Sean Jacobs's Blog, page 179

Women’s political consciousness in Senegal

Rama Salla Dieng talks with a British literature scholar on literary activism in French.

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Road photography between Dakar and Mbour. Image credit Carsten ten Brink via Flickr CC.

This post is part of our series ��Talking back: African feminisms in dialogue.�� It is dedicated to guest editor Rama Salla Dieng��s late sister, Nd��ye Anta Dieng (1985-2019).

I have known Ruth Bush for many years and we share a passion for reading Francophone literature, especially by African writers. The year I lived in Bristol, where she teaches, Ruth introduced me to AWA: La revue de la femme noire, one of the earliest independent African women��s magazines published between 1964 and 1973. At the time, Ruth was digitizing the magazine into an online archive as part of a fascinating project she started with Dr. Claire Ducournau. We started a conversation on the topic and she later invited me to the exhibition of the project at the Mus��e de la Femme Henriette Bathily in Dakar, which was co-produced with IFAN-Cheikh Anta Diop and launched as part of that year��s Ateliers de la Pens��e.

Earlier this year, I had a project that required me to write an article I provocatively titled: “‘The left and its leftovers’: Documenting women��s political activism in Senegal between 1950 and 1979�� as part of the Revolutionary Left in Africa Conference. I discussed with Ruth and she shared valuable material with me. I decided to focus not only on AWA��s voice through its editorial choices, but also critically analyze AWA��s silences in what was to become a central period for the revolutionary left in Senegal; from liberation movements and social movements culminating in May 1968, the musings of political pluralism, and last but not least, the rise and rise of a female political consciousness.

Rama Salla Dieng

Your passion has led you to dedicate a book to analyzing institutions, authors and ideas involved in the complex architecture behind your book, Publishing Africa in French. Can you please tell us more about this research, its motivations and findings?

Ruth Bush

My research began from a love of work by writers such as Aim�� C��saire, James Baldwin, Cheikh Hamidou Kane and Richard Wright, who lived in Paris in the mid-20th century. I was living in Paris and learned a lot about the city and its paradoxes through these writers: its claims to represent freedom and the avant-garde alongside its deeply rooted social and racial inequalities. It was illuminating to connect these writers�� literary work to larger political debates concerning decolonization and tiers-mondisme that came to the surface via journals and publishing houses such as Pr��sence Africaine and Editions Maspero. I spent a lot of time during my PhD working in the archives of publishing houses (many held at the Institut m��moires de l��dition contemporaine. I looked at readers�� reports on manuscripts submitted by African writers, including Cheikh Hamidou Kane and Malick Fall, in this period. These reveal how these manuscripts were evaluated and according to what notions of aesthetic value they were measured. This led to the central concern of my book, which is to diagnose the structural inequalities and forms of domination that obtained in the French literary field during the period of decolonization (from 1945��1967), and to show how African writers and publishers actively negotiated these contexts. The book shows how the material contexts of literary production and reception (from paper shortages following WWII and anthology culture, to self-publishing and the distribution networks of Pr��sence Africaine on the African continent) were intrinsically linked to ideas of autonomy and aesthetic freedom.

Rama Salla Dieng

Your analysis takes place in a specific political context: To what extent was the French language a battlefield of literary resistance or revolution between editors and authors? And, what were the roles of literary translation in such a vibrant context?

Ruth Bush

This is such an important question. The French language has been, and continues to be, a battlefield, shaped by political contexts and institutions such as the Acad��mie Fran��aise, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, and respective national education systems on the African continent. Senghor acted as a passeur for many African writers in the 1950s and 1950s, given his close friendship with Paul Flamand from Editions du Seuil, we can see his influence too in some relatively conservative decisions about language and genre. Literary prize culture has also been a space for consolidating the status of hegemonic languages, as seen in the institutional history of the Grand Prix Litt��raire d��Afrique Noire.

The ��language question�� continues to spark avid debates concerning the ��Africanization�� of French (seen in work by Ahmadou Kourouma, Boubacar Boris Diop, and Tobias Warner��s recent book. Overall, it often seems there is less inguistic experimentation in francophone African writing than in anglophone African writing��though this is changing, and partly through contact with other media. Language varies hugely, from the urban Wolof of Dakar, which blends in French and English, to Nouchi in Abidjan to Camfranglais in Yaound��. There are of course literary works that use these spoken registers in the francophone space, but still relatively few. The arguments made for producing literary texts in African languages also varies widely across francophone sub-Saharan Africa, and there have been important initiatives here. The publishing scene has, I think, been less concerned with material presentational details in publishing such as glossaries, footnotes, and italicization that have attracted widespread polemical comments in the anglophone space.

Literary translation clearly has an important ethical and social role to play in the African publishing landscape, but faces challenges in terms of sustainable funding models and training support. These challenges are structural and political. The final chapter of Publishing Africa in French discusses the French translations of novels by Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, and Peter Abrahams. It shows how translators appropriated these writers�� work in ways that enriched the French language, and in ways (especially in the case of Tutuola, translated by Raymond Queneau) that often marginalized the author��s subjectivity. This is also a structural issue, where translations of African works have continued to be mostly produced by non-African translators based in the global North. There is an urgent imperative to translate and re-translate African literature. This imperative fuels ideological debates concerning pan-African identities. It��s also underpinned by the material realities of the African literary commons (the pool of linguistic and imaginative resources on which writers draw). My current book project explores new archival sources on the translations of early francophone African “classics,” and research on more recent initiatives to build literary translation infrastructure on the African continent through independent publishing, prizes, festivals such as Bakwa, C��ytu, Cassava Republic, Writivism, or the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize.

Rama Salla Dieng

With Claire Ducournau (Universit�� Paul-Val��ry Montpellier 3), you led an AHRC-funded project on Popular Print and Reading Cultures in Francophone Africa, which digitized the pioneering francophone African magazine AWA: la revue de la femme noire (1964-1973) can you please tell us more about what inspired you to focus on AWA? Was it a fascination for Annette Mbaye D��Erneville, one of its founders, or the idea of francophone women organizing in the immediate post-independence period?

Ruth Bush

It was both of these things which inspired this work. This project was a collaboration between myself and Claire Ducournau, alongside the Mus��e de la Femme-Henriette Bathily and IFAN-Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. Annette Mbaye d��Erneville is very well known in Senegal for her inspiring work as a journalist and former program irector of the national radio, and poet. She had a very popular radio show called Jigeen ��i degluleen (Women, listen!) in the 1970s and 1980s, and is still known as “Tata Annette” by many people today. The digitization of AWA: La revue de la femme noire was accompanied by the production of a multimedia exhibition, held in Dakar, Montpellier and Bordeaux in 2017��19. I became interested during my PhD in print culture that existed on the African continent beyond the contours of the French literary field and its institutions and came across AWA while working in the National Archives in Senegal in 2009. It jumped out as a fiercely independent publication produced in Dakar at the Imprimerie Abdoulaye Diop at a time when most press was dominated by French-owned monopolies.

AWA��s blend of content is very eclectic: political news, profiles of inspiring career women and celebrities (Younousse Seye, Miriam Makeba��), fashion photography, literary texts by writers including Birago Diop, Virginie Camara, Joseph Zobel, and translations of Cuban and American writers. The readers�� letters pages are particularly fascinating and give a glimpse of how the magazine curated correspondence with a network of readers in West Africa, and further afield in Brazil, Martinique, Eastern Europe, and Israel. This was a magazine that was also actively read by women in Senegal, albeit an elite part of the population. The traces of female solidarity across borders are inspiring. AWA��s editorial team were mostly female, though many men contributed to its pages, offering advice and pointers which might be read as mansplaining today, but which were clearly integral to how the magazine��s founders saw the need for collaboration and “complementarity” between genders at this point in history.

Rama Salla Dieng

You explain in an insightful article titled Mesdames, Il faut Lire! that AWA was more a glossy magazine interested in ��re-fashioning�� la Femme Noire, and preparing her for the task of nation-building; does this mean that AWA did not have a feminist consciousness?

Ruth Bush

AWA did not explicitly describe itself as “feminist,” and at times actively rejects the term. But its militancy lies in its form and material history. Retrospectively we might position AWA within the plural feminist movements of the 20th century��especially the idea of the “Modern Girl,” which has been traced in the parallel women��s magazine culture from Japan to Egypt to the United States in this same period. But AWA is not a highly commercialized magazine��it received very limited revenue from advertising, and there are, for example, no adverts for skin-lightening creams found in other magazines of the period. AWA��s contributors wanted a space in which to debate how to combine the pleasures and challenges of womanhood with the task of nation-building, through reproductive labor, and through new career avenues, from politics and law, to being a sports woman, secretary, or radio presenter. It��s also key to situate AWA in relation to women��s associations and women��s local level community organizing across francophone West Africa in this period and to recall again the bias of AWA towards a certain elite segment of the population. This is something the editorial team were clearly AWAre of and attempted to tackle in various ways in response to calls from their readers.

Rama Salla Dieng

If AWA still existed, what in your opinion, would it look like today?

Ruth Bush

When the exhibition was launched, there were a couple of people who contacted us to say they were inspired to start a new AWA magazine. I don��t know if those initiatives have yet come to fruition, but it��s exciting to think that historical examples can inspire new incarnations. AWA��s longevity was stalled by a lack of funding and its desire to retain complete autonomy. The editors refused to sell the magazine to French press entrepreneur, Michel de Breteuil; Breteuil subsequently launched his own women��s magazine, Amina, which continues to be produced and widely distributed today. In 2018, an American artist, Fahamu Pecou, made a painting, exhibited in NYC, inspired by AWA. His painting, titled “Jig��n Bu B��s Fenkna,” features AWA��s masthead against the indigo dye found in West African fabrics, superimposed by portraits of two strong and strikingly dressed female figures. One is masked and the other stares directly at the viewer. I think that AWA would exist in the digital realm inhabited by these two women, if it still existed. It would continue to be bold in content, beautiful in aesthetic, and I hope it would retain its founder��s sharp sense of humor!

Rama Salla Dieng

If you were to cite three lessons from women organizing offline that you learned from your work on AWA, what would those be?

Ruth Bush

One, retain autonomy and own the means of production (or borrow them from good friends). Two, remember who your readers/public are and listen to them. And, three, keep laughing.

Rama Salla Dieng

What three recent novels from francophone writers would you recommend? Why?

Ruth Bush

I��ve been reading lots of African campus fiction recently, in French and in English. I enjoyed Mbougar Sarr��s De purs hommes, Fran��ois Nk��m��s Le cimeti��re des bacheliers, and J��r��me Nouhoua��s Le piment des plus beaux jours. They show��in very different contexts��how fiction can nourish reflection about institutionalized, bureaucratic and dehumanized spaces in the university. I also read V��ronique Tadjo��s poetic meditation on the Ebola crisis this summer��En compagnie des hommes��and was once again impressed by her stunning command of narrative voices.

Rama Salla Dieng

In the context of ��fallism�� and ��decolonial�� claims in South Africa, the UK, etcetera, what are your views on the future of ��La Francophonie��?

Ruth Bush

I��m very interested in how these “decolonial” claims are echoing in francophone spaces on the continent��especially in public universities, which are suffering the structural effects of the LMD system, massification and ongoing aftermaths of structural adjustment policies, and which are increasingly multilingual spaces. Colleagues in those universities have suggested that these debates about decolonizing the curriculum and the staff body took place much earlier (e.g. in 1968 student protests. There remains an embedded pedagogical tradition inherited from the French higher education system, but initiatives such as the Ateliers de la Pens��e are pushing at the boundaries, rethinking epistemic diversity and the ecology of knowledge production and circulation on the continent. The ways in which epistemic diversity can encompass multilingualism, without reproducing imperial paradigms or hierarchies, is an important next step. I think translation��as a creative practice, an ethic, and writerly craft��has a crucial role to play here. I��d be interested to hear your thoughts about this question, Rama!

Rama Salla Dieng

Are you a feminist yourself?

Ruth Bush

Yes. I grew up with a feminist historian mother who convened Women��s Studies reading groups in our living room in the 1980s and early 1990s. The matriarchs of my family have been very important figures in my life: one working-class grandmother who grew up in Northern England at a time when women were not encouraged to pursue education, lived through the difficulties of bringing up children during WWII, and retained a strong and intelligent sense of who she was. My other grandmother was from a middle-class background; she did study at university and went on to campaign actively in the peace movement, taking me and my brother on marches when we were small. My mother was never dogmatic about imparting her views, but I see now how much has rubbed off on me, especially since becoming a mother myself last year and facing a new set of challenges defined by this changing aspect of who I am. I enjoy reading feminist writers of fiction and non-fiction��of late books about motherhood (Adrienne Rich, Sheila Heti, Maggie Nelson, Leila Slimani). As a feminist, I try to support women colleagues, students, friends, and strangers whenever needed, and to anticipate situations where gendered injustices (including issues affecting LGBTQ+ communities) might arise. These everyday forms of feminist practice are essential to building a more equal forms of society.

Rama Salla Dieng

How do you practice self-care?

Ruth Bush

Self-care very often comes in the form of a piece of cake and a cup of tea. Since having my daughter, I am also much stricter about my working hours. Academic work can easily fill the whole week, but I find I am more relaxed if I spend weekends with friends, at the park, and pottering in the garden, and keep my evenings screen free as far as possible. I am also now trying to reduce my overseas travel for work��this is partly for reasons of self-care and recognizing the benefits of slower modes of thought and reflection, but also due to the unsustainability of long-distance air travel in the context of our shared climate crisis.

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Published on May 05, 2020 08:00

Decolonizing the Lens

Because of the 1994 genocide, Rwanda occupies a complicated place in the world��s imagination. A new film, about the preceding 1973 pogrom, wants to demystify that view. Does it succeed?

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Still from Our Lady of the Nile."

This year marks 26 years since the horrifying genocide in Rwanda and the 100 days of slaughter that went unheeded by the world. The killings began��on the night of April 6, 1994,��and left almost one million dead and wounded, while an entire country sank into traumatic shock. This is usually a season for mourning for Rwandans since then��and the collective mood is generally heavy and downcast for days on end. An entire generation of Rwandans has since come of age under the living and breathing memory of these events. History has also come under heavy scrutiny, and the hideous tangle of Belgian colonial policies that created and nourished the flames of division between Tutsis and Hutus has been excavated and discussed extensively in books and art over the past two decades.��

I would not go as far as to say that academic, literary or creative production from and about Rwanda is profuse or plentiful, given that production from the African continent as a whole remains marginalized and misappropriated, and exists outside of most international frameworks of distribution and promotion. Within that, East Africa occupies an even more marginal space. But since 2006, Rwandan novelist Scholastique Mukasonga, who writes in French, has blazed her own singular and prolific trail. Born in a large Tutsi family in the Gikongoro region, Mukasonga��s life from the age of four was marked by a series of expulsions and displacements. She grew up in a refugee camp, and has recounted the crippling fear of violence that was part and parcel of her daily life in her memoirs. As a writer, Mukasonga has significantly broadened the historical frame of the genocide in Rwanda by referring to pogroms against the Tutsis in the fifties, sixties and the seventies, events that shaped and eventually culminated in the genocide of 1994.

Now, Mukansonga��s internationally acclaimed 2012 novel Our Lady of the Nile arrives as a stunningly beautiful new feature film from French-Afghan writer and director Atiq Rahimi.

The novel has not only taken Mukasonga on a journey of international success, but also offers a glimpse into the actively cruel, racist and misogynistic policies of the Belgian colonial authorities. Set in an all-girls Catholic boarding school, two Tutsi girls who have been admitted based on a quota system allotting ten percent of slots to Tutsis endure horrific anti-Tutsi violence as gossip, jealousies and rivalries between teenage students escalate into a killing frenzy (while the Belgian nuns and teachers literally shut their ears and doors to the ��purge,�� locking themselves in safety).

Our Lady of the Nile has stayed steadily in the limelight in the last few years. The original French publication in 2012 was followed by the English translation in 2014, as the book garnered awards and acclaim. And now, Rahimi has given it yet another life by bringing it to the big screen. Admirably shot entirely in Rwanda, with Rwandan actors and with plenty of dialogue in Kinyarwanda, Rahimi��s film is visually breathtaking, tightly edited and an emotional rollercoaster. It is no surprise that it has already snapped up some awards at film festivals. The film is divided into four acts that are interspersed with haunting and lyrical passages narrated by a kind old witch, Nyirimongi��a Greek chorus-like device that becomes an objective, moral vector and our calm respite as the tragedy unfolds.

Rahimi��s adaptation makes some interesting moves with regards to the interpretation of the novel. Teasing out the main plot arcs, the film compresses the time span of the story to the few weeks building up to climactic violence against the two Tutsi girls enrolled at the elite boarding school. The novel��s timeline is much longer, and describes the village in which the school is located, while narrating a complicated regional history through local characters who are not part of the Our Lady establishment.

Rahimi��s boarding school tragedy follows a potentially conventional trajectory, with the first section, titled ��Ubuziranenge�� (Innocence), portraying a somewhat ��normal�� routine in which the pupils exist in relative harmony and are united against the authority of the teachers, nuns and priests. The girls discuss boyfriends, get caught copying exams, argue with teachers over their curriculum and cut lines for the bathroom. Rahimi also conveys nostalgia for days gone by with an occasional slow motion scene or long shots of lush landscapes that will soon come to represent a paradise lost. The gorgeous cinematography can feel bewildering given Rahimi��s lingering close-ups of beautiful young women, but by the end of the film, it is clear that, while there is a proclivity to aestheticizing, this is no sexualized fetish cam.

Innocence is, of course, soon thwarted as the school bully, Gloriosa, abetted by her meek companion, Modesta, set out to put their two Tutsi classmates, Virginia and Veronica, in their place. A local Belgian artist, De Fontaneille, harbors a fetish for Tutsi women that helps drive a sense of division as the shocking plot unfolds. Mukasonga��s novel, and now Rahimi��s film, explore what is called the ��Hamitic hypothesis�� that is often cited as the ideological basis of Belgium��s deliberate underdevelopment of the Hutus. Cunningly alluding to the Hamitic myth through a church sermon scene, Rahimi introduces the viewer to the Biblical story, which claims that the descendants of Ham, son of Noah, populated the areas by the river Nile, and thus remain related to Europe. In Rwanda, it was the Tutsis who were made to fit this category, and in a boarding school literally built on the banks of the Nile, the character of creepy De Fontaneille embodies a preoccupation with this racialized myth. He is openly obsessed with Tutsi women, their facial features, their necks and their blood lineage.

“Je vous aime” ( I love you people), De Fontaneille languidly tells Veronica and Virginia, then proceeds to spin for them a convoluted myth about Tutsi queens. By drawing a sketch of Veronica and lavishing compliments upon her about the shape of her nose, all in front of her classmates, De Fontaneille sets Gloriosa on a jealous and destructive path. She decides that the revered statue of the Madonna near their school must be given an authentic Hutu nose. ��Our statue has a minority nose,�� Gloriosa fumes. Later in the film, she physically climbs upon her friend��s back in the dead of the night to replace the statue��s nose: ��You��ll soon have a nice Rwandan nose,�� is Gloriosa��s demented, nationalist declaration to the statue. With the fires of hate and revenge officially fueled, the next three acts��titled Ikizara (Sacred), Umuziro (Sacrilege) and Igitambo (Sacrifice)��give us a glimpse into the actual 1973 pogroms that took place at schools and universities with the intention of purging Tutsi students enrolled on quotas.

A master stroke in Rahimi��s interpretation is the focus on direct and lived impacts of the invisible iterations of racism that colonialism creates and sustains: the inferiority complexes generated through European ideas of beauty; the promotion of ��good�� taste and refinement through European food leading to shame and alienation towards one��s local culture; and finally, what the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong��o has called the psychological and spiritual subjugation coming from the imposition of colonial language at a young age.

Some of the contemporary African boarding school narratives I have read engage similar tropes. Tsitsi Dangarembga��s Book of Not, like Mukasonga��s book, teases out the complicated reality of co-existing with schoolmates when racial and ethnic lines remain so tautly drawn. The battles that rage outside spill over into the inside. Ng��g�� wa Thiong’o��s memoir In the House of the Interpreter, for example, gives us a glimpse into a boys boarding school as anti-colonial war rages outside. Here, too, Christianity, European refinement, physical education and language superiority are meted out in the same toxic cocktail seen as fine and ��elite�� colonial education.

In the film, several shots of nuns bolting the iron gates of the Our Lady mark the ways in which these women��s bodies and their virginity is constantly controlled. ��We��re accountable for the virginity of the girls,�� the Mother Superior explains when a student shocks the establishment by getting pregnant out-of-wedlock. As the film progresses, the gates��which also symbolize a forcibly united post-independence Rwanda, mirrored in the structure of this school��are rendered futile. Soon enough, the violence is brought right into the classrooms and the dormitories as young men rape and kill.

In Decolonising the Mind, Ng��g�� wrote that colonialism meant that the ��night of the sword and the bullet was followed by the morning of the chalk and the blackboard.�� Our Lady of the Nile illustrates this by allowing the audience to eavesdrop on some infuriating lectures dished out by deadpan teachers proclaiming racist ideas, such as the notion that ��Africa has no history,�� or reprimanding characters with the adage, ��You are expected to be good citizens, good Christians.�� In one of the school assemblies, students are explicitly told, ��I have heard girls only speak Kinyarwanda. Our code of conduct forbids the use of this language.�� In addition to Christian chastity, the French language and glorified Western history, the ideals of good taste (code for European refinement) are also playfully dissected. The young women taste foreign foods like foie gras and caviar and find them repellent. Amidst the giggles, Gloriosa reminds them, ��You girls have to get used to this kind of food �� At official dinners, you won��t be eating beans and bananas.��

Rahimi also layers the film with archival imagery, with the perhaps pedantic goal of revealing horrifying facets of Belgian history. In one old photo the girls discover, they are puzzled about why one of the men��s faces is crossed out with a red marker. It is a 1960 photo of Patrice Lumumba at the event of his controversial speech commemorating Congo��s independence, and when King Baudoin of Belgium had famously stormed off. Such intertextual elements are artfully woven throughout and serve to emphasize the acute impact of European imperialism not just in Rwanda, but on the African continent more widely.

Women��s narratives about boarding schools expose the realm of the intimate and the domestic as a space of war. The origins of violence can be traced to seemingly banal, spiteful rivalries over who��s more beautiful. We see the brainwashing in action as the girls gush over photos of the Belgian queen, who they proclaim as ��beautiful.�� They are also fascinated with De Fontaneille; they visit him in hopes of becoming his muses. Virginia��s character remains an important counterpoint here. Always sage, analytical and prescient, she places her faith in pre-colonial systems of belief as the crisis threatens to worsen. She visits Nyirimongi, who lives in the mountains, and pleads for help. The message here seems to be that the colonial edifice upon which independent Rwanda was built cannot yield solutions or peace. Instead, we are going to have to return to older histories and alternative, non-Eurocentric approaches.

However, the Rwandan women students of Our Lady are not complicit recipients or foolish mimics of ordained behavior. Characters switch to speaking in their native language when required. Some find ways to hang out with their boyfriends and are certainly not invested in virginity. Catholicism is part of the school��s fundamental structure, but for the women, it is often no more than a charade. When a classmate suddenly dies, they all participate in the Christian prayers, but in the dead of the night, they whisper: ��I��m sure they lied to us,�� concluding that ��[n]othing��s fair in this world when you are a woman.�� As an alternative to the Christian prayers, they choose to mourn their friend under the inky twilight with a beautiful, traditional dance in the rain, reminiscent of scenes from Julie Dash��s Daughters of the Dust. Though this is hardly the world of the Northern Ireland series, Derry Girls, all the young women show spunk and attitude in some form or another. And the consistent representation of these women as empowered and independent-minded is the real redeeming feature of a film that could have easily succumbed to a depiction of these women as victims of society, family, institutions, war and the country itself.

While films about Rwanda have tended to focus on the events of 1994, Our Lady of the Nile is a game-changer because of its attempt to map the lesser known moments that contributed to and then culminated in the final horror of 1994. That said, the film does not significantly complicate the main political narrative about Tutsis as victims, Hutus as victimizers and Europe as the silent instigator. Human rights reports and the occasional memoir or documentary have attempted to argue that Hutu civilians suffered abuses too, and that the story is far more nuanced. But Rwanda occupies a complicated place in the world��s imagination. The current president, Paul Kagame, has held power since 2000 and has been heavily criticized for his forced reconciliation and social re-engineering programs. Perceived as the epitome of a benevolent tyrant, he does command respect in neighboring countries that complain of their own leaders�� corruption, inefficiency and a lack of heartfelt commitment to their people��s advancement. Given the intense rigidity of the current national narrative, it would be difficult to move the needle too much. Additionally, Mukasonga, who lost a shocking 27 family members in 1994, brings her personal experience to bear in her novel and by extension, the film.

Our Lady of the Nile��is a difficult but gripping book, and it is not surprising that Rahimi, himself a war refugee, saw a powerful film in the material and took on the challenge of bringing it to the screen. The challenge here is not only of cinematic adaptation, but of producing and distributing such a story within the context of a lopsided film industry that makes it hard for such movies to succeed outside the frameworks of festivals and small screenings.��And this year, a cruel season has dawned upon us all��as a global pandemic threatens livelihoods and collective sanity. Sadly, it has stemmed the flows of art, literature and culture.��Our Lady of the��Nile��was scheduled to make the rounds with screenings in different cities, and while these are now cancelled, I still hope that there is a way for the world to see this gorgeous film in the near future.

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Published on May 05, 2020 05:00

The new normal

Reflections from New Orleans, Louisiana��the US's most African city��on the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

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New Orleans, USA. Image credit Derek Bridges via Flickr CC.

Some have food but cannot eat, some can eat but have no food, we have food and we can eat, glory be to you my lord.

�� Nigerian Christian hymn

I am from Lagos in Nigeria. Lagos is a port city, the most populous in Nigeria and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. I now live in another port city, New Orleans, Louisiana. Where I live in New Orleans, we��re on the cusp of something �� ordinary. We��re in a moment that feels different but evokes sameness; the tree birds are chattering as remarkably as yesterday, even if the pace of our world has slowed. There are fewer cars, and less pedestrians on the streets, but Westworld just premiered its new season on HBO and take-out is still available.

Social life remains relatively undisturbed, already socialized towards disconnectedness by personalized technology: Spotify and Netflix distract our souls; on-demand consumption remains our prerogative, Uber Eats, Instacart and Amazon deliver sustenance to our bodies; text, video messaging, and dating apps lift our emotional spirits. We��re mostly dancing and cooking (sheltering) in place, longing for our old lives back.

But our social lives, relatively intact though scaled back because of the virus, have the opposite fortunes of our devastated economic life. The virus is erasing the wider economy, and specific sectors, like the restaurant industry, have been decimated. Because our social and economic lives are intertwined, we feel the current economic disruption deep in the marrow.

Some of us, the middle class and affluent, are facing the sort of existential uncertainty we usually defer until death or illness. While others, those of us already heavily policed by the state��immigrants, the working class, black and brown bodies��are facing the same ambiguous existence we��ve always known, except the moment is compounded by everyone else’s anxieties. But the future isn��t as inscrutable as we fear. There are at least two ways to be clairvoyant, by examining history and observing contemporary but parallel realities.

Right after 9/11, there was significant shuddering at what the future would look like. And when it came, it was what some of us already knew: hyper surveillance and militarized security. For much of white America the changes were invisible, like the suspension of habeas corpus to foreigners, allowing the indefinite detention of ��enemy combatants,�� the No Fly List which put restrictions on many Muslim sounding travelers long before the Muslim Ban, and electronic eavesdropping on US citizens.

And the most visible changes were initially shocking but soberly accepted among Americans: National Guard personnel armed with assault rifles arrived at airports, stoically preserving our peace with their frightening presence. Military presence in US airports has receded since, but vestiges of our former fear remain in the security screening process, K-9 patrols, and the occasional weapon-bearing military person. Today, our social lives have adjusted robustly to this new normal, because our economic lives are intact.

While 9/11 produced war and global surveillance, it was also an attack on the American psyche, symbolically represented by the financial industry. America��s greatest act of social defiance was to reignite its economic motor. Ergo the $15b bailout to the airline industry and other billions spent across various economic sectors. America��s response was captured perfectly by George W. Bush a few weeks after 9/11 when he said, ��Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.�� After all, our social lives only find meaning in consumption: it was business as usual.

If 9/11 offers a broad perspective on the doggedness of the US economic system and the social adaptability of Americans, ever accommodating as long as commerce and consumption remain uninterrupted, then Hurricane Katrina is a site specific example of what happens when the world completely changes but everything remains the same. Because, while Katrina temporarily sunk New Orleans�� restaurant industry, the city rebounded spectacularly.

Katrina was such a comprehensive disaster that the end of the city seemed more possible than a recovery. Before the hurricane, tourism, with visitor spending predominantly anchored by hotels and restaurants visits, contributed about $6 billion to the city��s economy, funding a third of the city’s operating budget. Immediately following Katrina The New York Times reported only about three or four restaurants of the city��s estimated 3,400 were still functioning. The economic cost to New Orleans was about $75 billion, the human loss stood at 1,200 people (or more). For restaurants in particular the situation was remarkably dire.

Ten years later, Mayor Mitch Landrieu in his 2015 State of the City Address would say ��… we are in the midst of a retail and restaurant boom.�� He was right. New Orleans is back to normal and even more prosperous than before: economic output has grown by about 26 percent since Katrina and tourism spending has jumped by around 50 percent, reaching a record $9b in 2018. Restaurants have rebounded spectacularly, growing by 24 percent since Katrina.   While the general economic trends have been positive, the specific rewards are uneven, with black New Orleanians benefitting the least. The economic distance between black and white New Orleans began before the hurricane and picked up right after. More than 75,000 of the 175,000 Black New Orleanians who fled the city after Katrina never returned. Today the share of black residents has dropped from 67 percent to 59 percent, and half of all black households earn less then $23,237 per year. In the restaurant industry specifically, black workers are more likely to be clustered in low wage jobs while ��the highest paid occupations in the full-service restaurant industry are disproportionately filled by white workers.�� And to remove any doubt that everything equilibrates back to inequality in the US, whether for labor or employer, let this pre-Katrina statistic, which persists still, marinate in your spirit: minority-owned businesses, which make up about 40 percent of all businesses in New Orleans, only receive 2 percent of total sales receipts.

The coronavirus pandemic is as much a public healthcare crisis as it is an economic crisis, without precedent yet parallel to Katrina. The coronavirus pandemic has brought with it the same desperate calls for federal aid, including for the restaurant industry, that was widespread during Katrina. Now as with then, everyone acknowledges ��the early and strong role of the federal government is critical in these mega-catastrophes.��

But, as usually happens in disorienting times like these, there is an intermediary step. Spurred by a desire to be helpful and faith in the free market, private citizens, businesses, and civic actors mobilized to take action. Restaurant kitchens were reconfigured into community resource hubs and kitchens. Formerly restricted content from food sections of publications like the New York Times emerged from behind paywalls to offer recipes for free. Big food and beverage brands, like Patron tequila, created emergency relief funds to assist restaurant workers. And individuals generously contributed to crowdfunding campaigns, supporting restaurants and their workers.

But as usually happens, both free market and philanthropic responses are ultimately impotent in the face of systemic crises��philanthropy itself a consequence not a solution for problems arising from the free market. All these efforts are a precursor to government relief.

The loose set of collective demands from restaurants were twofold. For their employees, they asked the government to stabilize incomes by offering paid sick leave and expanding unemployment benefits. For themselves they sought cost abatement and capital injection through rent relief, low to zero percent interest loans, debt forgiveness, and tax suspensions and holidays. On March 27, 2020, the government speedily obliged when the President signed a $2T relief package. It goes a long way to meet the demands, but falls short of industry specific relief that would recapitalize restaurants. Without additional intervention it seems many restaurants will die. But what exactly does this mean?

The restaurant industry is one where labor is segregated by race and gender, underpaid and uninsured. An industry fed largely by an industrial agricultural system that��either extracts profits from the environment with little consequences, or offers ethically sourced produced to just a few for a lot. An industry where on the higher end is great food at fat prices in spaces that drive up real estate values, pushing property prices higher and poorer people further. And on the lower scale, working poor people, making barely enough to keep them going, serve low nutrition meals to other working poor people, who can��t afford quality housing because of predatory development. Let it die.

This old god prioritizes the capital of a few people over the labor and lives of many. Relief keeps the status quo intact by taxing workers to subsidize owners. Stimulus checks and unemployment benefits offered to workers will be used to finance consumption (rent, food, healthcare, etc), which only concentrates wealth with the owners of these services. Similarly government guaranteed loans or grants to business owners are essentially the government financing the capital expenditure of businesses. Capital expenditure is money spent by owners to acquire or maintain assets. Assets generate returns. What is wealth if not this: the sedimented, accrual of returns, pressed down, shaken together and running over?

Americans famously say ��there��s no such thing as a free lunch” yet we don��t always abide this axiom. This very American stimulus package is an ��eat now, pay later,” relief for restaurant workers. Deficit spending, which this relief bill is, is financed by future tax increases, or service cuts or future borrowing or future inflation, which means future interest rate hikes and increased borrowing costs for workers (and owners).

Instead of this relief bill, we should be demanding a new system that works for owners and workers alike, one that provides quality housing, healthcare, food, childcare, education, leisure, and work. Instead of bailing out restaurants, we should make people whole.

We need a fiscal policy that does three things.��First it should include reparations: repaying historical debts to African Americans and Indigenous People. There is precedent for this: The US government paid interned Japanese Americans, and land dispossessed Alaskan Natives. Internationally, Germany made reparation payments to Israel for the Holocaust.

Second the policy must eliminate poverty for all US residents. One option is by instituting a Federal Jobs Guarantee which would achieve full national employment by providing jobs to all working age residents, with accompanying benefits including healthcare, childcare, paid family and sick leave and vacation. This creates a competitive labor market that eliminates exploitation. The government did this during the Great Depression.

Finally the policy must equalize opportunity for the next generation through ��baby bonds,�� which are trusts endowed by the government and given to each child at birth. The amount disbursed is based on the wealth position of the child��s family. The trust grows at a guaranteed rate of return and matures when the child reaches voting age. At maturity the trust will be restricted to asset building expenditures, like tertiary education and home ownership.

These three policy recommendations as packaged together are the product of long study by structural economist William Sandy Darrity whose research on racial wealth disparity proves that working the margins herds everyone towards safety.

These measures would fit neatly into the Green New Deal, a legislative proposal that tackles climate crises and economic inequality. Whether all of this is the exact answer is irrelevant. This historic moment calls for a complete retooling of our economic system��not a cheap resurrection of the old master.

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Published on May 04, 2020 17:00

Talking back: African feminisms in dialogue

How are young, African feminist scholars are using their life experiences as sources and resources for theorizing their feminism?

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Girls walking together outside Yomelela Primary School, Khayalitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. Image credit Karin Schermbrucker for UN Women via Flickr CC.

This post is the introduction to our series “Talking back: African feminisms in dialogue.” It is dedicated to guest editor Rama Salla Dieng‘s late sister, Nd��ye Anta Dieng (1985-2019).

In recent years, various forms of feminist organizing have emerged from the Cape to Cairo. We have seen South African students demonstrate on campuses around the country to resist gender-based violence, and to denounce structures of economic oppression (#FeesMustFall), as well as the coloniality of their curriculum and universities (#RhodesMustFall). We have witnessed Egyptian and Sudanese women and youth taking to the streets to reclaim a fairer and more equitable society, and denounce the violence with which their organizing has been met. In Uganda, scholars such as Stella Nyanzi faced imprisonment because of speaking truth to power (she was recently released). In Kenya and Botswana queer activists are pushing for the decriminalization of same-sex relations. On social media, Francophone African women have used the hashtags #VraieFemmeAfricaine, #Nopiwouma, #BalanceTonSaiSai, or #Doyna to challenge patriarchy, sexism, and gender-based violence.

In the coming weeks, a series of posts on this site called Talking Back: African feminisms in Dialogue will discuss issues that are the daughters of our times. It focuses on the connections and disruptions in African feminist thought and practice. It asks a simple question: How are young feminist scholars using their life experiences as sources and resources for theorizing their feminism? In attempting to answer this question, a deliberate effort is made to reflect on the politics of gender, ��belonging,�� and knowledge production, since delineating these concepts also requires a focus on the power dynamics at play.

Genealogies of African feminisms

African feminisms do not start with colonialism, yet similar to the history of African societies, they are still conflated with the encounter with ��others.�� The rich legacies of feminist ancestors who led in public life in pre-colonial times��including Njinga Bandi of 17th century Angola, Yennega of 14th century Burkina Faso, the Kahina of Algeria and Lingeer Ndate Yalla Mbooj of the Waalo Kingdom in Senegal��have been acknowledged. Yet, this focus on exceptional women and indeed, the shift from ��woman-as-heroine�� in the 1960s to ��woman-as-victim�� in the 1980s reveals the mainstream focus on the ��status of women�� (Andrea Cornwall 2005). Indeed, there are many other women who were not queens, but would today be qualified as feminists. Although there are claims that feminism is far from being elitist, there has been a deliberate erasure of voices of generations of women from Africa, the Caribbean, India, and Latin America.

African feminists have provided a vibrant counter-response and have actively contributed to transform these representations of African women, and indeed gender, in feminist scholarship and organizing internationally. A founding moment for the emergence of global south feminists was the conference held at Wellesley College in 1975. The conference was an opportunity for feminists from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to express their disagreement vis-��-vis some of the intellectual positions and social attitudes of certain American and European feminists, and to critique the homogenization of women and the universalism of questions relating to gender, race, and social classes. It was at Wellesley that African participants��such as Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Bolanle Awe, Marie Angelique Savane, Fatema Mernissi, Filomena Steady, Nawal El Sadaawi, Niara Sudarkasa, and Dina Osman, among others��met and decided to create what would become the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), an organization to support training, research, and advocacy by and for African women. Following meetings in Zambia and Senegal, AAWORD was finalized in 1977.

Seminal works by African feminists contributed to a shift in feminist scholarship internationally to acknowledge that difference and context matter, because the issues feminisms seek to address��structures of sexism, domination, patriarchies, oppression and inequalities��vary according to the social structures that engendered them. Some of these works sought to question the still colonial lens through which ��southern�� and African feminisms were being theorized. For instance, claiming the fluidity of gender (Amadiume 1987), or that age/seniority is more important in power relations than sex before colonialism/Christianity in subsaharan Africa (Oyewumi 1997), or even question the relevance of gender for understanding African societies (Nzegwu 2006). Other feminists have reclaimed that the Yor��b�� did do gender, questioning the selective use of language in defense of a matriarchy that was, in fact, profoundly patriarchal (Nzegwu 1998, Bakare-Yusuf 2003).

Feminist African scholars also theorized gender in social sciences in Africa (Imam, Mama & Sow 1997), while reclaiming African sexualities (Tamale 2011), and queer Africa (Ekine and Habbas 2013, Mathebeni 2014). They were pivotal to infrastructuring African feminist scholarship with platforms to discuss feminism in Africa (the journal Feminist Africa at the Africa Gender Institute in Cape Town, the African Feminist Forum (AFF) and its Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists), while organizing to articulate the various forms and shapes of feminist engagement on the continent. This centrality of self-identifying and collectively organizing is illustrated in the most important work of women in CODESRIA (the Council of Social Science Research in Africa) founded in 1973, AAWORD, created in 1977, and the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), founded in 2001.

From the 2000s to today, diverse variants of feminisms have blossomed on the African continent and in the diaspora. Social media has also contributed to new platforms of creativity, dialogue and activism on feminist issues such as African Feminist Forum, MSafropolitan, HOLAA!, and AdventuresFrom, to name a few. Currently, the #MeToo movement, which was started a decade ago by Tarana Burke, an American civil rights activist (and a victim of sexual violence herself), has sparked a worldwide movement to break the silence around sexual violence and harassment. Feminists in Africa and the global south have asked whether #MeToo was a west-only movement and have engaged in/from spaces such as churches (#ChurchMeToo), mosques (#MosquesMeToo), and in the international development sector (#AidToo).

For Mina Salami, who is behind MSafropolitan and is author of the forthcoming book Sensuous Knowledge, three main strands have emerged since the 2000s to complement postcolonial feminisms (radical, Afrocentric and grassroots). These are: 1) liberal feminism, which focuses on individual choices and freedoms, such as sexual rights, equality in the workplace, gender gaps, and internal household dynamics, but fails to address the consequences of neoliberalism; 2) the millennial or 4th Wave African feminism, which is represented by young women organizing across the continent from marches to student protests, blogging and vlogging, and artivism; and 3) Afropolitan feminism and Afrofuturist feminism. These feminisms are forward-looking and propose a transnational approach to feminism that is inclusive of (if not sometimes led by) the African diaspora. Feminism has gained momentum globally. And more and more African feminists are being recognized for their work including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie whose TED talk: ��We should all be feminists�� and short book Dear Ijeawele have resonated worldwide.

This series

The African Feminist Charter has beautifully highlighted the centrality of creating an inclusive, plural, and political definition of what it means to embrace feminism as African women:

By naming ourselves as feminists we politicize the struggle for women’s rights, we question the legitimacy of the structures that keep women subjugated, and we develop tools for transformatory analysis and action. We have multiple and varied identities as African feminists. We are African women, we live here in Africa and even when we live elsewhere, our focus is on the lives of African women on the continent. Our feminist identity is not qualified with “ifs,” “buts,” or “howevers.” We are feminists. Full stop.

Although are as many (African) feminisms as there are African feminists, in this series we use the term feminisms to acknowledge pluralism and diversity, and seek to theorize it and reclaim it from our various standpoints. Not all of us are academic, yet we reclaim our various activities as sites from which we can conceptualize and embody our feminist activism. In addition, this series seeks to highlight how each of us defines our feminism on our own terms, and do not seek to establish an identity through resistance. In doing so, we take a political as well as an ideological stance; identifying as such is a way of acknowledging, showing solidarity with, and placing ourselves in the continuity of previous generations of women fighting back against the sexism and patriarchy forcefully imposed on them. This series is a way for us, as African feminists, to reclaim the intersectionality and polysemy of our struggles. The following interviews address topics ranging from digital activism, women organizing online and offline, and writer��s and academics perspectives.

This allows us to re-claim feminism away from the exclusive territories and vocabularies (and policing) of academia, to allow ourselves to color outside the lines, re-locate or just re-claim feminisms in the interstices of our daily realities and solidarities.

The Talking Back series will consist of conversations with: Annette Joseph Gabriel (Ghana, France) and Mame Fatou Niang (France, Senegal); award-winning writer Mouhamadou Mbougar Sarr (Senegal); Francoise Moudouthe (Cameroon/France) of the pan-African feminist blog Eyala; Rosebell Kagumire (Uganda) of the pan-African feminist digital platform Africanfeminism; Tiffany Mugo (South Africa) of the pan-African feminist digital platform HOLAA; Nana Darkoa (Ghana) of AdventuresFrom; Dr. Ruth Bush of the University of Bristol; and an interview with Ndeye Debo Seck (Senegal) of the Coll��ge d��Education Moyen Waly Thiobane, Kaffrine.

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Published on May 03, 2020 17:00

Ghana responds to the coronavirus

Demolishing homes of poor residents in Accra while under lockdown, tells us all we need to know about the Ghanaian state's treatment of working class people.

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Independence Square, Accra, Ghana. Image via Piqsels CC.

On April 19, President Nana Akufo-Addo (in office since January 2017) gave his seventh address to the nation since he first announced a lockdown on March 30 to curb the spread of the coronavirus in major cities like Accra and Kumasi. The president emphasized that restrictions on public gatherings are still in place. All schools are to remain closed, but ��businesses and other workplaces can continue to operate observing staff management and workplace protocols, with the view to achieving social distancing and hygiene protocols.��

According to the Ghana Health Service, as of April 27, about 106,090 people have been tested for COVID-19. The country has 1,671 confirmed cases with 188 recoveries and 16 confirmed deaths.

Some of the government��s efforts to ease the burden of the pandemic on the population include the suspension of water bills from April to June, tax suspension for some health workers who provide essential services, suspending electricity bills for low-income Ghanaians and, more recently, distribution of food to people in need. The government has also supported the disinfection of public spaces like major streets and markets in cities such as Accra and Tamale. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education has worked with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation to provide online, TV, and radio lessons for primary, junior and senior high schools in the country.

Although these efforts seem commendable, it is important to not lose sight of the fact that economically marginalized people are feeling the effects of the pandemic the most; from the threats to their livelihoods, housing challenges, struggles to social distance, access to basic amenities, and access to credible information about the virus, among others.

A couple of weeks ago, more than 1,000 residents in Old Fadama, a suburb of Accra, were rendered homeless following a demolition exercise carried out by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly. Demolishing the homes of poor residents while the city of Accra was under lockdown tells us all we need to know about how the government is addressing the needs of working class people.

The destruction of the homes of some residents of Old Fadama means that many including children have had to sleep in the open and have been subjected to the vagaries of the cold harmattan weather, mosquito bites, etc. This situation puts these residents at risk of contracting the virus, as they have little to no way of observing social distancing rules, access to running water and access to other resources to practice basic hygiene. Although the Accra Mayor, Mohammed Adjei Sowah, said that displaced people will be provided with temporary housing, many are still sleeping in the streets.

Meanwhile, there has been growing stigma toward COVID-19 patients in the country. This stigma can be attributed to inadequate education about the virus. Although citizen-led groups and opinion leaders have taken it upon themselves to produce educational content in some indigenous languages, many Ghanaian languages have yet to be covered especially in mainstream media campaigns.

In addition, people with disabilities have been largely excluded from media campaigns about the virus. In a statement to Sanatu Zambang Studios (a media organization in Tamale), the Northern Regional Association of the Deaf (NRAD) lamented the lack of education on the virus for deaf people, and called on media organizations to provide education on the coronavirus in sign language.

It seems that the abundance of fake news stories also drowns some efforts to provide accurate information about the virus. The stigma towards people who test positive for COVID-19 means that many who fear they may have it shy away from testing and treatment. In early April, there were reports that a patient ran away from quarantine in the Tamale Teaching Hospital. On April 16, it was reported that another person who tested positive for the virus in Wa in the Upper West Region also ran away. Both patients were foreign nationals. As we look for ways to address stigma, it is imperative for us to consider how when coupled with xenophobia it results in situations where patients would rather run away than receive treatment.

Furthermore, the media should re-examine the role it plays in facilitating the stigma of COVID-19 patients by being more ethical in reporting these stories. Some media organizations have shown the faces of people who have recovered from the virus, inadvertently directing stigma to these people and their families. Others have mentioned the names of patients and their families in broadcasts. Ghana��s National Media Commission should work actively to address these issues and should put in place measures to sanction media organizations that expose patients and recovered patients to harm in this way.

At the same time, the media faces the immense challenge of fake news, which is being shared on WhatsApp and other social media platforms via friend and family networks, social group chats, and religious networks, among others. Many of these fake news stories, which are usually packaged via videos, audios and texts, are produced from unverified sources. Some are locally produced or imported conspiracy theories about the virus that are unfounded. The spread of disinformation is facilitated easily by many people��s inability to distinguish credible information from fake news, due to a deep lack of media literacy in our communities. Government efforts to curb this spate of disinformation have only gone as far as debunking untruths about the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country.

In the last few weeks, the state has involved the police and military to ensure that people in the country follow the rules about quarantine, social distancing and other directives regarding the lockdown in some major cities. That most of these police and military personnel walk around with firearms to ��safeguard�� these directives means that our communities have been reconfigured as war zones, and violence is used to confront civilians who break these protocols.

The involvement of the military and police in other African countries such as South Africa, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria has resulted in catastrophic consequences. Beyond the physical abuse of civilians, it was reported on April 6 that one such encounter resulted in the death of a man in Ashaiman, Accra.

Historically, policing has been a tool utilized by the colonizer to enact violence on the colonized. Furthermore, having lived through a series of military coups d��tat, coupled with curfews where the rights of civilians have been abused with impunity, we need to re-examine the way that we use these law enforcement institutions to fight the virus. According to criminology scholar Justice Tankebe, policing in many traditional Ghanaian societies ��was a collective responsibility of all individuals�� not the vesting of power in institutions and individuals to enact violence on the citizenry. Given the violent history and nature of the military and the police, a more humane approach to addressing violations of COVID-19 protocols would be more effective.

At a very critical time when the government should be exploring avenues to make things easier for the most marginalized in our society through various social support measures, the state has participated in worsening the lives and living conditions of many of these residents.

There is one bright spot: the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana announced on April 11 that the research institutes had successfully sequenced genomes of COVID-19. According to Professor Abraham Anang, the director of the NMIMR, this genome sequencing ��will strengthen surveillance for tracking mutations of the virus and aid in the tracing of the sources of community infections in people with no known contact with confirmed cases.�� The scientists have since shared their work with other scientists around the world through an open access platform. A few days ago, the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research developed rapid diagnostic testing kits, which would help facilitate and decentralize coronavirus testing across the country.

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Published on May 03, 2020 17:00

Ghana��s response to the coronavirus

Demolishing the homes of poor residents in Accra while the city is under lockdown, tells us all we need to know about the government's treatment of working class people.

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