Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Answertext will be available soon.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: I suppose I have a problem with this question in that I think we would never really ask the question what can we learn from Europe, what can we learn from the Americas, and that there is a certain reification of Africa which is taking place here, which obscures all the complexity and the diversity of African societies. Also, it raises a question of why Africa would be singled out as a single entity, as if Africa is a particular source of wisdom or a voice of knowledge that we and the rest of the world have lost. But, I would prefer to take the question in a different way and then I think I understand it, which is to ask the question what can we learn from the treatment of Africa by countries like the United States, what can we learn from the treatment of Africa by the colonial powers that participated in the scramble for Africa, what can we learn from the treatment of Africa by France and the other countries that today remain imperial and colonial forces in that continent? And what we can learn is a tremendous amount about the hypocrisy of professions to care about human rights, democracy and the spread of freedom by those countries, we can learn about the legacy of colonialism, which leads to such gross and stark inequalities in the world today. We can learn about the lack of genuine concern for suffering, death, starvation, privation that exists in the world today. And we can learn that the world cares about Africa today only insofar as a source for resources, and increasingly Western Africa is being seen as a source for oil, as the United States seeks to control and dominate not just Middle Eastern energy resources, but energy resources wherever they may exist, and of course is in the process of militarizing and supporting brutal dictatorships in that part of the world.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala: From Africa we can learn how to be united and how to fight unitedly for each other. We can say that we get energy through strength.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Well, what I have learnt from Africa is that one never can give up hope. What I have learnt from Africa is what freedom is all about. What I have learnt from Africa is that it is an incredibly beautiful rich continent with amazing people, that it is a continent that despite all efforts in all these centuries to colonize, to pillage, to plunder, that it will not give up and it continues to fight for freedom and it continues to fight for its beauty, and for its resources for its own people. What I have learnt from Africa is that instead of what the media would like to tell us that it is a basket case, it is actually a bread basket. And the reason it faces hunger is not because Africa cannot produce food for its people, but it is the external forces, the corporations, the colonization that has been responsible for its problems. But like I said, when I think about Africa, I think of hope, I think of beauty, I think of music, I think of dancing, I think of Nelson Mandela, I think of the townships where communities refuse to give up hope, and they continue their struggle.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: Again, this question to me raises a question for any country really. What can we learn from India, from China, from Israel, from the United States, from Antarctica, from Greenland, from Germany. Where is that question? And to me, there is always a deeper level to the question. There is a kind of everyday we have understanding say, thinking about Africa. Or I think the intent of the question or what I read behind it is, if you really could enter into the depth of Africa and understand African origins, what would that tell us about ourselves? What can we learn? And, in that deeper sense, we can learn everything about ourselves from Africa and our African origins and African culture. Can we really cross into the indigenous cultures of Africa? The wonderful rich, deep, ancient world views that have emerged out of Africa? That would be the question, I would have. And, I think what this question is pointing out is that they're such crude and gross ignorance in the cultures beyond Africa, in the west so to speak, in the European setting, in the eurocentric structures of culture that has great ignorance about other cultures and other traditions. Indigenous people such as, African culture. And we have prejudice and we don’t realize. That if we could enter into, for example, Bakongo culture, we would find highly sophisticated, subtle culture that can teach us so much about being human. About human relations, about dialogue and deep dialogue and how to be in a community in deep respectful ways and ways in which we can respect and be one with nature. So in a way, there is everything to learn from Africa. If we can access the widely diverse culture, rich and diverse, and enter those worlds and learn from them. As we could for example, enter the Lakota nation, Lakota mind, and learn from that culture as well. So, I love this question and the challenges can we really enter the worlds and leave our prejudices. Everything is there before us to learn.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: There are many things that we can learn from Africa. We can learn about the issues of governance. We can learn about the exploitation of peoples, we can learn about the exploitation of their resources, we can learn about the causes of conflict, and we can learn how wealthy, countries that are wealthy in natural resources may not be, have wealthy people. And it is not a disparate, delinked relationship. But as I had shared earlier in a previous question, it is not a coincidence that Africa has the world's most conflicts, that 100 million Africans face conflict every day of the their lives, and that Africa is also the world's wealthiest continent, has some of the world's wealthiest leaders, as well as the world's poorest people. We must not see these as disparate facts, but see the connections that extreme wealth and poverty creates, and to inquire deeply as to why this result has occurred. When we know that Africa has every resource that we have put a high value on, whether it's oil, diamonds, coal can, timber. Then we have to say, yes, what are the lessons that we must learn from Africa? And if Africans now have all this wealth and yet are so dispossessed of the benefits of that wealth, what leverage will they have when all of their resources no longer exist, if today, with all of those resources, they have no leverage at all?

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: What we can learn from Africa is how not to make mistakes. I think since their independence the Africans made many mistakes. They didn't know what they want. Do they want to be Europeans or do they want to return to their African roots. What they especially didn't understand is how to avoid corruption. The best thing we can learn from Africans is how not to hinder unity. The division of Africa in artificial states was disastrous and it's true that the Europeans contributed to that. And why couldn't the Africans get united? I think that has something to do with personal and human ambition. But something fundamental is missing in Africa. There isn’t much we can learn from Africa if not the mistakes. Sadly it's like that. If there is one African virtue it is brotherhood and the way people take care of each other and I hope that it won't disappear. It's to ensure that nobody starves and that there is always a place where you can eat. Like in the family, the tribe and in other families and due to the relation between humans. That's an African virtue. When they become more modern and industrialized like Europeans I hope that they won't lose this virtue. Unfortunately I don't think that it'll happen this way.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: Oh man, we can learn so much from Africa. The strength of the human spirit, how to do so much with so little. The focus of the village, the connection to the mother, there’s so much we can learn from Africa. And the fact that we still to this day, disrespect Africa for its contribution that it can add to the planet. Those villages in Kenya, in Zimbabwe, there are people here from those villages sitting at this table. They will have more to say than me for I am not from Africa. And therefore, I have a lot to learn from Africa. But I know from what I do know, is that the village is strong that the family is strong. Here in America, in Germany, all across the world, we need a village renaissance. We need that village to be reinstated within our culture. For in many ways, we say we come from Africa; although, by the color of our skin and the way that we act could be very hard to believe this in a lot of ways. And we shouldn’t be necessary tied to the story, but we should see it where we’re at. And that they are our brothers and our sisters that we can learn so much from their indigenous ways, in the way in which they relate to each other and with the animals -- the connections.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas: The question is what can we learn from Africa. But we should ask ourselves also what we can learn form humanity, from ourselves and from others. We should not restrict learning in particular geographical situations but we should amplify the horizont of learning concerning more global aspects that may involve different countries, different geographical situations and different cultures. In a more holistic concept of learning we can evalute the contribution which very important continents like Africa made concerning the economy of the world in the sense of interchange of genetic material of especies. Many plants of African origin are now in other countries and they are sources of economical alternatives. Culture and many traditions have been transmitted to other cultures. In Costa Rica for example we have an instrument called marimba that is one of our country’s most important instrument that has African elements which have been combined with indigenous and local elements. This way a new type of instrument called marimba has been elaborated. Thats why we know and believe that the [] has been very diverse in our communities in the world and arts, music and similar forms of expression and of economy have led to a rich cultural interchange and process. But we can also learn from erros. ...

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Bill Joy: Africa’s a land of great beauty, it’s also a land of great tragedy. It really points out the need for local solutions. When you look at a place like say Madagascar, where some ecological damage has been done there, species lost, you see a much smaller island, a metaphor for what’s happening to the island Earth, and the kind of things we have to do in the large that we are only doing in the small. We need to see the desertification of the north, see the kind of destructive change that you can imagine happening to the oceans as they acidify. So we see a land of great beauty, we see these tragedies, we see people not caring enough. People don’t care enough about the global tragedies that are going on and the poor everywhere in the world. We also see the need for local solutions. We see the diversity of the people. We see that no single solution applies across all the cultures. And we see the need for really big efforts, in problems like AIDS, not only in educating people so that they’ll change their behavior but also in research spending the kind of money and focused effort over decades, huge expenditures and research to develop vaccines and therapies. Not just stopping the disease at great expense for the cocktail as we can today, but vaccinating people to prevent it. We also see an Africa, places where disease emerge and ravage the environment and understand in setting our public health system, as modern as we think we are in the west that these kinds of diseases can spread around the world and infect us too. So what we see when we look to Africa is a microcosm of the problems and the hopes and the change that we need to make in the whole planet written out on a single continent.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Bora Cosic: From Africa, from Africans we can learn modesty, courage, poorness which in our own European superciliously we miss very much.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Brian J. Weller: What can we learn from Africa? Well, I think we can learn so much from Africa. I think we can learn about how to live within nature’s caring capacity. Africa teaches us about and shows us rhythm, music, joy, compassion, real heart, wisdom. But one of the great things I think we can learn from Africa is how in the south of Africa the fallout from Apartheid, how that was dealt with, is an incredible thing we can learn from Africa. It’s called “The Truth and Reconciliation Process” and it was birthed by a number of people, including Desmond Tutu. It’s really using the power of what’s called “truth telling and forgiveness” to break the bonds of estrangement and move social conflicts, really, away from revenge and restore true justice and hope. What an extraordinary gift from Africa to the world. This is what we can really learn from Africa, is basically, I think, this beautiful strategy to communicate beyond revenge and beyond the fear from the past, and really to embrace the pain in such a way that we can actually move through that and create a future based on forgiveness and love. I think that’s one of the great things we can learn from Africa and I would love to see that spread more around the world.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Catherine David: I think that we can learn from Africa as well as we can learn from India. The essential information of the question which makes me a little bit afraid and which makes sense for the comment is… Well, we certainly know what Africa is, but at the same time we are completely vague and inexact. There is as much as Africa as there are countries on this continent and I think that this bad habit, to devalue this continent, constantly associate Africa with dramatic events creates more problems than it offers resorts or solutions. It seems to me as if we could start to considerate “Africa” as an entirety of extremely divers and antagonistic countries. That would say more about its ideology, about its history that I would like to leave in the past and that does not say a lot of the current reality of so many different countries and so many different histories at risk.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

China Keitetsi: Answertext will be available soon.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: The western world can learn an endless amount of things from Africa, from Brazil, from other so called peripheral states. Africa has an enormous tradition of deep mythology, an enormous tradition of oral literature, has, for instance in Madagascar, the ancestor worship, has this ancestor worship in other states and cultures as well, that is a whole different way to deal with thepeople who are dying, to deal with the dead. In the industrial world the dead are concealed behind spanish walls, they die in the technical abstraction of hospitals, without their families, without integration. In Madagascar people live with the people who are dying, with the dead, they have an ancestor worship, a compassion, a humanity which is by far superior to us in the technical world. In general, we have to state that if we want to establish a pool of humanity, the inspiring impulse surely won’t come from the first world, they will come from the peripheral states, from Africa, from Latin America, a whole different form of humanity in the culture of our everyday life that may still be archaic from a historical point of view, but which is by far superior to the abstraction and the algebraization of the first world. Humanity is something that they care about, a form of cordiality, of living cordiality, of living metaphysics, of living spirituality that can enrich the world spirituality, that can enrich us. We can only say: It is them who dance, not us. That is to say they have a vitality, a zest for life, despite of their poverty, despite of the appalling poverty that we have lost long ago. When it comes to humanity, it is us, in the first world, who can learn from the peripheral states and not the other way round.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: Personally, you can learn a lot more from Africa. Their industriousness, their contribution to global development even though let’s say the slavery aspect; but whether we like it or not they were able to contribute to the world. And for me that’s one of the thing that I would say we can learn from Africa, their industriousness. And aside from that I think they also learn that willingness and very motivated initiative of the African people to develop their own countries and their own communities and that of having that a very energetic drive is something we should learn from them. Sometimes Third World countries block those highly energetic spirits that could, you know, that could lead to action for development. And, for me those are the things you can learn from Africa.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas

Sep 9, 2006 3:35:00 PM cite

Dritëro Kasapi: I think the biggest lesson from Africa is that one cannot import packages of solution and that is something that we keep doing all the time. We keep coming with recipes of how problems are solved and we think that just because those are the mechanisms and those are the solutions in our part of the world. And I think Africa has shown repeatedly that that’s wrong, that we need to support the local initiatives, the way people in Africa choose to solve their own problems by themselves and support that in a constructive way. I don’t think problems in one’s society can be the sole recipes of another society because problems have their history in a different context and they need genuine solutions which derive from local initiatives, but its our duty to see to it that we support them because we are also part, a significant part or maybe the main cause of the problems Africa has today. So, it’s our duty to support these initiatives and humbly accept that our recipes don’t always work.

by Dritëro Kasapi