safety for Kenyan women by KICTANET shows that going online can expose women and especially girls to greater risk. A cursory glance on facebook reveals the many ways that women, especially successful women who have broken outside the mold of convention are under continuous attack by Kenya’s cyber bullies.  Perhaps the most striking examples of this are the ways that female media personalities including reporters like Caroline Mutoko are continually harassed on social media.  If we are not careful, we may fight for women’s access to technology only to expose the same women to various forms of violence, especially psychological violence meted out by Kenya’s home grown cyber bullies.

Empowerment

The third and most important element of Kenyan women’s tech agenda needs to be empowerment.   Again we must move beyond thinking of empowerment in the traditional sense.  Kenyan women must embrace the ways that our use of technology is not just changing us but also how we as women are shaping technology itself.

Conventional understandings of how technology empowers women are mostly concerned with women’s economic empowerment: we worry most about how women can make money using technology.  Organizations like SamaSource have found ways to create work for women using technology. While some argue that such work is merely glorified sweatshop labour, proponents maintain that the income that women generate is truly empowering.

Jobs in tech are not the holy grail for women.

I argue that Kenyan women should ask more of technology.  Income is good but we can, and should, have more.

The way to achieve this ‘more’ is to ask what difference it fundamentally makes to have Kenyan women engaged with technology.  Do we, as women, bring about a fundamentally different structure of relationships by using technology?

Kenyan society is inherently hierarchial.  A cursory look at our politics at the national scale (ill-behaved waheshimiwa) and all the way down to our behavior behind the closed doors of our homes (the ill treatment metted out on our domestic workers).   Women, Kenyan women especially, do very poorly in hierarchies.  We tend to remain at the bottom.

Indeed, women, some argue, tend to think and live in ways that are anti-hierarchy.  That Chamas are a women’s phenomenon only serves to strengthen this argument.

I believe that the web is one place where women hold tremendous potential to bring about grand transformation because the Web offers tremendous potential for a restructuring of power relations from hierarchy and into a web of interconnectedness.

Unlike Kenyan society, and very much as a mirror to women’s lives, the web is ‘flat’ in very fundamental ways.  Interconnection is key.  Hierarchies don’t work so well on the web and success, as especially highlighted in social media, is dependent on one’s interconnectedness.

Women enter this encounter with an upper hand.  We have had lifetimes of training and socialization to build ‘flat’ and connected communities.  Indeed numerous studies on women in the corporate sector now highlight the ways that women bring stronger collaboration skills to workplaces.   And as globalization continues full steam ahead, women’s abilities to collaborate and build communities of sharing represent an increasingly advantageous resource.  Kenyan women are already empowered in this sense.

Kenyan women’s continued engagement with technology from this position of strength is not only good for technology, its good for Kenyan society.  The more that women thrive in a field where they hold competitive advantage, the more the values of a less hierarchical and more ‘flat’ society will become apparent in the broader society.  Women’s lives and ways of living can make Kenya a better place.

As such, Kenyan women’s tech agenda must embrace empowerment not just from a perspective of the money that women make by engaging technology.  The women’s agenda must seek to understand the ways that women can, and are already empowered to transform technology and to transform society as well.

Learn more:

Women Who Tech: http://www.womenwhotech.com

Take Back the Tech: http://www.takebackthetech.net/

Weaving with Chrystal Simeoni, Wambui Mwangi, & other FemTech sisters 🙂

Children living in fear: Newtown to Pakistan

I’m watching a live broadcast of the memorial service from Newtown Connecticut in the aftermath of the devastating massacre at a school.  The stories are devastating. Teachers who placed their bodies in front of the gunman to protect children.  Children who, despite surviving the horror, might never be able to sit in a classroom for the rest of their lives. Lives shattered and ruined.

President Obama is giving a touching eulogy and I stand with him.  I am an American and I mourn for, and with my adopted country.

I grieve for the children who will for years now wake up in terror afraid of death raining down. I grieve for the nightmares being had and those that will be had. For the trauma and fear that is undeserved and unearned.  We HAVE GOT to do this better!!

AND in the midst of this grief I am reminded of the children of Pakistan who, like their peers in Newtown also sleep in nightmares.  Who wake up in the middle of the night to clutch air, seeking mothers long dead.  School, the playground, home, offer no safety.

For years now the United States Government has embarked on a war on Pakistanis.  US drones, personally authorized by the same President Obama who has been shedding tears over dead American children have killed over 3000 people yet only 2% of these people killed in these drone attacks were ‘high value targets’.   President Obama has authorized more drone attacks than President Bush ever did and he personally authorizes each attack.  We, ‘progressives’ especially, need to hold him accountable for that.

Obama’s drone war has had devastating impact on Pakistanis. The war’s impact on the mental health of generations can only be imagined. Think of what its like to be a child in the region, drones overhead 24 hours a day. Never knowing whether you or your family are next. Everyone you know has been impacted.  According to a recent report,

People have to live with the fear that a strike could come down on them at any moment of the day or night, leaving behind dead whose bodies are shattered to pieces, and survivors who must be desperately sped to a hospital.

America’s First Responders are heroes. They earned and deserved special mention in today’s memorial ceremony. Sadly, in Pakistan, first responders get a different treatment. They are killed.

“Based on interviews with witnesses, victims and experts, the report accuses the CIA of “double-striking” a target, moments after the initial hit, thereby killing first responders”

This is confirmed by what we’ve seen in this  Wikileaks video about just how the U.S. attacks first responders in Iraq.

Back to the children.  In New Mexico, American soldiers operating drones and raining death on the unsuspecting humanity half way around the planet are having experiences that seem to have nothing to do with what happened in Newtown.   Bryant’s experiences below seem so removed from young Adam Lanza’s.

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.

“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.

“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.

Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.

They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?

BUT: What would happen if we started to connect the deaths of these two children?

The right to bear arms is often upheld by enthusiasts and patriots as protecting citizens from an overbearing government. Yet, interestingly, the 2nd amendment actually puts U.S. statehood in danger by ensuring that the U.S. government does not hold a “monopoly on the legitimate use of force”.  A right that my fellow political scientists, led by Max Weber,  have agreed is central to the definition of a state.

So then what do we do with the U.S. state? It does not hold a domestic monopoly on the legitimate use of force so its citizens occasionally go haywire and shoot each other up.  At the same time it steps outside of international law to rain illegitimate violence on victims halfway around the world, a majority of whom are innocent.

I contend that both forms of violence are connected. And in both cases the deaths of children have more in common than not.

So, if you were the therapist and the U.S. was lying on your couch, what advice would you give?  How does a country addicted to violence, almost defined by violence, give up the guns and drones?

And for goodness sake how do we get Americans to see the ways in which the deaths of children in Newtown is very much connected and related to the child dying right now somewhere in Pakistan. Children killed in the name of Americans.

How would American thinking and action change if Americans took the radical stance that the lives of children in Pakistan are worth as much as the lives of children in the U.S.?

And we haven’t even began to discuss the implications of yet another mass shooting by a young White man on America’s racial politics.  As some are beginning to ask, is there a crisis of White masculinity?

What if the main reason these shootings keep occurring is that white men aren’t handling equality very well? There aren’t, I believe, any easy answers. Even so, we can take this perspective with us, and we can work to think of ways to help young white males grow up in a society where the expectation of privilege is never indoctrinated. We can teach them early in life how to cope with rejection. We can realize that pointing fingers and blaming others might feel good in the short term, but in the long term, only working towards positive solutions will really help. And yes, we can absolutely continue to advocate for better mental healthcare. Finally, I think we need to be brave enough to have conversations like this one. We need to admit the possibility that by perpetuating the lie of white male superiority despite strong societal and scientific pressure to change, we may have created our own monster

And that monster is White privilege.  In the case of mass shootings, one blogger argues that,

The freedom to kill, maim, commit wanton acts of violence, and to be anti-social (as well as pathological) without having your actions reflect on your own racial group, is one of the ultimate, if not in fact most potent, examples of White Privilege in post civil rights era America. Instead of a national conversation where we reflect on what has gone wrong with young white men in our society–a group which apparently possesses a high propensity for committing acts of mass violence–James Holmes will be framed as an outlier.

But thats a whole separate blog post.  Because I think the crisis of masculinity is not just one being experienced by White men. I see it taking its toll on Kenyan society as well and we HAVE GOT to make those links!

AND we also have to talk about mental illness.  Because we are all Adam Lanza’s mother and there are a lot of families living in fear.

The United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.

We have got to do better!!

AND we need to talk about guns.  Because on the same day that Adam successfully massacred 26 people, a mentally ill man in china stabbed 22 children and none of them died.  The easy availability of guns in the US is killing Americans!

But again these are separate blog posts 🙂

 

To the White House and Back!

I’ve been on an incredible journey over the last few months so I thought I’d update with where I’ve been and what I’ve been saying:

The year started with a trip to the White House where I was one of 14 members of the African Diaspora honoured as ‘Champions of Change’ by the Obama White House and State Department. As part of the honor I got to contribute a post to the White House blog about my thoughts on African women’s leadership and my work with Akili Dada!  You can catch a video of my brief speech on Youtube

Before that I also had the honour to speak about the importance of educating girls at the World Affairs Council of Northern California.  I got to share the podium with Ann Cotton, the founder of CAMFED and Joel Samoff of Stanford University.  You can catch an audio recording of the evening’s conversation online.

I have a number of other past speaking engagements to share and new ones coming up including speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California tonight and at Stanford University tomorrow night and I’ll be posting any recordings of what I say when I’m out and about on my blog here.  Its just that I’m realizing that I do so much of my clearest thinking when I speak than when I sit in a quiet room alone with a computer 🙂

Can Women Lead?

I recently wrote a piece for the fabulous UP Nairobi magazine about women’s leadership where I argue that we need to move to a more sophisticated conversation about gender and leadership.
In the piece I identify two fundamental questions we must grapple with: How do we define ‘leadership’? And how does that definition lead to continued waste of one of the country’s most valuable resource: women’s capacity for transformative leadership?

I’m posting my full text below but will be taking it down once its posted on the UP Nairobi website. In the meanwhile be sure to check out the brand new UP Nairobi website.

To ask whether women are capable of leadership is to begin by asking the wrong question. Indeed the question of whether Kenyan women can lead was answered generations ago. YES WE CAN (and we have been)!

Indeed its time we Kenyans moved on to a more sophisticated conversation about gender and leadership. To do this we must address two fundamental questions: How do we define ‘leadership’? And why does Kenyan society insist on continued waste of one of the country’s most valuable resource: Kenyan women’s capacity for transformative leadership?

Leadership with a Capital P
For too long now leadership in Kenya has been understood as merely political kupayuka. Ask most Kenyans to identify a leader and they will point to a myriad of politicians and wannabe politicians. As a society we have failed to appreciate the ways in which leadership transcends the political sphere and includes valuable contributions in the social, education, industry, arts and culture among other sectors.

Our continued obsession with politics as the only venue where one can serve the community and transform society has led us to a race to the bottom. While we certainly have some qualified politicians, there are increasing numbers who, though they might actually be talented to serve in the private, civil society, civil service or other sectors, still shoehorn themselves into politics with disastrous results. So often our politicians live in realm of mediocrity to the country’s detriment.

On the other hand, an expanded perspective on leadership allows us to begin to make the necessary investments in sectors of our society that are indeed transformative. For example, our education system has for long failed to capture the real value that that the arts and culture generate in a society. Paraphrase an example recently offered by Vision 2030 Director General Mr. Mugo Kibati in a speech to Kenya’s emerging researchers, when most people think of America they can rattle off the names of various musical artists, actors, and sporting professionals. Beyond the President, very few people around the world can name as many U.S. members of Congress as they can artists.

While the contributions of some of these American artists might be dubious in terms of social progress, it is safe to say that they generate tremendous social and economic value for their country. Why is it then, that Kenyans have chosen to focus on our political leaders to the marginalization of the tremendous artists, academics, scientists, writers and other producers of knowledge and culture? What are we missing out by failing to recognize these innovative individuals as leaders who are transforming society?

Kenyan society pays a high price for our narrow perspective of leadership. We are failing to see the many ways that women are already contributing to the leadership of the country and doing so in earthshattering ways. For example, it is our narrow perspective on leadership that caused us to fail to recognize the tremendously transformative work of Prof. Wangari Maathai. Why did it take Kenyans so long to recognize and celebrate what the rest of the world already saw of our heroine’s work? What more could she have contributed to society had we embraced her early and deeply and given her the space to freely give of her all gifts to Kenya? We are failing to recognize the leadership of women like Ory Okolloh, one of the co-founders of the internationally recognized Ushahidi platform who now heads policy and government relations for Google in Africa. There are the Weaving Women, the collection of women artists, academics, writers and thinkers behind an exploration of the cultural image of ‘Wanjiku’ in representing the ‘average’ Kenyan citizen. This group of women is generating valuable new knowledge, indigenous knowledge, on the political and social systems of gender power in Kenya. Sadly, in our obsession with politicians, we are failing to see the ways these multidisciplinary women are innovative leaders. How many other Okollohs and Prof. Maathais remain untapped. Which other human resources, talented and dedicated Kenyan women of substance, is the country not benefiting from? Why do we continue with this wanton waste of potential?

In my own work with Akili Dada I am exposed daily to talented young women who, despite their family backgrounds of deep poverty, are passionate about social change. Akili Dada’s young women leaders are, in their teens, already driving projects with deeply transformative impact on their communities. They are not in front of microphones spouting ethnic hatespeech like some of our politicians. They are working diligently under everyone’s radar, imagining new a Kenya and doing the work that it takes to build and transform our societies from the ground. That is leadership. Yes, Kenyan women can lead. The fundamental question is, how can we as a country better tap into the tremendous resource that is Kenyan women’s capacity for transformative leadership?

The Delusion of Positive Thinking

I’m procrastinating from a pile of work so I decided to clean up my inbox and look what I found!

RSA does some really cool animations including my all time favorite video of Slavoj Zizek explaining whats wrong with buying more crap to save the world.

This piece by acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking.

In relating her arguments to what is going on with conversations about Aid to Africa I see ways in which ‘saving’ Africans is often driven by delusional positive thinking. And as non-profiteers we have feed into the delusion.  So often we raise money by telling donors that their $5 will save the world and bring an end to what are, in reality, very complex social problems.

In our race to raise funds we’ve made it ok for anyone to parachute in and begin whatever delusional idea about how to fix what ails Africans.

Ehrenreich has a wonderful critique about the powerlessness of positive thinking which, as she says, “always just envisions you as a lone individual redesigning the world to fit your ideas.”  This individualization and leads us to forget that “we do have power, collective power, which we could use to make changes and end unnecessary suffering in the world.”  Again the point is not to stop acting in the world but to act in solidarity and in collaboration.

To take it a step further, for me part of that collective power means involving the beneficiaries of our ‘help’ and not just the collaboration amongst the donors which is as far as many philanthropic collaborations get today.

Here is the full length video:

Of courage and strength: a return to Audre Lorde

Today I stumbled on a piece about the legacy of Audre Lorde who I admire greatly and whose work has given me strength over the years.  I was reading her piece on The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House and saw it in a different light today.

Towards the end of her talk at a conference on feminism she asks the audience of presumably White feminists”

How do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your
children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part,
poor women and women of Color?

Whaaat!! Boom! just like that the elephant is there, right in the middle of the room and nobody could ignore it now that it had been named.

I wonder if she was nervous or scared to ask that powerful and personal question. I wonder if she had planned to name the elephant or if the truth just fell out of her mouth before she could stop it.  Just as her daughter had reminded her that,

you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside

I wonder if that questioning of self identified feminist, who really could and should have been allies in the feminist movement, was pre-planned and strategically thought out or merely the truth punching her in the mouth from the inside and tumbling out.

And she didn’t stop there.  She’s concerned about being elevated and isolated as the gatekeeper for Black feminist thought so she, from the podium, demands of conference organizers and participants:

Why weren’t other women of Color found to participate in this conference? Why were two phone calls to me considered a consultation? Am I the only possible source of names of Black feminists?

How many other people, once elevated to the position of ‘thought leader’ or whatever we choose to label the pedestal, ever have the courage to question the very basis of their elevation?

For me, that is the moment of courage. To question and challenge the very system that has you on top and to demand, from your position at the top, that others be allowed into the room.  And I don’t think its that simple because then there is the question of selling out.  If you retain your space of privilege, that spot at the top, and chose to speak from it aren’t you selling out into the system that created the hierarchy in the first place?  When you choose to occupy a space, doesn’t your very decision to be there mark the space as having your stamp of approval?

Back to Lorde, was showing up at that conference and accepting the speaking position while other women of color were cleaning her fellow conference attendees’ homes an act of selling out?  It all goes back to my ongoing concern about what we do with our power and privilege.

At this point I’m thinking she is not selling out.  Because she was able to use that platform to speak into an audience that would never have stopped to listen to the same critique from their house cleaners and nannies.  Lorde had an opportunity to speak and she used it to give voice to an uncomfortable truth to an audience that would listen to her voice of authority in a way that they wouldn’t listen to the other Black women in their daily lives.

But was there a cost to her?  What price did she pay for being the kind of woman who could speak these painful truths to audiences?  We get a glimpse when she writes of the isolation of standing alone as different:

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference — those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older — know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled

What courage it must take to be so isolated!

I recently read an article explaining women’s absence in leadership with the argument that when women become leaders they get isolated and that is exactly what girls have been socialized to fear.  So, when standing alone is scary how does one gain the courage to speak the lonely truth?  Where and how can we both learn and teach the courage to speak truth while standing alone?

I’d love to sit with sister Audre and ask her how she did it. I wonder, if she could have forged a different path, would she have? If she could go back, would she choose an easier path?  I wonder about the personal toll it took on her to need to be so brave.

I wonder the same about our sister Wangari Maathai who braved bullets and clubs and hair ripped from her scalp to stand toe to toe with the Moi dictatorship.  What made her do it?  What was she thinking at those many moments when she stood defiant?  Were her hands shaking?  Or did she go into a different place in her mind and shut it all out, focusing only on the truth that needed to be said.  Or did that truth just come knocking her out from inside and tumble out despite her best efforts to conform and be liked?

There are so many women who we let live in isolation and emerge to celebrate after they’ve left us and the sting of their truth has numbed a bit.  I’d love for our Akili Dada scholars to learn the courage to be those truth tellers.  But I also worry for them if they become that brave.  Because there will be a price to be paid.

How NOT to support queer rights in Africa

Apparently the Brits have been at it again. Seriously, the colonial hangover lingers?  Thankfully there’s tremendous pushback:

Statement on British ‘aid cut’ threats to African countries that violate LBGTI rights

We, the undersigned African social justice activists, working to advance societies that affirm peoples’ differences, choice and agency throughout Africa, express the following concerns about the use of aid conditionality as an incentive for increasing the protection of the rights of LGBTI people on the continent.

It was widely reported, earlier this month, that the British Government has threatened to cut aid to governments of “countries that persecute homosexuals” unless they stop punishing people in same-sex relationships. These threats follow similar decisions that have been taken by a number of other donor countries against countries such as Uganda and Malawi. While the intention may well be to protect the rights of LGBTI people on the continent, the decision to cut aid disregards the role of the LGBTI and broader social justice movement on the continent and creates the real risk of a serious backlash against LGBTI people.

A vibrant social justice movement within African civil society is working to ensure the visibility of – and enjoyment of rights by – LGBTI people. This movement is made up of people from all walks of life, both identifying and non-identifying as part of the LGBTI community. It has been working through a number of strategies to entrench LGBTI issues into broader civil society issues, to shift the same-sex sexuality discourse from the morality debate to a human rights debate, and to build relationships with governments for greater protection of LGBTI people. These objectives cannot be met when donor countries threaten to withhold aid.

The imposition of donor sanctions may be one way of seeking to improve the human rights situation in a country but does not, in and of itself, result in the improved protection of the rights of LGBTI people. Donor sanctions are by their nature coercive and reinforce the disproportionate power dynamics between donor countries and recipients. They are often based on assumptions about African sexualities and the needs of African LGBTI people. They disregard the agency of African civil society movements and political leadership. They also tend, as has been evidenced in Malawi, to exacerbate the environment of intolerance in which political leadership scapegoat LGBTI people for donor sanctions in an attempt to retain and reinforce national state sovereignty.

Further, the sanctions sustain the divide between the LGBTI and the broader civil society movement. In a context of general human rights violations, where women are almost are vulnerable, or where health and food security are not guaranteed for anyone, singling out LGBTI issues emphasizes the idea that LGBTI rights are special rights and hierarchically more important than other rights. It also supports the commonly held notion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ and a western-sponsored ‘idea’ and that countries like the UK will only act when ‘their interests’ have been threatened.

An effective response to the violations of the rights of LBGTI people has to be more nuanced than the mere imposition of donor sanctions. The history of colonialism and sexuality cannot be overlooked when seeking solutions to this issue. The colonial legacy of the British Empire in the form of laws that criminalize same-sex sex continues to serve as the legal foundation for the persecution of LGBTI people throughout the Commonwealth. In seeking solutions to the multi-faceted violations facing LGBTI people across Africa, old approaches and ways of engaging our continent have to be stopped. New ways of engaging that have the protection of human rights at their core have to recognize the importance of consulting the affected.

Furthermore, aid cuts also affect LGBTI people. Aid received from donor countries is often used to fund education, health and broader development. LGBTI people are part of the social fabric, and thus part of the population that benefit from the funding. A cut in aid will have an impact on everyone, and more so on the populations that are already vulnerable and whose access to health and other services are already limited, such as LGBTI people.

To adequately address the human rights of LGBTI people in Africa, the undersigned social justice activists call on the British government to:

– Review its decision to cut aid to countries that do not protect LGBTI rights
– Expand its aid to community based and lead LGBTI programmes aimed at fostering dialogue and tolerance.
– Support national and regional human rights mechanisms to ensure the inclusiveness of LGBTI issues in their protective and promotional mandates
– Support the entrenchment of LGBTI issues into broader social justice issues through the financing of community lead and nationally owned projects.

Contact Persons

Joel Gustave Nana, (French and English)
Executive Director
African Men for Sexual Health and Rights
Tel: +27735045420,
joel@amsher.net

Hakima Abbas
Executive Director
Fahamu
Email: Hakima@fahamu.org

Wanja Muguongo
UHAI- the East African Sexual Health and Rights Initiative
Tel: +254(020)2330050/ 8127535
wanja@uhai-eashri.org

Phumi Mtetwa
phumi10@hotmail.com

Sibongile Ndashe
sibongilendashe@gmail.com

Minding our Qs and Ps: Questioning Power and Privilege in Philanthropy (version 1)

I was humbled last week to be honored as this year’s winner of the Thomas Yamashita Prize from the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley. The Yamashita Prize recognizes work that builds valuable bridges between academia and activism so my acceptance speech shared my experiences at this intersection. The audio recording of the speech (with additional links and comments) is available here and the notes from which I spoke are below it.  I’m still exploring these ideas so I’d love your feedback!  The introductory comments are by Colleen LaFontaine of the One World Children’s Fund and my speech starts at minute 6.15. Photos from the event are here

• Academia taught me to think about power and privilege
• There is an ecology of privilege that is systemic.  Slavoj Zizek talks about it being harder to have sympathy with thought than with suffering.  With philanthropy its easier to have a knee-jerk reaction than to sit at the uncomfortable place of contemplating suffering and the possibilities of human agency to alleviate suffering.
• The space between activism (Akili Dada) and Academia has forced me to seriously consider the intersection of power, privilege and philanthropy.

About Power and Privilege:

• Society has a very one dimentional conversation about privilege.
• Looking at me from an American perspective, it would be easy to assume that I hold no privilege.
• I’m Black, a woman, from the third world.  All these things are true and indeed if you were to base your evaluation of me on popular media images of Africans and particularly African women, I’m a miserable creature indeed.
• However, if you take seriously Chimamanda Achidie’s call for a balance of stories you might take a different perspective of me.
• As an educated, professor of Politics at an American university, I do wield considerable class, educational and other privileges relative to the rest of the world’s population.
• You see, the problem is that society as a whole tends to have very narrow views of privilege.
• This narrow view of privilege pervades philanthropy as well.
• On one hand we look at poor people in poor communities and fail to see the ways in which they do wield particular assets.  Even the poor man in the slums of Kibera wields a form of gender privilege.
• Our inability to see privilege as a systemic ecology has lead us to a type of philanthropy that produces disturbing imagery of African as miserable creatures in various stages of death and dying. The recipients of our philanthropy are cast as one dimensional passive victims.
• We fail to allow for the human agency of the recipients of philanthropic aid.
• The other impact of the unsophisticated view of privilege in philanthropy is that philanthropists often wield their own privilege without being aware of its implications.
• Our narrow views grant authority to philanthropists without requiring accountability for the ways they wield their power and privilege.
• The philanthropic ‘industry’ reflects the expansion of racial, gender, and imperial privilege that has largely remained unquestioned.
• For example, women remain surprisingly underrepresented in the ongoing discourse on how to save the world’s women that is en vogue today.
• These are the challenges that unquestioned power and privilege bring to philanthropy.

Philanthropy

• A more sophisticated view of philanthropy needs to recognize not only the shortcomings of how privilege functions within philanthropy, but its opportunities as well.
• The philanthropic relationship is itself an example of using one’s privilege for good.  Funders leverage their financial privilege, and people like me leverage the privilege we wield based on our life experiences and location
• I started Akili Dada as a way to use my own privilege for good.  I had benefited from scholarships for my high school, Undergraduate, Masters and Ph.D. education.  These scholarships and the education they made possible opened doors and allowed me access to power and privilege I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
• I frequently found myself the only African or even Black woman in a room sometimes.  Akili Dada was my way to leverage the access that I now had to change the situation.  I wanted to ensure that even where I was the first in the room and at the decision making table, I didn’t stay the only one.  Akili Dada is about holding the doors of access open for other women so that they have a chance as well.
• My question to you is: how are you using your privilege?  That is the hardest question of all.  It is easier to point fingers at how others are using their privilege badly, I certainly fall into that temptation more often than I should.
• But I must always turn the question on myself.  The intersection of academia and activism forces me to ask myself that question
• My answer is that Akili Dada makes possible for there to be a thousand other young African women coming down the pike
• Our mentors leverage their privilege and access by nurturing the scholars
• The scholars leverage their own privilege and access through their community service project
• Our donors and volunteers, especially in the US leverage their gifts and privilege to shift the conversation about Africa and African women.
• How are YOU leveraging YOUR privilege?

Shopping and Consuming and being a cheapskate

Its been a while since I blogged and instead of waiting till I feel I have something clever to say, I’m just going to release myself into posting the random thoughts on my mind.

I just got back from a shopping trip to the local mall looking for a new hat for my little boy whose life seems one long growth spurt.

I hadn’t been mall shopping in a really long time and what was different this time is that I didn’t feel like looking. The usual stores didn’t hold their appeal and I walked by uninterested.

Now this could be because shopping is difficult with a toddler whose main interest is riding the escalators and elevators over and over again 🙂

The main reason,  however, I think is because a few months ago we disconnected our cable service and inherited a Roku Box from my friends.  Because we now watch online tv we have been able to avoid commercials almost entirely.  And it feels like a commercial free life is also one with limited consumption.

Commercials create and feed a desire to buy stuff and by avoiding them, I simply don’t have this hunger to own the biggest and best.  I find myself interested in functionality and willing to pay a bit more to buy one high quality thing that will last me a long time.

Hmmm. Except for shoes.  I can’t get myself to spend more than $20 on shoes so the Payless clearance is still on my list of stops.  But even there its been more than a 6 months since I’ve made a stop.  The cobblers in Kenya who re-sole my worn shoes for $4 a pair keep me happily marching in imitation leather.

Ah the joys of the cheapskate life.

Intellectual Property matters!

Some nepotism: my brilliant hubby has an important post that I’m borrowing from the Afro-IP blog which “provides news, information and comment on IP law, practice and business deals right across Africa”

The Sticky Situation Surrounding Plumpy’nut

Afro-Leo is pleased to bring you a guest post by Isaac Rutenberg, PhD, Patent Agent at Bozicevic, Field & Francis LLP in San Francisco, CA, USA.  If you would like to contact Isaac directly, he can be reached at rutenberg@bozpat.com.

Is intellectual property always harmful to poor people? Plumpy’nut has been cited as an example that supports the case against allowing patent rights in matters of humanitarian aid. On the contrary, Plumpy’nut is a shining example of how proper use of intellectual property protections could have significantly enhanced international aid and development work.

A recent article in the NYTimes describes the row that has developed over Plumpy’nut. In short, Plumpy’nut is a revolutionary peanut-based product with the potential to end or significantly reduce severe acute child malnutrition. Developed by Dr. Andre Briend, a “crusading pediatrician” who became tired of traditional (frequently unsuccessful) solutions to acute malnutrition, Plumpy’nut is a simple product that is remarkably effective and practical.

So why the row? Turns out that the Plumpy’nut formulation has been patented in 38 countries, including the US, France, and much of Africa. The owner of the patent, the French company Nutriset, appears to be bent on commercializing not just the miracle product but the entire process of combating acute malnutrition. Nutriset and Nutriset’s collaborators (including a US for-profit company manufacturing Plumpy’nut in New Jersey for distribution to USAID) have defended their approach and their product, taking steps to prevent others from producing similar products. Criticism of Nutriset has been unsurprisingly harsh: non-profits worldwide say that Nutriset is trying to profit on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable children. Inevitably, there is the claim that intellectual property is to blame for this disaster.

I say, not so fast. The NYTimes article says that Nutriset obtained the patent rights because Dr. Briend “signed a consulting agreement” with Nutriset after developing Plumpy’nut, since he “never knew anything about manufacturing food.” This is somewhat vague, but according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office database, Dr. Briend and a co-inventor assigned (i.e., sold) the patent to Nutriset. This left Nutriset entirely in charge of the patent – Dr. Briend has no say in how it is used.

Had Dr. Briend kept control of the patent, things might look very different today. If his intentions were truly humanitarian, he could have used the patent to benefit the public in much the same way that open source software uses copyright protection. Contrary to popular belief, open source software is protected by copyright. The copyright owners (e.g., the software authors) have simply said that they are willing to grant an open license to anyone who would like to use the software, subject to some conditions. One important condition is that any advances made on the software must also become open source, so the software continues to improve but always remains freely available for use. If there was no copyright protection of the original open source software code, the open source system would not work.

Similarly, Dr. Briend should have kept his patent, and used it to ensure that anyone can produce Plumpy’nut. In particular, local producers in the countries that need it most would not then be reliant on USAID or the UN food relief programs as their sole source of the miracle product.

Although the entire story may be more complicated, one should not blame either Nutriset or patents in general for these events. The problem is that intellectual property and the implications of certain acts are often not fully understood by scientists and especially by the general public.

Had Plumpy’nut been developed by a multinational corporation that never made any pretenses of putting humanitarian interests above profit, then there would be a stronger case for mandating government intervention to make the formulation accessible to all. But this appears to be a case where one individual could have taken steps early on to secure patent rights and ensure universal availability of a life-saving miracle product.

Whoa Nellie! Not all Africans are needy

Guest Post from the one and only: Tamaku!

I’ve been enjoying Tamaku’s blog, Diary of a Gay Kenyan for a while now so I was thrilled when he posted something (from his experiences currently on vacation in the UK) I thought fit really well with my interests in international aid and development.  ENJOY:

Last week I went out on the town in Newcastle on my own because my hosts were away at a prearranged engagement. It was really windy and cold so I stepped out in a thick jacket, scarf, gloves and faux fur ushanka all wrapped up like a mummy. First stop was Chinatown to line my stomach as you do before any drinking. I got lured by the promise of eat as much as you can for £8 which was good value and most of it was rather yummy. It’s no secret that Chinese domination of the world has been accelerated by buffets of egg fried rice, chow mein and shredded roast duck. And soy sauce.

After the feast I walked towards the Life Centre around that triangle which is home to the city’s gay bars and settled for a pub favourite with bears. Forty minutes later I was minding my own business pretending to cruise when three hunks in kilts joined my table by the window overlooking the sidewalk. I was glad for the company of the three hairdressers from Scotland and we started chatting about nothing in particular, they even bought me a couple of drinks. Oh, by the way did I mention that one of them was black? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it a little odd hearing a Glaswegian accent from a black person.

Shortly the two other guys excused themselves to go outside to smoke. That’s when the black Scot asked me where I lived. I said I’m only here visiting friends, I live in Kenya. He says how cool is that, you speak verrie gurdt Inglish. (Lol. Sorry I can’t do the accent). I answered yes I do but just for the record I speak even better Swahili and two other languages. By this time his compatriots were back, that’s when he asked me whether I had a %^*~@&. I replied sorry I didn’t understand what you just said, what was that again? Obviously I need to work on my Scottish. I think he got my point because he started speaking very slowly: DO. YOU. HAVE. A. BOYFRIEND? I said yes I do have a very beautiful boyfriend, and told them a little about Gee. Curiously ebony Scot wanted to know what colorr George was so I said as black as you and me. That’s when he said don’t take this the wrong way fella but ‘gay Africans are way too needay when it comes to marney. They can‘t seem to stand on their own two feet’….

I pretended to take his offensive comments the right way even though I was seething inside, even his friends looked embarrassed. I know that in recent years ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ (read foreigner) have become dirty words to many Europeans largely thanks to a slew of articles about benefits scroungers in hugely popular rags aimed at swathes of the population whose reading age hovers around 9. So I asked ‘Field-slave-now-eating-at-the-big-house’, is that your experience? Have you ever dated an African? He said no but a friend of a friend has. Then he added all I know is the people there are starving and dying from aids. I couldn’t hold it any longer so I said to him Oh don’t be ridiculous, you don’t see me saying all Glaswegians are drunk illiterate morons who like to stick dirty needles into their arms. But I said it sweetly because I’m from the land of hakuna matata where ‘jaruos’, ‘kales’, ‘wasepere’ etc still have more than a few issues to sort out. I now accept that some form of bigotry exists inside everyone. Call it preference, type whatever. Also I blame charities who think the only way to fill their coffers are media campaigns showing emaciated and unwashed orphans with runny noses. It doesn’t matter that the kids’ dignity is violated by whoring their images, they are just poor god-forsaken souls from distant lands.

I didn’t even begin to say what I was really thinking. There’s a time and place for debates and I wasn’t in the mood to start a fight which I‘d have lost anyway. So we dropped the subject and some jägerbombs instead (my round) until the stripper came on. Then we just drifted apart to darker parts of the bar where one could get off anonymously. Needless to say I was only a spectator to any monkey business. Before I left the pub I went to the toilet where I bumped into black Mr Kilt. By now he looked a bit worse for wear but he still recognised me as I stood next to him at the urinal. Then without the faintest of warnings he lifted his kilt. I wasn’t too shocked because some gay men can get up to sleazier things in toilets, eh you don‘t want to know. Come to think about it, I’m sure some of you want to know hahaha you’ll have to go and ask George Michael. Anyway I clocked him and appreciated that like a true Scotsman he wasn’t wearing anything under the tartan. Luckily for him there was no one else in the toilets because let me just say that it’s not all true what they say about black men. Even in the dimmed lighting I could see that he was packing mini, or how shall I put it, well below expectations in both length and girth and I’m no size queen. Worse still said appendage was as dead as a doornail.

After I finished peeing I gave mine the customary two tugs and three shakes (always a pleasure) and washed my hands quietly staring at kilted flasher’s reflection in the mirror. Before leaving him alone in the toilets, I said bitchily whilst looking at his needledick, so sorry dear – even Africans aren’t that needy.

Questioning the ‘new’ philanthropy

A while back I gave a talk at the Global Fund for Women.  It was this talk that later inspired this blog and the book project that i’m (slowly) working on. My friend Nunu was kind enough to record it and upload to vimeo below:

Musings of a (former?) radical

I’m preparing my syllabus for a Master’s level class that I am teaching on international development.  For some reason I’m feeling in a very theoretical, and particularly Marxist, mood which showed in the readings that I picked for the class.

Anyway, I was going through books that I read in college (mad props to Bruce and Shampa!) that had a huge impact on me and I came across Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Decolonizing the Mind.  Wow!

I remember reading his words as a young Diasporic African coming into my own sense of political self.  I added excerpts from his book to the signature line of my email and soaked in his words with a purposeful intensity.

I stopped going by Carolyne (yep, thats my former name!) and went back to Wanjiru.  I wore a necklace that spelled out my name to help out those around me.  I was THAT kid in college.

Reading his words these many years later (9 precisely) still gave me goosebumps.  They made me wonder about that young radical I was and where she went.

I fear that graduate school and the Ph.D. in Political Science disciplined the radical clarity out of her.   For those seven years it stopped being about a belief in black and white, clear-cut social justice and had to become about surviving and living though the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  For me, grad school was about trying to be a round peg in a square hole and the scars linger.

After that, the pragmatic needs of running a non-profit took over.  To raise real money in the ‘real world’ has forced me to blunt my razor sharpness as it was perceived as brashness.  Nobody gives money to abrasive  so I had to tone it down if  I had a whisper of a chance to nurture and grow an organization whose cause I deeply deeply believe in.

Listen, I’m not complaining. Mine is darned good life and I’m getting to do the things I love.

And it could well be that being pragmatic and doing what needs to be done is to be radical.

But is that just a rationalizing?

Part of the joy of working with college students is getting to still be part of that zeal, that passionate awareness of absolute right and wrong.  Where the cost of being on the right side isn’t so high.

Either way, sometimes I miss that freedom: to read Ngugi, soak and marinade in the truth of his words, and try to live them out:

The oppressed and the exploited of the earth maintain their defiance: liberty from theft. But the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb.

The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland.

It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples’ languages rather than their own. It makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those forces which would stop their own springs of life. It even plants serious doubts about the moral rightness of struggle.
Possibilities of triumph or victory are seen as remote, ridiculous dreams. The intended results are despair, despondency and a collective death-wish. Amidst this wasteland which it has created, imperialism presents itself as the cure and demands that the dependant sing hymns of praise with the constant refrain: ‘Theft is holy’. Indeed, this refrain sums up the new creed of the neo-colonial bourgeoisie in many ‘independent’ African states.

The classes fighting against imperialism even in its neo-colonial stage and form, have to confront this threat with the higher and more creative culture of resolute struggle. These classes have to wield even more firmly the weapons of the struggle contained in their cultures. They have to speak the united language of struggle contained in each of their languages. They must discover their various tongues to sing the song: ‘A people united can never be defeated’.

Future blog posts: On playing ‘native informant’ and wearing my ‘African costume’ for public presentations.  What to wear is complicated when you are so keenly aware that your body is the site of so much identity construction.  Wearing a suit vs. a bold African print seems such a political statement! 🙂

Jamhuri Day: Building the (Kenyan) Nation

I had the pleasure of speaking at this year’s Jamhuri (Independence) Day celebrations for Kenyans across California.  The event was put together by the Harambee Foundation, which was “founded by Kenyan migrant residents in Northern California to create a cornerstone for the Kenyan community  that would serve  to bring about a sense of unity in times of emergencies and celebration alike.”

It was a tremendous honor to share the stage with the Consul-General Amb. Dr. Wenwa Akinyi Odinga Oranga, her Deputy Mrs. Jane Miano Mugweh and the Hon. Minister for Health Services Dr. Anyang’ Nyong’o.

My speech focused on Kenya’s need to transition from a state to a nation:

I made the contention that while A Nation is people who are believed to or deemed to share common customs, origins, and history, the term state refers to the set of governing and supportive institutions that have sovereignty over a definite territory and population.

In 1963 Kenya took on the instruments of statehood but the journey to nationhood is ongoing.

The colonial project deployed ‘divide and rule’ to construct Kenya’s ethnic groups as separate nations.  That colonial hangover lingers today and the challenge of the second republic is to build not just institutions but a public culture that can help us overcome our ethnic enclaves.

While the stipulations of the new constitution lay a legal framework upon which we can work on building the Kenyan nation, it is up to individual Kenyans to act and breath real life into the nation.

I offered concrete actions that Kenyans, particularly Kenyans in the diaspora, can take:

1. Stop talking crap.  How many times do we out in the diaspora participate in the besmirching of our country’s image by choosing to share only the negative?  From lies that help us get the coveted legal papers so we can stay abroad, to allowing ourselves to be deployed by dubious charities as examples of Africans who have escaped the hell hole that is the continent.

My point is not that we shouldn’t tell the truth about the challenges Kenya faces, but rather we should tell the whole truth.  We need to break beyond telling and reconfirming only the single story of Africa. We should also be talking about Ushahidi, Kencall, Akirachix, and all the other incredible innovations and businesses and growth happening in Kenya!

2. Expand your idea of ‘watu wetu’ (our people) to include Kenyans from beyond your ethnic community.  Part of building a nation is expanding our reach and hugging those who the colonial and post-colonial madness has taught us to hate.  There is precedent for expanding our circle, in most Kenyan communities the family unit is not the nuclear one but rather is constructed to include all manner of ‘strangers’ and ‘others’.  I argue that building the Kenyan nation calls for us to push our limits even further s as to include members of other ethnic communities as part of the circle of ‘watu wetu’.

3. The most efficient and effective way to expand the meaning of ‘watu wetu’ is to invest in young people.  Acknowledging the tremendous wealth transfer from the Diaspora to Kenya, and that much of the money goes to pay for loved ones’ school fees, I challenged the audience to move beyond paying school fees for a child within their family and extend that same generosity to a child from a different part of the country.  Take the time to travel out of your home community, go to a local high school and ask for a list of children who are on the verge of dropping out of school for lack of school fees.  Make a dent in that debt then walk away.  Its not about getting thanked. Its about having the privilege to give.

Building a nation is not about the grand actions, it is about the small selfless acts by individuals that accumulate and eventually change the way we relate to each other.

We need to invest in each other and in our collective future.  That is how to breath life into the nation and build on the promises of the new constitution.

Harambee Foundation Jamhuri Day Celebration

Saturday December 11, 2010

PROGRAM

Welcome Guests onies

• Edwin Okong’o, Master of Ceremonies
• Kenyan National Anthem
• Mr. Johnson Mbugua, Harambee Chairman.

Immigrant Rights Panel

• Mr. Samuel Maina Ouya, Immigration attorney.
• Adoubou Traore, African Advocacy Network.

The Second Republic: Explaining Kenya’s New Constitution

• Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, University of San Francisco.

• Amb. Dr. Wenwa Akinyi Odinga Oranga, Consul General, Kenyan Consulate, Los Angeles.
• Hon. Dr. Anyang’ Nyong’o, Minister for Medical Services, Govt. of Kenya.

Closing Remarks Vote of Thanks

• Professor Teresia Hinga, Santa Clara University.

Dance! Dance! Dance!

FemTech 2.0: The intersection of feminist activism and technology

I’m excited to be hosting a roundtable presentation at this year’s African Studies Association Conference.  The panel reflects  my growing techie interests with the theme below:

FemTech 2.0: The intersection of feminist activism and technology

Reflecting this year’s conference’s proximity to Silicon Valley, this roundtable explores the
opportunities and challenges presented by the unavoidable nexus of
communication technology and feminist organizing.

On one hand communication technologies offer unparalleled
opportunities for  feminist activists to connect with each other and
with an ever-widening base of supporters.  Social networking tools
mean that activists working on similar issues in different regions can
connect with each other and share experiences and tactics.   SMS,
Facebook, Twitter and other tools also mean that activists can
mobilize and co-ordinate mass action more efficiently, and at a much
lower cost.

Still, a heavy reliance of technology for feminist activism can serve
to further exacerbate the class disparities reflected by the gaps in
access to this technology.  Further, questions emerge on whether
technology can and should replace the personal connections that have
become a hallmark of feminist organizing.

The Roundtable will include presentations by Muadi Mukenge of the Global Fund for women

Kathleen Fallon will be discussing the role of ICTs in relation to the women’s movement in Ghana.  Specifically, although everyone acknowledges that ICTs are very important, those in Northern Ghana (where resources are more limited) have a much more difficult time accessing ICTs.  This leads to the women’s movement being biased toward issues focused in Southern Ghana, as well as resources being redistributed to Southern Ghana, rather than Northern Ghana.  Access to ICTs, therefore, reinforce existing inequalities.

An Associate Professor at McGill University,  Professor Fallon’s interests lie within political sociology, international development, and gender studies. Specifically, she focuses on women’s social movements, women’s political rights, and democracy within sub-Saharan Africa, as well as other developing countries. She has done in-depth field research within Ghana, examining how democratization influenced both women’s rights and the emergence of the women’s movement. Additionally, through comparative analyses and using both qualitative and quantitative methods, she has explored how types of democratic transitions influence women’s political representation.

Melissa Tully, a PhD candidate (ABD) in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will focus on a Kenyan initiative called AkiraChix. The AkiraChix are a group of women in technology whose broad purpose is to empower women, particularly women in the tech community or who want to enter the tech space for social good.  A PhD candidate (ABD) in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madiso, she’s interested in how communications technologies are used (or not or failed to be used) in the pursuit of social justice.

The panel will go from 8-10 am(!) on Friday November 19th and I can’t wait to share my experiences running an international African women’s leadership incubator (empowering brilliant young women from underprivileged backgrounds), as well as my journey on the Clitoraid campaign!

Reforming Kenya’s Education System

Image via Wikipedia

I’m excited to share this post from Guest Blogger Edwin Nyanducha.

Edwin Nyanducha is a management and policy adviser with strong focus on the problems and opportunities facing Africa. He is the founder and managing principal of Inkubate Ltd – www.inkubate.co.ke– a consulting and strategy advisory firm based in Nairobi. He previously worked for Deloitte & PricewaterhouseCoopers and  can be reached at edwin.nyanducha@inkubate.co.ke“.

Monumental Shift in Kenya’s Education Policy Scene

Last week, some under the radar but generational shifting changes in Kenya education scene were announced. In one setting, Higher Education Minister, William Ruto wondered why the government should keep investing significant sums of money in churning out graduates who do not contribute to Vision 2030. In another setting, Education Permanent Secretary, Ole Kiyapi, indicated that teachers will need to get 3 year renewal teaching permits and those who cannot deliver will be shown the door. As is usual, the hue and cry has already began and it is only a while before politicians treat us to a theater of the absurd.

Fist things first. Ordinarily, no politician in his right mind should try to reform either health care, education or agriculture. No matter what one does, you are bound to annoy as many people as you please. Plus, they tend to be highly charged issues where use of truths and half truths and selective use of facts can result in gross distortions in public perception/views and become a recipe for political suicide. Nonetheless, they are critical to the running of a state and someone must do the honours. Or as one of my colleagues remarked, the duty of a leader is to lead, not following the masses.

To enable me contribute to the debate effectively, I will first start by giving an analogy. A country can be thought of as a large farm. For argument sake, let us assume that Kenya was a 100 million hectares farm that produced nothing but tomatoes. Let us also assume that half of this land i.e. 50 million hectares was under use and could produce 2 million kilograms of tomatoes. If that is all the country produced year in, year out, then we would all soon realize that we cannot live a life of joy and happiness by only growing and consuming tomatoes. Life would be better off if some other people dedicated themselves to producing things other than tomatoes. Let us for simplicity sake assume that we decided to split the use of the productive 50 million hectares into two different uses. One half i.e. 25 million hectares is used to produce 1 million kilograms of tomatoes and the other 25 million hectares is used to produce 1 million kilograms of onions. Life would be improved now that we have the option of consuming a mix of tomatoes and onions. Then let us now assume that rather than people carrying tomatoes and onions physically to trade every time, we introduce stamps to represent the real produce of the economy. In this case, we produce 1 million tomato stamps and 1 million onion stamps. If in the next year, we are able to produce 2 million tomatoes and 2 million onions, it means that the number of stamps in the economy would have to grow to meet real production. And then don’t literally think stamps, think currency notes and coins. By extension, it means that the more real produce an economy churns out, the more the wealth of a country.

For Kenya to produce more “tomatoes and onions”, it can increase the amount of land under productive use, in this case bring into production the idle 50 million hectares. On the other hand, it could be that the 50 million hectares of idle land cannot be used for farming due to its poor quality or lack of water etc etc. In this case, the way of increasing output from the land is to invest in mechanization and equipment. Things like government policy also have dramatic impact on productivity because government policies that discourage farmers getting maximum value for their produce always end up leading to farmers switching to other activities and the whole sector getting distorted. The pyrethrum sector policy space is a case in time. But arguably, one of the biggest contributors to increased productivity and by extension output is management capabilities and science and technology.

To avoid losing non economists, I will now do without economic jargon. Education has dramatic impact on a country’s productivity by raising the quality of human labour and increasing the dispersal of scientific and managerial techniques. Since education represents significant monetary and time investment by both a country and its citizenry, there is need for rational policies to be followed. William Ruto’s observation that the government is spending a lot of money on many programs that do not contribute to Vision 2030 yet we have shortages of engineers, doctors and nurses does have a point. However, it also needs to be pointed out that things like the arts that serve such useful purposes as making society to self reflect in terms of things such as child labour, unabated crime and in general serve to document the beauty and tragedy of human existence can simply not be bandied off into the ocean as this would be a case of inviting barbarians to lurk at the gate. The key issue is striking balance.

A skills assessment exercise that maps the country’s inventory skill set starting from post graduate holders all the way to primary school drop outs should be undertaken. The results of the country’s skills inventory should then be mapped against the country’s projected skill needs. Areas that indicate there is going to be excess inventory should cull back their training programs while those that point to a shortage should have their enrollment and funding increased. With such an approach, a reasoned way forward can be charted rather than having the various parties advancing their self serving agendas while shouting from roof tops to scare and confuse the public.

On the issue of secondary school teachers, I remember having a heated discussion with a senior figure in Africa’s education scene round about the time the World Bank and the Commission of Higher Education had unimaginatively called for increasing the price of higher education in the country. I was then calling for increasing access to university education by adoption of Open Learning systems facilitated by the internet. The gentleman argued that increasing access was not the key issue. In his opinion, the poor quality of students emanating from primary and secondary schools was the crux of the problem and unless this is fixed, increasing the number of graduates leaving Kenyan universities would simply be a case of garbage in, garbage out. While concurring that the gentleman had some strong point to make, I should point out that I do not whole heartedly agree with the assessment with his analysis of secondary school products being of poor quality. The garage is rubbish but the car is a Mercedes. Kenyan students have potential; what is letting them down is the quality of the system and the trainers. What we need to do is fix or change the garage so that the true potential of the car can become self evident.

So far, Kenya’s education system has some serious short comings. For example, it assumes that students need to get tested over and over again for them to prove their worth. On the other side, some teachers who can barely read and write, retain their jobs and in the process ensure that children with potential do not end up realizing their true worth. In calling for teachers to be held accountable, Bill Clinton stated:

“We must do more to make sure education meets the needs of our children and the demands of the future. First and foremost, we must continue to hold students, teachers, and school to the highest standards. We must ensure students can demonstrate competence to be promoted and to graduate. Teachers must also demonstrate competence, and we should be prepared to reward the best ones, and remove those who don’t measure up, fairly and expeditiously. “

In truth, it is not wise investment of tax payer money in paying a salary (and pension it must be added) for people who have absolutely no teaching abilities. And rather than a one off test to see if one has the potential, there needs to be a system that takes into account ones training, the pass rate of students over the years, the satisfaction levels that students have in their teachers etc. In this case, those that have little or no ability should be shown the door immediately and we stop wasting tax payers money. Those who have the ability and are delivering should be remunerated, advanced and recognized accordingly.

In this regard, I support the move by the Ministry of Education to introduce renewable permits for teachers. What should be guarded against, however, is not letting the whole exercise degenerate into a gravy train for rent seeking by government officials by introducing systems and transparency. For example, a score card system that shows what rating a teacher has gotten versus objective parameters such as KCPE & KCSE average passes for students should be introduced. This could reduce the case of envelopes changing hands at midnight.

A final point requiring addressing by the country. The issue of teacher allocations. I was talking to an education insider who indicated that schools in urban areas always end up having about two times of the number of teachers they need while schools in remote areas are perpetually understaffed. This has to do with decisions made by District Education Officers who are always besieged with orders to transfer so and so to urban areas by politicians, businessmen, fellow civil servants etc. Now that government at the County level is here, perhaps the time has come for Education Officers to publish reports by schools showing total student enrollment, number of teachers and pupil to teacher ratios. Then benchmark standards can be put up and all those schools (and County’s) not compliant need to explain otherwise their funding is cut off.

Equally important is the whole issue of Education Officers. Apparently, when an Education Officer is from a particular area, say Muranga, he/she will be forced to make staffing decisions such as promotion and transfers of headmasters and principals on the instructions of area MP or Minister or whoever otherwise he/she will loose their job. This, I am informed, leads to a situation where schools of Districts/County’s that an Education Officer is not a native of, end up performing better than when the Education Officer is from the region. This is because the Education Officer has to play local politics and dispense favours based on politicians and their own agenda’s. Perhaps a policy of barring Education Officers from coming from the same District/County be deliberated and passed?

Comments most welcome.

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Between infatuation and discomfort: funders and Community Based Organizations

This post started as my personal notes from the Grantmakers without Borders conference earlier this year where I was one of the speakers and had the privilege of getting to listen to and connect to great minds from the progressive funding movement.  I’m choosing to post it in raw notes format because at this rate, I’ll never have the time to digest the notes into a more coherent form….

Between infatuation and discomfort: of funders and Community Based Organizations

Horizontal philanthropy–a reference to how the poor help each other–is strong across Africa. Indeed there are indications that orphaned children get 90 percent of their support from their community, including their extended families.

Horizontal philanthropy comes mostly in the form of Community Based organizations (CBOs)  Indeed it is at the CBO level that the rubber meets the road for aid and development work.

At the same time, community-based organizations (CBOs) have not gotten the attention that they deserve.  The dynamic between CBOs and funders is a two-edged sword:

On one hand there is the valorization of ‘scaling up’ and magnified impact means that many CBOs fall entirely by the wayside.  At the same time there’s been a move among funders to fund the small projects and then continue their funding practices in ways that keep CBOs small.

Part of the challenge is of one of perceptions because larger funders never talk about how they carry out their work through community organization.

The language used to address community-based organizations is skewed because there is an amplified voice about the about lack of capacity at the CBO level yet rarely a celebration of their strength and impact. Another problem is that funders focus on urban spaces and fear to venture into rural spaces. According to one contributor to the conversation at GWOB, “Funders don’t recognize the civilization that is thriving in rural areas, yet they always want to build on civilization that already exists”. This preference for urban spaces fails to recognize the real contributions and potential of community-based organizations especially in rural areas.

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A Political Science analysis of Kenya’s new constitution

I’m really excited to don my more conventional Political Scientist hat and presenting a public lecture and community discussion and analysis of Kenya’s new constitution and its potential implications for politics and democracy across the continent.  Many thanks to the Priority Africa Network for organizing the event!

Image by ActionPixs (Maruko) via Flickr

Priority Africa Network invites you to

A community dialogue on the new constitution in Kenya and what it means for the larger African Continent

Wednesday, September 22nd

6:30 pm

Speaker: Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, Asst. Prof of Politics, University of San Francisco,

Introduction: Nunu Kidane, Priority Africa Network

Venue: Shashamane Bar & Grill, 2507 Broadway, Oakland, CA

There is food and drinks to buy but no cover charge; please come early and join us for lively informal discussions.

What does the recent adoption of a new constitution in Kenya mean for the rest of Africa?  While the violence that marked the 2007 Kenyan elections

were widely portrayed an example of typical African ethnic barbarism, for some the new constitution and the process that led to its ratification represents

an argument to the opposite.  How can we understand the substance and context of this recently adopted document?  Is the new constitution robust

enough to reconstruct Kenyan society in more equitable ways or does it merely redistribute the poverty of the masses?

Image by ActionPixs (Maruko) via Flickr

Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an assistant professor in the Politics department at the University of San Francisco.  Her research and teaching  interests center on issues of

democratization, political economy, Philanthropy and international development,  gender, ethnic politics, and human rights.   One of her current research projects looks at

challenges to meaningful philanthropy towards Africa.

RSVPs requested, email PriorityAfrica@yahoo.com or call (510) 663-2255.

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The contradictions of capitalist charity – Zizek

A colleague just sent me one of the most brilliant things on Youtube.

Its an animation of a piece by Zizek about charity.  Its very very worthwhile!

Me thinking:

If Zizek is right and capitalist charity is fundamentally flawed whats the best way forward?

Should we aim for a return to what he terms pre 1968 charity that was altruistic and not directly tied to consumerist culture?  No more Project RED where ten cents of the cost of the T-shirt you just bought goes to an AIDS program in the country hosting the sweatshop the shirt was sewed in.  Instead just give your ten cents directly to an aid organization and bypass the consumerism.

Or should we aim for a consumerist charity that goes beyond surface level solutions and pushes capitalist charity to its most logical conclusion.  Should we aim for a charity that while base on capitalist consumption actually starts to dismantle the institutions that underly its very capitalist basis.  Should the charitable  funds from Starbucks be used to empower farmers’ collectives into creating a market alternative to Starbucks’ global coffee monopoly?  How you ask? By consumers compelling Starbucks to give their charitable funds to an entirely independent charitable organization and remove itself from any control over how the funds are spent.  It can be done.  If Nestle can be compelled to advertise the virtues of breast milk while selling baby formula, activist pressure makes anything possible.

Or are there other alternatives?

More from Zizek is here too:

“We’re bombarded with daily media reports about violence done by individuals, groups, or nations. Slavoj Žižek, cultural critic and provocateur, would have us look behind the visible, overt violence to what lurks beneath. In his recent book simply titledViolence,  Žižek discusses violence in the context of ideology, capitalism, language, and mainstream discussions of tolerance”.

Motherhood and Work

Its all been talked about before but I can’t help but feel how hard it is to balance family life and work.  Everything seems to want to tear me away from my commitments to my family and especially to being a ‘present’ mother.

And its wierd but although America is called the ‘land of opportunity’ Kenya feels like it has lots more opportunities for me and my husband right now.

Everything here (in Kenya) is changing.   Everything here is open for innovation in a way that doors are not open in the U.S.  There are many gaps to be filled and not enough people filling them.  Everywhere I turn there is an opportunity for work I could do.  Work my hubby could do, and support my young son could use.

But then I’m always happy wherever I am at the moment.  And I know that as soon as I’m back in the San Francisco Bay Area I’ll be back to being thrilled with my life there.  I’m particularly excited for my garden and the veggies that should be ready for picking as soon as I land.

And I’m excited for classes to start up.  I’ll be teaching intro to Comparative Politics (I think I’ll focus on constitutions being that Kenya just passed a new one!) as well as a class on the politics of international aid and development (I’m picking up lots of raw materials while here!)

But a part of me is still sad for the unrealized opportunities that I’ll leave behind when I get on that Emirates Airlines Flight back to the Northern Hemisphere

(by the way, Emirates Airlines is the best airline if you’ve got to fly long haul with a young child!!

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Loving being a Kenyan!

Image by Jorge Lascar via Flickr

I’m euphoric!  It feels like Life starts afresh today.  We have hit the reset button and we get to start again with new rules for the game.  The new constitution is not perfect but its good.  Its certainly much better than what we’ve lived under.

Not to mention how Kenya has now set the global standard in the use of mobile technology in running elections!

But in my euphoric celebration I remember Muthoni Wanyeki’s words of cautious optimism:

“The impulse of those who have worked so hard for this, through
several generations, will be to celebrate.
But only for a moment. Because, to realize the potential of a Yes
vote, we are all going to have to take a deep breath
and dive in again. Against the political and economic interests that
have always thwarted change.
And don’t imagine those interests are sleeping on the job – they are
always (always!) ahead of us all.”

And being in Kenya in the last few weeks I have seen first hand the ways in which political and economic interests are poised to appropriate the 84 pieces of legislation needed to bring this new constitution into effect.  Oh, yeah, the current Parliament only passed 4 pieces of legislation last year.  One wonders how they are going to manage to pass 84 of them in 18 months!!

But I think we’re allowed to celebrate for a day and I couldn’t agree more with Martin Kimani’s piece pointing out the many ways Kenyans continue to vote YES for our country.

It is optimistic celebration I share a poem by Shailja Patel, one of Kenya’s best poets and a friend:

KATIBA MPYA: NAMES FOR IT

For all it cost. For all we’ve lost. For all who persisted, decade upon decade, in the face of every defeat. For the invisible heroes of four generations, who brought it to fruition. For those taken by the struggle.  For the dead, displaced, dispossessed, raped, whose blood and suffering have watered this moment. If  victory means anything, it must mean the beginning of restitution.

brightness of joy how it

drips off our fingers
pools in our navels
gulps up the sun

thirst of our joy how it
swallows the highways
matatus and weaverbirds
rocket our ribs

tidal of joy how it
carries this country

anthems that surf

the green dazzle of trees

gentle of joy how it
melts out of garbage heaps
laps at the flex

of ten million walking legs

unhinges the pincers
of history’s heartbreaks
kisses them into the wind

here comes shadow here
comes shadow welcome
shadow sit with joy

i could cup all anger this moment
in the quiet of my joy
i could fold the world’s dementia
in the quiet of my joy
i could still the planet’s sirens
in the quiet

in the quiet
in the quiet of my…….

come to us like a thunderstorm
enter us like rain
sweep through us like a monsoon wind
then seed in us like flame
wake in us like an untold story
cry in us like a lone survivor
rip through us like a parturition
claw your way out of our bodies

pour and swallow what it takes
(and it takes everything)
surge and carry what it takes
(and it takes everything)
cup and cradle what it takes
every moment every breath
nothing less than everything
is what it takes
to dream

Shailja Patel, 2010. All Rights Reserved
www.shailja.com
Shailja Patel’s book, Migritude, comes out from Kaya Press in October 2010

http://kaya.com/books/28

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Analysis of the Kenyan political landscape

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to share my analysis of the Kenyan political landscape with the Africa Today show on Bay Area radio station KPFA.  Primarily donning my Political Scientist hat, I sought to explain the ongoing transition to democracy in Kenya as a long term affair and one election (2002) does not a transition make.  From this long perspective, the violence that rocked the country after the 2007 elections should not have been that surprising and the ongoing rift about the constitution is also expected.

On the whole, however, I remain optimistic about Kenya’s prospect of completing the transition with my main concern the kind of ‘nation’ we will create along the way.  The challenges posed by the ongoing transition are also tremendous opportunities for civil society to act and shape a new conversation about Kenya, one that challenges the ethnic entrepreneurship of the political elites.

The extensive interview is now available online and now below.  (the first couple of minutes include station announcements so skip ahead a bit)

Africa Today – June 28, 2010 at 7:00pm

Click to listen (or download)

Africa Today with Walter Turner
Mondays 7 pm – 8 pm

A weekly news program providing information and analysis about Africa and the African Diaspora. Africa Today seeks to update listeners on contemporary developments in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and the United States. The program utilizes an interview and discussion format to explore political, social, economic, and cultural themes relative to the African experience.

About Walter
He is a Professor of History and Chairperson of the Social Sciences Department at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California, instructing courses in United States History, African History, and African American History. Walter is also President of the Board of Directors of Global Exchange, and is an African News analyst for Pacifica Radio Station KPFA.
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Africans as Zoo exhibits in Germany?!

This alarm just came into my inbox:

German Zoos displaying ‘Africa’ and Africans – again!

Complete german version HERE —

Once again, German zoos are going to hold “Africa days” in the following days, whose framework program includes African people as well as their presentations, art and culture, becoming part of a visit to the zoo.

And -once again- with strong racist connotations. (Zoo Berlin: “Public Namibia-Day at the zoo” as part of the anniversary celebration “20 years of Namibia’s Independence”; Zoo Eberswalde: “Enjoy African flair with spirited live music and dance performed by the band (…) from Congo. (…) This event is supposed to support the ethnic group of the San, the “last first people”, helping them to help themselves, in terms of a gentle integration into our modern age.”

We will probably not be able to prevent these ‘festivities’, nevertheless hereby we ask for your solidarity and international protests.

Please help put an end to German indifference towards its own painful colonial history and the placing of African people and cultures in zoos!

All mail contacts and further information below.

*

Zoo Eberswalde:

Excerpt from the leaflet:

Enjoy African flair with spirited live music and dance performed by the band Odjadike and the Ballet Zebola from Congo.
(…)
This event is supposed to support the ethnic group of the San, the “last first people”, helping them to help themselves, in terms of a gentle integration into our modern age.

(…) klick “Mehr” to read on

• Experience the animals close to the action in a special atmosphere
• Be fascinated by unique lighting effects
• Discover nocturnal animals in the zoo during an individual night-time tour through the zoo
• Learning is fun – The zoo school offers entertainment for youngsters
• Take pleasure in information about Namibia and the San, the endangered last first people
• Admire and buy the carvings and wickerworks as well as other handicrafts created by them

Read the full  invitation here: (German original) / (English translation) . Note: The original (german) flyer is illustrated with photographs of animals (lion, giraffe, zebra) alongside photographs of an unnamed Black child and an unnamed Black wickerworks artist.

*

Zoo Berlin:

As part of the anniversary series “20 years of Namibia’s Independence”, of all things, the ‘German-Namibian Society’ is organising in cooperation with “p.art.ners berlin-windhoek gGmbH” and the Zoo Berlin, a “Public Namibia-Day at the zoo for the whole family”.

Excerpt from the invitation:

Democracy and technology

I just found the youtube videos of my favorite talks at this year’s PDF.

This first one is by Eli Pariser warning about the effects of increasing personalization on sites such as Google and Facebook where most of us are now getting the majority of our news.  Some of the most important things I found him to say are that:

– Increasing personalization of our news sources is telling us what we want to know not what we NEED to know as citizens and this has disastrous implications for the future of democracy.

-We need to stop assuming that the personalization of the news that we consume is itself democratic.  As he states, “we need to remember that the code, the machines, the software, are designed by people who have ideas about the world and that they incorporate those ideas into the code.  They incorporate ideas about what matters into this software”.

On the whole Eli is right that we need to be intentional in asserting that our online environment and sources of news needs to be heterogeneous.  Further, I agree with him that this is a very solvable problem.  Here is how:

Along the same theme of heterogeneity of our online experiences I also loved the talk by Susan Crawford who is the founder of One Web Day and recently a special advisor to the White House.

Her talk was a much needed warning about the ongoing consolidation of the U.S. communications conglomerates and its dire impact on internet access for the entire U.S. population.  In her words, ” we are in a titanic battle for the future of the internet in the United States, the technology community is radically underrepresented in this conversation and the response ‘i make websites’ is no longer appropriate or sufficient”

Here is more:

Is Kiva hosting loan-sharks?

Image via CrunchBasI’m  glad to see more questions emerging about microfinance.  dbzer0 has an interesting post about the exorbitant rates that borrowers from Kiva’s partners have to pay.  He writes,

until now I was tolerant to the idea of Kiva mostly because even though most of their partners where charging a high amount, it was still lower than the median rates of their area. However this has now changed for the worse. Not only do most partners now seem to hover around the median, but I’ve just seen one of the most digusting examples I could find within Kiva

This partner charges double the interest and makes double the profit that most lenders in their country. This is a loan-shark put simply. And yet. This is a Kiva partner. Pathetic. I don’t even know if this partner existed like this from the beginning of Kiva or if they increased their interest rates later on. Their URL number seems to indicate that they were one of the earliest.

This is the last straw for me. I can’t even remain neutral in the face of how Kiva uses the mutual-aid sentiments of people to support the debt-enslavement and debt-abuse of the most unfortunate. Until Kiva can provide a way where people can discover those partners which charge close to 0% interest (Do you have any anymore Kiva?), then I would suggest you stay away from it. It seems Kiva is simply becoming a useful tool in the hands of those who only wish to profit on the backs of the poor.

The whole blogpost is here

Postcards from the road

Last week I had a fantastic time at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Rio de Janeiro where I was honored to address the Forum about the work of the non-profit that I founded and continue to run.

Along with the other winners of the Maketplace of Ideas competition, I was thrilled for the opportunity to meet potential funders for the project.  After five years of toiling under funders’ radar its been fantastic to receive international recognition for our work.  And the United Nations at that!!

I’m currently in New York after the just concluded Personal Democracy Forum where it has been two packed days of trying to sip from the firehose of incredible knowledge about tech stuff.  I’m still trying to process it all .

I’ve also got to meet some of my online heroes in person.  Faves have included Allison Jones, Farai Chideya, Craig Newmark,  and Ethan Zuckerman and of course reconnecting with Ory Okolloh who, along with Ethan, took  the stage to talk about technology and its impact on democratization.

Here again I was honored to get to meet my fellow Google Fellows who are all doing impressive things at the intersection of technology and politics.

I return to San Francisco on Sunday in time to address the Grantmakers without Borders tenth annual conference on Monday afternoon.  I’m excited to be in a room with philanthropists committed to more just and fair ways of funding social activism.  I will specifically be  speaking on a panel about how grantmakers can make sure that grants they make in Africa promotes gender equality.

Again I’m so honored to have been asked and I can’t wait to participate in the conversation!

After three huge conferences back to back I’m going to be looking forward to some downtime with my family and time to follow up on all my wonderful new friends who must be wondering why the heck i’m not responding to emails 🙂

Google Fellow at the Personal Democracy Forum

I spent the last two days at this year’s Personal Democracy Forum where I was selected as one of this year’s Google Fellows.  Its been fantastic getting to meet some of my all time heroes and have my mind blown in regular intervals.  I was also apparently 5th most frequent tweeterer with over 200 tweets on the conference proceedings.  In between tweets I couldn’t help but think:

-As Deanna Zandt pointed out,  lot of us at the PDF got into fetishizing the technology and forgot to remain focused on the fact that at the end of the day there are still human beings behind the technology.  Whether technology exhilarates (using kites to map the impact of the oil spill) or depresses (Eli Pariser talked about the undemocratizing impact of filters on sites like Facebook and Google), there are still human beings behind the code.

The moment we lose focus of the human agency behind technology we miss  the potential of the PDF’s promise of taking us to where technology meets politics.  Indeed as Deanna reminded us all, broadly, politics is all about the ecology of power.  The beauty of this is that power can be contested and anything that can be contested can be changed and made better!

Indeed as Susan Crawford pointed out,  the U.S. is currently in an epic battle for the future of access to the web.  The battles that she outlined in her well received talk are very much political.  The machinations of major conglomerates for control over what has become one of the most valuable resources around, the web, speaks to the importance of politics in, and to, technology.

-While I’m all about getting people to use technology to ‘do something’, there was absent a conversation on how ‘doing something’ can sometimes be more harmful than helpful.  Clitoraid and even the 1 million t-shirts are stark examples in the Africa philanthropy space.  i wish someone would have pointed out that thoughtless deployment of  armies of well-meaning techies could  magnify the harm just as easily as strategic and thoughtful action could have a magnified impact for the good.

-I’m frustrated by the unquestioned use of the term ‘grassroots’.  Exactly who are we talking about with term ‘grassroots’? Is it a class distinction? Is it based on geographic location?  Specifically, I feel like the term is used as code to signify other more specific populations and in that obscurity can be dangerous.  If by grassroots you mean poor rural women in a specific African village or the working class men and women in suburban middle America why not specify?  In any case,  who of us is not ‘grassroots’?  Who are the ‘grasstops’?

Despite and because of  these enduring frustrations and questions I learnt a lot from participating at this year’s PDF and I hope for an invitation again next year. (so Google, if you’re listening, holla at a sistah! 🙂

Seriously, what an honor to get to spend time with incredibly brilliant people that I would normally never get to meet!

Onward and upward

OK

I have to admit this Clitoraid nonsense took way too much of my time and energy and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks catching up with the rest of my life.

So, I’m planning on this being my last post about Clitoraid. For those interested in furthering the conversation I’ve started a separate page on my blog here.

In the meanwhile here is a fantastic article by SF Appeal that pretty much wraps up what happened with the Clitoraid and Good Vibrations saga.  As the writer points out, Good Vibrations still does not come out smelling good.

I do find it extremely disappointing that the hundreds of people who organized to bring public scrutiny and transparency to amend the situation and pry the good reputation of Good Vibrations away from Clitoraid — many of them longtime members of Good Vibrations’ community  — only found out that Good Vibes ended their association via an editorial in that newspaper. None were contacted or informed directly; the blogging and Facebook communities whose loyalty buoyed the discussion were left to find news about the changes on their own.

To this day I am still waiting for Good Vibrations to announce their latest African women’s organization partner.  Indeed they made profuse promises to me and others that they would replace their support of Clitoraid with support for an organization headed and run by African women who are concerned with the issue of Female Circumcision.  We all worked hard to identify potential partners but to this day there has been no announcement.  If I were reading this from Good Vibrations, I’d make a move and make an announcement.  Clearly the community is watching and waiting…

As for me, I intend to focus my blog on more ‘boring’ things now.  I have a couple of really cool conferences lined up for the next couple of weeks and I intend to tweet from them and perhaps even put up some posts from the road.

If travel plans work out (grrrr!) I shall be at the Third forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in Rio de Janeiro Brazil later on this week.

Then off to New York City for this year’s Personal Democracy Forum where I am honored to have been selected a Google Fellow.

And finally I will be at this year’s Grantmakers without Borders 10th annual conference in San Francisco and talking to fabulously interesting people about the philanthropic focus on African women.

https://savingafrica.wordpress.com/clitoraid/

Arguing with fools hurts my head

“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference”

These are my thoughts as I read Clitoraid’s recent, and very personalized attack of a collective challenge to their humiliating campaign to adopt African women’s clitorises.

In their latest public statements Clitoraid has “likened the call for sensitivity toward those in Africa who perpetuate and condone FGM to those who were “sensitive” toward slave owners or Nazis”

What?!!  Over and Over and Over again I, and others including Dr. Petra Boynton, Dr. Elisabeth  Wood,  Matthew Greenall, Darklady,  Kudzai Makombe and Caille Milner of the San Francisco Chronicle, have expressed our position that we do not support the continuation of Female Circumcision.  Our collective concerns have been about Clitoraid’s humiliating adoptions of African women’s genitalia for dubious fundraising purposes.

Yet when faced with the very real critique that their fundraising campaign, indeed their entire organization, is culturally imperialistic and racist at best, Clitoraid and the Raelians behind them still do not get it!

I think part of the problem thus far has been that we have all abandoned issues of race and culture to the margins of feminism in ways that have led to the Clitoraid mess.  Had we heeded Audre Lorde’s call 26 years ago and made conversations about race and cultural difference a central plank of the feminist platform we would not still be debating whether its right or wrong for anyone to adopt an African woman’s clitoris.  Unfortunately, we’re still debating whether African women deserve dignity and respect.

But back to Clitoraid’s nonsense.  They argue that,

“Slave owners in the American South thought Northerners were insensitive to their needs,” Gary said. “And it wasn’t considered polite in Nazi Germany to ask what was happening to the Jews. Both situations demanded blunt, effective, immediate opposition, not sensitivity toward the perpetrators and their supporters.”
She said the same principle applies for eliminating FGM and restoring clitoral functionality through surgery for as many victims as possible.“This is a senseless, horrible act that causes excruciating pain and sexual deprivation for millions,” Gary said. “While other organizations just discuss and wring their hands, CLITORAID acts.”

What of the dozens if not hundreds of African women’s organizations that have been mobilizing around the issue of FGM for decades now?  Is that who’s wringing their hands?  Or does it not count when African women do something about their experiences, it only counts when ‘Westerners’ act?

And for the Slavery and Nazi analogies, I don’t even know what to do with that logic.  So is it Africans that are analogous to Nazis and slave holders?   Because thats who practices FGM.  Or is it the African woman activist (me) who raises the alarm about this humiliating campaign that is analogous to the slave holder of the Nazi? hmmmmmmm?!

My head hurts. and not in a good way.

Feeling the heat, Clitoraid goes on the offensive

Clitoraid responds to their critics, but key questions remain unanswered

Republished from the wonderfully informative, sex positive expert blog of  Dr Petra | originally Published: 21 April, 2010

Clitoraid have officially responded to questioning of their organisation and the controversial ‘adopt a clitoris’ fundraising scheme (a summary of discussions to date on this topic can be found here).

In a press release on April 21 2010 and a more frank statement on their website they argue their critics are anti sex; state questioning Clitoraid equals denying women treatment; and claim critics of the organisation are condoning Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C).

I would recommend reading both responses from Clitoraid which you may also wish to respond to. I will deal with a few of their points from both press release and statement which still require clarification. If you are a journalist I would strongly recommend you follow up these questions.

In their press release the organisation states:
“Millner and other critics following her lead have questioned the safety and validity of Clitoraid’s reconstructive surgery and expressed concerns about where the donated funds are going. And they say Clitoraid didn’t do an impact study to see how repairing the women’s genitals would affect their local communities”.

This would easily be answered if full financial records were disclosed. Clitoraid has been collecting money for its ‘pleasure hospital’ in Burkina Faso since 2006. How much money has been raised and has the hospital been built?

Any impact study and full evaluation of the published literature on FGM/C as well as working closely with the local community is essential in any intervention. Clitoraid need to produce all documentation to indicate clearly what impact study they have undertaken. To date, no evidence has been produced.

“In response, here is a written statement received at Clitoraid today from a woman born in West Africa. (She now lives in what she described as “a Western country.”)”

The press release provides a compelling statement from a woman who has had reconstructive surgery. We should not ignore or dismiss women’s voices, but we do need to be careful that one compelling story does not obscure other information. Specifically how many women have undergone reconstructive surgery via Clitoraid’s scheme and what success rates have been observed?

Also the women in this case is now living in a Western country where clitoral reconstruction will be interpreted in a different context to an African one where FGM/C is practised. We have no clear evidence from Clitoraid about what work they have been doing to enable women who have undergone reconstructive surgery to be accepted by their wider communities.

The woman quoted in the statement does make the important point that having undergone FGM/C does prevent women accessing healthcare for fear of judgement from healthcare staff. This has been noted extensively in the literature, but that is why many organisations are working to overcome FGM/C and also educate healthcare providers to more appropriate working practices to support women who have had FGM/C. Indeed many of those questioning Clitoraid are actively involved in such ventures.

“It’s very clear to us at Clitoraid that the criticism we receive is mainly from individuals who don’t consider sexual activity important,” declared Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, head of Clitoraid”.

This is an interesting and challenging statement. I would like to see the evidence of this from Clitoraid and Dr Boisselier. If you look to the Facebook group created to question Clitoraid you will note many of those who are supporting it are well known, sex positive activists and educators. There is certainly no suggestion the reason for questioning Clitoraid has been about denying why sexual activity is important. Indeed many of the resulting discussions between practitioners have been about reframing and reflecting on female pleasure and the importance of sexual activity within different cultural contexts.

“The Raelian Movement, thanks to its pleasure-embracing philosophy, is the only religion working to restore sexual pleasure, and we will continue to do so no matter what opposition stands in our way. We owe it to the 135 million FGM victims who have no other recourse.”

This is a bold statement. It appears Clitoraid claim to be the only organisation offering reconstructive surgery or pleasure-focused initiatives with women. We know this is not the case.

“Regarding the lack of scientific data often mentioned by critics, Boisselier said the surgical technique was developed more than 20 years ago by Dr. Pierre Foldes in France and published in a peer review journal, and that it is now practiced by many other surgeons trained by Foldes. Numerous testimonies from women praise his practice”.

Citing an established surgery from a journal is fine, but this alone is not adequate evidence of practice. While it does indicate reconstructive surgery is feasible, other research also shows surgery alone is not effective without wider cultural and social interventions and community involvement and support.

Again, we are faced with a lack of concrete data – ‘numerous testimonies from women’ do not tell us precisely how many women have been specifically treated by Clitoraid – or what the outcomes of their reparative surgery have been. Particularly for those not living in Western countries. If we are invited to send money to fund a clinical initiative it is not unreasonable to ask for this information, and any reputable practice should be able to provide this data.

“Nadine Gary, Clitoraid’s international head of operations, said the French health care system has been covering this common surgical procedure in France for years, and that Clitoraid’s head volunteer surgeon, Dr. Marci Bowers, MD, “a brilliant gender reassignment surgeon, will gladly and reliably clarify the steps and results of this surgery for anyone concerned about the validity and safety of this medical procedure.””

Myself and others asked Clitoraid for this information. They did not provide it. Within this press release they still have not given specific figures on what surgeries they have undertaken and how those have gone. There is already good evidence about the validity and safety of the procedure which is being used within Africa and elsewhere. The question for Clitoraid is what have they done and it is worrying that no concrete information appears forthcoming.

“Gary said anyone concerned about how Clitoraid’s funds are used should visit http://www.clitoraid.org, where the organization’s tax return statements are posted”.

But this still does not tell us whether the hospital they have been requesting money for has been built.

Meanwhile in the statement of 19 April from the Clitoraid website the organisation responds ‘This baseless smear campaign is costing genitally mutilated women the valuable support they need to get corrective surgery.’

Asking questions about practice, community involvement, efficacy and impact is not a ‘baseless smear campaign’. It is standard practice within evidence based healthcare. It is also worth noting among the criticism of Clitoraid has come calls for suggestions of established organisations and hospitals to support, to offer women the opportunity to get corrective surgery and to contribute to educational programmes tackling FGM/C.

“Professor Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, assistant professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, and Caille Millner, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, spearheaded what CLITORAID representative Nadine Gary called “a vicious attack of misinformation and distortion of truth.”
“Their statements, especially in Millner’s April 14 article “Wrong Approach to Genital Mutilation,” led to an online petition that cost CLITORAID the participation of its fundraising partner,” Gary said, adding that adult toys retailer Good Vibrations of San Francisco “was bullied into canceling its summer fundraising campaign on behalf of CLITORAID after receiving a petition signed by over 200 people.”
“The funds from Good Vibrations would have purchased medical equipment for our new hospital in Burkina Faso,” Gary said. “Now that won’t happen. It’s so unfair. The allegations are baseless – and some are just plain stupid.”

This states there is a hospital in Burkina Faso, for which medical equipment would be purchased. Yet questions asked of Clitoraid have failed to clarify if the hospital has been built. It is worrying that reasonable questions asked about one’s practice are dismissed, publicly, as ‘just plain stupid’.

In responding to the questioning of the ‘adopt a clitoris’ scheme, Clitoraid replied:
“not even one woman awaiting clitoral repair surgery through CLITORAID has complained about the slogan. In fact, none of them have ever even mentioned it!”

Yet what evidence do we have women were told of this scheme? And were they listened to? We do know in top down approaches to healthcare people very often don’t feel empowered to speak out or question. And if someone is offering to help you, do you turn them down? Certainly it does appear the community did object to the naming of the ‘pleasure hospital’ being built in Burkina, and the Realians threatened a forum discussing this complaint with legal action.

The statement continues:
““Brutal, violent acts like female genital mutilation don’t call for sensitivity,” she said. “They demand immediate action, and that’s what CLITORAID is doing.”
She likened the call for sensitivity toward those in Africa who perpetuate and condone FGM to those who were “sensitive” toward slave owners or Nazis.
“Slave owners in the American South thought Northerners were insensitive to their needs,” Gary said. “And it wasn’t considered polite in Nazi Germany to ask what was happening to the Jews. Both situations demanded blunt, effective, immediate opposition, not sensitivity toward the perpetrators and their supporters.””

This is offensive and misleading. At no point during discussions of Clitoraid has anyone condoned FGM/C. Indeed many of those questioning the organisation are actively involved in educational programmes and other development initiatives to overcome the practice. It is a wilful misrepresentation to suggest questioning the effectiveness of a programme means endorsing FGM/C – and particularly upsetting when combined with emotive suggestions that those doing so are akin to Slave owners or Nazis.

“This is a senseless, horrible act that causes excruciating pain and sexual deprivation for millions,” Gary said. “While other organizations just discuss and wring their hands, CLITORAID acts. Our first hospital dedicated to clitoral repair surgery will open in Burkina Faso in 2011”

Yet previously in the statement it claimed that the withdrawal of Good Vibrations would result in equipment not being purchased for the hospital, yet here it seems the hospital is not yet built and won’t be for at least another year. This is the same hospital where funds have been collected since 2006.

Again, we need clarification on how much has been collected for the hospital and what is the progress of the build. Why is an organisation collecting for medical supplies for a hospital that is not built yet?

“Gary said Larry Ashley, Ph.D., a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, university professor and sexual trauma counselor, sees each Clitoraid-sponsored patient, and that renowned sexual therapist Dr. Betty Dodson created the post-surgery sexual therapy program that complements the procedure. “This great team of volunteer professionals is made up of non-Raelians who have chosen to work with Clitoraid,” Gary said. “I notice our critics neglected to mention them.”

This is not correct. Those supporting Clitoraid were also invited to reflect on their involvement. Betty Dodson remains committed to the organisation. Discussions relating to non-Realian supporters are summarised and linked to here.

“Gary said critics of Clitoraid should practice what they preach. Millner and Professor Kamau-Rutenberg say Good Vibrations should have exercised due diligence before associating with Clitoraid, but they didn’t do their own. These two women should have known better. They turned the truth about Clitoraid completely upside down out of their own prejudice and a lot of ill-founded assumptions. In the process, they hurt many good people. And those they’ve hurt most are the FGM victims on our waiting list.”

We have continued to ask questions and we are still awaiting answers. Rather than there being ill founded assumptions we have witnessed a collection of practitioners from all over the world asking questions about Clitoraid, and doing this transparently through blogs to ensure fair practice and evidence based reflection and appraisal.

It is disappointing when any organisation, wherever they are based and whoever they are funded by, refuses to engage in discussions about the efficacy and acceptability of their initiative. It is standard practice within healthcare and education, and while it can feel threatening and difficult at times, is worthwhile to ensure those we are working with are not harmed or exploited.

Clearly we cannot hope to get the Raelians or Clitoraid to engage in the kinds of debates and reflections one might expect in standard healthcare practice, which is a pity. It is equally sad that reasonable questions about practice have been met with unpleasant accusations. Not least the singling out of one African critic, rather than focusing on a global questioning of an organisation which has been steadily growing for the past four years.

We should continue to ask questions of Clitoraid because to date answers to specific questions about fundraising and activity have not been adequately answered.

Betty Dodson and Audre Lorde: Can I possibly use the master’s tools to demolish her house?

So Betty Dodson, the ‘expert’ that had recommended Clitoraid with their humiliating Adopt A Clitoris campaign has written an attempted response to the critics of Clitoraid.  The piece, republished on the Clitoraid website, is an interesting provocation to engage but it is so lacking in logic that I’m having a hard time even deciding whether to respond.

On one hand I’m tempted to engage her and convince her the many errors of her ways with regard to this specific issue of Female Circumcision.  She obviously didn’t do her research enough to realize that I’m not African American, there is no such place as San Francisco University, and that the critique of Clitoraid is much wider than just my individual concerns as reflected by the 221 signatures to the online petition before we closed it early.  Indeed many, including Dr. Petra Boynton, Dr. Elisabeth  Wood,  Matthew Greenall, Darklady,  Kudzai Makombe and Caille Milner of the San Francisco Chronicle have all previously written criticizing Clitoraid extensively.

Sadly Ms. Dodson’s  willful blindness speaks to how she goes about things and why she’s ended up in the Clitoraid mess she’s clinging to.  Apparently her research method is restricted to grabbing random facts about an issue and rearranging them to suit her own fancy.

Then again i’m reminded of Audre Lorde’s wonderful piece titled The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.  In it she writes that,

“Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male
ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an
old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with
the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of women of Color to
educate white women — in the face of tremendous resistance — as to our
existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This
is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal
thought”. (http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/2006-March/000794.html)

This excerpt reflects exactly how I feel about Betty’s attacks on my critique of clitoraid.   Audre Lorde wrote this indictment of feminism 26 years ago and it is stunning how far feminism has NOT come thanks to feminists like Ms. Dodson!

Seriously, when do we get to move on to the real and pressing issues?  Why must I stop and have to explain the importance of respecting African women and our dignity to fellow feminists?

So, that is why I don’t know how to react to Betty Dodson’s statements.  To engage with her ridiculousness is to divert my energies from much more important work that urgently needs to be done.  But if I chose to be quiet I’m afraid I might communicate to other young brown feminists out there that feminism is still a space of hurt and humiliation for women of color where speaking out is met with personal attacks from older ‘experts’.

Then there is the disturbingly unquestioned position of authority that Betty holds on all things sexual.  Reproducing patriarchal systems of hierarchical power, it seems she has reached to far high up the ladder that anyone who dares ask a question is a pariah whose sanity is to be questioned.  I had never heard of her before this Clitoraid thing and so it was in naivete that I questioned her ‘expertise’ on the issue of Female Circumcision.  Woe unto me for daring.

I have to admit that it is with sadness I wonder out loud if this the cutting edge of North American feminism? Is it that the sum total of feminist thought and mobilizing is about pleasure?  We’ve made the entire experience of womanhood all about what is between our legs and not between our ears and in our hearts?  That the respect so necessary in building the bridges of sisterhood is to be abandoned because one ‘expert’ must be venerated?

26 years after Lorde’s indictment we are still standing at the same street corner haggling over whether women of color deserve respect and have anything to contribute to feminism?!

If you were me what would you do?  Would you engage with Betty or leave it at these questions?

Good Vibrations begins sending good vibes African women’s way!

Update April 15th:

WE DID IT!! Today’s San Francisco Chronicle further confirms that Good Vibrations has officially dropped their support of Clitoraid and with their humiliating ‘adopt a clitoris’ campaign.  Instead, Good Vibrations is searching to partner with a feminist organization addressing the issue of Female Circumcision in a culturally appropriate and respectful way. (see call for suggestions below).

YOUR signatures, tweets, blogs, led to the overwhelming public response so that the campaign only needed to last 10 days from April 5th to April 15th!

THANK YOU for taking a stand for African Women’s dignity and respect.

April 14th 2010

Definitely as a result of all our mobilizing, and perhaps highlighted by today’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle there is finally some good vibes coming from Good Vibrations.  Indeed, I’m beyond excited to have a positive update to this ongoing drama about Good Vibrations and Clitoraid with their adopt a clitoris campaign.

Jackie Strano, GV’s Chief Operating Officer and I have been in further contact and she has promised to end Good Vibration’s support of Clitoraid and partner with an African women’s organization addressing the issue of Female Circumcision.  In fact, Good Vibrations is now actively seeking to partner with an African women’s organizations working on this issue!

So, I am turning to you out there, who have kept up with this blog and supporting the critique of Clitoraid, to please let us all know of potential partner organizations.

By crowdsourcing this information on African women’s initiatives around FC I’m hoping for two things: 1. Good Vibrations will be spoilt for choice when it comes to potential partners, and 2. Those organizations dealing with FC will have  some public recognition for their diligent and good work that too frequently goes unrecognized.

So, please help me reach out into all your networks and identify African women’s initiatives addressing FC and its impacts on women’s health.

On my current list are the Global Fund for Women, the Africa Women’s Development Fund, and AMANITARE.  I know there are many others out there.  What are their names and how can we contact them?

Please note that posting here in no way constitutes an endorsement.  We must always  conduct rigorous due diligence before endorsing any charity!

Also please see my earlier post with questions to ask before you engage in philanthropic activity

No free lunch: African women are still not for sale

Good Vibration has repeatedly stood by its support of Clitoraid and their campaign offering African women’s clitorises up for adoption by anyone with spare change.

After an intense mobilization and many sexual health experts questioning their decision to support the Raelian UFO cult instead of African women’s own initiatives against Female Circumcision our online petition now has 201 signatures and our Facebook page has 223 members.

We have made it clear that this campaign challenging Clitoraid an their support by Good Vibrations is not to support the practice of Female Circumcision.  It calls for respect for African women when addressing this important issue.  We KNOW that it is possible to address the negative effects of female circumcision without denigrating African women with gimmicks such as clitoris adoptions.  Indeed African women who have undergone circumcision also deserve integrity and respect!

In response to my ongoing critique,  Jackie Strano,  Chief Operating Officer of Good Vibrations has just written to offer me a free lunch.

I said not yet.  My email back to Good Vibrations explains why:

Thanks for the offer but I don’t think lunch is yet appropriate.

I’d rather sort out our differences  first THEN meet over lunch to celebrate when we both are on the same page about the dignity of ALL women including African women.

I think you have not understood yet that my protest at your publicly stated support of Clitoraid is not just about me as an individual.   And stalling for time just allows more time for people, your former and potential customers, to find out about your more than unfortunate choice in partners when it comes to supporting undermining your African sisters.

Instead of trying to placate me as an individual wouldn’t it just be so much easier to go ahead and issue a fresh new press statement retracting your March 24 press statement that celebrated your support for Clitoraid.  Within your new press statement you can even announce corporate support for an African women’s initiative on the issue of FGM (which I, or any of the numerous African feminists now watching for your next move, are more than happy to help you decide from).

A public retraction of your previous statement begins to undo some of the ill will that you have been gathering, especially among women of color, plus GV gets to look good by supporting African women’s self-empowerment campaigns…

Once you’ve done those two things then I’d be happy to break bread with you.  Heck, I’ll be happy to host an African lunch for you at my home!  Consider that the offer I bring to the table 🙂

Until then, there have been too many inconsistencies in your statements for me to trust you enough to have, and enjoy, your free lunch.

Warm Regards

Wanjiru

Wasn’t me …

Just in case they are tempted to deny, here is the most recent announcement by Good Vibrations standing by Clitoraid as recently as April 7th 2010.

Their original press release was made on March 24th 2010

Clipped from: magazine.goodvibes.com by clp.ly

Some thoughts on Clitoraid and the ethics of intervention

This is a fantastic post by Elizabeth of Sex In The Public Square.org.  Reprinted in its entirety with her gracious permission:

Submitted by Elizabeth on 11 April 2010 – 5:33pm

Sexual pleasure is a human right and I wholeheartedly support the providing of free surgery to those who need it and can’t afford it. This is the case for many women who underwent the excision of their clitorises during ritual cutting (FGM/C). There is also no question in my mind that “Adopt a Clitoris” – the campaign rally of Clitoraid.org – is a deeply problematic slogan for a deeply problematic organization. If you’re new to the Clitoraid story here’s some background:

Several years ago the Raelians (a religious group that believes humans were created by intelligent designers from outer space) founded an organization, Clitoraid, to offer free clitoris reconstruction surgeries to women who had undergone clitoridectomy – one form of female circumcision or female genital mutliation/cutting (FGM/C) – so that they could have the pleasure of clitoral stimulation restored to them. Clitoraid uses language that reduces sexual pleasure to clitoral orgasms and that treats African women’s bodies as objects that can be reduced to clitorises and adopted. That said, it is true that their mission is indeed to provide free surgery to women who need it. They do this by funding surgeries at a clinic in Trinidad Colorado, and also by using donations to build a hospital in Burkina Faso.

There are a number of problems with Clitoraid’s work and I’m going to talk about only two. Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rotenberg raises questions about the connection between Good Vibes and Clitoraid (more on that below) and Dr. Petra Boynton raisies questions about Clitoraid from a medical and research ethics point of view. Please read their work. I’ve included a list of sources explaining the work already going on in Burkina Faso at the bottom of this post as well.

One of the problems I want to address is that, while the Raelians are collecting money to build a brand new hospital that they will control, there are already hospitals in Burkina Faso, both public and private, that are performing these surgeries and have been for years. According to IRIN nearly 1000 surgeries, funded by the state, to reopen womens vaginas had been performed between 2001 and 2009. In 2006 surgeons began performing clitoral reconstruction surgeries. Over 100 such surgeries have been performed at a cost of roughly $140, well out of reach of many women in Burkina Faso. Still there is a waiting list because not all the women who want the surgery can be accomodated. Given all this work already going on in the country, it puzzles me that the Raelians are choosing to build a new hospital instead of supporting local efforts that are desperately in need of the funds being syphoned into this new initiative. In the IRIN article I linked above, Dr. Michel Akotionga and Dr. Charlemagne Ouedraogo outline the tragic lack of resources to support the work they are doing. Dr. Akotionga

said he has helped train 20 doctors to perform the 30-minute operation but “lack of equipment prevents them from [performing] the surgery.” Ouedraogo said were it not for the equipment problem, surgeons could reconstruct clitorises during genital repair operations. “We are right there before the clitoris – why not reconstruct it?”

Why build a whole new hospital, ignoring local cultural issues while doing so, and running into all the troubles that generally accrue to top-down, outsider-focused interventions? Why not donate equipment, help expand the existing surgeries, and donate funds for subsidizing the surgeries for women who can’t afford it? There may be reasons that collaboration with institutions in Burkina Faso is problematic but none are mentioned in any of the Clitoraid literature about this. (And specifically regarding the choice of Good Vibes to donate via Clitoraid, it may also be the case that Clitoraid is the only organization working on women’s sexual health care who will take money from a sex-related business. I wrote a few years ago about how the Breast Cancer Society of Canada would not except a donation from Exotic Dancers for Cancer because of the stigma attached to the work of the donors. If this is part of the story it is evidence of how limited the opportunities for philanthropy might be for an organization like Good Vibes and how far we need to go to distigmatize sexuality here in the United States.)

Difficulties aside, it is critically important that any efforts to help women through reconstructive surgery be paired closely with those efforts to transform the cultures that caused the harm they are trying to reverse. That brings me to the second problem I want to address which is linked to the first through Clitoraid’s apparent lack of focus on local cultural context. A 2005 report posted on IRIN, the news and analysis project of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, notes that though FGM/C was outlawed in Burkina Faso in 1996 (punishable by a fine of up to US $1,800 and 3 years in prison), and excisions had dropped in the decade since, that still many people were willing to risk the fines and indeed some people had been jailed more than a few times.  In addition, in a 2007 Reuters article Alice Behrendt of Plan International notes that despite the government making available reconstructive surgery “Men are still very afraid of women being unfaithful, and most parents refuse to abstain from excision because they fear their daughters will express sexual desire and it will bring problems for the family such as early pregnancy.” She “worries that some families may try to re-excise women who have the reconstructive surgery.” In fact Benjamine Doamba, an active campaigner against FGM/C in Burkina Faso who is also quoted in the Reuters article, suggests that an unintended consequence of making surgeries available without sufficient cultural change may be that FGM/C becomes harder to resist: “If everyone is saying girls have to be excised, well maybe a parent will say to himself or herself ‘I’ll fulfill my role as a father, as a mother, and excise her, and when she grows up, if she wants, she can go to the hospital to put back her clitoris.” This does not mean that the surgeries should not be performed, of course. Instead it means that the surgeries must be accompanied by internal educational and cultural change efforts.

So, if Clitoraid began all this several years ago, why the attention now? Clitoraid’s US operation was featured in Newsweek last October, after all. The attention comes now because of a recent press release circulated by Good Vibes announcing their support for the project through donations of vibrators for the very important rehabilitative work that is needed after surgery. That release made the rounds of several feminist sexuality email lists and raised some eyebrows. A bit of investigating raised anger. And that anger will, I hope, create an opportunity for some important discussions. It is worth noting that had it been another sex toy retailer I suspect the explosion of interest would not have happened in the same way. Though Good Vibes does not brand itself as feminist, I think that many of us who love the store for its woman-friendly, nonjudgemental, educationally-oriented space in the sex toy retail wold think of it as feminist. We associate it with the creative, intellectual and activist work of people like Carol Queen as if the two are one entity.

In writing about this I’m made painfully aware of the parallels to disagreements ways to write about and support sex worker advocacy. The emotionally-charged nature of the issue is similar. The need felt by those with greater privilege to help those with less is similar. The risk of running over community-based initiatives without noticing is similar. The potential for us/them divides among people who would otherwise be allies is similar.

In sex work research, advocacy and intervention as in public health work we know that if we are not members of the population we are trying to help we cannot impose our models and assumptions on those who are. We need to work collaboratively with local organizations, we need to involve the population we are working with in developing strategies and frameworks. We know these things and yet they seem to have been neglected here. In this case there are local anti-FGM/C and local health care initiatives that can be supported. I hope that what comes of the new attention to this issue is not divisiveness but discussion. I hope this generates discussion about the best ways to support locally organized anti-FGM/C campaigns where they have started, the best way to provide reconstructive surgery to those who want it, and sex education and rehabilitation along with relationship and family support to those who have surgery, and the best ways to support each other in doing all of this important work.

I invite comments with suggestions for ways to start and to sustain such conversation.

News coverage of clitoral reconstruction surgery and anto-FGM/C efforts in Burikna Faso

• IRIN: Humanitarian News and Analysis from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Dial SOS Circumcision and Stop Girls Being Cut,” March 18, 2005: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?reportid=53474
• Ochieng’ Ogodo, “Second Chance Against FGM,” Islam Online, January 7, 2007: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1165994389008&pagename=Zone-English-HealthScience/HSELayout
• Naomi Schwarz “Genital Surgery Helps Burkina’s Women,” Reuters, August 22, 2007: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL2692897720070822
• IRIN: Humanitarian News and Analysis from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “When Sex Becomes A Luxury,” April 10, 2009: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=83893

I Call further BS on Good Vibrations!

Wow, Good Vibrations keeps digging a bigger hole with every move.  This morning they wrote to me and other critics:we donated vibrators and body care products for post-surgical care to the women undergoing surgeries at the clinic in Trinidad. Colorado, because our colleague Betty Dodson requested that we do so. We have not partnered with Clitoraid beyond this, nor do we have plans to do so.

But just a wee little bit of digging pulls up a press release they made on  March 24th this year declaring

This Summer, Good Vibrations’ customers can give the gift of pleasure to women around the world who suffered female genital mutilation (FGM) during childhood. They can do this by making a financial gift to Clitoraid at the time of their Good Vibrations purchase. (for full text see here: http://www.newsguide.us/education/Good-Vibrations-Announces-Upcoming-Donation-Partner-Clitoraid/?date=2010-03-25)

Oh, and Clitoraid seems not to have gotten the memo that Good Vibrations is not supporting them either!

http://www.clitoraid.org/e107_plugins/links_page/links.php?cat.2

Good Vibrations, if you’re listening allow me to suggest that publicly denouncing Clitoraid and making a public show of support for any of the African led organizations working on this issue is going to be a much better strategy than trying to dodge this and hoping nobody notices.  Its only a matter of time before the national media picks this story up I think….But then again, what do I know,  I’m just an African woman.  And as you’ve clearly shown, those voices don’t carry any weight for you.

Please sign the Petition urging Good Vibrations to cease their support of Clitoraid here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/feministschallengingclitoraid

Write to Good Vibrations urging them to cease their support of Clitoraid for their humiliation of African women!
Send emails to: webmaster@goodvibes.com, CamillaL@goodvibes.com CharlieG@goodvibes.com, and  carolq@goodvibes.com.

Call Good Vibrations and communicate your concern about their support of Clitoraid’s African women’s clitoris adoptions: Camilla Lombard, Events and Publicity Manager: (415) 974-8985 ext. 201

New communication from Good Vibrations re their support of Clitoraid

I just received an email from Good Vibrations where it seems that our mobilization is finally causing them to pay attention.  They write:

Greetings.  I would like to formally request that you please communicate the *facts* about Good Vibrations’s involvement with Clitoraid, which is that we donated vibrators and body care products for post-surgical care to the women undergoing surgeries at the clinic in Trinidad. Colorado, because our colleague Betty Dodson requested that we do so. We have not partnered with Clitoraid beyond this, nor do we have plans to do so. We have absolutely NO relationship with or control of the language that organization uses to describe their work, and we are not involved with it beyond our support of Betty’s work with the women at the clinic.

We are a retail business, established to give women (and everyone else) access to pleasure via information and good-quality products. I am deeply distressed that our mission, which is valued by so many, has been misrepresented, and I hope my statements can clarify the situation somewhat.

Thank you for your attention.

Carol Queen, PhD

Staff Sexologist and Cultural Officer

Good Vibrations

and I have quickly responded:

Hello Carol,
Nice to hear from you and your attempts at clarification.  But I’m confused and so are we all, who have felt betrayed by your association with Clitoraid.

Here is why we’re confused:

You may not have control over the language Clitoraid uses but you certainly have control over who you chose to partner with.  Indeed your decision to partner with Clitoraid through Dr. Dodson is both implied and EXPRESSED support of their work.  Your customers have certainly seen it that way.

Further, in my conversation with Camilla on Monday April 5th at 10am, she indicated that Good Vibrations was asking both its online and in-store customers to make a donation towards the genital reconstructive surgeries.   This is in addition to the vibrators and body care products Good Vibrations donated.  Again I’m confused since that is two very different messages coming from the same company.  Did you at any point ask your customers to give any donations that would end up with Clitoraid or Ms. Dodson’s work in support of Clitoraid?

Further, your (Camilla’s) last email to me indicated that nobody else was performing these surgeries.  Which is simply not true!  The government of Burkina Faso has itself been funding free reconstructive surgeries for years now and close to 1000 women have benefited from this public health service.  Private clinics also abound in Burkina Faso with emigrants returning to Burkina Faso from as far away as Canada to undergo the reconstructive surgeries.  Surely, if I could so easily access that information online a bit of research would have revealed it too.

Finally, bearing in mind that you clearly, either did not conduct the necessary due diligence about Clitoraid, or that you thought nobody would notice, wouldn’t it be easier to just back out of supporting them?

Better yet, why not make up for lost time and hurt feelings by showing your PUBLIC support for African women’s organizations engaged in this kind of work.

In fact, allow me to suggest a few:

African Partnership for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Women and Girls (AMANITARE)   Now based in South Africa, since 2000 AMANITARE has worked to advance the rights of African women, irrespective of difference, based on the principle of bodily integrity

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a grant-making foundation which supports local, national and regional organisations in Africa working towards women’s empowerment.  They have a particular focus on harmful traditional practices.

And closer to home:
The Global Fund for Women (GWF) which Since 1987 has awarded over $71 million to 3,800 women’s organizations in 167 countries.  Their African program funds small grassroots women’s organizations working towards ending the practice of FGM.

I hope that you will consider these organizations as viable and much more feminist alternatives to Clitoraid.

In sisterhood,

—

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, Ph.D.

Hello Carol,
Nice to hear from you and your attempts at clarification.  But I’m confused and so are we all, who have felt betrayed by your association with Clitoraid.

Here is why we’re confused:

You may not have control over the language Clitoraid uses but you certainly have control over who you chose to partner with.  Indeed your decision to partner with Clitoraid through Dr. Dodson is both implied and EXPRESSED support of their work.  Your customers have certainly seen it that way.

Further, in my conversation with Camilla on Monday April 5th at 10am, she indicated that Good Vibrations was asking both its online and in-store customers to make a donation towards the genital reconstructive surgeries.   This is in addition to the vibrators and body care products Good Vibrations donated.  Again I’m confused since that is two very different messages coming from the same company.  Did you at any point ask your customers to give any donations that would end up with Clitoraid or Dr. Dodson’s work in support of Clitoraid?

Further, your (Camilla’s) last email to me indicated that nobody else was performing these surgeries.  Which is simply not true!  The government of Burkina Faso has itself been funding free reconstructive surgeries for years now and close to 1000 women have benefited from this public health service.  Private clinics also abound in Burkina Faso with emmigrants returning to Burkina Faso from as far away as Canada to undergo the reconstructive surgeries.  Surely, if I could so easily access that information online a bit of research would have revealed it too.

Finally, bearing in mind that you clearly, either did not conduct the necessary due diligence about Clitoraid, or that you thought nobody would notice, wouldn’t it be easier to just back out of supporting them?

Better yet, why not make up for lost time and hurt feelings by showing your PUBLIC support for African women’s organizations engaged in this kind of work.

In fact, allow me to suggest a few:

African Partnership for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Women and Girls (AMANITARE)   Now based in South Africa, since 2000 AMANITARE has worked to advance the rights of African women, irrespective of difference, based on the principle of bodily integrity

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a grant-making foundation which supports local, national and regional organisations in Africa working towards women’s empowerment.  They have a particular focus on harmful traditional practices.

And closer to home:
The Global Fund for Women (GWF) which Since 1987 has awarded over $71 million to 3,800 women’s organizations in 167 countries.  Their African program funds small grassroots women’s organizations working towards ending the practice of FGM.

I hope that you will consider these organizations as viable and much more feminist alternatives to Clitoraid.

In sisterhood,

—
Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor,
Politics Department,
University of San Francisco

Making money off African women’s genitalia

The more I dig into this Clitoraid stuff the more i’m left scratching my head at Good Vibrations and just how much they did not do their homework!

This morning I found this article Basically stating that the surgery to reopen the vagina to ease medical problems has existed for many years, and is offered for free by the government of  Burkina Faso.   Further, as of the article’s publication date in 2001 the new reconstructive surgery being performed here now is the first to attempt to reverse circumcision and allow women to regain some sexual sensation.

So what is Good Vibrations talking about when they say “Clitoraid was the only nonprofit organization we could find that was specifically funded for this purpose”.  A few minutes on google and they would have the same information that I’ve found!

Again, I see their digging into supporting Clitoraid as a form of willful ignorance and arrogance where they would rather promote their business to customers with a ‘cool’ marketing ploy at the expense of African women and our dignity.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Feminists-Challenging-Clitoraid/103036729737458?ref=mf

Someone IS listening!! Good news from the Challenging Clitoraid campaign

I’m really excited to have something positive to blog in regards to this whole Clitoraid fiasco.

Last week I  sent an email to the organization Do Something which was also supporting Clitoraid’s adoption of African women’s clitorises.   DoSomething.Org is an innovative organization Using the power of online to get teens to do good stuff offline. They had sent a tweet to their 344,492! followers on March 30th stating: “As a means of supporting an important new medical facility in Burkina Faso, you can adopt a clitoris! (I’m not kidding.) http://www.clitoraid.org”

I sent them an email urging them to retract their support for Clitoraid and got the wonderfully encouraging response below.  Now if only Good Vibrations would take the cue! 😦

Thanks so much for your thoughtful response to our tweet — as someone well versed in issues surrounding international women’s rights, I have heard similar sentiments as the ones you expressed in terms of the difficulties that come with these sort of activist campaigns.

Our twitter account belongs solely to our CEO, and because of our large following, she is often sent hundreds of links to tweet out each day on behalf of our own and many other organizations, so obviously they are not all heavily researched and you point out a danger in this kind of promotion, so thank you for that and we’ll look to be more aware in sifting through these requests going forward.

Additionally, if you feel there is important content on this issue that you would like to see on our site, specifically ideas for how young people can take effective action around this cause, please feel free to send it to us and we will integrate onto our website.  Thanks very much!

Best,
Julia steers

—
Julia Steers, Content Editor
Editor, CelebsGoneGood.com
212 254.2390 x232

www.dosomething.org
powering offline action

Follow us: www.twitter.com/dosomething.

Below is the email I had sent them asking to reconsider their support:

Hi Do Something staff.
A while back you tweeted an encouragement for your supporters to ‘adopt an African woman’s clitoris’ via clitoraid.org.

I’m a professor of African Politics and an avid techie so I thought I’d write you with a heads up to be careful about who you urge your followers to support.

Clitoraid is a project of the Raelian movement. A UFO religion that believes that all life on Earth was created in scientific labs by a species of extraterrestrials. Their previous venture, Clonaid was met with a kind of skepticism that Clitoraid has not.

For years now African women have been complaining that, even as we are engaged in domestic campaigns to end the practice of female circumcision within our communities, the eager participation by Westerners, has sometimes done more harm than good. These well meaning but ill informed activists have taken over the space, displaced African women’s voices on the issue.

Feminists have now started coming together to challenge Clitoraid and their humiliating campaign: http://bit.ly/9pdF94 I think that would be a better place to direct your supporters as we work to ensure a feminism that is free of racism.

A good place to start getting familiar with the vast literature by African women on Female Circumcision is the book:
Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses edited by Obioma Nnaemeka

Yet another book: Female “circumcision” in Africa: culture, controversy, and change By Bettina Shell-Duncan, Ylva Hernlund. The chapter by Fuambai Ahmadu starting at Page 238 is particularly enlightening.

I hope that you will undo your support of the cult supported Clitoraid by tweeting a retraction to your followers.  We, your supporters, will be waiting eagerly to see your updates on this very important issue as you stand on the side of empowering African women!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: find out what it means to me (Still ranting about Clitoraid)

Sign the petition here

Chris asks a fantastic question that deserves its very own blog post.  He asks: If there was someone besides the Raelians who was offering it (reconstructive surgery), or if there was an African-based organization that made these treatments available, would you object to that?”

the quick answer is simple: NO!

I WOULD NOT OBJECT TO OTHER ORGANIZATIONS ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN CIRCUMCISED!

In fact, I agree that there is a need for services to such women.  According to the research I’ve done, there are indeed local Burkina Faso doctors offering surgeries to reverse the tissue damage.  Indeed it seems that the government of Burkina Faso itself offers these surgeries and since 2001 975 women have had state-funded genital repair surgeries. (If Good Vibrations had done their due diligence they would have known this!)

Some of the people performing the surgeries include Dr. Michel Akotionga, a gynaecologist and one of the first gynaecologists in Burkina Faso to perform the reconstructive surgery.

I am NOT opposed to Clitoraid because it offers reconstructive surgeries.  I am opposed to it because of their demeaning campaign. Again, I am ALL for women’s pleasure!  But I am also for respect and against humiliation. Nobody’s genitalia should be talked about in the way that Clitoraid is talking about African women’s genitalia.  In fact, no part of anyone’s body should be up for adoption in this way that reminds us too much of the slave trade (Oh no, I went there!).

Seriously, what does it mean to ‘adopt a clitoris’?  Does that mean you own said clitoris or are you just fostering it for a little bit?  Do you get to name it?   What are the implications for the person whose clitoris is being adopted?

As an African woman I’m sick and tired of my entire experience reduced to what is between my legs.  And this is not a new feminist argument.  Western feminists have been arguing this for generations now.  Why is it o.k. for Western feminist to argue that they should not be reduced only to what is between their legs while an allegedly feminist organization like Good Vibrations engages in such a practice?  Where is the sisterhood there?

That is why I’m angry.  But behind the anger is a real sense of betrayal and being thrown under the bus by Good Vibrations.  All in favor of a UFO cult that has my clitoris up for adoption for anyone with spare change.  Thankfully they do not have a price tag on it.  How much would it suck if it only cost $1!!! 🙂

Apparently the disrespect extends to the way Clitoraid carries out their activities in Burkina Faso where it sounds like the Raelians have ran afoul of local authorities with their activities.

In further research about what the Raelians are doing on the ground I have found the following links rather helpful:
–http://le10sident.blogspirit.com/archive/2009/08/28/la-clinique-du-plaisir-qui-fait-couler-beaucoup-d-encre-et-d.html

Their own newsletter describing their operations in Burkina Faso further confirms my suspicions.  In this newsletter they brag about misrepresenting the name of the hospital they are building stating,
“The official name of the Hospital was another ball game! The name “Pleasure Hospital” seems to have shocked some people along the administrative trail of the file. One of the women who were to sign for the Health Ministry, retained the file for several months, asserting that she would never sign as long as the word pleasure would not be removed from the official name. After many endless discussions, the women’s access to pleasure who were waiting, appeared more important to us than the name itself and the hospital thus became: The “KAMKASSO HOSPITAL” which means in the local language, the women’s house. But we will keep for our communications the name “Pleasure Hospital”, no matter how displeased that woman was that we could associate a clitoris and pleasure”.

They admit to blatant duplicity in how they are marketing the hospital!! And that is their side of the story.  I’m eager to find out how the opposition would describe their activities.

Doesn’t it seem like strange bedfellows for Good Vibrations?  where was the due diligence before pledging their support?  Did they know, and decide to ignore, all this before they decided to support the organization or was the temptation to adopt clitorises just too much to resist?

Depressing Response from Good Vibrations

Update: don’t just get mad or sad, act!

The online petition to Good Vibrations is up and running here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/feministschallengingclitoraid

so please show your support and click to sign it.

So I finally heard from Good Vibrations and its not good news.  They firmly stand behind the public humiliation of African women through Clitoraid’s Adopt a Clitoris campaign 😦

I have to admit that I feel incredibly betrayed by this business that is supposed to be at the progressive edge of the feminist movement.  Most so because I believed.  I believed that there was such a thing as a sisterhood that was based on mutual respect and dignity.

Not once does their letter mention the very humiliating campaign targeting African women’s most private of parts.  And not once do they address the fact that Clitoraid is ran by a UFO cult, the Raelians.  These are strategic decisions on their part.  To sidestep the issues at the center of my critique of their approach.

The issue under debate is not whether there are cultural complexities around the practice of FGM.  Of course there are. Everyone knows it.

The issue is whether it is right for an allegedly progressive feminist organization to support a cult that is advancing the adoption of African women’s clitorises.   I articulated that quite carefully in my first letter to GV and I’m deeply disappointed that GV chose to side with the continued humiliation of African women.

But I do hope that American feminists will have the courage to critique one of their own.  Because apparently, African voices are irrelevant.

For the full and unedited text of the letter that has me so depressed read on:

Dear Wanjiru,

In response to your recent criticism we would like to clarify our role and re-state that we are honored to engage in a supportive role with women who have chosen to undergo this elective surgery. We understand that there are large cultural issues underlying the very need for this surgery and wish to reiterate that our involvement is intended to support women who wish to achieve the pleasure that is their birthright.

Good Vibrations: Who We Are

Good Vibrations, www.goodvibes.com, is the nation’s first and premier provider of sex education and sex positive products. We are a San Francisco-based multi channel retailer that women and couples have trusted for over three decades to provide a comfortable, safe environment for finding sex-positive products and educational materials to enhance their sex life.

Good Vibrations strives to be an agent for social change, through the lenses of sexuality, diversity and alternative business practices. Both within our organization, and throughout the communities we serve and in which we live, Good Vibrations is committed to fostering respect, promoting supportive communication, providing access to educational resources and strongly advocating for women in leadership roles.

We make it a priority to employ and interact with individuals and organizations according to their skills, abilities and experience. We value diversity and embrace all manifestations of gender, orientation and consensual sexual expression in the fulfillment of our sex-positive mission. We are conscious of the roles that the race, class, age and the physical and emotional abilities of our workers and our communities play in the realization of that mission.

Clitoraid

Good Vibrations has partnered with Clitoraid to donate vibrators and bath and body products to assist with the post-op physical therapy of patients who have undergone reconstructive surgery.   Betty Dodson leads the physical therapy sessions and recommended Good Vibrations as a partner since we carry vibrators that she prefers.

Our founding principle as a sex education and retail company is that pleasure is a birthright of all people. Clitoraid’s mission of “restoring a sense of pleasure and dignity” resonates with this foundation.  Despite the politics around the practice of clitoridectomy, sometimes called female circumcision, we believe that women who so desire should have access to a surgery that would give them clitoral sensation and pleasure free of charge, and that is what Clitoraid offers.

Our Research

Clitoraid was the only nonprofit organization we could find that was specifically funded for this purpose.  There are very few surgeons in the world who do this practice, and the surgeon in Colorado studied under the surgeon who pioneered the practice in France.  Newsweek did an interesting story following several patients, here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/218692 Betty Dodson’s endorsement is indeed powerful, as an important founder of the pro-sex feminist movement and the greatest champion of female orgasm ever.  http://dodsonandross.com/blogs/betty-dodson/2010/03/dr-marci-bowers-new-clitoral-reconstructive-surgery-brings-hope-140m-wome

The Women

There is clearly a very large demand for this surgery, as the wait list for the Clitoraid hospital in Burkina Faso is already up to 224, and it isn’t even completed yet.  So far, Clitoraid has funded 16 surgeries free of charge in Colorado to women from around the world, including Canada, Japan, and Korea.  This is not limited to African women.

Elective Reconstructive Surgery

At this point, the number of surgeries performed is still relatively small. However, the patients have expressed great satisfaction with the process. Even though it can take several months to fully heal, many have “reclaimed” their orgasms.  Their gratitude is largely between them and their surgeon, and the people who assisted them.  Patients typically keep the experience private so they may continue to function within their community.

Good Vibrations understands that the relationships between cultural practices, colonization, and activism are complex and we are not suggesting that Clitoraid or their work is a substitute for the important work to address the issue of female genital mutilation. We would be happy to support any organization, African or not, that supports women from all over the world getting access to surgery that connects them to their pleasure.

With respects,

Camilla Lombard, Events and Publicity Manager

Dr. Carol Queen, Staff Sexologist and Chief Cultural Officer

Dr. Charlie Glickman, Education Program Manager

Camilla Lombard

Events and Publicity Manager

Good Vibrations

(415) 974-8985 ext.201

camillal@goodvibes.com

www.goodvibes.com

www.GV-IXFF.org

No, you can’t have my clitoris!!

Updates:  In the face of complete silence from Good Vibrations its time to mobilize.  Please join the campaign at http://bit.ly/9pdF94

Are you in North America? Call Good Vibrations and communicate your concern about their support of Clitoraid’s African women’s clitoris adoptions: Camilla Lombard, Events and Publicity Manager: (415) 974-8985 ext. 201

So I just called Good Vibrations and spoke the Events and Publicity Manager.  Good Vibrations has partnered with Clitoraid whose campaign urging people to adopt an African woman’s clitoris  I wrote about last week.  According to the manager, Good Vibrations is not only providing boxes of vibrators, they are also encouraging both their online and in-store customers to donate to Clitoraid.

One of my students did note that, quite interestingly, Clitoraid does not seem to assign a price value to the clitoris under adoption!

Anyway, The lady at Good Vibrations was wonderfully polite and excited to share information about their support stating that Clitoraid was a natural fit 🙂 for them to support the organization since Good Vibrations considers sexual pleasure a birthright.  (and I wholeheartedly agree that it is!)

When I pressed further on the due diligence Good Vibrations had done for the campaign things got a little more silent.   When I pointed out the ongoing outrage about Clitoraid on the webspace including Facebook and Twitter her response was a request for more scientific evidence that support of clitoraid was a bad idea.  O.K. Fair enough.

So I sat and started drafting an email explaining it all.  And I thought to myself, if i’m going to all this trouble writing this, why don’t I share it publicly and see what happens?  My last public email to Feed My Starving Children seems to have had absolutely no impact at all anyway…

So this is what I wrote:

It was nice to speak to you this morning and I hope you will forgive me for copying other members of your organization on this email.  I am doing it because I hope that the critical conversation that we’re having about good Vibrations’ support of Clitoraid and their campaign to have supporters adopt African women’s clitoris(es?) should not end with just you and I.

I’m sorry I could not immediately direct you to sources of more information about the very complicated conversation about female circumcision that exits off the top of my head.  I’m afraid that sometimes after one has been steeped in certain conversations for a long time the answers are so obvious and so my response to your request for sources of information was a bit more like ‘duh, EVERYONE knows thats a loaded issue!’

That said, it does seem that you, and the hardworking people at Good Vibrations, were not aware just what a loaded issue the topic is and so I’m directing some sources your way so that you can inform yourselves.  In addition to the homework allow me to bookend them with my articulation of why your support for the Clitoraid and its move to adopt a clitoris is deeply problematic from an African woman’s perspective.

1. Clitoraid is a project of the Raelian movement.  A UFO religion that believes that all life on Earth was created in scientific labs by a species of extraterrestrials.  Their previous venture, Clonaid was met with a kind of skepticism that Clitoraid has not.  It is beyond me what led the Raelians into such a passionate ferver for African women’s clitoris but the Raelian movement’s institutional backing behind Clitoraid should have raised some serious questions at Good Vibrations.

2. Honestly, it blows my mind that, by your admission, you never bothered to consult even one African woman, or even read any of the massive amounts of literature that African women have written about the practice before wholeheartedly throwing Good Vibrations’ support behind the clitoris adoptions.  There is so much information out there that not looking at it seems a willful act of ignorance.  It is because I chose to believe that your blindness was not willful that I am taking the time to draft this email and engage you in conversation.

3. When I asked what kind of research you had done on Clitoraid and their campaign you indicated that your due diligence consisted only of a phonecall requesting your support from Betty Dobson.  Seriously, to only rely on one American woman’s endorsement of the campaign, whether she’s the famous Betty Dobson or not, is a little too trusting. No?

It boggles the mind that the voice of one Western woman was enough to merit ignoring the voices of the many African women who have devoted their lives to writing about the topic and working to end the practice!

After our conversation this morning I took some time to research Betty Dodson and was impressed by her singular commitment to women’s pleasure.  Of that I am a huge fan.  When it comes to the topic of female circumcision though, I was appalled as she revealed just what we African feminists have been complaining about our Western sisters.

I was shocked to read Betty’s account of ‘her’ first circumcised African woman (her words, not mine!).  At the end of the particular blog post she reveals her expolitationist orientation when she describes what happened when ‘her’ first circumcised African woman left.  Carlin and I were ecstatic. Then my brilliant business partner looked at me and said, “This is an op-ed piece for the New York Times.” “I’d rather see it as an article in Vanity Fair,” I replied. At that point we grinned from ear to ear, did a high five and called it a day”.
This is the one and only ‘expert’ you consulted?  Really?  How come?

For years now African women have been complaining that even as we are engaged in domestic campaigns to end the practice of female circumcision within our communities, the eager participation by Westerners, particularly Western feminists, has done much more harm than good.  In a nutshell, Western feminists have taken over the space, displaced African women’s voices on the issue, and have carelessly thrown about their neo-colonial weight in ways that have served only to further entrench the issue.

Unfortunately, you at Good Vibrations have unwittingly walked into that existing dynamic and, by not consulting African women who have for generations been working to end the practice, have replicated the neo-colonialist and exploitative stand so common of Westerners in this conversation.  What makes me sad about it is that you, as a company, have been so progressively feminist in so many other ways!  Why this blindness when it comes to your African sisters?

In an attempt to enlighten allow me to share with you some of the conversations that African women have been having, albeit apparently unheard, on the topic.  The references below are just the tip of what is a massive literature, primarily by African women, critiquing the neo-colonial way that conversations about African women’s genitalia have captured the fascination of the West.
A good place to start is the book
Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses edited by Obioma Nnaemeka

Yet another book: Female “circumcision” in Africa: culture, controversy, and change By Bettina Shell-Duncan, Ylva Hernlund. The chapter by Fuambai Ahmadu starting at Page 238 is particularly enlightening.

Further critical African women’s voices about Western discussions of the topic: can be accessed here: http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd3-2.html#Z1

I hope that my email will help you evaluate your decision to associate your company (of which I’m an avid supporter 🙂 with the Raelian movement and its ‘adopt a clitoris’ campaign.

Listening to ‘Africa’s Voice’

To finish off the week is a guest post by former student now working at Creative Commons and volunteering for Akili Dada,  Allison Domicone The main question, as I see it, is what if we used technology not to talk AT Africa, but to LISTEN!

“Africa is dying in silence for no one listens to its voice” – Ryszard Kapuscinski

Oh really?

I came across this quote while trolling the net for possible topics of discussion for a weekly meeting of Akili Dada interns and volunteers a few weeks ago. I found it on an Italy-based website called Afronline: the voice of Africa. Afronline seeks to “encourage the development of cultural relations between Africa and Italy. In particular, its aim is to diffuse, through the offer of quality information, a better knowledge of social conditions on the African continent.”

While I didn’t find it all that strange that a Polish journalist’s quote would show up on an Italian website seeking to give voice to people on the African continent, I did find the whole thing somewhat troubling. First of all, I find Mr. Kapuscinski’s quote to be a bit alarmist, and I question anyone who puts Africa and dying in the same sentence – how many times and to what end must we hear about the myriad ways the continent and its peoples are suffering, enduring, and fading away into diseased, war-racked nothingness? I’m nowhere close to being African and I find the whole picture dismal, reeking entirely of prejudice and self-fulfilling prophesied doom.

Certainly, I will admit to having bought into, on occasion, this Western view of a dying, withering Africa that I must do my part to save (whatever that means). How could I not, with so many centuries of thinking and acting in such a manner bearing down upon me? Luckily, two things have occurred in my life in the past three years that have helped me rethink the whole Africa-is-going-down-the-hole-faster-than-we-can-say-starving-child mentality that pervades Western economic, social, and political thought and actions. One, I met Wanjiru. If you read her blog you’ll understand how an educated but relatively sheltered young white woman from a middle class background could stand to learn a lot from her.

The other was that I started working at Creative Commons , an innovative nonprofit that promotes easy and legal sharing of content online – be it academic, scientific, artistic, or educational – so that anyone, anywhere in the world can access and benefit from the rich and diverse culture that surrounds us, especially in the vastness that is cyberspace. Suddenly, my eyes were opened to a world of ground-breaking technology coming from organizations who share the same values of openness and access as Creative Commons – technology that has the capacity to level the digital playing field, so to speak, and allow anyone with access to the web a chance to participate in global culture.

For Africa, this is huge.

Perhaps for the first time ever, we have the opportunity to listen to the voices of Africans themselves. Forget Western filters. Forget gigantic (U.S.-headquartered) non-governmental organizations. Let’s listen to a blogger in Sierra Leone tell us how she views the world, rather than force her to listen to our view of hers. Let’s shut up, for once, and relinquish control over the power of information and let information technology transform the world, as I believe it has the power to do. Transformation begins with uprooting all preconceived notions of the way the world works, of who has power, who deserves it, who speaks for whom and why, and who doesn’t get to speak at all.

Something that Wanjiru said during our discussion that day in our meeting really struck me (to the point where I hastily jotted it down like the eager university student I haven’t been since graduating nearly two years ago), and continues to influence my thinking on this topic: namely, the idea that Africa has been unable to participate in global conversations, even on matters of grave importance to Africans themselves, because the powers that be have been undermining Africa’s legitimacy for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. For far too long, we have been relaying the message: “No no, no one wants to listen to you. You don’t know any better.”

Luckily, the internet is making it harder and harder for those in power to squash the voices of its citizens. It’s proving to be quite the convincing tool for democracy and peace and I hope it can continue to spark the kinds of cross-border awareness that afronline.org is, for better or worse, promoting.

In the meantime, I’m encouraged to see sites popping up all over that directly address the concept of Africa’s legitimacy, without any of the damaging neo-liberal baggage. There’s Maneno, a website completely built from the ground-up to be a blogging and communication platform to meet the needs of the Sub-Saharan blogger and writer. Or Global Voices Online, a community of bloggers around the world working to bring translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with an emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media.

While I’m still not sure what Africa’s “voice” does currently or might at some point in the future sound like, I’m optimistic that there are tools that exist and more that are being developed everyday that will encourage Africans to continue to speak up, talk back, and make themselves heard.

Adopt an African Woman’s Clitoris!

Some of these things you cannot make up!!

Yes, for a few dollars you too can adopt a clitoris!

and if adopting a clit  is just too much for you, how about donating underwear for Africa’s children ?

Oh yes. There are so many ways you can save Africa!

Makmende

Its impossible to navigate the Kenyan online space without running into Makmende!

Makmende is a fictional Kenyan superhero and you cannot be on facebook or twitter without running into him as the Wall Street Journal seems to have noticed:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/03/24/kenya-launches-countrys-first-viral-music-video/

for more makmende jokes check out twitter:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23makmende

and to understand who Makmende really is in the context of technology and and media in the Kenya space: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/03/24/makmendes-so-huge-he-cant-fit-in-wikipedia/

More from the band who brought us Makmende: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_N8dOOq1wk&feature=related

and randomly interesting: A promising netflix-like video rental site that uses text messaging rises in Nairobi: http://www.famiflix.com/

Philanthropy is like dating…

If you want to meet new people stop hanging out in the same old bars!

I’ve been glad to see the self-reflection going on in the social entrepreneurship space about diversity and more specifically, the lack of diversity among social entrepreneurs.

As one Skoll blogger put it, is it that only White men are innovative?

When there is a bit of colour (not that there aren’t any White Africans),   majority of the Africans on the roster of the major fellowship organizations have had the good fortune of receiving Western educations at some point in their careers.

So, why is it that those selecting social entrepreneurs to nurture and support are having such a hard time finding Africans on the continent who are creating valuable social ventures?

This is where my dating analogy comes in.

Recruiters of social entrepreneurs have been hanging out in the same bars and have been meeting the same potential fellows.  Those bars are, for the most part, located in North America and Western Europe.

The major, and I think potentially harmful, result of this is that there is a serious dearth of African social entrepreneurs being supported in their innovations for Africa.  Instead we are perpetuating the same old formula where Westerners come up with solutions for African problems and try to deploy them on Africans who have given varying levels of consent.(I smell another blog post coming!)

And while I’m at it I should point out that diversity is not just different skin colour, its also different lived experiences.  This, I think, is where the rubber meets the road.  Its one thing to have someone like me, Western educated, teaching at an American university, and able to speak the language of social entrepreneurship.  It’s entirely another thing to have someone who hasn’t left Nairobi, or a rural village, and to identify them and support their community transforming work.  These amazing social entrepreneurs are there all across Africa and I would love to see them recognized.

To find such entrepreneurs you’re going to need to get on an airplane and go to where they are, spend time with them and the communities they serve, and figure out, from the bottom up, what kind of help and support they need.  It may not look like the traditional networking package offered by the usual social entrepreneur fellowships.  I don’t know what it looks like but we need to get bigger ears and keep them to the ground.

Diversifying the field of social entrepreneurship requires a deep deep commitment to diversity.  One that goes beyond rhetoric and that is willing to put money where the mouth is.  Investing in offices and recruitment officers on the African continent who will traverse the various countries in search of amazing Africans who are silently transforming their communities.

My question is whether the funders of social entrepreneurs are willing to truly and really engage. To commit their resources to visiting different bars on different continents?

Understanding the history of global economic ideas

I have been teaching about the oil crisis of the early 1970s and its impact on the economies of capital poor countries and how that crisis was at the root of the devastation caused by structural adjustment policies of the 1990s.

While I find fascinating the process of making the links between seemingly disparate global events, its always a challenge cutting through the economic lingo and into the ideas.

Then a former student emailed me this link:

I love the humorous way of explaining the difference between Hayek’s and Keynes’ ideas about the role of the state ithe economy.  The battle of ideas between these two continues to impact the lives of millions of poor people to this day.

Watu Wazima: A gender analysis of forced male circumcisions during Kenya’s post-election violence

posted by Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

This article is part of a debate organized by Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) in collaboration with Moi University (Eldoret) and Pambazuka News. A selection of essays based on this debate will be published in an edited volume by Fahamu Books. For PDF documents of the debate please go to www.csls.ox.ac.uk/otjr.php.

Stories of men being forcibly circumcised and even castrated peppered news accounts of the madness that overtook Kenya in the aftermath of the December 2007 elections. According to the Waki commission that investigated the Post Election Violence (PEV), by January 2008 the ethnic militia of the Kikuyu ethnic group, Mungiki, used blunt objects such as broken glass to forcibly circumcise at least eight men, some as young as eleven and five years old. While exact numbers are hard to come by, one can deduce that tens of men endured genital mutilation during the first three months of 2008. Forced circumcisions were not new in Kenya. There had been previous reports of high school boys being forcibly circumcised at school and the now infamous Mungiki sect had made their mark on the Kenyan psyche by forcibly circumcising Kikuyu women. But this seemed the first time that forced circumcision was being used as a political tool. It was being deployed as a weapon of inter-ethnic war.

How can we understand the forced circumcisions in the context of gendered and ethnic politics in Kenya? Better yet, what would a gendered exploration of Kenya’s PEV that placed these forced circumcisions at the center of analysis look like? This question does not pre-suppose that others have not offered a gendered analysis of those gory months in 2008. Indeed, many brilliant authors have written incisive reports focusing a keen eye on the varied forms of brutality that women especially endured.

Still, I find that much of gender analysis today still leans too heavily towards a discussion of women’s experiences. While a focus on women has yielded enormous insight into the ecology of gender, the way society’s power is distributed among the genders, we stand to gain even more if we also pay attention to men’s experiences. It is with this critique of the field that I offer what I hope is a different kind of gender analysis to Kenya’s PEV. Mine is a gender analysis centered on men’s experiences.

If we are to take seriously that gender is a social construct that assigns different power values to the masculine while usually devaluing the feminine then there are some very serious gender implications for what happened in Kenya on those fateful days in early 2008. I argue that a gendered analysis of Kenya’s PEV that centers on men’s experiences reveals why all Kenyans, even men, should care about, and struggle for gender equality. Indeed, the Kenyan experience shows how, in a moment of political tension, anyone, even men, can be feminized, and once that is achieved, brutalization and violation is an easily justified next step.

December school holidays bring with them a wave of circumcision ceremonies across many of Kenya’s ethnic communities. Young men mark the verge of adolescence with the cutting of their foreskin often in elaborate ceremonies. Often the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood begins with a sequestering where the initiates are taught ‘how to be men’ and climaxes with the ceremonial cutting. From the elaborate ceremonies in rural Kenya to the sterile surgical cuts in genteel urban Nairobi, circumcision is a Kenyan institution with those few communities that do not practice it excluded in certain ways. It is important to note that among the first wave of rioters during PEV in January were young Kalenjin men, who had just completed their initiation rites in circumcision camps in Eldoret that December. Infused with a newfound sense of male identity, these young men rampaged through the Rift Valley province attempting to cleanse it from ‘outsiders’ from other ethnic communities.

Circumcision in Kenya is more than a cultural act. The practice has a long political history. A quick glace at Kenyan political history from colonialism onwards shows that circumcision, both male and female, has been wielded as a political tool during moments of intense conflict. Circumcision, especially female circumcision, was deployed as a weapon of anti-colonial struggle. The country’s founding father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, wrote about it in glowing terms, deriding those communities that did not make men of their boys. Meru women hid and circumcised each other when the practice was banned by the colonial British. President Moi’s insistence on banning female circumcision only served to drive it further underground and throughout the cutting of genital flesh has served as an act of resistance.

Then Mungiki came. They wore dreadlocks, invoked Mau Mau, inhaled tobacco snuff, and agitated for a return to what they saw as the pristine original state of Kikuyu natural identity. Kikuyu women became the targets. They were not to wear trousers and those who did were stripped naked and beaten publicly. Stories began emerging of Mungiki forcibly circumcising Kikuyu women.

Strangely, few spoke up. Some women’s rights activists protested, but within the larger public sphere, in those early days, Mungiki was a Kikuyu problem and only a menace to Kikuyu women.

Then came those shocking days in early 2008 when Kenyans took to crude knives, seeking to make men of each other. Mungiki was at it again, only this time the Kikuyu militia were circumcising Luo men, accusing them, as Kenyatta had alluded long before, of being mere boys. Circumcision was supposed to render them men. These circumcisions, of course, were torturous acts of violence that often turned out to be castrations calculated to kill their hapless victims.

Why did these Kikuyu men deploy the rhetoric of circumcision? What social context rendered circumcision a resonant frame within which to articulate their actions as part of the ethnic warfare that was going on? It is here that gender analysis helps us understand that Mungiki were able to kill by circumcision by first feminizing their victims.

The construction of Luo men as feminine was a process that had begun long before in Kenya’s ethnic politics. This construction ranged from Kenyatta’s rhetoric in newly independent Kenya to the murmurs, whispered under Kikuyu breaths during the referendum on the Draft Constitution, that Kenya could not be led by mtu mzima. The Kiswahili term, meaning whole person or adult, was used euphemistically to refer to ODM’s leader Raila Odinga. The term was used as a double entendre in deriding Odinga, who, by virtue of being Luo, was uncircumcised hence anatomically ‘whole’ while at the same time pointing to the contradiction that he could not be adult because he was uncircumcised.

Interestingly, rather than challenge the discursive privilege accorded to circumcision as a measure of manhood, Odinga has continued to insist that he is himself circumcised. He has also become one of the staunchest advocates of circumcision as a method of preventing HIV/AIDS transmission in line with recent scientific findings.

Once the construction of Luo men as feminine was firmly entrenched, there was almost no defense needed for brutalizing them. Gender theory and analysis has shown that feminization comes before brutalization. For so long Kenyan society has failed to protect its feminine dimension. Mungiki had brutalized Kikuyu women with forced circumcision with impunity for years. Society as a whole had never spoken up. Not even those Kikuyu men who were not Mungiki had seriously challenged Mungiki on the issue. The police barely acted on reports of women being forcibly circumcised. Emboldened, it was only a matter of time before Mungiki wielded this weapon of terror on other targets.

The forced circumcisions were not just acts of violence; they must be understood as occurring within the context of Luo feminization. This feminization fit within the context of a biased history that tells Kenya’s story as that of brave Kikuyu warriors, the Mau Mau, who rescued the state from its colonial masters. From this biased Kikuyu perspective, Kenya’s history has been told as a story of Kikuyus as more hardworking than all the rest. Other ethnic groups are constructed as weaker, belonging less, having less of a stake in: as feminine. The forced circumcisions represented Kikuyu men declaring that they wield a masculine power over the feminized Luo men whose flesh they mutilated.

When Mungiki started by forcibly circumcising Kikuyu women, men, especially Luo men, hardly thought they had a stake in the issue. Gender is about the ecology of power. The economy of gender functions in ways that devalue the feminine even as it simultaneously empowers the masculine. That was at the heart of the forced circumcisions. The Kikuyu men were, at the moment of violence, rendering their Luo victims feminine. Unless we understand how this process works, how the feminine is automatically weaker and of less value, we remain a long way from achieving true gender equality. This is why, all Kenyans, even men, should care about issues of gender.

These issues of the gendered ecology of power in Kenya’s ethnic politics remain as urgent today as they were in 2008. Kenya’s ethnic politics continues to feminize some ethnic communities while simultaneously casting others as more masculine. In the absence of justice for the victims and perpetrators of the violence, the same ecology of gender power not only remains but is getting further entrenched. The continued silence around the forced circumcisions and castrations speaks to our collective acceptance that the practice is a relevant weapon of ethnic war which bodes ill for the 2012 elections.

* Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an assistant professor in the Politics department at the University of San Francisco. Her research and teaching interests center on issues of gender, women’s politics, ethnic politics, and human rights and she is currently writing a book on the impact of ethnic politics on the struggle for women’s rights legislation in Kenya. She is also the founder and executive director of Akili Dada, an international NGO empowering the next generation of Kenyan women leaders (www.akilidada.org)

The above article is available as a PDF

---

Kenyans for Peace through Truth and Justice urges full implementation of Waki Report. Press Statement. Nairobi, October 30, 2008. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/51717

“Police On the Spot Over the Number of Deaths in Nairobi”, The Daily Nation, October 15 2008

Commission of Inquiry into the Post Election Violence (The Waki Commission); Sumission by FIDA-K http://www.humanitarianreform.org/humanitarianreform/Portals/1/cluster%20approach%20page/Kenya/GBV/Sexual%20%20GBV-%20Waki%20Commission.pdf

Rape on the rise in post-election violence, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76068,

“Writers’ Stories Go to Commission on Violence”, Inter Press Service, August 4, 2008

Watu Wazima: A gender analysis of forced male circumcisions during Kenya’s
post-election violence.
Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, Ph.D
17 July 2009
Stories of men being forcibly circumcised and even castrated peppered news accounts of
the madness that overtook Kenya in the aftermath of the December 2007 elections.1
According to the Waki commission that investigated the Post Election Violence (PEV),
by January 2008 the ethnic militia of the Kikuyu ethnic group, Mungiki, used blunt
objects such as broken glass to forcibly circumcise at least eight men, some as young as
eleven and five years old.2 While exact numbers are hard to come by, one can deduce
that tens of men endured genital mutilation during the first three months of 2008. Forced
circumcisions were not new in Kenya. There had been previous reports of high school
boys being forcibly circumcised at school and the now infamous Mungiki sect had made
their mark on the Kenyan psyche by forcibly circumcising Kikuyu women. But this
seemed the first time that forced circumcision was being used as a political tool. It was
being deployed as a weapon of inter-ethnic war.
How can we understand the forced circumcisions in the context of gendered and ethnic
politics in Kenya? Better yet, what would a gendered exploration of Kenya’s PEV that
placed these forced circumcisions at the center of analysis look like? This question does
not pre-suppose that others have not offered a gendered analysis of those gory months in
2008. Indeed, many brilliant authors have written incisive reports focusing a keen eye on
the varied forms of brutality that women especially endured.3
Still, I find that much of gender analysis today still leans too heavily towards a discussion
of women’s experiences. While a focus on women has yielded enormous insight into the
ecology of gender, the way society’s power is distributed among the genders, we stand to
gain even more if we also pay attention to men’s experiences. It is with this critique of
the field that I offer what I hope is a different kind of gender analysis to Kenya’s PEV.
Mine is a gender analysis centered on men’s experiences.
If we are to take seriously that gender is a social construct that assigns different power
values to the masculine while usually devaluing the feminine then there are some very
serious gender implications for what happened in Kenya on those fateful days in early
2008. I argue that a gendered analysis of Kenya’s PEV that centers on men’s experiences
1 Kenyans for Peace through Truth and Justice urges full implementation of Waki Report. Press
Statement. Nairobi, October 30, 2008. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/elections/51717
2 “Police On the Spot Over the Number of Deaths in Nairobi”, The Daily Nation, October 15 2008
3 Commission of Inquiry into the Post Election Violence (The Waki Commission); Sumission by FIDA-K
http://www.humanitarianreform.org/humanitarianreform/Portals/1/cluster%20approach
%20page/Kenya/GBV/Sexual%20%20GBV-%20Waki%20Commission.pdf
Rape on the rise in post-election violence, http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76068,
Oxford Transitional Justice Research Working Paper Series 1
reveals why all Kenyans, even men, should care about, and struggle for gender equality.
Indeed, the Kenyan experience shows how, in a moment of political tension, anyone,
even men, can be feminized, and once that is achieved, brutalization and violation is an
easily justified next step.
December school holidays bring with them a wave of circumcision ceremonies across
many of Kenya’s ethnic communities. Young men mark the verge of adolescence with
the cutting of their foreskin often in elaborate ceremonies. Often the rite of passage from
childhood to adulthood begins with a sequestering where the initiates are taught ‘how to
be men’ and climaxes with the ceremonial cutting. From the elaborate ceremonies in
rural Kenya to the sterile surgical cuts in genteel urban Nairobi, circumcision is a Kenyan
institution with those few communities that do not practice it excluded in certain ways. It
is important to note that among the first wave of rioters during PEV in January were
young Kalenjin men, who had just completed their initiation rites in circumcision camps
in Eldoret that December. Infused with a newfound sense of male identity, these young
men rampaged through the Rift Valley province attempting to cleanse it from ‘outsiders’
from other ethnic communities.4
Circumcision in Kenya is more than a cultural act. The practice has a long political
history. A quick glace at Kenyan political history from colonialism onwards shows that
circumcision, both male and female, has been wielded as a political tool during moments
of intense conflict. Circumcision, especially female circumcision, was deployed as a
weapon of anti-colonial struggle. The country’s founding father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta,
wrote about it in glowing terms, deriding those communities that did not make men of
their boys. Meru women hid and circumcised each other when the practice was banned
by the colonial British. President Moi’s insistence on banning female circumcision only
served to drive it further underground and throughout the cutting of genital flesh has
served as an act of resistance.
Then Mungiki came. They wore dreadlocks, invoked Mau Mau, inhaled tobacco snuff,
and agitated for a return to what they saw as the pristine original state of Kikuyu natural
identity. Kikuyu women became the targets. They were not to wear trousers and those
who did were stripped naked and beaten publicly. Stories began emerging of Mungiki
forcibly circumcising Kikuyu women.
Strangely, few spoke up. Some women’s rights activists protested, but within the larger
public sphere, in those early days, Mungiki was a Kikuyu problem and only a menace to
Kikuyu women.
Then came those shocking days in early 2008 when Kenyans took to crude knives,
seeking to make men of each other. Mungiki was at it again, only this time the Kikuyu
militia were circumcising Luo men, accusing them, as Kenyatta had alluded long before,
of being mere boys. Circumcision was supposed to render them men. These
4 “Writers’ Stories Go to Commission on Violence”, Inter Press Service, August 4, 2008
Oxford Transitional Justice Research Working Paper Series 2
circumcisions, of course, were torturous acts of violence that often turned out to be
castrations calculated to kill their hapless victims.
Why did these Kikuyu men deploy the rhetoric of circumcision? What social context
rendered circumcision a resonant frame within which to articulate their actions as part of
the ethnic warfare that was going on? It is here that gender analysis helps us understand
that Mungiki were able to kill by circumcision by first feminizing their victims.
The construction of Luo men as feminine was a process that had begun long before in
Kenya’s ethnic politics. This construction ranged from Kenyatta’s rhetoric in newly
independent Kenya to the murmurs, whispered under Kikuyu breaths during the
referendum on the Draft Constitution, that Kenya could not be led by mtu mzima. The
Kiswahili term, meaning whole person or adult, was used euphemistically to refer to
ODM’s leader Raila Odinga. The term was used as a double entendre in deriding
Odinga, who, by virtue of being Luo, was uncircumcised hence anatomically ‘whole’
while at the same time pointing to the contradiction that he could not be adult because he
was uncircumcised.
Interestingly, rather than challenge the discursive privilege accorded to circumcision as a
measure of manhood, Odinga has continued to insist that he is himself circumcised. He
has also become one of the staunchest advocates of circumcision as a method of
preventing HIV/AIDS transmission in line with recent scientific findings.
Once the construction of Luo men as feminine was firmly entrenched, there was almost
no defense needed for brutalizing them. Gender theory and analysis has shown that
feminization comes before brutalization. For so long Kenyan society has failed to protect
its feminine dimension. Mungiki had brutalized Kikuyu women with forced circumcision
with impunity for years. Society as a whole had never spoken up. Not even those
Kikuyu men who were not Mungiki had seriously challenged Mungiki on the issue. The
police barely acted on reports of women being forcibly circumcised. Emboldened, it was
only a matter of time before Mungiki wielded this weapon of terror on other targets.
The forced circumcisions were not just acts of violence; they must be understood as
occurring within the context of Luo feminization. This feminization fit within the context
of a biased history that tells Kenya’s story as that of brave Kikuyu warriors, the Mau
Mau, who rescued the state from its colonial masters. From this biased Kikuyu
perspective, Kenya’s history has been told as a story of Kikuyus as more hardworking
than all the rest. Other ethnic groups are constructed as weaker, belonging less, having
less of a stake in: as feminine. The forced circumcisions represented Kikuyu men
declaring that they wield a masculine power over the feminized Luo men whose flesh
they mutilated.
When Mungiki started by forcibly circumcising Kikuyu women, men, especially Luo
men, hardly thought they had a stake in the issue. Gender is about the ecology of power.
The economy of gender functions in ways that devalue the feminine even as it
simultaneously empowers the masculine. That was at the heart of the forced
Oxford Transitional Justice Research Working Paper Series 3
circumcisions. The Kikuyu men were, at the moment of violence, rendering their Luo
victims feminine. Unless we understand how this process works, how the feminine is
automatically weaker and of less value, we remain a long way from achieving true gender
equality. This is why, all Kenyans, even men, should care about issues of gender.
These issues of the gendered ecology of power in Kenya’s ethnic politics remain as
urgent today as they were in 2008. Kenya’s ethnic politics continues to feminize some
ethnic communities while simultaneously casting others as more masculine. In the
absence of justice for the victims and perpetrators of the violence, the same ecology of
gender power not only remains but is getting further entrenched. The continued silence
around the forced circumcisions and castrations speaks to our collective acceptance that
the practice is a relevant weapon of ethnic war which bodes ill for the 2012 elections.
* Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an assistant professor in the Politics department at the
University of San Francisco. Her research and teaching interests center on issues of
gender, women’s politics, ethnic politics, and human rights and she is currently writing a
book on the impact of ethnic politics on the struggle for women’s rights legislation in
Kenya. She is also the founder and executive director of Akili Dada, an international
NGO empowering the next generation of Kenyan women leaders (www.akilidada.org)
Oxford Transitional Justice Research Working Paper Series 4

Questions you should ask before making that donation to an organization ‘saving’ Africa

These are notes from a talk i recently gave at a giving circle of the Foundation for Sustainable Development but that I think apply broadly.

Before you open your wallet I think you should seriously contemplate these question:

• What power do you wield?  It is important for donors to understand themselves as the consumers of philanthropy since the end recipients of aid do not hold the ultimate power.  The village woman where the project you are funding will eventually be implemented really has no say on whether that project should be implemented or not.  You do!  Traditional business models tell us that the customer is right.  Philanthropy doesn’t work that way though.  In this case, you, the donor, is actually the consumer of philanthropy and it is you who has the power to ensure that a certain project proceeds or grinds to a halt.  Once you step into that donor role you then have a moral obligation to do your homework.

• Why am I engaging?  Why am I giving? Is it out of a sense of superiority? What do I expect in return?  Am I in danger of re-creating the ‘white man’s burden’.  We all get something out of engaging in philanthropic giving and the pleasure is not a bad thing.  What we do need to be aware of are the unspoken expectations that we often place on the recipients of our aid.

• How can we avoid replicating the mis-steps of past engagement with the continent?  Before your donation their is  along history of external engagement with Africa.  From the Chinese in the 14th century, the Arabs, Portuguese, missionaries, World Bank officials…… You and the organization you are about to support are not the first.  How are we all positioned within the historical context of those external interventions into Africa?

• What is the legacy of earlier external engagement in this community?  Have the other people or groups who have engaged with the community whose project you are about to fund disappointed the community with unequal partnerships?  You are almost certainly not the first ‘donor’ to show up.  How have other donors before you acted?  What is the community’s historical memory about interacting with ‘donors’.  So often we focus on how communities have shown accountability to previous donors and never even ask if previous donors have shown true partnership to the communities we seek to engage with!

• What existed on the ground before we showed up?  If you are about to fund a microfinance operation do you know what forms of debt existed in the community before you showed up?  What is the culture around debt and credit in this community?  In what ways does microfinance fit and not fit within already existing cultural understandings of debt there?

• Beware of what Chimamanda Achidie calls the ‘single story’ of poverty in the community you are engaging with.  Often we are tempted to think of the people we want to aid as being poor and only poor.  They are more than that.  In fact, chances are, that within any community you engage in are indiginous attempts at eradicating poverty.  Do you know what they are?

Coming next: Questions to ask before giving that microfinance loan

Understand yourself as a consumer of philanthropy since the end recipients do not hold the ultimate power.  The village woman where the project you are funding will eventually be implemented really has no say on whether that project should be implemented or not.  You do!  Traditional business models tell us that the customer is right.  Philanthropy doesn’t work that way though.  In this case, you, the donor, is actually the consumer of philanthropy and it is you who has the power to ensure that a certain project proceeds or grinds to a halt.  Once you step into that donor role you then have a moral obligation to do your homework.

Who’s your Audience

I’ve had a hard time trying to decide who I want to write this book for.

Do I want to write a book to a more general audience of college educated Jane Doe or do I want to write a book to practitioners in philanthropy?

Do I want to say what I really think, which will probably come off critical and bitchy, or do I want to sugarcoat it all and attempt to reach a wider audience?

Then again, cant the audience sense the sugar coat?  Would they care?

This month has been big on me trying to figure out which role to play as I get invited to give even more talks in the coming months.  On one hand the stereotypes of the ‘angry Black woman’ abound (watched a reality show recently?).  I know that at a certain point you fit into people’s preconceived notions so well that they don’t even listen to what you have to say.  And isn’t critiquing the eager and earnest do-gooders the ultimate?!

So whats a critical Black woman to do?  I’m torn.

Responding to the Haitian earthquake in a sustainable manner

In efforts to help the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti we seem to be repeating some of the same old mistakes.  According to food first, “Farmers in other parts of the country are growing food that can be purchased and given to those in and around Port-au-Prince”.

Inspired, I sent off this email to the directors of Feed My Starving Children:

Hello sirs,
I have read with interest your earnest efforts at helping the people of Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake.
As a Christian, your mission to feed the starving resonates deeply with me.

I am concerned, however, that your particular approach to helping might do more harm those in need.  I am absolutely certain that is not your aim which is why I decided to write to you directly.

I wanted to bring your attention to the fact that your shipping quantities of food from the U.S. to crisis locations actively undermines the food producers in those countries and in so doing leaves local populations in situations of dire food insecurity.  With food insecurity in place, its only a matter of time before more emergency food reserves are needed.

For example; you are currently mobilizing volunteers to pack packets of food to be shipped to Haiti.  This food has been grown by U.S. farmers who received government subsidies to grow the food at below market rates.  The food is then purchased, using funds donated by your supporters) or donated by large multinational conglomerates such as Monsanto and Cargill.  You ostensibly use American shipping companies and airlines to get the food to the ground in Haiti where it will be distributed to those in need.

The problem with this supply chain is that local farmers in Haiti have been growing locally appropriate foods for this whole growing season.  They, and their food stocks have not been affected by the earthquake.  There are thousands of tonnes of culturally appropriate food currently available from these local sources.

Your free food aid will end up filling the food market place and local food producers and distributors will be flooded out of the food market.  It doesn’t matter who you are, nobody can compete with free!  Next season, Haitian farmers will have made no profit from the food they grew last season (many being subsistence farmers who are only able to sustain themselves and their families on a season by season basis).  Not having any profits from the previous season they will be unable to pay for fertilizer and other farm inputs and will surely sink further into poverty.  Its almost predictable that half a year from now, Haiti will endure a biting hunger epidemic because local farmers will not have planted enough food to feed the population.

inevitably your organization will ship even more free food aid and the cycle will continue.
Repeat this scenario in every country you are currently distributing free food and we’ve got a major problem.  We’ve had a major problem for a while.

Solution?
Why don’t you just raise money from your donors and purchase food for your food aid programs locally?  That way you and your organization’s supporters are able to nurture the nascent food industries in poor countries.  From farmers, distributors to local shopkeepers and market women, a sustainable food supply chain will have benefits that truly feed God’s starving children.
Surely you can explain this to your donors and still retain their support.

I know there is a large possibility that this email will go largely ignored but I pray that it will not.  The future of millions of poor starving people is at stake.

Sincerely yours,

Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg

Do non-profits dumb Americans down?

Part of the problem with philanthropy towards Africa is that of ease.  Organizations want to make it ‘easy’ for their donors to give. So they simplify complex situations into ‘easy’ diagrams. They  uncomplicate the situation so that potential donors can understand what is going on.

For example, look at the situation in Darfur and compare the response of the “SAVE DARFUR” campaign to the sophisticated analysis by Mahmood Mamdani)

Unfortunately, the devil is always in the details. In the rush to simplify complex situations such as the one in Darfur we lose understanding of historical context and how that impacts what is currently happening.

I think the advertising industry has done us all in really.  The advertising industry has been in a mad dash to promote consumer products with easy to understand and snazzy marketing and non-profits have followed suit.

But are donors really that dumb? Can anyone  interested enough to give to a particular cause really incapable of understanding anything beyond caricatures of the problem?

Why do we, as non profits, not trust our donors to be smart enough to understand that the world is a complex place.  Surely Americans are not as dumb as we have made them out.  I would like to think that the average donor is capable of, and willing to take the time to see if they agree with any particular solution to the very complex problems facing the continent?

I, at least, desperately want to hang on to the belief that the average American understands that situations of poverty in Africa are much more complex than the dumbed down ad they see on T.V at dinnertime.

Here We Go!!

The  journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step said Lao-tzu way back when in 604bc.

The journey towards what will hopefully end up a published book starts with this blog.  Well, it started a few months ago actually.

In August 2009 I was ranting to my friends  about the crazy things I was seeing as I worked on the Non-Profit that I head.  I kept running into well-meaning but completely off the mark efforts to ‘save’ Africa.  This  is all their fault.  They are the ones who egged me on to write something and not just hold my frustrations on the inside.

So one night, after I put the baby to bed, I sat at my computer.

I started off with a page, then two, then five.  More conversations.  Then an invitation to present my ideas at a brown bag at the Global Fund for Women.  I was shocked that the room was packed and thats when I knew I was on to something.   Over lunch after the presentation my friend Natalie convinced me to hurry up and write a book.

The final goal: something short, sweet, and to the point.  A quick non-academic read.   Then I’ll go back to working on my dissertation and turning it into a book.  That, afterall, is what professors at my stage in their careers are supposed

Problem is, I HATE WRITING.  writing my dissertation was the most lonely, painful, and isolating experience of my life.  And it took forever! (3 years to be exact! (O.k. I spend the first two years dreading the prospect then mostly wrote in the last year))

Still, I can’t imagine putting myself through the same misery again.  Hence this blog.

This blog is just a crutch to get me through the book writing process.  For me writing needs to be an interactive process.  I get and refine my ideas through conversation with others.  So, instead of emailing my busy friends with random questions, opinions and ideas and asking for their reactions, I’ll post them all here and see if anyone reads this thing and what they have to say.  Should be easy enough…… 🙂

so, if you’ve got things to say about philanthropy, and particularly philanthropy in Africa, talk to me!