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<ckoch@emory.edu> I submit this with Cheryl Johnson-Odim's permission. From: Cheryl E. Johnson-Odim <cjohns1@orion.it.luc.edu> Subject: African Studies in Britain I am responding to your request for any thoughts on this piece which was forwarded to me as an ex-board member of the African Studies Association. This piece makes some interesting points but I have a couple of observations. The first has to do with the first paragraph. While it may be true that Africa accounts for 0.7% of world production, this does not assess its important role in providing raw materials to the west, particularly minerals, and in the case of Nigeria, oil. It is interesting to me how, in calculating the world's wealth, so little attention is given to the fact that though the machines of production may be primarily in the West (or piece-mealed to various free trade zones where labor is cheap but still under control of the West) the natural resources that make the machines go are primarily located in the Third World. Maybe we need a different method for calculating *wealth* versus its distribution. I say this also because it lends less of a *noblesse oblige* tone to why Africa is important. My other observation has to do with the statement "...Africa is in the throes of an urban revolution compressed in time as no other has been, with a third of its people now living in cities where a hundred years ago there were none." This is true in terms of the *modern* city, but it implies Africa has no urban tradition that precedes colonialism, which any historian of Africa knows is false. This statement needs "massaging" so that it doesn't play into the stereotype of Africans as never having governed any large areas with centralized governments and all that implies. The inclusion in this piece of the discussion of the two Diasporas (the first attendant to the slave trade and the second to the "voluntary" immigration of professionals) is good. This piece should certainly spark some interest, controversy, discussion, and commentary.
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