You freedom fest, and and you will libertarian conference featuring several others. These panels will air on saturday and sunday. For complete scheduled visit booktv. Org. Afterwards veterans correspondent jay barbree talks about Neil Armstrong on the 45th anniversary of the moon landing. Then to des moines, iowa, literary sites and authors, you will see former wall street journal publisher Karen Elliott talking about saudi arabia from our college ceres ask pepperdine university. Former representative james rogan discusses his new book and actor danny glover is part of a panel on the black power movement. Of this and much more, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors on cspan2. Booktv, television for serious readers. Now on booktv, dayo olopade 11 talks about her book the bright continent breaking rules and making change in modern africa at the chicago printers fest. This is new and great ideas people in Subsaharan Africa are coming up with to deal with the global challenges they face today. This is 45 minutes. I wanted to start with that wonderful essay from the great canyon satirist who wrote that mind glowingly good essay how to write about africa by which he meant how all of us who wrote about the continent, he started with the following. Broad brush strokes throughout our good. Avoid having the african characters laugh or struggle to educate their kids or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them eliminate something about europe or america. African characters should be colorful, exotic, larger than life but empty inside with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stores, no deaths or quirks to confuse the cause. Perhaps we could start there since it seems to me that your book is precisely what he is advocating in his essay and that is the portrayal of africans as people with their own agency, and idiosyncrasies and a sense of destiny. So what inspired the project in the first place . Where you just fed up with the way africa was being reported on . What you call poverty porn . Yes. That is, short answer. Thank you for being here and i am glad you chose this particular essay which has a lot of revenue. He was writing about fiction but when it comes to nonfiction which is my discipline the same narrative biases replicate. And reference to poverty porn. And this stories that have gotten our attention, it hasnt in the kidnapping of Nigerian School children rather than decades, weeks, months, years of slow economic development. It is hard to grab our attention when the story is one of generally in incremental positive gains so to that extent, that is a good example of the way this nonfiction media industry, the reporters community of which i find myself a part struggles to get the attention of the world at large with African Development and ordinary africa. With respect to my book i am proud there are no animals in this book. All book about africa without animals. I didnt realize until i looked at the manuscript when it was finished that i did it, no safaris, no sun sets, sort of a users manual for the africa you have not heard about, the very ordinary thing. Given that my background is one of someone born in the u. S. In chicago and spent a lot of time in Subsaharan Africa it has given me a unique perspective on where we are missing the mark, what we are not understanding and ordinary things like giving directions that here we would say we are coming to 700 state street but if you are in nairobi you would be like okay, youre going to look for the petrol station and if you see at yellow building you have gone too far. So double back and it is all contexture will and very ordinary little differences between different types of societies that i seek to eliminate which are not as sensational or gripping as the story of a kidnapping or a multimillion dollar Banking Transaction but is really the substance of what the real africa, the one i tried to eliminate as the bright continent. Lets pick up and talk about how being a of homegrown chicagoan from the nigerian family, how that informed the way you approach the store you wanted to tell. I spent a lot of time in nigeria and that sort of shuttle diplomacy between washington where i was working as a reporter covering american politics, covering the state department, International Development and home. Again sort of illuminated for me where we were missing the mark. I was inspired to write the book not just by the casual conversations, the fortune i have been able to have to go back and forth. A lot of people did not have the opportunity to go home and feel like it is just another side of relatives for them but it was when i was covering the United Nations week which is General Assembly every september. Everyone comes to new york, traffic is crazy, every head of state and every entourage in new york and in 2010 it was the tenth anniversary of the famous Millennium Development goal which was the blueprint for poverty in 15 years with these simple steps and as an american journalist working for an american publication i was watching this presentation and the United Nations had a poster competition to commemorate the tenth anniversary. The winning posters they selected goes to the issue of agency you were mentioning. At the top of the photo, there is a photo of it in the book, hard to describe. From the bottom up, from the waist up, the g8 in their suits, you could tell because Angela Merkel was the lone woman in a pants suit and from the waist down it had what i could only assume were african children in refugee camps. No faces. They were cut off, no issues, waiting in line and the tagline red deer World Leaders we are still waiting. That just jolted my sensibilities. It took me out of my role as an american reporter and put me in the role of an irritated african because anyone who has spent time in Subsaharan Africa knows people work twice as hard to get half as far. The idea of someone sitting around and waiting is preposterous. My first trip to nigeria i remember being bored with what you could buy in traffic. I was 10 years old, nose pressed against the glass in traffic seeing people selling fruit, electronics, art, vhs tapes which dates me little bit. Dynamism and force innovation, that ended up being the theme of the bright continent breaking rules and making change in modern africa, necessity is the mother of invention, africa is the mother of necessity. We are missing that. The world including the United Nations, the people who should be thinking most critically about what life is like contexture will be in poor countries. So within a month i had liquidated all my things and started writing this book. As you set off, what were the misconceptions that you were carrying yourself into that situation . What were the biggest surprises for you . Great question. I will answer in two ways. One, i think, formality bias is a term i coin in the book to talk about expectations that things should look as organized as they looked in the United States or another wealthy western country. It is a presumption that my getting directions means using google maps or whatever and you get wherever you are going. That extends to the role and reach of government. As someone who is a good liberal, grew up in hyde park and american politics to realize the connection between the citizen and a state across Subsaharan Africa was bankrupt. That ended up being a huge part of what i realized was driving the innovations i went on to document and the reason why people were Generating Systems of production for workers had nothing to do with the formal sector. People needing to find ways to provide a social safety net without government support, people finding ways to create Health Solutions and Energy Solutions in the absence of electricity, all of these things were driven by a fundamental lack of belief in government. For me coming from a place where there is garbage collection where these lights wont go out, that was one very important difference for me in terms of trying to understand the political economy of what i was writing about. We can talk much more about that because there are different ways to think about a roll and reach of the state in africa and everywhere. The second was agriculture. This book when i started conceiving it, when i started to talk about it with folks and pitch it it was a book about cellphones. Cellphones have come to africa and everyone is connected and we have a democratic moment, people are solving problems, all of that is true, but i think the sort of very basic sort of two out of every three people on the continent touched by agriculture, food, production, land use, the future of all of that in africa is the most important thing. A friend of your consideration living in hyde park. Not even that. This is so interesting given the essential nature of Food Production for the world. That is one of the things that should make africa a thing of concern and importance for everyone, the idea that we need so much more food than we have, we need more land than we have, we have sort of quite damaging cultures, capital and labor intensive Food Production and africa is a real natural solution to provide solutions to poverty and hunger at the same time so that was a revelation and to realize there is so much to do that had not occurred to me as something that was as important as it is in Subsaharan Africa. So i am wondering if what your own identity and background brought to the story and the places where it created an obstacle. If i go into a small village in south africa to do my reporting and you go into a village in nigeria, there is a different reaction to that arrival. I am curious about how you thought of that issue come as you were setting off because in some ways in terms of race and backgrounds and language, i dont know. You had a point of its affiliation. In other ways you were an outsider, a single woman in her 20s living alone as you put out in the book. What were the advantages and where were the tricky spots . That is a wonderful question. Nigeria is my country, uruguay is my tribe. Chicago to a certain extent, i am traveling. I lived in kenya where i thought i chose kenya for a particular reason. One is the tech explosion. The first story i ever wrote that ended of being around seems of the rope, Google Africa where they build eight offices, playing hard for consumers, this exploding technology sector, the big play was in kenya with mobile Financial Services. I went to kenya because it wasnt nigeria and i could move between cultures, up with more ease than in nigeria. And that proved to be a really important division. I also travelled to 17 countries over the course of two years and in each place there were advantages in being able to sort of not invite people to begin performing. In many cases the debtor economy comes with white faces and provokes a certain set of behavior is and a certain set of lack of discretion or disclosure that might be the case where someone who looks like someone even if they are not from the same background. That was an advantage. In somalia, more conservative countries, it was quite a disadvantage and washington as well to be clear. Knowing yourself, having the right questions, understanding the informal expectations in terms of your interaction with someone particularly someone in government really matters and i had to be completely covered. I was completely uncomfortable and never been in a situation like that having travelled in the middle east and travel from israel to turkey, i hadnt had that experience before. Not only was an odd for someone who is completely american to be completely covered but it was so hot, it was 95 degrees. I couldnt believe it. It cut both ways. It was interesting and humbling to travel to all these different cultures. One of the exciting things about this book is we hear the voices of so many young people and to point out 70 of the population in Subsaharan Africa is below the age of 30. Many commentators see that including african heads of state see that fact as the president of south africa like to say the ticking time bomb. You see the flip side of that, a situation that creates tremendous potential. The demographics are shocking. It really blows my mind, when you look at the youth bulge, it is worth looking at these charts that map out places like india, china which has quite obvious sort of gap where the effects of the one child policy kicked in and places like italy, japan, western europe in general, where the replacement rate, where it is 2. 1 people for every couple of, that is not enough to sustain the sort of productivity levels that the macroeconomic level are important for global competitiveness. In Subsaharan Africa you have this enormous youth bulge. I call it a demographic dividends and a workforce that is maturing as a result of Public Health gains, living past childbirth, increasingly following through the educational system and poised to take ownership of economies that is printed ahead. Those are positive for Subsaharan Africa. What is frustrating and i heard this everywhere. The mozambiqueand anthropologist who talks about weight hood. The space between childhood and adulthood where you are stuck. You did not and Economic Opportunities that match your ambition. Trickledown economics has not trickled down to you. And assets with a tangible or skill based you cannot move on with your life, to get married, start a family, become an adult. So wehood is tens ait zooba hoo millions of young people. For july of this with the overlay of religious extremists in. That is one end of the spectrum. The others seeing a dynamic young people who i profile throughout the book who are doing important things to solve problems locally and to improve the continent and the world. The frustrating thing for these folks is not just the economics of waithood but the political economy whether governments, since there and africa has the largest gap between the age of leadership and the age of the public in the world. In the United States it is 16 years, barack obama 52. And 82, we are talking about folks who are geriatric, a population and its 38. And concerned and motivated but the gap is 46 years compared to 16 in the United States. It is not a ticking time bomb, the population being dangerous but someone waiting for these old leaders to move on and for young people to be able to assert authority in these hierarchical civil structures where people are encouraged to defer to elders and wait their turn. It is recipe for frustration but the book profiles different people taking on that challenge and doing away that is instructive for young people everywhere. One thing you encourage us to do is to drop archaic language, first world, third world, developed world, developing world and to replace it with the words fact and lean and i wonder if you are trying to poke us for having bad diets or where you are driving this with that distinction. I assume moving away from developed and developing is important because but that the situation from the inside out and the bottomup, not from the top down and if we say developed and developing we are assuming other people are on trajectory of where we have been in the u. S. And that is a dangerous assumption. It is provocative. The story i tell about this, given how much Economic Activity is happening in the eastern hemisphere, the book is all about maps, and in terms of being a way of thinking of orientation. Family to technology. Orientation has law often been ridiculous in terms of the way we map that. Even borders of states i themselves, a term like developing, very normative. Assumes it is one direction. It is linear, you end of las vegas and that is, should be. I disagree with that. There are elements of advanced economies and wealthy societies are problematic and i documented a few of them, the new york times, i wrote about this lien idea, you talk about oil dependence, overleveraged households, diet and consumption, energy use and the extent that consumption is an issue for wealthy countries, lean economy is our consumption is constrained and recycling is obvious. Is a necessity. Theres something behavioral to look at these lean economy is, innovation is something we talk about in the contemporary moment and it has always been calm little misguided when you think of American Innovation or california innovation or Silicon Valley innovation where you have superscool iphone apps find you a parking space or track whatever. It is innovation toward and trivial issues and i want to focus on lean economy is because i think these innovations for the most incredibly important issues of our time. If you are going to see Retail Solutions for off grade energy will see them first. The pain point is there because energy doesnt, energy is in constant, People Living in a state where the lights could go off at any moment. For Public Health finding ways of decentralizing care, health care in the United States is not any better. I covered this debate in washington. When you look at shifting, because there are so few medical resources on the continents, nurses do the work of doctors, Community Health workers do the work of the nurses, laid people do the work of Community Health workers, you are seeing people in some communities in the u. S. All across Subsaharan Africa, resource scarcity is an important way of bringing this bowling alone problem if you are familiar with that the we have in the u. S. Where no one knows one another, people dont have as many friends as they used to 25 years ago, communities are fragmented and very specific local culture to the village spirit for lack of a better word you see across Subsaharan Africa in terms of family relationships and extended family relationships are response as i mentioned earlier to failure and a good example of been sort of politics. You use the word for make do or hustle. What are a couple other examples of that in practice . The other thing you up and in this book, there are things in africa where the only things in the u. S. Or europe or africans to learn rather than the other way around. The book is literally about that. The specific creativity born of necessity like pack shifting for Public Health is a good example. Something like off the grid Energy Solutions is another good example. And mobile Financial Services, you are in an environment, in kenya this exploded. Mobile money which is the ability to use your cellphone as of bank account to send money, i will send it to you, exploded exploded in kenya because it is a place where there are 40 Million People and 2500 atms and no checking accounts and no access to finance. People are keeping money in coffee cans and mattresses and pillows and there is no formal hand reached out to empower people who do have assets, they are not dirtpoor but are not able to participate in the Global Financial system let alone a regional Financial System so mobile money was the telecom that began as mobile air time transfers where the telecom is enables people to send minutes where it is all backing up a little bit. It is all prepaid because theres no Credit Reporting system and very formal addresses. How can you be opposed to the traditional account . People would change minutes back and forth. And an incredible ideas this was. And to use quasi currency. And they realize what is happening and with 500,000 grant, and decided to buy the real Banking System using cellphones. Long story short, 86 of households use the system to transact 35 million a day. It is enormous, life changing. Allows people to have meaningful Financial Lives and what is most exciting is people are layering on more complicated Financial Services like access to credit and loans and a rudimentary Credit Report so without just herself funds and no access to finance a situation like the United States we never would have invented mobile money here. We would never have thought of this so this necessity given innovation is like an excellent example of something that saldivar problem but economists have been struggling over forever. How to improve Financial Lives of the poor. That is a great example and the book is full of other ones like that. We will take questions if people want to go to the microphone and i will ask one more. I have tons but dont want to dominate the questioning. One of the beautiful examples of a new kind of approach to media in this book is the comic book and radio show, i wondered if you could talk about how these new ways of reaching people with news about everything they need to know about the connection between dying your chicks pink in order to keep creditors from be able to go after them to investigative reporting about fraud and how that works. Explain a radio show and comic book published in kenya for you if was generated by the realization that use media in africa consists mostly of music videos and that is about it and we talked about the demographic demographics. There is an extremely large young population not being engaged in a way that is fought full, developing skills and developing the capacities people are not getting at school which is important so it is a end run around the deficient educational system, Free Education oil system and they tried to offer tips for improving your life, participating in Civil Society and their reach is remarkable because they have embraced tools of where the young people are. The graphic novel is so different from the textbook. The text book is alienating, graphic novel, and serial cast of characters used to tell stories about dying chickens pink which keeps them from getting stolen by hawks. This is a problem in rural areas where people are trying to raise livestock but there is all this attrition because of talks so they put this tip in the magazine and to encourage people to do it and have a radio show. Radio is the killer media across Subsaharan Africa, it reaches everywhere. Hd tv hasnt. What is interesting is they ignore the educational system and try to reach folks who have dropped out of school work are not perfectly welleducated but still interested in improving their lives and they reach out to them in a way that is social. Of book is one thing. But a comic book you can pass around so in terms of their medium as well as their message focusing on african use is a great model. Beyond fast i would critique myself and not focusing as much on media. I focus on technology, family, commerce, youth, agriculture and energy but media, someone who is a reporter would agree with me a societal ingredients of Civil Society and democratic culture, it is essential to participate. Is as important as water and electricity in my opinion. There are some amazing Media Ventures that can reach people and i didnt cover enough of them but it is an important tool for the development agenda. I mentioned as part of the first question, how to write about africa, i wanted to ask about the other sensational thing he did in the last year which was to come out as a gay man. There is not much in this book about the struggle of lgbt people to expand freedom for themselves. By wondered how youre thinking about that is what your experience was in travelling around. I have written about the dungeon bill that was sponsored. I was in you gonna for couple months during the time this was going on and i wrote about it in the context of being one of those classically cynical political distractions. This is a place where you have young people without jobs or economic growth, president s that have been there since 1986, people who are not concerned with homosexuality per se as much as other things. This is something that has been used as the wedge issue, used by politicians in that country to distract from other more complicated issues in their political scene. Homophobia in africa is quite real and quite dangerous for people to be out. It depends on the country you are in or this deal are in, nairobis very cosmopolitan. Those are different than in rural areas. You got that had its first pride parade this week which is remarkable given the danger involved in that but we could quibble about what the nature of the danger is, whether it is the population that is feeling animosity or the political class. It is the big problem. I point to my discussion of Community Norms in the book. Family is a very important dynamic in Subsaharan Africa. It is your shelter against everything and it is the thing people look to to create support systems and the discussion of family talk to little bit about set of golf and gambia where it is illegal but has been practiced for centuries. The norm in the community, it was a cultural tradition. In the course of one more generation, steady work within these communities for 15 years but in one generation the norm shifted. And people standing up and agreeing collectively to affirm that they would not cut their daughters. And the shared public norm that immediately changed peoples behavior so to the extent people are interested in legislative solutions and human rights activists want pronouncements from the government and action from the secretary of state of the u. S. I am not sure that is the way to solve the problem of homophobia in africa. It may be less sexy and more complicated work of working with communities to change norm is and it is not a satisfying answer but conforms to my general argument which is the government is not where you go reporter in africa. Why dont you tell us what your name is and where you are from . Nick from chicago just down the street. You touched in your last comment on the part of the question i was going to ask about people not looking to the natural Government National government for help and support. Any reporting in this country about africa, typically is stereotyped as tribal in nature. You mentioned the importance of family or social smaller social groupings, what is your perception of the possibility, how africans themselves perceive governing as a nation, you mentioned earlier the mapping is all wrong. That would detract from any possibility of effective government at the national level. How do you see that evolving overtime in the hope of there being Effective National governance in the countries of Subsaharan Africa . That is a very fine question and one i have grappled with. Very seriously in the book, you are right that the concourse of states themselves dont necessarily defined the way people live their lives. The region from the west end in donna all the way to the nigerian border to the ivory coast, people are crossing borders and engaging in Economic Activity, tribes crossed these borders, present in all 17 countries in west africa. To the extent the state borders dont describe or capture life as lived or experience in economics as experienced, it is a huge from. And these authentic borders, there are actual benefits to thinking about the region not as nation by nation environment. When you look at a country like nigeria which is the biggest on the continent is 170 Million People and the country neighboring it is under 6 billion. When you look at the entire west African Economic community it looks comfortable to these Major Economies like brazil and india and china, the East African Community which is kenya and uganda, tanzania, that starts to look like a powerful economic bloc. You the Southern African countries the same story obtained. Look at the content as a whole, Subsaharan Africa, 800 Million People. The attraction at least for the investor class, the big exploding commercial zones is more pronounced. When you think about africana as interlinked economic communitys from the political level that the more granular sort of regional basis i think people are so disappointed in national government, i mentioned over and over again, citizens all over the world ask what have you done for me lately and the answer when looking at so many african states is absolutely nothing, whether it is the education system, the road in front of your house, Public Health outcomes, it is disappointing so people come up with alternative arrangements, private cooling systems, they buy generators, it can be very frustrating. And municipal government is much more exciting than the federal government i used to cover in washington and to the extent that it relates to people where they are that and offers the regional and local skin in the game, it is more exciting and i would say the same about Subsaharan Africa. They can actually assess these on the ground, make decisions about allocation of resources. This has been going on for centuries. We disrupted that with the political overlay of the traditional political map of africa to the extent that local is better from a political and economic perspective. That is my best hope for african governance at least in the short term. I would hold hope that National Governments would approve in the long term but right now it is a big full to hold 800 Million People hostage to leaders who wondersperformed. In the book you suggest that children and grandchildren of the African Diaspora have a role to play. You mentioned the move, the rest of it. Out of your own experience, seeing what other people who have gone back have been doing with you think there is said generational click of recognition that comes from that process. I would say yes. I think one exciting element of years of exports, brain dream they used to call it, what i called rain gain, folks like myself who have an understanding of the dynamism in Subsaharan Africa and i believe it is the fact that it is one of the most if not the most important story of the 21st century. It might take someone like yourself who has spent time living in africa all the more time to get to that realization. It is obvious. A slight advantage in whatever sector. If you are working in private equity or Public Health or do Something Interesting in technology or tell the story of a system, a family friend who used to pick me up from school when i was growing up in chicago from ethiopia, he emigrated here after having done and did chance degree in what was then czechoslovakia and is working here at the university of chicago in 2005 went back to ethiopia. Talk about disappointing apparently she went to become a farmer. Agriculture that i was mentioning, the idea you could leave medicine in the United States and the work in agricultural ethiopia and find yourself contributing, doing in some ways better, feeling more alive, more in the charge, more influential is surprising to some people. He had 400 employees, he drives five cars, has a white and two kids, doing really well, running this business in ethiopia. That is a really exciting dynamic for so many people like myself who are first secondgeneration immigrants to realize your home country has opportunities you are uniquely positioned to seize. That will be and essentials piece of africas growth story. For unfortunately we are out of time but that is a fantastic place to leave it for now
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