Kah Walla – “It’s the politics, stupid.” (Guest Post)

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Africa Rising, Cameroon, emerging Africa, gender parity in Africa, Ghana, Kah Walla

By Angie Tyler, Graduate Student at SAIS at Johns Hopkins

Kah Walla, entrepreneur, activist and former presidential candidate from Cameroon gave a short presentation on Thursday at Georgetown MSFS titled, “Africa is Rising. Are Africans?” and then spent most of the time on Q&A. She said that she chose her theme based on her recent trip to Ghana where she found that despite impressive statistics on economic growth her conversations with Ghanaian citizens revealed a different reality.  Apart from a few exceptions, she argued, most African countries have not been able to translate their vast economic potential into health and wealth for their citizens, which led her to ask, “Why is there such a disparity between the potential and the reality?” In a word…GOVERNANCE. She says Africa is not poor, but poorly run and lacks visionary leaders and strong democratic institutions.

Kah Walla at Georgetown Tomorrow – Guest Post Anyone?

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Africa Society of Georgetown, Cameroon, Georgetown, Kah Walla

I have to confess I don’t really know who Kah Walla is.  However, the name sounds very familiar, so I suspect for Cameroon watchers, her talk tomorrow afternoon at Georgetown on ‘Leadership: Africa in the World and Women in Africa‘, is a rather big deal.  Her brief bio is quite impressive – presidential candidate, recognized by the World Bank, and celebrated by Forbes magazine.

I don’t usually plug events of this nature, but I had such a good time at the Africa Society of Georgetown’s pan-African conference last weekend, I wanted to highlight more Georgetown Africa activity (especially since I rarely get to their events).  Cameroon is also one of those countries (similar to Uganda and Burkina Faso, but definitely a notch below) where the lack of explicit US commitment to the professed policy of supporting democracy and governance really concerns me.

As always, I welcome a guest post from any of you who attend.  Also, I had promised a post a few weeks ago on a Cameroonian-American in DC with an awesome story, that will be coming soon.