There's a New Columnist in Town!

Far be it for me to blow my own trumpet, but then I am used  to it: if having a blog is not an exemplification of that, I do not know what is!

On a more serious note, Wednesday 24 August saw me entering, once again, the folds of columnists -- this time as a political science columnist(rather than a Business one) for Ghana's "Business and Financial Times" paper. Here's the reason why I started it:

It is one of the reasons why this new column was thought-up: to respond to the dearth of analyses about ECOWAS and the AU by Ghanaian media practitioners. The real challenge now is to ensure readers begin to accept these challenges and be ready to respond to them. Secondly, ECOWAS likes to make a lot of noise about the sub-region moving from an ECOWAS of States to an ECOWAS of the people – as per ECOWAS Vision 2020. For it to be realised, it is going to take all of us to get there. Will you join me?

 Many people know my alter-ego to be one that has made considerable noise on regional integration. I just thought I'd get more serious and create the future I want: leaving a legacy and many column inches about not just a topic dear to my heart, but one I believe many more Africans and Ghanaians to take seriously in the next couple of years.

The ECOWAS and AU will not go away, and the only way to make them more accountable is by reporting on them. Until the reports transcend being ad-hoc, accountability is unlikely to happen. I know Ghana as a topic is more popular than regional cooperation/regional integration, but if the instrumentality of the Arab League in  the crisis in Libya tells us anything, it's that the tectonic plates are shifting from multi-polar to regional. So let's "shine our eyes!"

Read me on Mondays and Wednesdays in  the B&FT, or online at http://www.thebftonline.com if you can.

Kindly check out my latest piece: Why “Africa” is Lost in the “Abuja Treaty” Translation: http://www.thebftonline.com/bft_subcat_linkdetails.cfm?prodcatID=6&tblNewsCatID=63&tblNewsID=9224

Lessons in Blogging: Blogging Integrity; and Why Niche-Blogging Must be Encouraged

A few months ago, I sent a blog entry to a friend whom I had quoted in the entry. In that quoted piece, I had used a picture of her, which was a few years old, and some of what I had written probably no longer applied in 2010.

I had written the post in 2006, and was referring to it in 2010. On the picture, she wondered whether I could not change it.

I said no.

This is what I wrote:

I don't know how exactly to call it, but blogging has an implicit "integrity:" abt it--which is to say that it is rare to go back and change a post (dating, in this case to 2006!) and picture...significantly minimises the "blogging integrity" of it. Even if there are typos, keeping it as is makes it "authentic".

I have checked online to see whether I could find any similar definitions, but none was forthcoming. So please take it as my coining of a new term!;-)

Practising "blogging integrity" is, in essence, retaining a blog-post(with mistakes and all) [even] for posterity.

If you're familiar with history, it's like keeping a primary source, thus increasing its authenticity. Any tinkering makes it a secondary source. In other words, it no longer retains the authenticity it held when you wrote it. There was a mood that set the tone for your writing of that post, including what informed you to use a particular post.

Any change of that post you wrote a few years ago(no matter how politically-incorrect, replete with typos, or narrow-minded it was) years down the line is in essence a breach of blogging integrity.

Keep on with your niche-blogging!

Niche-blogging is pretty self-explanatory: it is blogging about a particular industry -- a kind of esoteric blogging if you will.

The only bug-bear I have with this kind of blogging is that it is mostly profit-oriented. I personally think it does not have to be!

I am your quintessential niche-blogger blogging for free!

I maintain a photo-blog (Accra Pictures by Day and Night) on http://accradailyphoto.com, and also own Critiquing Regional Integration, which can be accessed on http://critiquing-regionalism.org.

Comparing this blog with those other two is like comparing chalk, cheese, and polar bears: they're all mostly white, but very different in style!;-))

The reason why I am even writing about it at all is because the other day, I wrote a post entitled "
Understanding the Relationship between the AU, Africa's RECs and the African Economic Community(AEC)".

By the time I had come to work the next day, I had had visitors from Belgium; the UK; other parts of Europe having accessed that blog. Here's just a snapshot of some of the countries that have been visiting my regional integration blog:

Within hours, I found my blog entry here: http://www.acp-eu-trade.org/. This is no other than a very reputable and respected website on ACP-EU affairs!

Just when I thought no-one was noticing, someone, somewhere picked up my "niche-blogging" post and spread it far and wide!

Goes to show that in blogging, don't ever think no-one is watching, or reading. If you are sufficiently passionate about a topic, just go ahead and write, write, and write some more.

Get some good trackers, like FEEDIT live, whilst you are at it!

Hope Floats While I Chill in Abuja Heat

Been in Nigeria for the past two days for an ECOWAS-related conference, and you might think I am in my element.

Not quite.

As much as I praise the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for a number of positive developments in the sub-region (including visa-free travel since the 1980s), I am beginning to think that the

ECOWAS of the States towards the ECOWAS of the People--so-called VISION 2020--might be nothing more than a bunch of well-paid elites working in an European Union-style organisation thinking that grouping journalists and pther civil society activists together will empower people.

I saw this happening back in Brussels (2001-2004), when as a civil society activist working for a Brussels-based NGO, I attended many a CSO meeting organised--and paid--by the European Commission. The co-option by the EC of the CSOs was always lurking on the horizon.

That two CSO people I knew then now work for the European Commission can only attest to this fear of what might happen here at this meeting where ECOWAS is in effect providing good grounds for civil society to be part of the ECOWAS of the people...

Still, despite all the tallk about Nigeria and the attendant fear, I'm enjoying this country: the people are strong-minded (and the country has profound potential! Abuja is one hell of a prosperous city!!)

I like strong minds against the face of apparent hopelessness.

Without hope, we are nothing, dontcha think?

Best get back to the meeting. Lunch period is over...

Enter Left for Ghana in ECOWAS, as Ghana Plays Host to a Regional Electricity Agency

Two important developments within the past two days have reminded me that Ghana might not be playing a low-key role in international diplomacy, albeit African geo-politics.

Now that one of my long-time blogger-followers since 2005--Daniel Hoffman-Gill--has migrated from my other blog to this one, I think it behooves me to be as clear as possible about where I am going with this post, as even in Ghana, few care about what ECOWAS means.

The Economic Community Of West African States is a regional organisation--just as the EU is of 27 countries--that has been in existence since 1975. It successfully, albeit controversially, resolved the crisis in Liberia, primarily by expanding its mandate from an economic imperative to a peace and security one as well.

In 2007, it changed its structure to an EU one, whereby there are now ECOWAS Commissioners for trade, human security, etc. The Secretariat in that year also became a Commission, rather than a Secretariat, with greater powers to facilitate a more people-centred organisation that would be meaningful for West Africans.

Now the boss, since 2001, has been a Ghanaian by the name of Dr.Ibn Chambas. Yesterday, I learnt from reports online that he has just landed a top-job in the Brussels-based African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP Group).

In the same vein, I found out today that the promise that Ghana would play host to one of the ECOWAS agencies--in this case the ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERERA) has been honoured, and it is in a very visible place on the famed-Spintex Road!

This evidently means nothing about Ghana in ECOWAS foreign policy, but the developments within the past two days is certainly nothing to be sneezed at.

For the record, I do hope that as the EU meet today to decide who becomes the President of the newly-empowered EU Council(thanks to the Lisbon Treaty) Tony Blair will miss it by inches--not because he is not competent, but because I don't think someone who never accepted that he botched the justification for the invasion of Iraq will be accountable to EU citizens!

Prepare for a blitzkrieg of blog posts

I feel so energised now. It's like I can do anything I put my mind to. I've been doing some serious reflections about the trajectory of my life. Though rather stressed, it's kind of a positive stress to spur me on. Things are far from perfect: I'm battling with some inner demons over a number of unfinished projects, but I am paradoxically encouraged that faith has been placed on me to do certain things I never might have considered possible.

Some of my blog posts over the next couple of days will include Taxi Tales, where I present two stories of two different kind of taxi-drivers I encountered last two weeks...and then some!

It's great to be back blogging. I had to go and set up another blog; will for sure keep you posted.

My critiquing-regionalism.org blog has gone down in the back-burner, and is one of the reasons why I feel aggrieved as I believe I have downplayed global issues in place of African Union ones. I'm perhaps the greatest proponent of global regional integration initiatives. I need to get back to that perspective in order to restore some degree of sanity insofar as my blogging of politics is concerned.

It's not so much the fact that the organisation I work for--Third World Network-Africa is finally on Facebook that enthuses me. It's the fact that when you have silent readers/fellow Facebookers of my blog(s) write me what I will paste below, I feel that the exuberance--digital and otherwise--I have is perhaps worth it:

I read your blog posts in detail over the weekend and find them very impressive,informative and inspiring...I think you have a great wealth of knowledge and experience to help shape our country and continent...i think your knowledge ,background and exposure puts you on a leverage above your contemporaries...Good thing your forebears kept that flame alight in the family.I know you shall cause that transformation we need...

I've clearly got work to do!

The AU Grand Debate Is On: My Interview on Radio Gold 90.5fm

This side of the equator, it's no longer news that the AU summit will be held in Ghana's capital in July.

To this end, a number of public events questioning the utility of a union government in Africa have been held in the country. To ensure that there is open and public discourse on the topic, an open forum was held last week at Ghana's teacher's hall, with the theme: "Achieving African Union Government by 2025".

The forum was packed to capacity as speakers from all sectors of society--from civil society to the private sector, and members of the government and its opposition--were present. The debate lasted a good two hours and a half, and saw many animated interventions and submissions that made the forum worth attending.

As the programme was about to end with interventions, I stepped in, and made one (which will be the subject of a later entry). This prompted a few headshakes in agreement as to my submission--as well as being approached by one Roland Aquah-Stevens. The man has been described in some quarters as "indefatigable", and I only got to know this when I realised much later that he was not just scouting for young people -- the youth -- to make interventions in the flaship Radio Gold programme "Platform Africa", but that he was also reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man". He is, in fact, a very learned man.

So there I was being approached to appear on radio--for the first time ever. Despite my initial apprehension, I agreed.

Two days later, I defied the Andy Warhol conception of short-term fame to be interviewed on Radio Gold, one of Ghana's private radio stations broadcasting in English, for a good two hours.

I was there with two other panellists--one "Grandfather",a Pan-Africanist journalist, and James Kwabena, a youth activist. The interviewer/host was Matuli Muntara--also the brainchild behind the entertainment website ShowGhana.com.
Below is a short transcript of what transpired between me and the host.

MATULI: That was the voice of Osagyefo Dr.Kwame Nkrumah, and I think that the insert is germane to the discussion we are having this evening on Platform Africa. The Grand Debate of the Union Govt for Africa: Perspectives of the Youth. I'd like to say, gentlemen, welcome to the programme. Let me start with you Emmanuel. When mention is made of the Union govt for Africa, what comes to mind?

EKB: What I see when there is mention of the Union Govt of Africa is an Africa that comprises five main regional blocs, because I think it is important we don't forget that in conceiving of a United Nations of Africa, to include the regional economic communitites. They are so critical to that development. Already the African Economic Community--the main charter--the basis upon which AU govt is supposed to be established has set five main regional blocs--ECOWAS in West Africa; SADC in South Africa; ECCAS; IGAD; Arab Maghreb Union. However, because there is a plethora of regional economic communities--mostly now eight--there is some talk of rationalising--there is ongoing research in Nairobi on rationalising some of tehse RECS so that it is important to look at the overlap --or lack thereof -- of these RECs. When I talk of overlap, it's about some countries belonging to two or more RECS. When we begin to talk about union govt and we exclude this fact, I do not think we are going anywhere.

MATULI: So you think union govt is possible through these five or eight regional blocs?

EK: I really do think that is possible, but it is important also for there to be information strategies/information sharing on these regional economic communities, because a lot of africans--at least some of those who I have talked to... in this country and beyond -- have no idea. Even ECOWAS, I meet a number of Ghanaians who know there is ECOWAS, because you go to the border of Togo--it's French-speaking and you can pass with your passport. But beyond that, ECOWAS is something --an idea that is very difficult to comprehend in their mind, and I think the problem is because it has not been broken down by our policy-makers sufficiently for them to understand the value of, let's say, being West African.

MATULI:To you, what is the union government of Africa?

EK: The union govt of Africa would be decentralised:I would see an AU commission--we already know there is an AU Commission headed by Alpha Kounare--with these RECS linking/liaising with main AU commission in Addis Ababa, taking instructions from there, on how to manage their regional economic communities. Because I think West Africa and Southern Africa and Eastern Africa, there are differing levels of development.



So, supposing in West Africa, ECOWAS remained the main regional organisation -- instead of UEMOA or smaller regional RECS-- we would take instructions from the AU Commission in Addis, and we would look at our political, economic, and social institutions that are there--including our health, through the West African Health Organisation-. All the institutions that are important need to be strengthened so that it would make more sense, rather than trying to devolve all the power to the AU, because it's big. Already, the AU is under-staffed; it has some 500 members of staff-- as compared to the EU, which has about 20,000 members of staff at its commission in Brussels. So already, we are seeing a problem with finances.

I am working on the transcipt, but in the meantime, let me just say that my major contribution for that got me on the programme involved three simple points.

First, there needs to be identification of imperatives of each region. Simply put, what is unique about a particular region that that region can capitalise on to bring to bear in the conception of an AU government? So, we can say, for example, that ECOWAS's sub-regional imperative is that of conflict prevention/resolution /management, given its experience with Liberia/Sierra Leone/and the instrumentality of ECOMOG. SADC's might be a different one; the EAC's might be on, say, regional infrastructure. For example, § A paper from UNU-CRIS cites that: “the AU has been the first regional organization to establish a clear relationship with the UN as it is consciously aspiring to closely coordinate, if not integrate, its mission planning and execution of peace and security action with the prevailing structures/plans of the UN”.


Secondly, there needs to be comparative approaches. By this I mean what best practices are there from each of these regional communities that can best be put to good use in any conception of an AU government? This means that ECOWAS's peacekeeping/peace enforcement wing ECOMOG could be analysed for use in a regional organisation like SAARC that has experienced problems over Kashmir/India and Pakistan. What is it that ECOMOG has been able to do in enforcing peace that SAARC can learn from?

Thirdly, there needs to be collaboration, as exemplified by the donation of $1m by the Arab League to the African Union's peacekeeping forces.

I have further arguments that can be elaborated on in later entries, but for now, these three points remain the crux of my personal vision of an AU government. Even then, ramifications of these elements remain, and can be very much expounded upon.