⁣With soft guttural whoops and a tickle of the water, a pygmy man in Central Africa plucks a fish from the river with his bare hands. Another hunter releases a crude arrow into the canopy above. A monkey falls from the trees, shot directly through the heart. Eyes still bulging from the shock, the hunter quickly slots the monkey’s tail under its lolling neck to make a neat bag of his bush meat. It’s skills like these that have allowed the pygmies to live in the rainforest of Cameroon for generations. But now they’re facing stiff competition for their forest range.
With only 7% of the rainforest here protected, there are rich pickings for the loggers. Now logging tracks have spread like spiderwebs through the forest, leaving the pygmies exposed. Perversely, conservationists are also gnawing away at the pygmies' land. Wildlife reserves patrolled by anti-poaching patrols leave just 1% of the forest available for the pygmies. Emile, an old hunter, bemoans the coming of the white men.“Because there’s this protected zone we don’t have enough to hunt. We were forest people, now we’re beggars.”
Caught between two worlds, the pygmies are making their choice. “'Before we used to live in the forest. Then the tall people came and said you can’t live like this. Before, we always used to run away and hide. Then we said this is getting us nowhere and we left the forest.” The pygmies are reaching out, demanding schools and health clinics. Now many families have abandoned their nomadic lifestyle, settling around mission schools.
Yet outside the forest the Pygmies are struggling to find their place. They are forced into jobs that only serve the whites or the Bantu, the predominant black tribe in the area. They’re losing their identity and are being treated like bonded labour, paid with alcohol, food and cast-off clothing. Ironically, many also find work with the logging companies themselves. Hacking down their forest home for a few cents per tree. In a state of rapid cultural transition they don’t know which way to jump. Their culture grates with the loggers’ work ethics. At the local sawmill their ways are tolerated but not respected. “It’s difficult to work with pygmies. When the hunting season or harvest time comes, they simply leave .You can't rely on them. When people won’t change their mentality they can’t be integrated in the workplace' moans the French sawmill manager. Working for hunters is the only other employment around. Tourists pay $20,000 a week to have the pygmies lead them to the prize prey of elephants and gazelles. Its easy work for the pygmies but it’s killing their land as well. The hunters' guns spell danger to the region's elephants.
Back in the forest, in their traditional leaf huts, a band of pygmies try to live as they used to. Their children line up to have their canine teeth filed - the pain is worth it, they say, for this mark of pygmy beauty. The men hunt, the women gather, digging for roots and grubs to be roasted. But even here the lure of a western way of life is drawing people away. The refrain of many mothers is the same. “I want to stay in the village. The most important thing to me is that [my child] can go to school.”
The pygmies are in an impossible situation, their skills, perfected over hundreds of years, are becoming worthless in a world dominated by profit and loss accounts. They are being exploited in the same manner as the ancient rainforest trees: as an expendable commodity with a short term value. Can the pygmies find a successful identity as the modern world closes in?
Produced by Marion Meyer-Hohdahl

Construction of An Earth Library in the Eastern Region of Ghana.
Using locally sourced materials and labour.

The Hadzabe tribe of Northern Tanzania, Africa are a unique hunter gatherer tribe found near Lake Eyasi, The Great Rift Valley. This video is a introduction and insight into the their language.

Dr. Molefi Asante discusses his dream for a United States of Africa, a movement begun by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president. He will examine the prospect for an African Renaissance based on the idea of an African Federative Union and present the prospects and problems of a continental government in Africa.

Seven Continents Center for Research, Policy & Caribbean Dialogue (CARD). Featuring Dr. Bayyinah Bello, Haiti-based Historian, Author of Sheroes of the Haitian Revolution. Professor Gerald Horne, Author of Confronting Black Jacobins: The US-THe Haitian Revolution and the Origins of the Dominican Republic, and Special Guest Pascal Dafinis Ph. D Candidate, University of California, Irvine. Held on 24th of January 2021.

Afrikan Development Studies 2012 12 19 LECTURE 9 [PART 1]

TOPIC:

PROBLEM-SOLVING AS DEVELOPMENT SPECIALISTS


I. National Ethics, Governance and Development
• Nation-building and its challenges:
Integration of National and Ethnic Identity-
Afrikan Cultural Commonalities
• Violent Conflicts within States and their implication to Development
• Western Domination: Machinations, Interference
• Cultural Basis of Leadership Ethics, Corruption and Counteractive measures--
Solution: Traditional Afrikan Ethos



Readings:

The Wretched of the Earth [Frantz Fanon]
Chapter 1 -- Concerning Violence
Chapter 2 -- Spontaneity: Its Strengths and Weaknesses
Chapter 3 -- The Pitfalls of National Consciousness
Chapter 4 -- On National Culture


How Europe Underdeveloped Africa [Walter Rodney]

Maldevelopment [Samir Amin]

Black Power: A Moral and Political Imperative [Dr. Amos N. Wilson]

Why are they so poor? [Rudolf Staham]

Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature [Ngugi Wa Thiongo]

The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community. [Malidoma Patrice Somé]


Dr. Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi

Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Economics
Associate Director, Research & Publication
Editor-in-Chief/Managing Editor East Afrikan Journal of Research
Tumaini University Iringa University College
Tanzania, East Afrika



Dr. Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi a citizen of the United States of America and expatriate resident of the United Republic of Tanzania. Dr. Dukuzumurenyi is a graduate of Grambling State University, Grambling, LA with a Bachelors of Arts in History and Masters of Public Administration in Public Administration with emphasis in Health Service Administration and of Southern University A & M College with an earned Doctorate of Philosophy in Public Policy Analysis from the Nelson Mandela School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. Dr. Dukuzumurenyi is an Afrikan-centered educator, public policy analyst, public administration scholar, political scientist, and public lecturer on Afrikan education, history, economics, politics and spirituality emphasizing systems design and strategic planning in the development of Afrikan political, military, social and economic agency. He has served the Afrikan community as an Afrikan American Studies, Geography and Economics teacher in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System of the United States for nine years, as an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Southern University A & M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for one year and as Associate Director of Research and Publication, Editor of the Journal of East Afrikan Research and Lecturer on the Faculties of Education, Cultural Anthropology and Tourism, Business and Development Studies at the University of Iringa in the United Republic of Tanzania, East Afrika for two years. The guiding influences for Dr. Dukuzumurenyi have been the works of Dr. Amos N. Wilson, Dr. Asa Hilliard, Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochanan, Dr. Marimba Ani, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, Minister Malcolm X, Stephen Biko, Shaka Zulu, Mangaliso Sobukwe & Ptahhotep to name only a select few.