Dissolving post-colonialist states
The other day a diplomat offered his serious opinion that in fifty years the Central African Republic will no longer exist. Each neighboring country will subsume the part extending out from the shared border. We are at the end of the road, he said. This prognosis strikes me as the most hopeful of any I have heard. It is more realistic than assuming that the aid directed here will bring about a turnaround in the governance of the CAR state, which is largely privatized. Life expectancy in CAR drops by six months each year. For men, it is now 39.2. On a continent that has seen its population skyrocket in recent decades, CAR's has stagnated for 25 years and remains at a measly 3.9 million in an area the size of France and Spain combined. Meanwhile, everything is imported -- even manioc, the staple food, -- and importing is hugely expensive -- and quite profitable for Cameroon, from whence most products arrive. If dissolving the CAR state seems like sacrilege under the principles of sovereignty that govern the international system, and maybe especially African Union-era Africa, or if it seems like some flavor of lack of solidarity with CAR (a put-down, in the sense that they could not make a go of it on their own), I would argue that such points of view reflect a lack of the kind of creative thinking that could actually help the people who live in this literal center of the continent.
A New Decade of Sharism
Technology matters, but the more important thing is whether people will be more open to sharing. I call it "sharism". The new spirit can help one person to make his or her thoughts known and plug into global social networks. Without doubt, the media world will be changed because of such paradigm shift -- as will sovereignty. Those who believe in a top-down approach will still try hard to maintain a hierarchy so that they can keep their authority. But I'm sure they will learn many lessons as they begin to face the reality of losing their power. A purely top-down structure can destroy itself, whether we're talking about a country or a small organisation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/03/goodbye-noughties-sharism
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