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A WELCOME MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
Mark Ashurst has worked as a journalist in Africa since 1993, both for local media and as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, The Economist and Newsweek. He drafted submissions from the South African Broadcasting Corporation to the country’s first Independent Broadcasting Authority, and spent six years as the BBC's Africa Business Editor.
“In the first jubilant years of Africa’s independence, Nadine Gordimer cautioned her European friends that prescriptions from abroad would fail: ‘They have had so much of us, from tear gas and taxes to brotherly advice, that most Africans are going through a period where they prefer their own mistakes to successes (or mistakes) that are not their own’.Since then, a new agenda of political and economic liberalisation has taken root in most of sub-Saharan Africa – a necessary adjustment if Africa is to harvest the fruits of its wealth and talent. Change has been faster and more profound in recent decades than over the course of several preceding centuries. This momentum cannot be halted, but the outcomes are uncertain. No-one today can claim a monopoly of good ideas. Tolerance of mistakes has waned. Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president, contends instead that ‘to be a true African is to be sufficiently enraged by Africa’s condition in the world to want to join the mass crusade for Africa’s renewal’. Renewal will demand creativity and pragmatism – qualities abundant in Africa, for all its problems. Outsiders need to play a more constructive role too. Good intentions, often voiced in terms still redolent of 19th century Victorian philanthropy, will count for nothing unless matched by a new readiness to take Africa seriously. The Africa Research Institute, a new and non-partisan think-tank based in London, has been set up with that objective in mind. We look forward to working with you”
Mark Ashurst
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