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2014 did not start under favorable auspices for Africa. The onset of a civil war in both South Sudan and Central African Republic, an attempted coup in DRC, the institutional stalemate in Tunisia and the noxious political situation in Egypt have made the headlines of African news. In addition, there are less dramatic realities yet painfully concrete such as the climate of distrust prevailing between African citizens and their political representatives, in South Africa for instance. Unfortunately the systematic misuse of public goods and the embezzlements on an industrial scale don’t only happen in Malawi where the scandal resulted in the government resignation. A job market way too narrow and everyday more impervious to young graduates is feeding a general dissatisfaction.
The most pernicious of the multiple ills threatening Africa remains the lack of creativity and innovation. Creativity and innovation are not only the privilege of art or fiction. They ought to be the pillars of our action on our reality in its social, economic and political dimensions. So many things await to be improved, we cannot afford to merely suffer the present and accept it as is. Not only should we create alternatives to what is being thought and done today but also give ourselves the means to mobilize the resources which will bring those alternatives to life.
Many of my generation, now aged 20 -40, would rather watch instead of intervening on the broad range of problems plaguing the continent. We indeed have no grip on the short term of Africa, the one of the great events which will be under the world’s spotlights in 2014. But we are the first makers of the medium term of Africa, the one which will define the decades to come by the middle of the twenty-first century, in 2050. Hence, we can make of 2014 a pivotal year in which we will pave the way for a brighter future.
It is a resolution to which we, at Terangaweb-l’Afrique des Idées, are firmly committed. Our main goal will be, for 2014, to make operational the think-tank that we have been incubating for several years and that we consider necessary to the public debate and the social life of our African countries. As a reminder, when we launched the website Terangaweb.com four years ago, we wanted to create a free space for dialog, conducive to an exchange of ideas and rigorous analyses about Africa, because we thought that such spaces lacked in the Web, with most websites being news-oriented.
We even identify the same lack in the current offer of laboratories of ideas. The term ‘think-tank’, known also as ‘laboratory of ideas’ refers to an independent and a not-for-profit structure gathering experts with a view to producing studies and proposals for public policies, in order to enrich the debate and influence decision-making.
We have indeed few laboratories of ideas in sub-Saharan Africa while the need for expertise is acute for the public debate and the orientation of public policies. The two main think- tanks for French-speaking countries of sub-Saharan Africa are the CODESRIA (based in Dakar) and the CEDRES of Burkina Faso. They are very academic laboratories of ideas in social sciences, with an operating mode characteristic of the older generation of laboratories of ideas, aiming at an expert and technical audience and overlooking the general public and the diffusion of their analytic and policy briefs through the media and towards the decision-makers.
In 2014, we will keep on improving our website Terangaweb.com and fully dedicate our time and energy to achieve the ambition of a think-tank, l’Afrique des Idées, which will meet the need for an independent, creative, innovative and yet rigorous actor, which will propose solutions and mobilize itself for their implementation in fields such as youth employment, social protection, renovation of African civil services, preservation and sustainable enhancement of the environment and ecological heritage, inclusive growth and reduction of social inequalities, monetary policy of the CFA franc zones among other important issues…
That is the collective good resolution of l’Afrique des Idées, we wish to all success and the best for 2014.
An article by Emmanuel Leroueil, translated by Ndeye Mane Sall