With all the evidence in our midst—foreign monopolies in mining, banking, coffee trade, humongous profit expropriation, policy double-standards, direct foreign aggression such as foreign capital land grabs, and violent aggressions as witnessed in Somalia and Libya, endless captive debt and so-called aid—why have Africans failed to stage committed resistance [intellectual, cultural or even military] against the ongoing pillage? Most of this championed through the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) whose ruins on the continent have been acknowledged as visible everywhere, why have Africans refused to resist this pillage with their lives as their grandparents’ resisted colonies and protectorates?

Asked differently: how did “former” colonisers so successfully and quickly manage to re-colonise newly independent states—as early as just 30 years after independence—that is, re-monopolise cash and food crop trade, and continue the aggressive violent extraction of Africa’s natural resources without attracting the ire of Africans? Or why have Africans failed to see structural adjustment as ‘colonial adjustment,’ as new ways in which yesterday’s colonisers returned to continue the pillage of the continent?

By demonstrating that structural adjustment programmes – with examples in banking, coffee trade, and mining – actually embody and display all the ugly features of the past colonial projects, this long-read argues that (a) the technocratization of pillage has so successfully disguised the exploitative nature of the power relations giving it a hue of benevolence and mutually observable interests. Africa’s eternal colonisers took off their khaki uniforms for suits, and replaced missionaries with diplomats who, instead of chanting Christianity and civilisation, are now vending democracy, human rights, and free market economics. (b) Reminiscent of the colonialism of old, in addition to violent and structural enforcement, new colonialism has conscripted both willing and unsuspecting compradors across the continent. These have been organised into sophisticated elite networks and are more handsomely [directly and indirectly] remunerated than the earlier group of compradors. These range from heads of states, mid-level politicians, and senior public servants. Others include Europeanised folks in the NGO and civil society sectors whose cosmetic work on the African continent simply benefits the workers than their claimed target groups. Against technocratization and conscription of compradors including local elites, it is common to find expectedly “woke folks” in the west—activists, journalists and scholars—not simply dismissive of the colonial nature of structural adjustment programmes, but also ignorant of the facts to the point that they are unaware of their own conscription to a newer and uglier version of colonial control. In an earlier essay on roape.net, I have called these folks, ‘the new intellectuals of empire.’ Thus, this clearly more lethal wave of colonialism remains invisible – with several fancy names – and has thus failed in generate the ire from Africans, and sympathy from genuine hearts in Europe and North America for whom colonisation of the continent continues in their name.

Most profitable banks in the world

There are 24 commercial banks in Uganda.  In the year 2019, the aggregate net-after-tax profit for those banks was USH807.5 billion (about $215m). Of the 24 banks, only three are locally owned. That is, with over 50 percent local shareholding: Centenary Bank, Housing Finance, and Post Bank. Of these three, only Centenary has noticeable visibility in the market; the other two are very minor players with limited visibility. With the remaining 21 owned mostly by South African and British, often white capitalists, that humongous amount of profit money leaves Uganda every year. Profit expropriation is easy in Uganda with the 2020 estimates showing that USH528 billion (about, $144m) left the country. This is 72 per cent of banking, net-after-tax profits that live the country annually.

Picture this: a story published by The Economist in 2020 – with closer focus on Uganda – noted that “Africa’s banks are the most profitable in the world while also being the least effective.”  With interest rates ranging between 12-30%, these banks, The Economist noted, make over 17% returns on equity for shareholders. So, what type of businesspersons borrow, thrive and pay off these loans – in an economy as small as $36 billion?

In truth, what The Economist did not say was that these inefficient banks were actually, in many ways, a bunch of thieves, disguised as bankers. The trick is, the lender lends while fully aware that you’ll not make any success with the borrowed monies, instead, the bank will keep you in a cycle of debt while they take all of your labours and any profits in the interests. But most importantly, they are looking at your collateral, which they will also take. Because no one borrows money at that interest rate, invests it and repays their loans back—and also makes profit to thrive as a business. Only thieves or friends of government – not paying taxes or working on government tenders – can actually make a profit on such exorbitant interest rates. Sadly, these bankers are not embarrassed to reproduce colonialist stereotypes as justification for the interest rates. Citing the World Bank, The Economist reported that, “Interest rates also price in risk. Assessing borrowers is hard when they often lack credit histories. Chasing up bad loans is a struggle.” Why do honest borrowers incur costs for unfounded colonialist mistrust that bankers have about them?  Can you imagine even in the year of the pandemic – where there was literally no economic activity – these banks together collected USH874 billion (about $239m), which meant their net-after-tax increased by 6.9%! How did they make this money? Through a more technocratized form of exploitation, where, with lengthy labyrinth of contracts and ideologies, the guilt of exploitation is sadly passed onto the exploited as s/he hands over their land, property, sweat and entire livelihood chastening themselves for their bad luck and poor business acumen.

The Kenyan central bank tried resisting this nonsense. In 2020, The Economist reported, Kenya tried capping commercial-loan rates at four percentage points, which was above the central bank’s policy rate. But “the move backfired. Bankers slashed credit to small businesses, reasoning that the rewards of lending no longer matched the risks.” But the exorbitant interest rates actually keep many small businesses away from even approaching these banks in the first place. To appreciate the deep-seated racism and deceptiveness of these high interest explanations, you need to know that in Uganda, for example, the present banks have worked tirelessly to make sure than no native bank opens and thrives.

In 2018, the Auditor General of the government of Uganda, in a confidential report to parliament noted that the central bank of Uganda had in the past three decades closed and sold assets of seven banks – all of them locally owned – with neither guidelines nor minutes: these banks include Teefe Bank (closed, 1993), International Credit Bank Ltd (closed, 1998), Greenland Bank (closed, 1999), The Co-operative Bank (closed, 1999), National Bank of Commerce (closed, 2012), Global Trust Bank (closed 2014) and Crane Bank Ltd (2016).  And here is the kicker: Nile Rivers Acquisition, an offshore company based in Mauritius bought assets of five of the closed banks at 93 per cent discount using the British law. Never mind that these assets, mortgages and loans were based on Ugandan soil, and there was no indication whatsoever that the Ugandan laws could not handle the said transactions.  One would then ask: what enraged Bank of Uganda to close these banks for sport? Why did locally owned commercial banks become criminalised to the point of being closed without due procedure?

The answers to these questions cannot be reduced to individuals at the Bank of Uganda or the government of President Museveni (although these persons are responsible to a degree especially for their comprador character). But the colonialism of structural adjustment, which coerced African political leaders into selling government assets to foreign capitalists—because these recently decolonised countries had no local capitalists—offshoring them and hiding their profits from public scrutiny, before moving this stolen wealth to the bustle of London and Paris. Indeed, if colonialism was about syphoning Africa’s resources, this has continued uninterrupted, as former colonisers learned exploiting without direct administration!

Creaming Africa’s Coffee

Uganda ranks as one of the world’s leading producers of coffee producing over 5 million bags [each of 60kgs] of beans in the year 2019. Coffee remains a major foreign exchange earner in Uganda bringing USH1.8 trillion, that is, $494m in the financial year 2019-2020. This made it Uganda’s number one forex earner.  But while these figures look awesome, the money, despite being counted in Uganda, does not end in the hands of Ugandans farmers and businessmen. But rather traders and big conglomerates in the UK, Switzerland and Germany among others. The Ugandan, Ethiopian, Kenyan coffee farmer remains as exploited as his grandparents during the colonial period.  Political economists, Jörg Wiegratz (2016) and Karin Wedig (2019) have documented the quagmire in which the local farmers are trapped after structural Adjustment in the late 1980.

Using terms such as “fraud,” “cheating,” “theft,” “deception” as empirical tools, Wiegratz has showed the farmer as an endangered species cheated for sport by middlemen in the absence of powerful negotiating unit which were once provided by cooperatives. With majority coffee farmers being rural and often uneducated small-scale folks, the cooperative often negotiated prices on their behalf. Dismantled by free markets, they are cheated with impunity. While Wedig disagrees that cooperatives were ever dismantled – focusing on recently created dilutions of cooperatives such as Gumutindo – she too, acknowledges the conditioning limits in which both farmers and the present cooperatives operate.

I came of age after SAPs (structural adjustment programmes) had just been imposed onto the continent, and cooperatives were dying out across Uganda. But I vividly recall coffee growers’ unions—a local extension of cooperatives—spread across the countryside helping local farmers thrive. The colonial government had, specifically, favoured Indian monopolists, and had worked so hard to make sure farmers remained disunited and lacked a single bargaining voice. This barrier had been successfully dismantled with the enactment of the Coffee Industry Ordinance in 1952. This allowed Native cooperatives to thrive having been denied operational licenses since 1908 which saw many natives die fighting to cooperate. Local Growers’ Unions had village offices, big storage facilities, and cemented yards where farmers collectively dried their coffee beans. Small scale farmers using mostly family labour would harvest their coffee, and use a bicycle or carry it on their heads to the nearest grower’s union yards and stores. The prices had been fixed for the benefit of the farmer. Since Uganda Coffee Marketing Board (UCMB) had negotiated the price for the beans, there were no middlemen to cheat the farmers, and prices never depended on seasons.  If they did, the UCMB would pass the message down the chain.

Over and above negotiating good prices, the cooperatives and growers’ unions ensured that farmers received additional services, including farm equipment, training, seedlings and veterinary support. During bad weather, storage facilities were offered. Lorries branded, “FOR EXPORT” or “COOPERATIVES” often traversed villages collecting farmer’s produce. The Uganda Commercial Bank (UCB) offered big and small loans to farmers—alongside grower’s unions—to help them meet their immediate needs including sustaining their families and paying school fees, medical bills. Can you imagine UCB was giving farmers up to 90 per cent of capital costs to cooperatives to buy ginneries of their own? The 1950s-1980s were good times before structural adjustment took hold.  Together, the farmers were enabled with a voice to demand representation at the national stage. Then structural adjustment came and crushed this down.

Presently, with the dismantling of nationally supported and bottom-up cooperatives, coffee farmers do not have any locally-invested voice on the international market, as UCMB did.  Prices are determined by the so-called market forces of “demand and supply”—and all their fetishized violence. When the books say $490m were earned in a particular year, over 60 per cent of that money ends in the pocket of local barons and British and Indian middle-men. These middle-men have also set up shops and farms in Uganda and are, sadly, part of the local count. African Business reported that the biggest players include, “Kyagalanyi Coffee…which later became Volcafe group, the coffee division of ED&F Man, a commodities trader headquartered in London. Other big players include a subsidiary of Sucafina, a Swiss trading firm, and Olam, a commodities giant from Singapore.” Others include Neumann Gruppe with farms and large tracts of land in Mubende district in the central region, and Twin Trading, which is a UK coffee trading company. These use their local offices to earn money—audited as earned by Ugandans—but quickly returned to Europe – just as colonialism did.

But there is more: if Ugandan coffee ever fetched $490m into the Ugandan economy—which ends in UK and German companies with local offices in Uganda—the same beans brought $3.4billion into the Swiss or Germany economy. In a ground-breaking essay, Angers Elsby showed us how a bag coffee grown in Uganda, Ethiopia or Ivory Coast, Europe earns from the same bag seven times more. Elsby has written that, “between 2000 and 2010, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cote D’Ivoire received an average of $138, $71 and $68 per bag of coffee exported, respectively.  Switzerland, Europe’s most profitable coffee re-exporter, earned over $700 per bag.” And this is not because African countries are unable to “add value” but rather that the politics of assessing value addition are inherently flawed to favour western multinationals. Elsby notes that policies implemented by European states during the 1980s and 1990s – accompanying structural adjustment – “dramatically restructured global commodity markets in their favour of Europe and artificially inflated the international competitiveness of their commodity trading and processing industries”. In truth, this so-called competitiveness, Elsby demonstrates, does not stand much on value-additional claims but rather “value capture” by Europe, a thing entirely dependent on political or state power. Not economics. Value capture, and claims of value addition is the new language of exploitation. But what more value would be there beyond making the bean available, beyond farming this bean?

From Leopold II to King Gertler

In his seminal book, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Adam Hochschild tells the story of an official, Edmund Dene Morel from shipping company Elder Dempster which was based in Liverpool.  Morel championed the campaigns to end the late phases of slave trade under King Leopold II, something he followed up on by sheer intuition and instinct. It was about 1897, when, on one of his occasional supervisory trips at the Belgian port of Antwerp, Edmund Morel noticed something unsettling about the ships loading and unloading goods to and from the Congo:

At the docks of the big port of Antwerp he sees his company’s ships arriving filled to the hatch covers with valuable cargoes of rubber and ivory. But when they cast off their hawsers to steam back to the Congo, while military bands play on the pier and eager young men in uniform line the ships’ rails, what they carry is mostly army officers, firearms, and ammunition. There is no trade going on here. Little or nothing is being exchanged for the rubber and ivory. As Morel watches these riches streaming to Europe with almost no goods being sent to Africa to pay for them, he realizes that there can be only one explanation for their source: slave labor.

Indeed, there was slave trade, and Morel would go on to champion a major human rights movement against King Leopold II in the years that followed. Among the other activists that Morel inspired was the well-known satirist and novelist Mark Twain. In one of his epistles, Mark Twain noted that when he participated in the anti-slave movement that Morel had inspired, “in the Congo, a practice [Slave trade] had taken eight to ten million lives.” Reading this figure, Hochschild was startled: He noted:

Statistics about mass murder are often hard to prove. But if this number turned out to be even half as high… the Congo would have been one of the major killing grounds of modern times. Why were these deaths not mentioned in the standard litany of our century’s horrors?

There are three things I want to highlight from this section of the story of King Leopold II and his crimes in Congo. The first is that if he ever returned anything to the Congo for the rubber and ivory he pillaged, it was weapons and soldiers. Not more goods. Secondly, his actions directly led to millions of deaths as Mark Twain noted. If they were not directly killed and maimed as punishment for not fulfilling the quotas of wild rubber demanded, they died from the conditions that the Leopold enterprise put in place. Conservative estimates have put the numbers at 10 million people. The third point, and perhaps most important for this essay, is that the template that Leopold used has never been thrown away.  It has simply been revised over the successive years, to become more disguised but it remains as lethal as before. To make that case more succinctly, I will tell the story of Leopold’s later replacement: King Dan Gertler.

Considered the richest or one of the richest men in Israel, Dan Gertler’s empire has been built off Congolese natural resources and like Leopold, leaving many dead bodies in his wake.  With monopolistic rights over almost all the mining sites in the Democratic Republic Congo, Gertler is the absolute embodiment of the colonialism of the so-called free-markets – that were ushered in by structural adjustment. Gertler enjoys near-monopoly rights in Congo’s diamond, copper, cobalt and gold trade, which he attained only dubiously. Recently, western media was awash with his corruption scandals, in which he allegedly gave out $100m of bribes to acquire this monopoly status. Interestingly, the script involves direct voices and footprints of the American presidents from George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and now Joseph Biden. Sadly, not narrativized as colonialism, but in the beautiful language as a contention over a “trading licence.” The state of Israel appears only on the side-lines.

But why would the story of a single businessman – interacting in a free market economy – directly implicate presidents and states? Because there are no businessmen of this size without the violence of their states. These license scandals notwithstanding, in 2020, Bloomberg reported that Gertler would be getting richer over his Congolese possessions after entering trade agreements with Tesla’s Elon Musk.

Having reached the DRC in 1997, the BBC reported, Gertler’s breakthrough came during the 2000 civil war in DR Congo which “risked ending Kabila’s reign as suddenly as it had begun.” Arguably with the support of the Israel government, “Gertler promised millions of dollars and, according to a United Nations report, access to arms.” Emphasis added. In the spirit of states propping their capitalist exploiters of the African wild—disguised as individuals on free trade projects—this access to arms would only be guaranteed by his state. Gertler delivered on his promise of arms according to a UN report cited in the New York Times. In return, Gertler “received a monopoly on DR Congo’s substantial diamond exports,” and “diamonds would be exchanged for money, weapons and military training.”

The mention of military training should signal us to the ways in which state-driven, war-driven capitalism reproduces itself: works with the state. No wonder, when Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001, Gertler had “gained the trust of the younger Kabila” who went on to become president, and with him, Gertler was guaranteed more success.  Just 47 years of age, Gertler is believed to the richest man in Israel with major investments across Tel-Aviv – not Kinshasa.  King Leopold built Belgium through his proceeds from Kongo – not Kongo.

The BBC story continues that with bribes estimated to be over $100m, “Companies controlled by Mr Gertler started sweeping up licences for mineral deposits all over the country.” Not to eat alone, Gertler helped other capitalist exploiters “like Swiss commodities trader Glencore and New York hedge fund company Och-Ziff Capital Management.” These acquired control over mining sites, and the pillage continued. It is estimated that DR Congo has lost $1.36bn in these shady deals. Presently, there are Blue Helmets in DR Congo, and continued violence in different parts of the country directly connected to the ways in which minerals are mined in the region. The difference here is that while King Leopold II would be directly called out, under Gertler’s regime, it is individual Congolese held responsible for killing each other. Gertler is deftly hidden.

For those unfamiliar with the new wave of colonialist-capitalist control, it is easy to put the two Kabila presidencies on the spot for being corrupt and allowing foreign pillage. It is also easy to seek to hold Gertler as individually accountable. This would be barely scratching the surface. These men are beneficiaries and servants of a ‘regime of truth’ that was set in motion by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Under the language of free market economies, former and new colonisers work in the background—outsourcing individual businessmen whom they can discard once things turn sour. In addition to quietly manipulating and supporting conflicts, they return as defenders of human rights, and seek to prosecute perpetrators – to do all of this they have conscripted an army of journalists and scholars, returned as donors and aid-givers, and turned the political class into compradors accessing entire economies through simple, technocratized routes (development, aid, human rights, democracy, etc.)

In the Congo, the Gertler pillage is technocratized and no one ever questions how a white foreigner owns monopoly rights over natural resources in a war-ridden country. Instead, the situation is captured and debated in technicalities and legalese of courts judgments, licenses or sanctions, and does not involve dismantling this outrightly colonial empire.

Structural Adjustment as Colonial Adjustment

In a recently published book, Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World, Jason Hickel tells the story of Structural Adjustment in rivetingly precise details:  after independence in the 1950s and 1960s, Hickel writes, newly independent governments rolled out progressive policies to rebuild their economies. They used taxes and subsidies “to protect their domestic industries, improve labour standards and raising workers’ wages. They also invested in public health and education.” Hickel continues that “all of this was meant to reverse the extractive policies of colonialism and improve human welfare – and it was working.” The effect of this was that “average incomes in the global South grew at 3.2% per year in the 1960s and 1970s” which in effect, improved the quality of life in these countries. As this happened, former colonisers were not pleased at all. These breakthroughs in formerly colonised places had meant, Hickel notes, “losing access to cheap labour, raw materials and captive markets that they had enjoyed under colonialism.” They had to intervene. For about 25 years, they schemed and planned on how to reverse the tide. Using their control over the World Bank and the IMF, they imposed structural adjustment programmes across Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia.  Forcefully, SAPs “liberalised the economies of the global South, tearing down protective tariffs and capital controls, cutting wages and environmental laws, slashing social spending and privatising public goods – all to break open profitable new frontiers for foreign capital and restore access to cheap labour and resources,” Hickel concludes.

To make the argument that parastatals and cooperatives – mining companies, transport systems, farmer’s support systems, value addition chains, hotels, etcetera – were not working, Wiegratz (2016) has noted that World Bank (i.e. it’s advisors/experts) had to forge evidence: according to a key source from inside the state machinery in Uganda, “cooperatives were forced to sell their business to the private sectors” through manufactured bank statements that declared them indebted and unsustainable: “accountants were sent into cooperatives to check their books… made sure the cooperatives were on a loss on paper: cooperatives were told, you have to sell to cancel your debt [that was created on paper in the first place]. Also, cooperatives were not regarded credit worthy by respective banks” (2016: 99).  It did not matter that almost all African economists and ministers of finances had argued that African economies were too small to be left on their own (i.e., without protective barriers, state subsidies, trade deals politics etc.).  There were no businessmen rich enough to buy, take loans (at +20 per cent interest), and run entire railway lines or hotel chains. We had just emerged from colonialism. It meant – with global market fictions – that, rich, mostly white men from Europe and North America, propped by their governments would come and buy the very things they had once taken by force and looted.

In truth, after decades of independence, the loot continues – but in a more technocratized form and expert driven and less violent than before. This is the story of Dan Gertler, ED&F Man London, Sucafina, Switzerland, Olam Group, Singapore, Neumann Gruppe, from Germany and Twin Trading from the UK.

Conclusion: scramble without partition

If the 1885 Berlin Conference meant that Europe would grind Africa down after sharing it amongst themselves—which also often meant fighting over each other’s share—the 1980s Structural Adjustment project meant that the lions had finally agreed to eat their prey without fighting over it. There was no reason to split it into small units of influence anymore. They could eat all at once, and everybody was welcome to the dining table, exclusively designed, meticulously calculated, legally and forcefully protected for dinners in Europe and North America.

Hickel has written that in Europe and North America, “…fully half of the total materials they consume are extracted from poorer countries and generally under unequal and exploitative conditions. The coltan in your smartphones comes from mines in the Congo. The lithium in your electric car batteries comes from the mountains of Bolivia. The cotton in your bedsheets comes from plantations in Egypt… the vast majority of materials consumed in the south ultimately originate from the South itself even if they are recycled through multinational value chains” (2020: 112). How does one ensure that these supplies keep coming? Beyond the legalese of SAPs, Sierra Leonian-German activist, Mallence Bart-Williams has added that this also involves “systematically destabilising the wealthiest African nations and their systems, and all that backed by huge PR campaigns” while at the same feigning endless benevolence to the Africans through aid—under the flashing lights of cameras—but stealing much more under the shadows.

One might say, that one of the most binding lessons of the Second World War, and the Cold War, was the uselessness of fighting over helpless prey – or prey that can easily be sedated or manipulated into subservience. The lions realised there was no need for outright violence over the prey. This eating-together approach is more tactical, subtle, disguised, and even welcome among sections of the prey, as it does not arouse any animosity from the prey itself. In truth, it is this subtlety, technocratization, legalese, conscription of local politicians/elites that Africans publics remain blinded from the colonial continuities despite the enormity of scale.

–

This article was published in the Review of African political Economy (ROAPE).

“Kenya’s official languages are English, Kiswahili, and Silence.” ~ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Dust (2014)

I want to explore something I have been wrestling with over the last three weeks. About silences, and also about anger.

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The Omicron variant of COVID-19 was first identified by scientific teams in southern Africa, and reported to the WHO on 24 November 2021. Since then, there has been a chaotic outpouring of news, speculation and reactions. We have also been furious about travel bans, about scientists being punished, about COVID being labelled as African, and about global vaccine inequality/apartheid.

Some of the dust is only now settling. Omicron has spread incredibly quickly worldwide, and has displaced older variants. European and North American healthcare systems are in danger of being overwhelmed. There is political fallout from the unpopular introduction of tighter controls.

The first cases from Omicron in Kenya have now been identified, but the variant has probably been here for some time. Daily case numbers began doubling just before Christmas 2021. We have entered our fifth wave.

This new variant seems extremely transmissible, but key aspects of its longer-term severity, and its ability to resist existing vaccines, remain unclear. Results from South Africa, Europe and North America about its “mildness” were eagerly projected onto a quite different population here, one with much lower vaccination levels – even as all those health systems went into crisis. New unpredictable variants are still likely to appear over the coming year.

We are still in a situation of uncertainty, but we are desperate to believe the pandemic is over.

~~~

I want to explore the psychological impact of the pandemic. There are things we need to understand, acknowledge, and address now. If we fail to do this, we may remain distracted or paralysed at a time when we really need to gather and refocus our energies.

The pandemic may be viral, but it has also created a mental health epidemic. Most of us are completely exhausted from the past two years. Our emotional and financial reserves are drained. Some of us are suffering from the longer-term effects of COVID, from isolation, or just from the stress of unpredictability.

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Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor wrote, “Kenya’s official languages are English, Kiswahili, and Silence.”

After the Omicron variant was announced, and the West responded with travel bans, I felt we should add a fourth language — and perhaps for Africa more broadly. Anger.

~~~

Fight, Flight or Freeze.

Many of you will recognise these as our classic responses to threats. We usually become angry in response to a source of fear — a threat. We want to fight, to protect ourselves from whatever threatens us. An ancient reactive part of our brain, the amygdala, takes over.

It has to act quickly.  It can’t do nuance.  It. Doesn’t. Have. Time.

Our amygdala has to flatten the world around us, divide it neatly into friends and foes.

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Anger in itself is not a bad emotion. It evolved to protect us. Sometimes it is life-saving. Channelled well, outrage can change society in really positive ways.

However, in our modern, artificial, overcrowded, confusing, stressful and technological lifestyles, we have to be careful. Anger can be misplaced, destructive, and exhausting, especially if we become trapped within cycles of anger and trauma.

At this stage of the pandemic, we are frightened and exhausted. Some of us are on the verge of collapse and paralysis. We want this to be over.

We are also angry.

But the real cause of this anger — an invisible virus — is hard to attack.

~~~

Since COVID-19 emerged in 2019, the world has been a confusing and frightening place. COVID-19 fuelled a global crisis in an extremely unequal and unfair world.

The pandemic, and the accompanying lockdowns, created huge fears, personal losses, sickness, deep economic and psychological challenges. Many people struggled and some genuinely found it hard to understand why.

COVID-19 fuelled a global crisis in an extremely unequal and unfair world.

Lockdowns succeeded in reducing the initial spread, but this paradoxically undermined their justification. Without people visibly dying everywhere, some questioned whether news of the pandemic had a hidden motive. The reluctance of western media to show the suffering of white bodies also created a cognitive disconnect, especially in the US.

We were at war with an invisible virus — not with one another — but still tensions rose.

Our amygdala is not good at this new kind of war. It needs a recognisable enemy.

This medical crisis is not a fairy tale, with cartoon heroes and villains. However, when we are angry, frustrated and scared, the protective instinctive part of our brain activates.  It desperately wants to flatten complicated reality into a reassuringly simple cartoon version.

Who is attacking us?  Who are our enemies?

We needed someone to blame.

~~~

There has been a lot of coverage of far-right COVID conspiracy theories. Trump labelled COVID-19 the “China virus”, while allowing it to kill far more people in the US. An election year in the US cemented a crazy partisan divide, with right-wing politicians taking their stance against masks and vaccines. Public health was placed in opposition to personal freedoms. This soon spread to other countries online.

At a deeper level, the Christian far-right in the US doesn’t believe in evolution. A rapidly mutating virus is impossible to understand. A deliberately weaponized pathogen, developed in a lab, by godless people unlike them, made far more sense. There was someone (imaginary) to blame. They found their “real” enemy.

(This wasn’t a solely Christian problem. Religious “leaders” with political access in India also derailed the COVID response in their country, with disastrous global consequences.)

~~~

Conspiracy theories may be convoluted and nonsensical — but they are emotionally satisfying. In a confusing world, they give us someone clear to blame, to scapegoat.

The idea of the scapegoat comes from the Jewish tradition where, as described in Leviticus 16:21, the sins of a community were placed on a live goat, which was then chased off into the wilderness. I am not sure the scapegoat fully understood what was happening, and the goats I have consulted think this was probably not a huge punishment. However, the point was never really about the goat, but about the removal of sins from within the community.

Lockdowns succeeded in reducing the initial spread, but this paradoxically undermined their justification.

In the modern world, we still find scapegoats — people to blame.  They are not the real cause of our problems and chasing them into the wilderness does not resolve anything.  While the original Jewish ceremony may have served a genuinely useful social purpose, our modern versions do not.  Scapegoats are now useful distractions, used to stoke up and misdirect fear and hatred.

~~~

While there has been a lot of emphasis on far-right conspiracy theories, I think there is also a different but related phenomenon on the left.  After all, people who are scared and angry need to find someone to blame. We all need a scapegoat on whom to pile our complex, perhaps intractable problems — and then noisily chase them out of town.

This does not solve our problems — but it is something tangible we can do. It provides some temporary relief.

In the narratives of these conspiracy theories, pharmaceutical companies and Western governments have conspired to create global vaccine apartheid.  Greed, control or naked racism are the clear explanation in the wilder discussions online. There are wicked people to blame, and we must attack them.

Like any good conspiracy theory, there is a kernel of truth in these narratives. We live in a world that has been substantially shaped by capitalism, and that is still scarred by deep historical inequalities stemming from slavery and Western colonialism. Africa has been last on the list to receive vaccines. (Omicron may have emerged in Africa because of low vaccine coverage, allowing new variants to appear.)

We all need a scapegoat on whom to pile our complex, perhaps intractable problems — and then noisily chase them out of town.

A global public health emergency needed a global public health response. While there was immense public funding and coordination, it has been galling to see large pharmaceutical companies make massive profits from this catastrophe; the techniques and “recipes” for the vaccines must become public goods — not controlled for private profit.

There are very unpleasant echoes of past crises. As Zeynep Tupfecki has observed, most of the people who died in the HIV/AIDS epidemic did so after ARV medicines had been developed. Intellectual property rights and corporate profits took precedence over global health, and Africans bore the brunt of that approach.

~~~

We clearly need better global health systems.  However, this narrative that vaccine inequality was deliberate and racist — and our angry response — simplifies and obscures key issues.

There actually was a plan to make sure all countries received vaccines. This plan recognised that we were facing an interlinked global health crisis, and that we needed to address structural inequalities. COVAX was explicitly set up as “a global risk-sharing mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.”

Several things went wrong with this plan, but an angry backlash against vaccine inequality is now obscuring that history. This anger may prevent us from learning difficult lessons, or taking the time-critical action we need to focus on right now.

Our house is on fire. People are inside, still at risk, but some of us are standing outside —  feeling safe because we have been vaccinated — and yelling about who started the fire. Trying to find the people to blame, instead of figuring out how we can help right now.

~~~

Contracting most of the shared vaccines to one provider — the Serum Institute of India (SSI) — was a disastrous decision for COVAX. This decision may have been based on cost, but it was a strategic mistake to put so many eggs in one basket during an unpredictable global disaster.

Under Narendra Modi, India’s right-wing government did not take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously. A whole government department was set up to push herbal remedies, and other unproven treatments like steaming. Politicians were preoccupied with elections and religious rallies, which turned into super-spreader events. When the Delta variant began to ravage India in February 2021, the government retreated into full-scale denial.

It has been galling to see large pharmaceutical companies make massive profits from this catastrophe.

The situation in India was devastating. I was already helping to coordinate Indian volunteer group efforts, and I remember the horror of seeing the wave of infections grow rapidly, and then overwhelm the country. People struggled to find oxygen, medicines and ICU beds for their loved ones — or even for themselves.

Then things went quiet — which was even more ominous. The COVID wave was starting to ravage communities, and they had no one to ask for help.

However, the crisis in India was also an indication that a global crisis was brewing. SSI was meant to produce 700 million doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine for poorer countries in 2021. It had already encountered some production issues, and the Indian government, in its complacency, had not ordered doses for its own citizens until it was too late. At one point, facing threats from desperate Indian politicians, the CEO fled to London for his own safety.

Exports of the doses produced for other countries, including for Kenya, were blocked. Much of the vaccine famine we experienced early in 2021 was caused by this crisis.

Mistakes were made, and people were definitely culpable as well. However, this key event does not fit neatly into the angry narrative of vaccine apartheid. If the rich white West are the obvious villains, and black Africans are the clear victims — adding a complex disaster in India to the mix just messes up the neat fairy tale.

China developed its own vaccine. It has administered nearly three billion doses to its own people, and exported millions as well.  Cuba did even better, despite facing economic sanctions. After a delayed start, Latin America is doing far better with vaccinations, with larger countries nearing Western levels of protection.

The problem is not simply racism, but relative poverty. However, it is a better fairy tale if we just edit out the inconvenient parts.

~~~

In political theory, a surprising convergence between right- and left-wing extremes has often been noted. Starting from different initial points, positions seem to become more similar as they become more radicalised and angry. This is known as the “horseshoe theory”.

This links to how we flatten the world, and look for simple friends, foes, and scapegoats, as that part of our brain that responds instinctively takes over to protect us from threats. Traditionally, political theory has focussed on dry policy issues and class allegiances.  But with the rise of Trump and other populists mainstreaming conspiracy theories worldwide, a lot more research has been undertaken to explore deeper psychological issues around fear, uncertainty, and anger.

Politicians were preoccupied with elections and religious rallies, which turned into super-spreader events.

In a world dominated by powerful and often impersonal, confusing and opaque structures, our amygdala has to find someone to blame — like a classic Bond villain. Common examples are both right- and left-wing antisemitism, and attacks on globalisation.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, pro- and anti-vaccine groups both see conspiracies organised by greedy pharmaceutical companies. The more you think about this, the more bizarre it seems — but here we are. Anger at international structures in general has also grown, leading to strange bedfellows. At one point, I saw Elon Musk attacking the World Food Programme, and left-wing people rallying to his side. I had to switch off my devices and lie down for a while.

~~~

The SARS-CoV-2 genome only contains about 29,903 bases of single-stranded RNA — 30kB of data, less than half the length of this article. This tiny virus is outwitting human civilization.

Our amygdala, and the adrenalin it activates, can save lives — but only in the right context. We need to act instinctively rapidly when we are running out of a house that is on fire — as did our distant ancestors when escaping predators.

However, in a slow-burning and confusing pandemic, our amygdala should not be allowed to take charge.

COVID-19 is being helped right now by our own fearful responses.

Right now, our house is on fire — and many of us are still trapped inside.  We instinctively want to save ourselves, get our boosters, and get away from the problem as quickly as possible.

However, as a country we are less than 10% fully vaccinated.  Our fire is far from out.

~~~

The last few years have been an “I can’t breathe” crisis on several levels.

Franz Fanon was a physician, psychiatrist and philosopher. His work on colonial violence, and the lasting psychological and cultural damage it caused, remains important to this day. After all, these past years have been a crisis of COVID, but also of George Floyd, and of Black Lives Matter.

I was very influenced by Fanon’s work, via Steve Biko, the South African anti-apartheid activist who built on Fanon’s work.  I first encountered these ideas around lasting cultural trauma when I was a peace worker for British Quakers, based in South Africa.  About a decade after that experience, I took part in the first large Rhodes Must Fall march in Oxford, which was extraordinarily moving and powerful.

Fanon talks of the colonial world as “a Manichaean World”, divided into light and dark.  White colonizers are seen as the light, and black colonized individuals are viewed as darkness, and the epitome of evil.

In a world dominated by powerful and often impersonal, confusing and opaque structures, our amygdala has to find someone to blame.

At this point, this should sound familiar. Surely the antidote to this colonial polarisation, a world where black is bad — is it’s opposite — white neo-colonial pharma as the epitome of evil?

However, this is simplistic — as I have demonstrated with the catastrophe in India.  I am reminded of a jingle for Lotus FM in Durban: “Not everything’s black and white. . .”

I would also argue that it is literally dangerous.

Painting Africa as the wretched of the pandemic, a whole continent victimised yet again by the West, deprives us of agency and urgency. It glosses over complex but really important details.

Most importantly, while the image gives us something to focus our anger on, a scapegoat to chase out of town, it also provides us with an excuse not to actually do anything difficult but useful ourselves.

We can safely exhaust ourselves shouting at foreigners in the West, and this venting is cathartic. We are now absolved from doing anything closer to home. Powerful and evil external actors are in charge — at least until some utopian revolution dawns.

~~~

Meanwhile, the reality which this narrative obscures is that vaccines have been arriving in Africa. Kenya now has millions of vaccines available, and the immediate but very real challenges are local logistics, and persuading people with mild vaccine reluctance to get vaccinated.

Unfortunately, anger at global pharma is being manipulated to make people on the ground more hesitant at a time when we need to reassure them that vaccines are safe and effective. It is still not quick and easy to get a vaccine in Kenya. Vague rumours about side effects and large wicked corporations are enough to put scared people off doing something that seems novel, risky and time-consuming.

But while overall Africa has lagged behind other countries on vaccine uptake, we have also seen much fewer deaths.  It is not entirely clear why this is — although it will probably be due to a complex mix of factors, including our younger demographics, and fewer comorbidities from diseases of affluence like obesity and diabetes.

Painting Africa as the wretched of the pandemic, a whole continent victimised yet again by the West, deprives us of agency and urgency.

As more vaccines became available during 2021, more of them went to countries where they were more desperately needed, rather than to Africa, which had lower case rates. The overall picture includes Latin America and South East Asia, which did get vaccines when they needed them more. The now high vaccination rates in these regions are being ignored by those arguing that there is a global vaccine apartheid.

We are also likely to experience a global oversupply of vaccines in 2022. Part of the reason pharmaceutical companies seem greedy is that they know vaccines are going to commodify. Increased supply will drive price reductions, so companies want to take profits while they still can. Free markets are not morally perfect, but when they scale up, they are incredibly powerful.

(I still believe we need a more global public control of vaccines that are essential to public health. Since the Delta variant overwhelmed India in May, and torpedoed collective efforts via COVAX, I have argued that we need a “Liberty Ships” approach to this pandemic — a wartime level of effort and resources. This did not happen fast enough, and we have lost lives as a result.)

~~~

Mirroring global vaccine inequality is local vaccine inequality.

I have been concerned for some time that the relatively privileged but tiny urban elites in Kenya would get themselves vaccinated then lose interest as their own lives returned to normal. Once vaccination rates in Nairobi reached about 20 per cent, and the lockdowns and curfews were eased, this did seem to happen; although most of Kenya’s counties still had very low levels of vaccination, the national conversation moved on, unconcerned.

Once Omicron was announced, there was a vast amount of anger at travel restrictions imposed on southern African countries. There were lots of legitimate reasons for the frustration, especially as Omicron was probably already in many countries, as has proved to be the case, but African scientists were effectively being punished for being the first to identify it.

Blanket travel bans are in any case not very effective at stemming the spread of variants and those travel bans have now been largely removed.  (Ironically, France is now restricting travellers from Britain, where Omicron case numbers are rising alarmingly.)

Part of the reason pharmaceutical companies seem greedy is that they know vaccines are going to commodify.

However, the anger I sensed seemed really unfocused and confused. Kenyans were also outraged, but there was little concern or interest in the actual variant, or in the rising cases in southern Africa — the countries with which we were apparently showing solidarity. Christmas concerts and parties continued. Some people seemed more worried about having their own travel plans, and their newly regained privileged lifestyles, threatened.  I felt like a lone voice, trying to remind Kenyans just how few of our own citizens were protected by vaccines.

I am not sure what Frantz Fanon would make of our bourgeoisie.  Che Guevara would actually have shot most of the people who wear those trendy t-shirts bearing his image. I doubt Fanon would have been impressed.

We have now got our reward, with exponentially rising case numbers in Kenya as well.

My feeling is that the outrage was actually based on the deeper fear that we would return to lockdowns, and that the pandemic was not actually over. Instead of focussing on the actual problem — a new variant — we found foreign scapegoats to yell at, allowing the thing which frightened us to take root.

~~~

For Fanon, the colonized were kept constantly on edge by an “atmospheric violence”, tensed in anticipation of violence. The pandemic has done something similar to our limbic systems. While not comparable to the traumas of slavery, we are constantly stressed, and on edge.

I am strangely reminded of Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity as a “slave morality”. Good Christians, by turning the other cheek, did not push back against power. Returning to the Fight/Fright/Freeze stress response that I learnt about in school, it has been updated to include a fourth response sometimes called ‘Submit’, ‘Fawn’ or ‘Feign’.

The Slave Bible, published in 1807 in London, then circulated in Caribbean and North American plantations, was a disturbing later embodiment of Nietzsche’s criticism. Sections such as the exodus story, which might inspire hope for liberation, were removed. Instead, portions that justified and fortified the system of British Imperial slavery were emphasized.

The Slave Bible encouraged silence, subservience and passivity, in the face of injustice.  It was used to pacify people subjected to the worst forms of oppression and constant violence.

We found foreign scapegoats to yell at, allowing the thing that frightened us to take root.

The reality is more complex. Jesus himself was not passive. Theologians like Walter Wink have shown that turning the other cheek was actually a powerful act of resistance, given wider Roman culture. To turn the other cheek forced the aggressor to use their left hand, which would be seen as humiliating for the aggressor to other Romans. This would reclaim some power and agency for the Christian in a situation of powerlessness.

In the “atmospheric violence” of the pandemic, I sense we all feel disempowered. Some of us have become passive and withdrawn, while others have become angry and frustrated. However, instead of channelling the energy of anger into practical action to take care of one another, we are simply venting our frustrations publicly and fruitlessly – and sometimes counterproductively.

Some of us channel our frustrations against the pandemic restrictions of our own governments, or vaccination programmes – while others rail against international injustices.

Venting may feel helpful, but it is not reclaiming power or agency.  It may briefly feel good, but it is not really helping us.

~~~

Casting Africans as the wretched of the pandemic seems to make sense, given the obvious inequalities.  It is proving an incredibly powerful global rallying cry.

It makes people righteously, blindly, angry.  It directs all our fear and rage outwards.

It is also, however, a good way of absolving us from tackling the harder questions, much closer to home, or requiring more difficult practical action. The actors who matter are powerful and elsewhere, which limits our own direct responsibility to do more than yell from a safe distance.

We all have limited energy at the best of times, and right now most of us are depleted. Directing our energy at global injustice, while ignoring more local problems, feels wrong to me. We actually have vaccines and knowledge and hard work to do right now. Nobody else can or will do that work for us.

Perhaps this is why such anger is so attractive though.  If the problems are all global, we don’t have to look at our own broken health systems, venal politicians diverting COVID-19 relief funds, or the real challenge of addressing rumours that have spread over the past year about vaccine side effects. We can ignore the failings of our own leaders, who hold rallies and threaten our citizens, if our true enemies are global ones.

Anger directed at outside factors also prevents us from taking a hard look at how fragmented we ourselves are. While life-threatening famine was raging in large parts of Kenya, Nairobi was worried about cancelling Christmas parties and flight bans.

If you are reading this, you probably inhabit a tiny, relatively privileged bubble, just as I do.  Even those of us who want to improve vaccine access have little idea what is happening in other parts of the country. It is harder still to know how to help.

Fanon never wanted colonialism — or the struggle against colonialism — to define us, taking on a simplistic crusading missionary zeal ourselves.

~~~

I’ve been organising civil society work around COVID-19 for much of the year, but I’m struck by how few people are able to volunteer their time and energy. We are all exhausted, but it feels deeper than that.

In India, one genuine problem was that so many people wanted to get involved, which created lots of duplication and confusion, as so many people reinvented the same wheels, and made the same mistakes.

South Africa also has a much stronger civil society response than I have seen here. Kenya is one of the few places I know where activists are treated with suspicion. This feels like the shadow of both colonialism, and Jomo Kenyatta’s and Moi’s authoritarian rule. Repression and fear were normalised. Kenya suffered from atmospheric violence. The few brave activists became lightning rods — but with little support from those for whom they organised.

No country in the world had massive health service capacity in reserve, ready for a pandemic. A massive civil society effort has been needed everywhere but I simply have not seen one in Kenya. We are rightly frustrated at the incompetence and the colonial threats of our own Ministry of Health, but we are not yet willing to roll up our sleeves and get involved where we see obvious gaps. We complain loudly — but that is all we do.

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor talks of silence as one of Kenya’s official languages.

I feel that that silence has been breaking over the past decade. Kenyans are more forthright, more outspoken and more critical. The internet has helped many to speak up, and to find kindred spirits. There is also a lot of buried historical baggage to process, and economic frustration and inequality, and injustice as well.

We are rightly frustrated at the incompetence and the colonial threats of our own Ministry of Health, but we are not yet willing to roll up our sleeves and get involved.

This is an important part of becoming a healthier society — one not cowed by power. We are growing up, from literally being treated as the children of the nation, which suited our rulers just fine. We have suffered the consequences of arrogant power for far too long.

We have difficult baggage to process, and the pandemic has added layers of fear and frustration. There is a lot we need to face, and mourn, but being angry is a distraction from that. I also see a hollow and defensive kind of pride, used as a shield against any kind of criticism.

These are ways of covering up our pain.

Anger is becoming our fourth official language.

This is dangerous — especially since 2022 will be an election year.

~~~

What is the alternative?

Well, vaccines are here, and will keep coming.

Kenya has more vaccines in fridges than we’ve used in total so far.

We have a national mobilisation project — to ensure all of our people are safe.

The narrative that we are wretched victims also ignores all the inconvenient good news. How did Morocco or Botswana manage to vaccinate so many of their populations?

Within Kenya itself, some counties are doing much better than others.

What could we learn from them?

Who are our local heroes?

Who needs our help?

~~~

We stand at the beginning of a New Year.

I actually think it will be a hopeful one, as far as the pandemic is concerned.

Even with new variants like Omicron, science is incredibly powerful. In particular, the mRNA platform is able to rapidly create new targeted vaccines.

There is also unprecedented global solidarity. Unlike during other previous crises, such as conflicts or famines, rich countries were the first to suffer the devastating consequences of the pandemic, so there is huge empathy. We can tell our stories online in compelling ways, and these stories resonate.

Even more than science and compassion, economically speaking, the world will put resources into ending the pandemic. Highly infectious diseases simply cannot be contained by travel restrictions. Our world is simply too interconnected and interwoven.

It is also an election year in Kenya. We can look at how politicians and governors have performed, and the state of their health programmes. This is the one time we have some leverage.

Anger is a call to action that we can channel into things that are more useful than empty, exhausting rage and the accompanying disempowering sense of victimhood. Action will be truly healing, as we find ways to take back control, after the helplessness of the past two years.

For some reason, we have also been lucky. The level of COVID deaths and serious illness in Kenya have been undercounted – but they still aren’t as high as in some other countries. This isn’t because of our excellent scientists (that’s southern Africa) or our experience with Ebola (west and central Africa). It may be demographics, geography, and exposure to other pathogens. The answer will probably be a mix of different factors.

So far, strangely enough, we’ve actually escaped the worst of it; we have simply not been the wretched of this pandemic. The worst of what I saw in India, and in many other countries, did not befall us. Our biggest challenge now is to get our own population vaccinated, with the now fairly available vaccines, so that we are better protected against new variants.

It may be demographics, geography, and exposure to other pathogens. The answer will probably be a mix of different factors.

We need to take a deep breath and take stock of where we actually are right now. Instead of fighting battles from last year, and knowing all that we now, what should be our focus?

~~~

Our next challenge is climate change, and that will be much harder. Especially for Africa.

We need to end this crisis, and in doing so, learn how to deal with our own fears and anger, our need for simple scapegoats, if we are to stand a chance of addressing the climate crisis.

COVID-19 was relatively minor, but it still shook our civilisations. Climate change is a truly existential threat.

For six years, from 2016 to 2021, I was Vice Chancellor (President) of a private university in Kenya, the United States International University-Africa. It was an honor and privilege to serve in that role. It marked the apex of my professional academic life. It offered an incredible opportunity to make my small contribution to the continued development of the university itself, put into practice my scholarly research on African higher education, and deepen my understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the sector at a time of tumultuous change in African and global political economies.

When I took the position, I was quite familiar with both African universities and Kenya as a country. I was a product of African higher education having undertaken my undergraduate studies at the University of Malawi, my home country, in the 1970s. I had done my PhD dissertation at Dalhousie University in Canada on Kenya’s economic and labor history where I spent about fifteen months in 1979-1980.

Later, I taught at Kenyatta University in Nairobi for five and half years between 1984-1989. That is one reason the position of Vice Chancellor at USIU-Africa eventually proved attractive to me.  I would be returning to my African “intellectual home.” Or so I thought. I came back to a different country, as I will elaborate later in my reflections.

After I left Kenya at the beginning of January 1990, I spent the next 25 years at Canadian and American universities. But Africa was always on my mind, as an epistemic and existential reality, the focus of my intellectual and political passions, the locus of my research work and creative writing. My scholarly studies on intellectual history examined the construction of ideas, disciplines, interdisciplines, and higher education institutions and their African provenance, iterations, and inflections.

Over the years I had published numerous books and papers on African studies and universities including in 2004 African Universities in the 21st Century (Vol.I: Liberalization and Internationalization and Vol II: Knowledge and Society), and in 2007 The Study of Africa (Vol. I: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters and Vol.II: Global and Transnational Engagements).

In early 2015, I was commissioned to write the Framing Paper for the 1st African Higher Education Summit on Revitalizing Higher Education for Africa’s Future held in Dakar, Senegal March 10-12. I was also one of the drafters of the Summit Declaration and Action Plan. So, I was well versed on the key issues facing African higher education. But leading an actual African university proved a lot more complex and demanding as this series will show.

The vice chancellor’s position at USIU-Africa was advertised after the Dakar Summit. Initially, it had little appeal for me. My earlier experiences at Kenyatta University had left me wary of working as an “expatriate”, as a foreigner, in an African country other than my own. In fact, in 1990 I wrote a paper on the subject, “The Lightness of Being an Expatriate African Scholar,” which was delivered at the renowned conference convened by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, held in Uganda in late November 1990, out of which emerged the landmark Kampala Declaration on Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility. The paper was included in my essay collection, Manufacturing African Studies and Crises published in 1997.

The paper began by noting, “The lack of academic freedom in Africa is often blamed on the state. Although the role of the state cannot be doubted, the institutions dominated by the intellectuals themselves are also quite authoritarian and tend to undermine the practices and pursuit of academic freedom. Thus, the intellectual communities in Africa and abroad, cannot be entirely absolved from responsibility for generating many of the restrictive practices and processes that presently characterize the social production of knowledge in, and on, Africa. In many instances they have internalized the coercive anti-intellectualist norms of the state, be it those of the developmentalist state in the South or the imperialist state in the North, and they articulate the chauvinisms and tyrannies of civil society, whether of ethnicity, class, gender or race.”

The rest of the paper delineated, drawing from my experiences at Kenyatta, the conditions, contradictions, constraints, exclusions, and marginalization of African expatriate scholars in African countries that often force them to trek back to the global North where many of them studied or migrated from, as I did.

Once I returned from the diaspora back to Kenya in 2016, I soon realized, to my consternation, that xenophobia had actually gotten worse, as I will discuss in later sections. It even infected USIU-Africa that took pride in being an “international American university.” In my diasporic excitement to “give back” to the continent, to escape the daily assaults of racism that people of African descent are often subjected to in North America, Europe and elsewhere, I had invested restorative Pan-African intellectual and imaginative energies in a rising developmental, democratic, integrated and inclusive post-nationalist Africa.

Over the next six years, I clang desperately to this fraying ideal. It became emotionally draining, but intellectually clarifying and enriching. I became an Afro-realist, eschewing the debilitating Afro-pessimism of Africa’s eternal foes and the exultant bullishness of Afro-optimists.

In 2015, as I talked to the VC search firm based in the United States, and some of my close friends, and colleagues in the diaspora I warned up to the idea of diaspora return. The colleagues included those who participated in the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP). The program was based on research I conducted in 2011-2012 for the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) on the engagement of African diaspora academics in Canada and the United with African higher education institutions.

CADFP was launched in 2013 and I became chair of its Advisory Council comprised of prominent African academics and administrators. This was one of four organs of the program; the other three were CCNY providing funding, the Institute for International Education (IIE) offering management support, and my two former universities in the US (Quinnipiac) and Kenya (USIU-Africa) hosting the Secretariat. Several recipients ended up returning to work back on the continent long after their fellowships. I said to myself, why not me?

For various reasons, my position as Vice President for Academic Affairs in Connecticut had turned out to be far less satisfactory than I had anticipated. I was ready for a new environment, challenges, and opportunities. So, I put in an application for the USIU-Africa vice chancellorship. There were 65 candidates altogether. The multi-stage search process replicated the ones I was familiar with in the US, but it was novel in Kenya where the appointment of vice chancellors tends to be truncated to an interview lasting over a couple of hours or so in which committee members score the candidates sometimes on dubious ethnic grounds.

At the time I got the offer from USIU-Africa, I had two other offers, a provostship in Maryland, and as founding CEO of the African Research Universities Alliance. Furthermore, I was one of the last two candidates for a senior position at one of the world’s largest foundations from which I withdrew. I chose USIU-Africa after long deliberations with my wife and closest friends. Becoming vice chancellor would give me an opportunity to test, implement, and refine my ideas on the Pan-African project of revitalizing African universities for the continent’s sustainable transformation.

USIU-Africa had its own attractions as the oldest private secular university in Kenya. Originally established in 1969 as a branch campus of an American university by that name based in San Diego that had other branches in London, Tokyo, and Mexico City, it was the only university in the region that enjoyed dual accreditation by the Commission for University Education in Kenya and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges in the United States. Moreover, it was the most international university in the region with students from more than 70 countries; an institution that seemed to take diversity and inclusion seriously; a comprehensive university with several schools offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs; one that boasted seemingly well-maintained physical and electronic infrastructure poised for expansion. The position prospectus proclaimed the university’s ambitions to become research intensive.

Six months before my wife and I packed our bags for Kenya, I took up a fellowship at Harvard University to work on a book titled, The Transformation of Global Higher Education: 1945-2015 that was published in late 2016. I had long been fascinated by the history of ideas and knowledge producing institutions around the world, and this book gave me an opportunity to do so, to examine the development of universities and knowledge systems on every continent—the Americas, Europe, Asia, and of course Africa. Writing the book filled me with excitement bordering on exhilaration, not least because it marked the second time in my academic career that I was on sabbatical.

I thought I was as prepared as I could be to assume leadership of a private African university. As I showed in my book, by 2015, private universities outnumbered public ones across the continent, 972 out of 1639. In 1999, there were only 339 private universities. Still, public universities predominated in student enrollments, and although many had lost their former glory, they were often much better than most of the fly by night profiteering private institutions sprouting all over the place like wild mushrooms.

Africa of course needed more universities to overcome its abysmally low tertiary enrollment ratios, but the haphazard expansion taking place often without proper planning and the investment of adequate physical, financial, and human resources only succeeded in gravely undermining the quality of university education. The quality of faculty and research fell precipitously in many countries and campuses as I have demonstrated in numerous papers.

Serving in successive administrative positions ranging from college principal and acting director of the international program at Trent University in Canada, and in the United States as center director and department chair at the University of Illinois, college dean at Loyola Marymount University, and academic vice president at Quinnipiac University, I had come to appreciate that once you enter the administrative ladder, even if it’s by accident or reluctantly as was in my case, there are some imperatives one has to undertake in preparing for the next level.

Universities are learning institutions and as such university leaders at all levels from department chairs to school deans to management to board members must be continuous learners. This requires an inquisitive, humble, agile, open, creative, entrepreneurial, and resilient mindset.

It entails, first, undergoing formal training in university leadership. Unfortunately, this is underdeveloped in much of Africa as higher education leadership programs hardly exist in most countries. As part of my appointment, I asked for professional training opportunities to be included in my contract for the simple reason I had never been VC before so I needed to learn how to be one! In summer 2016 and summer 2017, I attended Harvard University’s seminars, one for new presidents and another on advancement leadership for presidents. Not only did I learn a lot, I also built an invaluable network of presidential colleagues.

Second, university leaders must familiarize themselves with and understand trends in higher education by reading widely on developments in the sector. In my case, for two decades I became immersed in the higher education media by subscribing to The Chronicle of Higher Education and later Times Higher Education, and reading the editions of Inside Higher Education, University World News, and other outlets. As vice chancellor I took to producing a weekly digest of summaries of pertinent articles for the university’s leadership teams. I got the impression few bothered to read them, so after a while I stopped doing it. I delved into the academic media because I wanted to better understand my role and responsibilities as an administrator. Over time, this morphed into an abiding fascination with the history of universities and other knowledge producing institutions and systems.

Third, it is essential to develop the propensity for consulting, connecting, and learning from fellow leaders within and outside one’s institution. As a director, chair or a dean that means colleagues in those positions as well as those to who one reports. The same is true for deputy vice chancellors or vice presidents. For provosts and executive vice presidents and presidents the circle for collegial and candid conversations and advice narrows considerably and pivots to external peers.

In my case, this was immensely facilitated by joining boards including those of the International Association of Universities, the Kenya Education Network, better known as KENET, and the University of Ghana Council, and maintaining contacts with Universities South Africa. These networks together with those from my previous positions in Canada and the United States proved invaluable in sustaining my administrative and intellectual sanity.

Fourth, it is imperative to develop a deep appreciation and respect for the values of shared governance. Embracing and practicing shared governance is hard enough among the university’s internal stakeholders comprising administrators, faculty, staff, and students. It’s even more challenging for the external stakeholders including members of governing boards external to the academy. This was one of the biggest challenges I faced at USIU-Africa as I’ll discuss in a later installment.

Fifth, it is critical to appreciate the extraordinary demands, frustrations, opportunities and joys of leadership in African universities. Precisely because many of these universities are relatively new and suffer from severe capacity challenges of resources in terms of funding, facilities, qualified faculty, and well-prepared students, it creates exceptional opportunities for change and impact. Again, as will be elaborated in a later section, I derived levels of satisfaction as vice chancellor that were higher than I had experienced from previous positions in much older and better endowed Canadian and American institutions where university leaders are often caretakers of well-oiled institutional machines.

Sixth, during my long years of university leadership at various levels I had cultivated what I call the 6Ps: passion for the job, people engagement, planning for complexity and uncertainty, peer learning, process adherence, and partnership building. This often encompasses developing a personal philosophy of leadership. As I shared during the interviews for the position and throughout my tenure, I was committed to what I had crystallized into the 3Cs: collaboration, communication and creativity, in pursuit of the 3Es: excellence, engagement, and efficiency, based on the 3Ts: transparency, trust, and trends.

Seventh, it is important to pursue what my wonderful colleague, Ruthie Rono, who served as Deputy Vice Chancellor during my tenure, characterized as the 3Ps: protect, promote, and project, in this case, the mission, values, priorities, and interests of the institution as a whole not sectarian agendas. She often reminded us that this was her role as Kenya’s ambassador to several European and Southern African countries during a leave of absence from USIU-Africa, to safeguard Kenya’s interests. Unfortunately, outside the management team, this was not always the case among the other governing bodies as will be demonstrated later.

Eighth, as an administrator one has to balance personal and institutional voices, develop an ability to forgive and forget, and realize that it’s often not about you, but the position. Of course, so long as you occupy the position what you do matters; you take credit and blame for everything that happens in the institution even if you had little to do with it. Over the years as I climbed the escalator of academic administration, I confronted the ever-rising demands and circuits of institutional responsibility and accountability. You need to develop a thick skin to deflect the arrows of personal attack without absorbing them into your emotions. You need to anticipate and manage the predictable unpredictability of events.

Ninth, I had long learned the need to establish work balance as a teacher, scholar, and administrator. In this case, as an administrator I taught and conducted research within the time constraints of whatever position I held. I did the same during my time as vice chancellor. I taught one undergraduate class a year, attended academic conferences, and published research papers to the surprise of some faculty and staff and my fellow vice chancellors. I always reminded people that I became an academic because I was passionate about teaching and research. Being an administrator had actually opened new avenues for pursuing those passions. I had a satisfying professional life before becoming vice chancellor and I would have another after I left.

There was also the question of work-life balance. Throughout my administrative career I’ve always tried to balance as best as I can my roles as a parent, husband, friend, and colleague. Moreover, I maintained outside interests especially my love for travel, the creative, performing and visual arts, voracious reading habits developed in my youth over a wide range of subjects and genres, not to mention the esthetics of cooking and joys of eating out, and taking long walks. I found my neighborhood in Runda in Nairobi quite auspicious for the invigorating physical and mental pleasures of walking, which I did every day for more than an hour during weekdays and up to two hours on weekends.

Not being defined by my position made it easier to strive to perform to the best of any ability without being consumed by the job, and becoming overly protective of the fleeting seductions of the title of vice chancellor. I asked colleagues to call me by my first name, but save for one or two they balked preferring the colorless concoction, “Prof.” Over the years I had acquired a capacity to immerse myself and enjoy whatever position I occupied with the analytical predisposition of an institutional ethnographer. So, I took even unpleasant events and nasty surprises as learning and teachable moments.

This enabled me to develop the tenth lesson. Leave the position when you’ve given your best and have the energy to follow other positions or pursuits. When I informed the Board of Trustees, Chancellor, and University Council fourteen months to the end of my six-year contract that I would be leaving at the end of the contract, some people within and outside USIU-Africa including my fellow vice chancellors expressed surprise that I was not interested in another term.

The fact of the matter is that the average tenure of university presidents in many countries is getting shorter. This is certainly true in the United States. According to a 2017 report on the college presidency by the American Council of Education, while in the past presidents used to serve for decades—my predecessor served for 21 years—“The average tenure of a college president in their current job was 6.5 years in 2016, down from seven years in 2011. It was 8.5 years in 2006. More than half of presidents, 54 percent, said they planned to leave their current presidency in five years or sooner. But just 24 percent said their institution had a presidential succession plan.” Whatever the merits of longevity, creativity and fresh thinking is not one of them!

A major reason for the declining term of American university presidencies is, as William H. McRaven, a former military commander who planned the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, declared as he announced his departure as chancellor of the University of Texas system after only three years, “the job of college president, along with the leader of a health institution, [is] ‘the toughest job in the nation.’ In my case, there was a more mundane and compelling reason. My wife and I had agreed before I accepted the position that I would serve only one term. Taking the vice chancellorship represented a huge professional and financial sacrifice for her.

By the time I assumed the position, I believed I had acquired the necessary experiences, skills and mindset for the pinnacle of university leadership. Over the next six years I experienced the joys and tribulations of the job in dizzying abundance. This was evident almost immediately.

Two days after we arrived in Nairobi, we were invited to the home of one of my former students at Kenyatta University and the University of Illinois. Both he and his wife, who we knew in the United States from the days they were dating, were prominent public figures in Kenya; she later became a cabinet minister in President Kenyatta’s administration. We spent New Year’s Day at their beautiful home together with their lovely and exceedingly smart two daughters and some of their friends and relatives eating great food including roasted meat in Kenyan style. It was a fabulous welcome. We felt at home.

But the bubble soon burst. Hardly two weeks later, our home in the tony neighborhood of Runda was invaded by armed thugs one night. I was out of town at a university leadership retreat. My wife was alone. While she was not physically molested, she was psychologically traumatized. So was I. The thugs went off with all her jewelry including her wedding ring, my clothes and shoes, and our cellphones and computers. My soon to be finished book manuscript on The Transformation of Global Higher Education was in my stolen computer. It was a heinous intellectual assault.

Our Kenyan and foreign friends and acquaintances showered us with sympathy and support. Some commiserated with us by sharing their own stories of armed robbery, what the media called with evident exasperation, Nairoberry. We later learnt there was more to our hideous encounter, the specter of criminal xenophobia. It was a rude awakening to the roller coaster of highs and lows we would experience over the next six years during my tenure as Vice Chancellor of USIU-Africa.

Both of us had fought too many personal, professional, and political battles in our respective pasts to be intimidated. We were determined to stay, to contribute in whatever way we could to higher education in our beloved motherland.