Online Education Could Boost African Development

Education is recognized as a major catalyst for human development. During a high-level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview.html) in 2010, UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – pointed out the necessity of making rapid gains in education if all the MDGs are to be achieved. The goals deadline is 2015 – just two years away.

Two of the eight goals are directly related to education systems. MDG2 focuses on boosting universal primary education by 2015, and MDG3 calls for the elimination of barriers to primary and secondary education for women and girls.

UNESCO found that between 2000 and 2007, the share of total government education expenditure devoted to primary education across sub-Saharan Africa fell from 49 per cent to 44 per cent (Rawle, 2009). It also found total aid for education was on the decline and foreign aid for basic education began to stagnate in 2008. This contrasted, UNESCO stated, with the “strong advances made over the past decade.”

Overall, in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, resources for education fell by US $4.6 billion a year on average in 2009 and 2010 (UNESCO, 2010).

With funding for education dependent on fluctuating factors such as foreign aid, government budgets and the state of the global economy, alternatives are needed to retain the gains made in education and to improve them even further.

Thankfully, one new innovative learning tool, dubbed massive open online courses (MOOCs) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course), is about to have a major impact in Africa. Rapid improvements in access to the Internet in Africa means that online learning tools could be a growing solution to the education deficit.

MOOCs mean people will have access to a global treasure trove of free online courses in science, technology, engineering and math. Many believe the leapfrog into digital education will do for education what mobile phones have done for African’s ability to communicate and do business.

These online courses vary in approach – some have set start and finish dates and can last from six to 10 weeks, while others are more loosely structured. But they all offer students the ability to learn from online video lectures and use online forums as a replacement for seminars, debates and question-asking.

According to a recent paper by Harvard University Professor of International Development Calestous Juma, “There is a real possibility for Africa to dramatically improve its teaching – especially in science, technology, engineering, and math – through the deployment of MOOCs.”

The diffuse nature of the Internet means many of the drivers behind promoting this trend in Africa will be found at the regional rather than the national level. The Internet helps remove the dependence on national governments and their education policies and funding – or lack thereof – to further education goals. This means the ability to make the most of the powerful new resource of MOOCs will be amplified by innovators within Africa, from entrepreneurs to information technology pioneers.

Their solutions will help make it easier to access these learning resources.

MOOCs are a variation on OpenCourseWare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCourseWare) university courses, created for free distribution on the Internet. MOOCs bypass the hazard in the past of digital courses going missing or being mislaid: they are online and always available. Nobody can mislay the content by accident.

The Khan Academy (khanacademy.org) is one of the best-known popular MOOCs pioneers. It was founded in the United States in 2008 by Salman Khan, who quit his job as a hedge fund manager to run the business full time. Khan is academically highly accomplished – he has three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard University. The Khan Academy targets mainly secondary school students and claims to have 5.5 million unique users a month. It is run as a not-for-profit and receives donations to keep it going.

It does this with a staff of just 37: proof of how much can be achieved when the power of the Internet is leveraged to pass on knowledge.

The Khan Academy platform greets readers with questions such as “What is the eccentricity of an ellipse?” or “What if there’s a negative exponent?” And if you do not know, you better get cracking doing their problem sets. Students can practice their math skills, answer other students’ questions or watch a video walk-through of the services on offer on the website. The main categories are math, science and economics, computer science, the humanities and help with preparing for various standardized tests such as the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). There are over 4,000 videos on offer on the website.

“Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer,” the website states.

“I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him,” states Khan.

MOOCs offer not just course materials, videos, readings and problem sets but also discussion forums for the students, professors/teachers and tutorial assistants to build a community. This is considered an ideal model for reaching students over great distances and in remote regions. So-called “open” educational resources are used and often no fees or tuition are charged.

The OpenCourseWare (OCW) (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) seeks to “publish all of our course materials online and make them widely available to everyone,” according to Dick K.P. Yue, Professor at MIT’s School of Engineering.

Through its website, it offers nearly all of MIT’s course content, a treasure trove from one of the top research universities in the world, a long-standing home for pioneers and innovators in science and technology.

By way of the Internet, anybody anywhere in the world can access this resource. The most visited courses online as of February 2013 included undergraduate “Introduction to Computer Science and Programming,” “Physics I: Classical Mechanics,” “Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science I,” “Principles of Microeconomics,” “Introduction to Algorithms,” and “Principles of Chemical Science.” There are 2,150 courses and so far 125 million visitors to the website.

Having access to the courses allows teachers to gain new insights into the subjects they teach and benefit from the impressive resources of MIT.

MIT also sees it as a way to aid people to tackle the big development issues of our time, including climate change and health problems such as cancer.

Other MOOCs providers include Peer-to-Peer University (https://p2pu.org/en/), Udemy (udemy.com), Coursera (coursera.org), Udacity (udacity.com), and
edX (edx.org), a not-for-profit partnership between Harvard and MIT to develop courses for interactive study on the Internet.

In the United Kingdom, the Open University (open.ac.uk) and Futurelearn (http://futurelearn.com/) also offer online courses, as does Open2Study (http://www.open.edu.au/open2study) in Australia.

Boosting access to MOOCs presents a great business opportunity for Africa’s mobile phone entrepreneurs and its mushrooming information technology (IT) hubs (https://africahubs.crowdmap.com/).

“I view online learning as a rising tide that will lift all boats,” Anant Agarwal, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and president of edX, told The Financial Times. “It will not only increase access, it will also improve the quality of education at all our universities.”

All of this matters because it means Africans will increasingly have the tools to participate in the global marketplace of ideas and products and services on a more level playing field. By far the biggest obstacle to competing is the lack of timely information and knowledge about what is happening in the global economy. It is a frequent complaint, from the farmer desperate for the latest news on market prices and trends and innovations, to the strivers in the growing megacities of the continent who have their sights set on global success.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: April 2013

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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African Digital Laser Breakthrough Promises Future Innovation

For decades many African countries have experienced low investment in research and development (R&D) and scientific innovation. One of the few nations to benefit from a sophisticated university network and research and development sector was South Africa. It still ranks top on the continent for funding R&D and its high number of scientific journals.

And it seems this support has paid off in a recent innovation. The world’s first digital laser designed and built in Africa has been developed by a team of physicists at the University of KwaZulu–Natal in South Africa (http://www.ukzn.ac.za/), as reported in the MIT Technology Review (http://www.technologyreview.com/).

This innovation joins a positive trend in Africa, where support to science, technology and R&D is rising – albeit from a very low base. In 2010 UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – found Africa was reversing decades of neglect in research and development. African countries were increasing investment in science and technology after realizing it will accelerate their connection with the global economy and help create better-quality jobs to tackle poverty. The UNESCO Science Report found Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa had adopted laws to support biotechnology research, for example.

Since 2005, six new science academies have been established in Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Sudan, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. This compares to nine established between 1902 and 2004.

The proportion of GDP (gross domestic product) devoted to R&D averages 0.3 per cent in Africa, according to UNESCO.

South Africa continues to lead in R&D spending, raising its investment from 0.73 per cent of GDP in 2001 to 0.94 per cent in 2006. The country is home to 46 per cent of Africa’s scientific publications compared to 11.4 per cent in Nigeria and 6.6 per cent in Kenya (UNESCO).

Experts say the digital laser developed in South Africa is a breakthrough that will open up ever-further innovations and business opportunities.

So, what is a digital laser and what is the innovation? A laser is short form for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. It is a device that produces a concentrated light source. Unlike conventional light sources that emit a diffused, multispectral light, lasers allow for a monochromatic light beam to be concentrated on a small area. This can be used to cut an object precisely, or beamed over long distances without losing its strength.

Lasers can create immense light, heat and power at close range and are regularly used in surgery and medical diagnosis.

Conventional lasers require external devices to alter and bend the laser light beam. The digital laser allows the shape of the beam to be digitally altered internally at the touch of a computer keyboard and gives greater immediate control. This means a plethora of new shapes can be formed with the laser beam, and this can have many practical applications.

The digital laser augers in a new age of creativity with lasers and more spontaneity in how they are used. Rather than having to place a lens or mirror at the front of the casing to shape the laser beam, this innovation makes it possible to create any shape desired digitally by a computer. The research team has been able to create various complex shapes for the laser beams in experiments. One mooted use is to apply laser beams to manipulate microscopic objects – similar to the tractor beams seen in science fiction films such as “Star Trek”.

Few of us spend much time thinking about lasers, yet they are ubiquitous in the modern world and are found in many electronic products (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laser_applications). They play a critical part in the modern world’s economy. Some common applications for lasers include laser light shows at music concerts, bar code readers at the grocery store, or laser pointers used during public presentations. Dentists also use them to speed the hardening of fillings.

Not to exploit lasers as a technology in the modern world is equivalent to bypassing the silicon micro-chip that sits inside personal computers, electronic devices and mobile phones.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: April 2013

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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The South has a Good Story to Tell

The fast-changing modern world is raising the living standards of billions in the South – China alone has lifted 400 million people out of poverty since the 1980s – but it is also risking the loss of many rich cultural traditions. One of them is storytelling.

Oral storytelling is a critical tool for passing on history, while teaching morals and ethics, especially in societies with low rates of literacy and little formal education. But with the rise of modern media and advertising, few traditional storytellers – many of whom are old – stand a chance. Populations are on the move like never before. As more and more people end up in sprawling cities, many are becoming disconnected from their roots.

Yet across the South, people are finding ways to re-invent story telling — and also to make money, preserve cultural pride and feed the appetite for novelty in hungry, modern media and business.

In 1997, storytelling was acknowledged by UNESCO, which pledged to back humanity’s oral and immaterial heritage, and to protect a vast number of oral and musical traditions, crafts and knowledge – plus the “living human treasures” who possess them. It backed this up in 2003 with the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It supports storytelling through its International Programme for the Development of Communication.

But what about the young – the most important generation for storytelling to have a future? In Bogota, Colombia, students have started a movement of urban storytellers. Aged between 17 and 35, they draw on the things they have learned in university. They eschew linear narration and instead adopt the popular language of films and advertising. Inspired by one television commercial, a story revolves around a drop of tomato sauce falling from a high-rise building, sparking a gun battle. The staccato narrative takes inspiration from post-modern authors like Italo Calvino. It is also the perfect narrative to capture modern, urban audiences who live in a world saturated with media.

By blending together ancestral and post-modern tales, these student storytellers are luring Latin Americans back to listening to stories. Live storytelling, when done well, has an ability to connect with other people like no other medium. This new generation also is helping make Colombia a gathering place for storytellers in Latin America, expressed in events like the Hay Festival Cartegena, a literary event that draws authors from around the world.

But is there any money in storytelling? Tale-spinners like Argentinian Juan Moreno say yes. Moreno quit teaching 17 years ago to tell stories for money in theatres, bars, universities and libraries, tapping into a contemporary marketplace for storytelling.

In fact, it is better paid than acting in the theatre, he claims, and if you are good, it comes with lots of travel. There is a global round of congresses, festivals and seminars to keep storytellers connected, inspired – and paid.

Moreno now makes money teaching many professions how to use stories to be more powerful communicators. He told the UNESCO Courier, “the value of the spoken word, words that heal and restore, that can give life but also take it away,” are key to many fields, like law and social work.

The world centres of storytelling are very much focused on the South. The International Congress of Oral Storytelling, part of the Buenos Aires Book Fair, has been running every year since 1995. At the Congress, tips are exchanged over the subtle tricks of timing and voice, gestures and facial expressions. Other Southern cities with storytelling events, include Bucaramanga, Colombia, Monterrey, Mexico and Agüimes, in the Canary Islands.

While young people are breathing new life into storytelling, Morocco’s legendary storytellers have been facing a common dilemma seen across the developing and developed world: how can they compete with flashier and more distracting pastimes like computer games and TV?

Illiteracy in Morocco affects 40 per cent of the population, so telling stories is an excellent way to reach this non-reading group. Stories and parables have long been seen as a great way to convey ideas, values and philosophies.

But Morocco’s storytelling sages, or halakis, are using their heads and turning to computers to get their stories told, and prevent their thousand-year tradition from dying out. With the help of UNESCO, the halakis have created a digital archive of their stories in audio and video.

Based in Marrakesh’s famous main square, Jemaa al-Fna, they compete in a hury burly of street entertainers and aromatic foods; it is a place where men with monkeys vie with snake charmers for your attention. Morocco’s storytellers would set up in the public squares of the cities of Fes, Meknes and Marrakesh to entertain crowds and educate about morality. These would include the ethical values of kindness, honour and chivalry. But Marrakesh is now the only place where a half dozen old men (there used to be 20 in Marrakesh) still practice this ancient art form.

UNESCO declared the square in 2001 part of the world’s “Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.” Video recorders have been documenting the storytellers and chronicling them on the internet.

Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo, who spends part of his year in Marrakesh, has championed the halakis in his book, Marrakesh Tales, and in bringing UNESCO in to help them. He has defended their corner against the plans of city planners and developers.

Seventy-one-year-old Moulay Mohammed is blunt about the current state of storytelling: “Young Moroccans would rather watch TV soap operas than listen to a storyteller, much less become one themselves,” he told the BBC. Mohammed’s stock-in-trade is the Old Testament and all of A Thousand and One Nights: both tales of sultans, thieves, wise men and fools, mystics, genies, viziers and belly dancers. And he has been telling these tales for 45 years.

In South Africa, digital technology is also breathing new life into storytelling – and infusing the stories with urgent, contemporary issues like HIV, and domestic and sexual violence. South African women are using digital technology to preserve traditional storytelling: A collection of 15 digital stories – called “I Have Listened, I Have Heard” – made in 2006 are being distributed along with books. They assembled the stories using audio recorders and made movies of the readings with digital cameras. It was funded by the Foundation for Human Rights and made at the Women’s Net Computer Training Centre in Johannesburg.

The storytellers worked together on each script, taking a day. They would tell the group a story focusing on particular experiences or meaningful moments in their lives. The group would comment and draw out the best bits of the story. The whole process helps the story teller to flesh out the story with metaphors, narrative techniques and milestones.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: April 2008

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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Nollywood: Booming Nigerian Film Industry

The digital revolution in filmmaking over the last decade has given birth to an African success story: Nollywood – Nigeria’s answer to Hollywood, uses low-cost digital filmmaking and editing to tell local stories — in the process making money and creating thousands of jobs.

This do-it-yourself (DIY), straight-to-DVD and video market has in just 13 years ballooned into a US $250 million-a-year industry employing thousands of people. In terms of the number of films produced each year, Nollywood is now in third place behind India’s Bollywood and America’s Hollywood. Despite rampant pirating of DVDs and poor copyright controls, directors, producers, actors, stars, vendors and technicians are all making a living in this fast-growing industry.

The power of creative industries to create jobs and wealth has been a focus of UNESCO, through its Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity. UNESCO has been in the forefront in helping African countries re-shape their policies to take cultural industries into consideration. The promotion of cultural industries also has been incorporated into the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

What is particularly attractive about Nollywood to the poor in the South is its rough-and-ready approach to filmmaking: combining low-cost digital cameras and film editing software on personal computers, with small budgets and fast turn-around times. Films are made on location using local people. These factors make getting into filmmaking accessible and within reach of more people.

Nollywood grew out of frustration, necessity and crisis: in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nigerian cities became crime hotbeds. People were terrified to go out on the streets, and this led to the closing down of many movie theatres. Desperate for entertainment at home – and unsatisfied with foreign imports from India and the West – Nigerians turned to telling their own stories to stave off the boredom of staying in.

The film credited with sparking off the industry is 1992’s Living in Bondage – a huge financial hit credited with raising the level of professionalism and production values in Nigerian cinema.

Now, between 500 and 1,000 feature-length movies are made each year, selling well across the continent of Africa. Average productions take 10 days and cost around US $15,000 (www.thisisnollywood.com). Nollywood stars are famous throughout Africa – and Nigeria culturally dominates West Africa just as the US does the world. It is estimated there are 300 producers and that 30 titles go to shops and market stalls every week. On average, a film sells 50,000 copies: a hit will sell several hundred thousand. With each DVD costing around US $2, it is affordable to most Nigerians and very profitable for the producers.

“These are stories about Africa, not someone else’s,” well-known actor Joke Silva told the Christian Science Monitor.

Focused on Africa, the films’ themes revolve around AIDS, corruption, women’s rights, the occult, crooked cops and prostitution. They do so well because they speak directly to the lives of slum-dwellers and rural villagers.

“We are telling our own stories in our way, our Nigerian way, African way,” said director Bond Emeruwa. “I cannot tell the white man’s story. I don’t know what his story is all about. He tells his story in his movies. I want him to see my stories too.”

The big brands – Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon – all produce cameras capable of high-definition digital filmmaking and these have become the staple tools of this filmmaking revolution.

More and more, the films are capitalising on the large African diaspora around the world, on top of Africa’s large internal market. And this is offering a step-up into the global marketplace for Nigerian directors and producers.

The Nollywood phenomemon has been documented in the documentary This is Nollywood, directed by Franco Sacchi, a teacher from the Center of Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University.

The prospects for the industry are only looking up: the Nigeria in the Movies project has been launched to help grow the industry, establish standards, improve distribution and broaden its international appeal and awareness. It also offers filmmaking grants for neophyte filmmakers.

Of course, filmmaking can be a tricky business: authorities in largely Muslim northern Nigeria have imposed 32 restrictions on the local film industry — nicknamed “Kannywood” after the city of Kano. A six-month ban lost the industry US $29 million and put thousands out of work: a sign of the economic importance of this DIY filmmaking business. The message is clear: filmmakers need to be sensitive to the cultural norms of the communities in which they work.

Kannywood, started in 1992, has 268 production companies and 40 editing studios, employing over 14,000 people.

Adim Williams is one Nigerian director who is getting an international audience. He spends about US $40,000 on films that take two weeks to shoot. He has already secured an American release of a comedy, Joshua. Another director, Tunde Kelani, is regularly featured at international film festivals, where Nollywood screenings are more common.

And some, like young director Jeta Amata, believe Nollywood’s cheap, fast-production, DIY approach has a lot to teach Hollywood, with its expensive filmmaking and ponderous production cycles.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: March 2008

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

Cited in Innovation Africa: Emerging Hubs of Excellence edited by Olugbenga Adesida, Geci Karuri-Sebina, Joao Resende-Santos (Emerald Group Publishing, 2016)

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African Culture as Big Business

In the last decade the world’s creative industries (including crafts, fashion and design) have gained greater respect for being the spark that drives economic development and entrepreneurship. They are seen as fast growers and good job creators, and importantly, the lynch pin in cultural identity and cultural diversity. UNESCO, through its Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity, has been in the forefront of helping African countries re-shape their policies to take this into consideration. The promotion of cultural industries also has been incorporated into the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).

The global clothing industry is estimated to be worth US $900 billion a year. Culture and creativity are big businesses: according to UNESCO, in 2002 the UK exported US $8.5 billion in cultural goods, the United States US $7.6 billion, and China US $5.2 billion. The UK’s Burberry fashion label alone made £157 million in 2006.

This is good news for Africa’s growing fashion industry, which is finally getting the attention and respect it deserves. Entrepreneurs are tapping into this awareness as a great way to make money. Well-known Nigerian fashion designer Alphadi says the continent’s fashion industry is “giving Africa a chance to show its true self, its solidarity, its huge generosity and its greatness.”

Africa’s fashion entrepreneurs are showing more and more confidence and striding with pride across catwalks around the world. And despite the problems faced by black models – as highlighted by supermodel Naomi Campbell in her recent press conference in Kenya – some African models have a growing international profile: these include Alek Wek from southern Sudan, and Waris Dirie from Somalia. Campbell has said she plans to set up a modelling agency in Kenya to increase opportunities.

Just as African music has fans around the world, the continent’s growing fashion scene is gaining fans and more attention. From Hollywood stars to European catwalks, African fashion designers and apparel makers are feeding the industry’s hunger for novelty and new ideas.

African entrepreneurs, from village craftsmen to ambitious and creative urbanites, are finding ways to cash in on this rising awareness.

The rising stars of South Africa were on full display at this August’s Cape Town Fashion Week. David Tlale, who produces glamorous haute couture creations, places community empowerment in his hometown of Johannesburg at the centre of his business. Tlale was joined by rising stars Thabani Mavundla, Thula Sindi, and Craig Jacobs.

Creator and founder of the Fundudzi label of Johannesburg, Jacobs presented a couture collection at Paris Fashion Week in July. A former TV presenter-turned-fashion designer, Jacobs sees a renewed pride in African creativity and a new dialogue about Africa’s place in the world. His motto is: “Africa reworked…Africa re-inspired… Africa renewed”.

Established in 2004, his clothing company for women strives to be socially and environmentally responsible: “Fundudzi is also an eco-conscious label, utilizing materials such as organic cottons, soy and bamboo as well as cashmere produced in Africa which is not harmful to the environment,” he said. “The message which we want to resonate with the rest of the world is that Africa has always been organic.”

“Our label has grown out of the desire to help change the perception of our home, Africa, by presenting clothing designed and created here which can compete on the world stage.”

Jacob benefited from support from various organizations in South Africa to get his business plans sorted out. The country’s tourism body has focused on fashion with its C’est Couture campaign. But he has also struggled with the complexities of exporting his designs and navigating global customs regulations.

“There has been a lot of interest internationally in our collection, but I am not sure what the rules and regulations are … We need an over-riding body to help assist us young entrepreneurs. My experience in Paris, in July, has been that we do have something new and fresh to say in fashion, and we can produce at the same standard as the rest of the world.

There was validation of that. But we as Africans need to follow our own signature, look internally to come up with inspiration, and show that to the rest of the world. “The global village environment, and the access that technologies such as the Internet have provided, means that we can tune into the same stimuli in terms of trends and fashion directions to ensure that we are on par with the rest of the planet. I do believe that the world, bored with the same trends they have been exposed to for so long, are looking for a new guard of inspiration – and we need to empower ourselves with the right tools to answer that call.

“Our positioning is quite simple – our label is dedicated to creating jobs in Africa, thereby reducing our dependency on aid in securing our future …I wanted to create a label which is rooted in Africa, which tells African stories, but which is not tradition or museum curio – rather, intelligent pieces which can fit seamlessly into the global firmament of fashion. The label is focused on redressing the prejudices about the “dark continent” – each collection is designed as a travelogue, informing the world about the rich tapestry of life in Africa.”

Another hub of dynamism in the African fashion scene is Nairobi, Kenya. Kikoromeo connects its catwalk fashion designs with the principle of community development. The label uses mostly Kenyan materials – cotton, silk and wool – and works with local artisans, including women’s groups. Its bags are woven with Kenyan Sisal by Machakos women’s groups, and the beadwork is done by Maasai women’s groups.

Anna Trezbinski of Nairobi, who is popular in Hollywood and has contracts to provide items to top designers like Paul Smith, employs 800 people – mostly Masai women in her workshop in the Great Rift Valley.

This new wave of African fashion designers is proving that anyone with talent, a website and a fan base can puncture the bubble of the European and New York catwalks and make a splash.

“Africa is a haven of inspiration,” says the Tanzanian-born, Nairobi-based designer and collector Lisa Christofferson, who has clothed Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weiss and Jane Seymour. “Africa for many years now has been the flavour of fashion,” she says. “It has really opened the door for us.”

She believes the internet has expanded her business and her brand. It gives clients and boutiques around the world the ability to import her hand-painted, African-inspired cashmere sweaters, bedspreads and throws. Many are ceremonial cloths of the Kuba Kingdom in Congo.

Another designer based in Kenya, Annabelle Thom, believes changes in the last seven years are responsible: access to TV and film, music channels and a burgeoning middle class with money. “People care more about fashion and if you look around in Nairobi, the average person is beautifully dressed – people are spending money on themselves,” she said.

Ethiopia has also been identified as a bubbling fashion hot spot for its indigenous raw cotton and potential to produce other natural fibres. Ethiopian designer Guenet Fresenbet launched Ethiopia’s first fashion magazine, Gigi, to help take the lead.

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Published: October 2007

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP's South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South's innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.  

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