Date & Time: Friday, June 29th, 2018 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Venue: Room 327, Research and Lecture Building, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

Speaker: Horman Chitonge (Professor, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town / Visiting Professor, African Studies Center - TUFS)

Theme: Is Africa Rising: Changing Fortunes or A Bleep on the Screen?

Report:

Dr. Chitonge, the speaker of the 19th ASC seminar, spoke about the Africa Rising Narrative (ARN) which he summarized as the "new" and "old" Africa. How can Africa break away from her old ways to be abreast with the rest of the world? Dr. Chitonge criticized the ARN and emphasized the importance to regard it as a rhetoric, a political and economic agenda being pursued in Africa for resource extraction that benefits outsiders such as westerners, the Chinese and a few of the continent's political elites. Even though Africa has made quite a significant socio-economic and political progress, there are still challenges that mitigate rapid economic development. These challenges were discussed under the sectors of education, infrastructure, labor productivity etc. He spoke about the fastest growing economies in the world which features some African countries like Angola, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria etc. Other issues discussed include some common export commodities in Africa, employment pattern, ratio of working poor in selected African countries and the poverty headcount trends by region. Dealing with and addressing the challenges, he suggested that much effort is needed to develop agriculture which employs a vast percentage of the African population, followed by industrialization instead of predominant reliance on raw materials.