As promised earlier this month,this week on Upfront we discussed the impact of Barack Obama's historic victory, and what it means to Africans on the continent and in the diaspora.
There was evidently widespread support for the Obama candidacy by millions of Africans who were excited by the prospect of a black person heading the United States Government. Because of such overhelming support, some critics on the right said that most Africans or black people in general were in the 'band wagon for a black candidate,just because he was black'.
However that myth was dispelled in the famous encounter posted on youtube,when one nay-sayer confronted a young black man at an Obama rally, and asked him a 'policy' question with such a gotcha attitude, that we all held our breath and seethed with resentment at his pointed and almost rude questions.However, we were all pleasantly surprised when Ashong effortlessly, responded to his questions with such a deep grasp of the issues and policy details of Obama's policies and 'technical specifics' watch video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9fWES11P0c".
This proud moment watched by millions was the hallmark of a change in attitude for people who questioned the wholesale embrace of Obama by young Africans or African Americans.

The respondent in the video is Ghanaian-American Artist Derrick Ashong. For reasons of full disclosure and a little pride,i must mention that i know Derrick Ashong, and he is a smart educated young man,so i am not sure that the millions of other black men would have such an awareness of deep policy issues. However,it must be said that he obviously represented millions of others black or white.

It is indeed true that millions of Africans supported Obama because he was black. But Derrick and others like Mati who i interviewed say that in Barack they saw a better candidate not because he was black, but because he articulated their vision for change and hope. 'In my opinion, he was the better candidate,regardless of his race' says Mati.

Many people on the African continent and beyond, had different reasons for their support of Obama. They say that in Obama they see themselves and their dreams. One listener from Nigeria said that Obama's election means that a black man can become anything in this world. Indeed many young people who i spoke to before the election reiterated this point. They told me that regardless of whether Obama won the election or not,the fact that he had gone that far in the election was good enough.So now that he won,'the victory is an icing on the cake' Chimene a Howard University student says.

So what does his victory mean to you....is it of significance that a man with a name such as Barack Obama is at the helm of such a powerful office? Would it have made a difference to Africans if Obama's name was Michael Jones or if he was republican? Lets hear what you have to say.

Please feel free to be part of the conversation by contributing your thoughts and ideas.

This week on Upfront we looked at the importance of engaging in community service. In some western countries there is a recognition and often mandated, that before a young person graduates from high school or college,they need to have completed a certain amount of hours of community service. In the larger scheme of things,the most basic of all values is that people helping people inadvertently help themselves

So, what about community service and why is it important that young Africans take on this culture and spirit of serving their community. Community service refers to service that a person performs for the benefit of his or her local community. People become involved in community service for a range of reasons — for some, serving your community is an altruistic act, others do it is a punishment.

In Rwanda,the government mandates once a month for people to serve their community. The practice is known locally as 'Umuganda'. On this day of 'Umuganda' the community comes together to serve a common cause-their community-.Even though there has been speculation that such a practice serves another larger purpose of bringing people together in a post conflict country,it is important for people to understand the need for solving their local problems without waiting for government intervation.

That to me is one the main reasons that community service should be encouraged. People should not wait for government to pick up trash on their roads.If there is a stream of water that is a breeding place for mosquitoes,why wait for the government to drain it,when you can mobilize the community to do it. Who suffers when we overlook such problems and instead delegate them to the government.?

However community service is not just about coming together to solve common problems. It is about recognizing individual responsibility to your community and everything in it-people and environment. When we encourage and promote community service among our schools, the effect is that it simultaneously strengthens young peoples' senses of civic engagement, and help them in achieving educational, character development and social goals.

So amidst all the excitement of the past few weeks-election and all. We decided to debunk some of the myths related to Obama's historic election. Many of us are happy with just being alive to witness such an event in our lifetime. But without taking away some of the excitement,lets just understand that his election does not mean the end of all our problems in the world. That said,let me get to what we discussed on this week's Upfront-Education-(We will talk more about Obama's election and its impact in our show next week)

So one of my favorite topics is education,specifically Africa systems of education.I have always been of the point of view that our education does not completely reflect the challenges of African societies.Basically that our pedagogical inclination is towards more theory and less practical. According to many experts education in most of Africa is affected by limited funds and lack of adequately trained teachers, classrooms, and learning materials. Now since i had introduced the Obama subject earlier on, let me refer to the current President Bush,whose ambitious Africa Education Initiative (AEI), a $600 million multi-year initiative that focuses on increasing access to quality basic education in over 30 Sub-Saharan countries through scholarships, textbooks, and teacher training programs.I believe this is a noble undertaking and i hope that goal of the Obama foriegn policy towards Africa will be to strengthen such a program.
However it is not enough to sink millions of dollars in the system,if by itself is flawed.It is evident that there is a gap between what education systems currently produce and what many African countries needs to achieve its development objectives.

Most of Upfront listeners lamented the lack of an education policy in their respective African countries,which seeks to promote research in their local pedagogical systems. There is also a tendency to base our education on western models and material. Our students learn about streets in New York,but they can't name streets in the capital city. Our history teaches us about the first 'man' to discover the river Nile-what it doesn't clarify is that Sir Samuel Baker was the first European and not the first to visit the source of the Nile.

Looking back,much of the history and geography and sciences that we studied in primary and high school,there was little or no mention whatsoever of our African heritage,sciences,heroes and geography.

A good education system should be geared towards creating a workforce that is equipped to fix their nation's development challenges. There is a evidence in developed countries that they have been able to achieve economic growth, the promotion of equality, and reduction of poverty etc, mainly because they continue to teach their students the skills to respond to such challenges.
A recent world bank report concludes that there 'is a continuing gap between education and development' and that policy makers in Africa need to consider alternative paths of educational development in the future.

In this week's episode of Upfront we explore this new phenomenon in dating known as ' friends with benefits'. Many people that i spoke to said that they are aware of this, or have been involved in some kind of relationship with a 'benefits only' agreement.

Even though this sort of 'arrangement' is very common among young college students, many professionals who most times have no time to engage in more 'traditional' relationships are also getting on board with it. The term for it is also fairly new, with traces from a popular culture of the past decade.(that time frame is debatable)


On the show we explored the different reasons why people agree to such arrangements and who benefits more from them.Joyce and Tiffany,both college students seem to agree that it is a misconception to think that men or boys are the sole beneficiaries in these relationships.It is evident that the main pull of these relationships is the easy availability of sex without all the 'strings attached'-such strings being the pressures and limitations of a relationship.

There is a common saying among college students these days, "Friends are friends,and buddies sleep together." This adage was appropriately coined to refer to such friendships that are more than plutonic. However i keep wondering how plutonic a relationship is, if as friends you cross into that physical realm. Are these just euphemisms?

Joyce says that friends with benefits or for purposes of this discussions- 'FWB', have a mostly unspoken agreement to have sex occasionally, without ever pursuing a romantic relationship. However,from her experience,the downside to this is that emotions often take over and jeopardize the relationship,leading to broken hearts.

Usually one party will increasingly cross the line into 'emotional territory' and the next thing they are demanding for more than just sex.In addition, sometimes one of the parties may become jealous if the other person starts dating someone else seriously. It can be very difficult to separate emotions from sex.

Joyce also explains that in her situation, the worst-case scenario happened; the blurring of the lines between friend and lover destroyed a great friendship.
Unfortunately this is a common trait in all of these relationships, when you cross the physical line, the old dynamic between friends is lost forever.
This site has some more information http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/10/09/tf.friends.with.benefits/

So what do you think? Please add your voice to this discussion.

As one of my friend says,we live in interesting times.A lot has changed in our societies,for the past couple of decades we have seen great social and economic transformations all over Africa. One of the effects of this has been that our communities,cultures have also changed.
So,one of those changes we sought to look at this past week was the female/male dynamic in lieu of the changing roles in society.We can all agree that traditionally,men and women had different roles to play.

There is now such a thing as 'corporate' women in Africa.These women have the same roles as men, and are entrusted with making decisions both at home and in the work place. So given this new dynamic,we wanted to find out the differences in decision making processes of the two sexes. Who makes the better money manager,who is more emotional and what are the overall differences between men and women?

Ofcourse as you would expect when you hold such a discussion,our listeners were divided right up in the middle.There were some stark differences outlined by a listener in Nigeria;he says women are so emotional and therefore make decisions based on their emotions.Tiffany Gordon a student in North Caroline said that men are less detached emotionally and this is because they are taught that 'emotions are for women'...

I interviewed the best selling author--John Gray of the 'Men are from Mars and Women and from Venus' fame. He told me that it was a misconception to think that men are less emotional than women,he however said that women are better at finding outlets for their emotions through their extended social networks etc.
He adds that "Over the last fifteen years, a new trend in relationships has emerged linked to increasing stress. Both couples and singles believe they are too busy or too exhausted to resolve their relationship issues, and often think their partners are either too demanding or just too different to understand"

But enough with all the 'emotional' stuff...one thing i picked from our conversation was his finding that women are 'natural problem solvers' and that even when there are no tasks at hand,"women will create them one so as to solve it.." wow..pretty deep huh? Do you believe women create problems to solve them?

Mati Muta a law student in Boston offered that women are 'natural nurturers'...how could i argue with her on that?

Studies show that although at times differences in women's and men's communication styles seem to be constant and overwhelming, they are really quite minor. For example, both women and men can be nurturing as Mati says, but both are aggressive, task-focused, and sentimental (atleast i am).

What we need to discuss more about is if women and men perceive the same messages to have different meanings. Is this interpretation the cause of the historical "battle of the sexes"?

Studies indicate that women, to a greater extent than men, are sensitive to the interpersonal meanings that lie "between the lines" in the messages they exchange with their mates. That is, societal expectations often make women responsible for regulating intimacy, or how close they allow others to come.
For that reason, it is argued that women pay more attention than men to the underlying meanings about intimacy that messages imply.

Men are more sensitive to "between the lines meanings" about status. For men, societal expectations are that they must negotiate hierarchy, or who's the captain and of the team.

Does this mean that men are just 'power hungry biengs?' What is to be said of the argument that if women were in charge of the politics of this world 'there would be no wars'

Anyway the discussion was long and interesting.Let's keep it going on here.