Regret to report that there has been another good linkedin post
If you just banked that coffee money every week and denied yourself every other instance of life’s gastronomic pleasures, however small and ordinary, you could save enough to make the down payment on that starter house in [checks notes] five hundred and seventy three years
‘Brussels Effect’, ‘Beijing Effect’, ‘Delhi Effect’ - all these ‘effects’ are playing out vividly on the African continent, presenting a unique lens through which to analyse the (de)merits of each approach developmentekko.substack.com/p/glocalizin...
"Africa doesn’t lack opportunities, but it does lack patience for fundamentals. The problem with these overrated businesses isn’t that they’re useless; it’s that they’ve been sold as shortcuts to wealth" weetracker.com/2025/08/18/o... ht @nanjira.bsky.social
"Policy isn’t a more secure or better compensated branch of academia. Stacking up publication credits doesn’t come with any rewards" www.chalmermagne.com/p/death-by-a... ht @nanjira.bsky.social
“If the future hasn’t changed in the past, how could it possibly change now?”
www.publicbooks.org/no-future-a-...
Instead of asking: “How can AI make selection faster?”
We should ask: “How can AI help us find those we’d otherwise miss?” www.linkedin.com/posts/paulag...
I am so, so tired, of the term 'potential'.
It has been used endlessly to speak about Africa, her youth demographic and to animate poor policy postures.
So, when a chance presented itself to pen a (yet another) polemic, I did.
developmentekko.substack.com/p/africas-yo...
We're getting used to cyber attacks that cause massive service outages, assuming every unknown number is a scam, not being able to tell what's real from a deep fake. We're walking through a digital junkyard in which nothing really does what it's meant to do, but sure, AI can make Jesus ride a prawn
"Refrains like youth being leaders of tomorrow never specify when tomorrow is. In the eyes of many of the continent’s young and not-so-young, tomorrow never comes, not in time at least"
The last two decades of Africa potential discourse have already taught us that entrepreneurship cannot per se overcome poor public policy. It is especially fallacious to expect young people to magically leapfrog these entrenched complexities developmentekko.substack.com/p/africas-yo...
#InnovationAmnesia depends on cultural patterns that appear to be increasingly widespread: the valorization of technological innovation and the sensation of limited political space for reforming social arrangements.” /2
firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph...
💡 “…a theory of amnesia in the face of innovation:
when apparent technological innovations occasion the disregard of preexisting cultural, legal, and infrastructural norms.” /1
Aid is more than a line item in a budget—it is a system of power.” /3 💯
africasacountry.com/2025/04/as-a...
It’s a moment that demands a deeper reckoning with how aid and development have functioned as tools of control—how they hollowed out the African state and replaced political struggle with donor-led projects. /2
“…calls for sovereignty cannot be separated from the history of aid and the role of NGOs on the continent. This is not just a moment of budget cuts. /1
Reclaiming pan-Africanism from elite capture. That’s the struggle! ✊🏾
In this distinctively diasporic African imagination, African nations become idyllic homelands, fertile lands of possibility, sanctuaries from the racial injustices of the West, and places where lost ancestral connections can be miraculously restored.” /3 🎯
africasacountry.com/2025/05/pan-...
Beyond the material consequences, these celebrities also aid African governments to craft a progressive, aspirational image that conceals deep-seated class inequalities and the dire material conditions of ordinary Africans. /2
“‘#Wakandification’: the process through which Africa *as a product* is reimagined to serve the interests of representation, nation, and capital[…]
/1
Policy extraversion always amounts to playing a rigged game.
Davos founder accused of manipulating World Economic Forum research. on.ft.com/3GAaWlM
It turns out that political thinkers from outside the West can challenge and enhance our Western conventional wisdom about political life, partly because there is at least one big difference between Western and non-Western political theory: the experience of European colonialism.”/4 👏🏾
With this broader understanding of where we can find political theory, we are now seeing scholarly work emerge about the political thought of people previously excluded from the field. /3
But over the latest generation, many have accepted that political theory also happens in speeches, letters, newspapers, pamphlets, wherever humans express themselves to make sense of what is happening in their world so that they can respond to it. /2
“Until the past two decades or so, political theorists assumed that political theory happens in only treatises: written books with systematic, logical arguments. /1
The ways that AI disrupts livelihoods in Africa are bound to be different than the West developmentekko.substack.com/p/tech-givet... ht @nanjira.bsky.social
Their arsenal combines 3 implements: plutocratic gravity (fortunes so vast they distort reality’s basic physics), oracular authority (their technological visions treated as inevitable prophecy), and platform sovereignty (ownership of the digital intersections where society’s convo unfolds) /2
“Today, it’s increasingly clear that it’s the tech oligarchs — not their algorithmically-steered platforms—who present the greater danger./1
“The failure to recognize that the United States was born out of rebellion against oligarchy, not just monarchy, has long helped preserve oligarchic influence in the country.”
foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/25/d...
