African societies are bound together by strong family ties. A typical African home extends further than just the nuclear family of mother,father,brothers and sisters.

In a typical household, close family members and in many cases distant family members are welcome to stay briefly or for extended periods of time. These people are not treated as visitors but as members of that family. So it is not rare that they take on roles as decision makers in the day to day operations of the home.We refer to them as 'uncle','auntie' etc. They became part of our daily lives and influence what we do and how we behave. This dynamic probably explains why most Africans grow up with a strong sense of family.

So this week on Upfront we decided to look at the role of family in our lives.Is family responsible for the outlook you have on the world. At what point do we cut off the strong family ties that we have cultivated since childhood? One young lady said that when she gets married,she transfers her allegiance to the new family but still maintains strong ties with her former family.

Most African societies are like one big family. Their relationships; economic and social factors are mediated by the system of values passed down for thousands of years. That is how they have survived droughts,famines and wars. Most times Africans view family through other concepts rather than through genetic distance. One listener said that he found out much later in life that the lady who frequented his house and spanked him a couple of times,was not his real auntie.
But we all have those people we call 'auntie' and 'Uncle'--they don't have any blood relations to our family.But we respect them like our elders and we are always on our best behaviors when they are around.

According to experts, the family unit plays a major role in our socialization. Our families are there to provide a sense of "intimacy, love and trust. The saying 'Its a rough world out there' implies that when we are out of the confines of our family setting, we face the wrath of the world without the protection of the family unit. It is there for us to escape the competition of dehumanizing forces in modern society. The African family provides us with something that is “vitally needed but missing from other social arrangements"

Some noticeable developments that made news this week on the continent include; the tragic death of Susan Tsvangirai wife of Zimbabwean Prime Morgan Tsvangirai. There was a conspiracy making rounds that President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU/PF had a hand in this accident--based on earlier incidents in which opposition figures have lost lives in car accidents. However even Prime Minister Tsvangirai himself laid the conspiracy to rest by admitting that it was just a tragic accident.
In the US,President Obama called on for education reform,he summed it like this "Economic progress and educational achievement have always gone hand-in-hand in America,”

Last week President Obama said that there was a strong need for education reform in this country,he summed it like this "Economic progress and educational achievement have always gone hand-in-hand in America,”


So now that we know that there is a strong connection between education and economic progress.....what is next?

On a previous show here on Upfront,we called for a need to reform Africa's education systems. We noticed that there has been little recognition of this challenge among our political leadership. Now that a high profile American leader has connected the dots for us in terms of understanding the relationship between our poor economies and education,we should hope to hear more African leaders taking on the task to spearhead reform of our education systems.

On Upfront show this week, we talked about the current economic crisis, its implications and effects on our continent. We had a number of voices from the continent talking about the rise in commodity prices,loss of jobs etc. Our guests included a young lawyer from Rwanda working in Washington D.C., a medical student from Nigeria Port Harcourt university and a Kenyan Harvard MBA student. Each of them has an interesting take on the global economic crisis and what it means to Africa.Are there any opportunities for us to leverage our investment potential?

The world bank and other development institutions say that the global economy will shrink this year for the first time since World War Two. The implication this has for Africa, among other things, is that we face higher borrowing costs as we access finance for our public projects. There is already a considerable decrease in capital flows in form of decreased remittances from the diaspora community. Robert a Rwandan lawyer in Washington DC told me that since the recession began,he has been forced to cut in half remittances to his family in Kigali. He has also been forced to put off investment projects including a house he was building for his family.
Ultimately economists say that the decrease in direct foreign investment or from diaspora communities, will as lead to a slower growth in the future.

Nobel laureate, economist Joseph Stiglitz spoke at a meeting of a U.N. Commission of Experts to explore reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. The Commission was created to deal with the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries. Stiglitz told the Commission that poor countries unfortunately do not have the billions of dollars needed to revive their economies. Many African countries are dependent on development assistance. However as the rich nations grapple with their own economic problems,they don't have much to spare anymore. The world bank reports that donor countries have fallen behind by around $39 billion on their commitments to increase aid made at the Gleneagles Summit in 2005.

Mumo Muthengi a Harvard MBA student from Kenya told me that in this crisis,Africa could position itself as the best investment destination for people seeking to make a better return for their buck. Even though this years growth figures have not yet been announced,previous growth data supports his hypothesis.

A report released by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) a couple of years back showed that Africa was growing faster than any other developed region. However in a report coming out this week, the World Bank says that developing countries face a financing shortfall of $270-700 billion this year, as private sector creditors shun emerging markets, and only one quarter of the most vulnerable countries have the resources to prevent a rise in poverty.

Now this paints a somewhat grim picture of our economic future,but that is the reality of the economic times we live through. Even developed countries are feeling the heat. How do we come of this crisis a
stronger continent economically will depend on our immediate responses and long term strategies.
This could be one of those generational opportunities and we can't afford to let it pass by doing business the old way. We have both the resources and skills....at least that is how it appeared to me during the recently concluded Harvard Business School African Business Conference.

"An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture."

We are in the middle of another interesting week. On the continent two major events that made history were the assassination of the Guinean president Joao Bernardo Vieira. As always when this happens,the military leaders in Guinea-Bissau reassured the citizenry that they would respect constitutional order. We will have to wait and see if that is a valid promise. In Sudan, the ICC finally indicted President Bashir for crimes against humanity,interestingly they did not charge him with the crime of genocide. Many people are raising their voices on both sides of the issue.

On Upfront we explored an interesting topic;Beauty-the concept and idea. It is one that everyone can relate to. Beauty as it turns out was a very elusive topic.Many define beauty as an idea that provides a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction. In non physical sense,many said that beauty was not physically observable. Thus,one's positive deeds can make them beautiful even though they lack the physical traits.
Still many societies and people have different parameters when defining physical beauty. These are cultural and most often generational depending on a given society.
There is however a uniformity in defining beauty when we base our judgment on actions. Many people agree that an altruistic deed renders one a beautiful person. If you do something nice and kind without personally benefiting yourself,you are most definitely a beautiful person.

Now for many people when we debated the topic of beauty, they automatically assigned a physical attribute and others a gender face to the concept of beauty. Research shows that variations in the physical appearance of humans, are important factor in the development of personality and social relations in 'particular physical attractiveness'. Does this mean that people's physical traits can determine there social character? Is that why Hollywood promotes physically appealing stars as the good guys,while the bad guys are usually less attractive?

Now with the increasing influence of technology in our lives and the flattening of the world (globalization). We have come to adopt a uniform acceptance of beauty. We consume the same information and are influenced by a popular culture that transcends distance. The danger with that is that we have come to adopt the same 'shallow' definitions of beauty often sold on us by dominant cultures. This unfortunately is at the expense of our own understanding of beauty-often seen through the prisms of our own social contracts and experiences.