In the Echo Chamber: Is South Africa Really The Rape Capital of the World?

Echo chamber: when a claim, often erroneous, bounces around the echo chamber of government and media, making it sound as if multiple, reliable sources are corroborating the same story.

In the last decade, multiple countries have competed for the title of "rape capital of the world." Sometimes it's India. Often it's the Democratic Republic of the Congo or South Africa.

According to fact-checking and news gathering website Africa Check, the vast majority of media claims about South Africa as the world's rape capital are based on claims repeated by other media sources. These original claims are, in turn, based on fake allegations allegedly made by reputable bodies like the United Nations and INTERPOL. When Africa Check interviewed officials at both organizations, they denied making these claims. An INTERPOL even said, "We have previously... request[ed] a correction in this regard, and will do so again. Unfortunately these false reports have been repeated by various media."

An excellent 2013 Foreign Policy article by Marya Hannun explores why it's so hard to declare one country the world's rape capital in the first place. Hannun writes: 

The first problem in cross-country comparisons of crime rates in general — and rape in particular — is definitional. What exactly constitutes rape? Statistics tend to skew upward in places with broader, more inclusive laws. In Sweden, for example, each instance of sexual violence is catalogued as its own crime. "When a woman comes to the police and she says my husband or my fiance raped me almost every day during the last year, the police have to record each of these events, which might be more than 300 events," one Swedish sociologist explained to the BBC. "In many other countries it would just be one record." In Congo, by contrast, the World Health Organization found that police did not record reported cases of sexual violence in the absence of a witness who could testify to the use of force. 

Last October, I interviewed Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola of the University of the Witwatersrand for Ayiba Magazine. Gqola's latest book, Rape: A South African Nightmare,  explores the troubling realities of South African rape culture. When I asked her about the claim that South Africa's the world's rape capital, she had this to say: 

I don’t think South Africa in fact has more rapes than everywhere else in the world. We never knew this and there is no way of knowing it. It’s the media reportage that very quickly started conflating research that showed highest reporting rates to highest incidents of rape. For a time we had much higher rates of reporting – because for a time, in the early days of our democracy – women had increased faith in the criminal justice system. So, what we actually had was the highest rate of reported rapes in the world. All over the world, rates of reporting are atrociously low, as research from different countries repeatedly shows. Our reporting rates have decreased significantly, as rape survivors realized that faith in the criminal justice system is often not rewarded. So if we were working with rates of reporting today, rather than in the mid-1990s, our statistics would be unspectacular comparatively. This is not the same as saying rape incidents are lower.

Most statistics on rape are based on data sets that aggregate criminal reports of rape. Unsuprisingly, in countries with good outreach systems and efficient, competent police forces, reports are likely to be higher. When women don't trust the system, they don't report sexual violence. 

With different legal definitions of and methods of recording rape in addition to under-reporting of sexual violence worldwide, making international comparisons is hard. Before we make generalizable claims like which country is the world's rape capital, we need better data. To obtain better data, we require systems that better support survivors of sexual violence by "interrupt[ing] the continuum in societal attitudes, norms, and behaviors that enable rape and rape culture."

Rock the Vote From Abroad

In another life, my friend Emefa Agawu would be the voting czar of the DNC. Last year, she was on a one-woman mission to make sure everyone who crossed her path voted in the tight CT election that secured a second term for Governor Dan Malloy. 

Inspired by Emefa's zeal for getting people to rock the vote, I'm on a mission to encourage every American abroad to vote. I think local elections are just as important, if not more important than presidential elections, but it's always the race for the White House that garners the most attention. So if you're not going to vote for your local election, you can at least vote in a presidential election.

Yesterday, I got an email from a former Princeton in Africa fellow with some useful information on overseas voting that I'll share below: 

If you'd like to vote in the presidential primaries (as well as more local elections), please go to www.overseasvotefoundation.org. Depending on your home state, there is still time to register for the primaries and in many states you can do the entire absentee voting registration process, and even vote, electronically. 

If you're only abroad temporarily, when you get back to the US the following two sites might be worthwhile for you. If you end up outside of your home state but want to continue to vote in your home state (e.g. you move to NYC but want to vote in your home state), you can use www.longdistancevoter.org. If you need to register in a new state (or register to vote for the first time), you can find a guide here: https://vote.usa.gov

Given the enormous influence that America has on the lives of people outside its borders, including Africa, it is our responsibility to use this enormous privilege we have to take part in shaping America’s future and the future of humanity.

The Breakfast Staple That Transcends All Borders (Roads and Kingdoms)

I've been following Anthony Bourdain-backed travel website Roads and Kingdoms for quite some time. The website bills itself as a "next-generation travel, food, music and journalism platform." And it's living up to its lofty goals: it's won two James Beard nominations, an IACP nod, and was named the best Travel Journalism site by the Society of American Travel Writers. I was really excited when the editorial team gave me the chance to write for their breakfast series. Check my ode to "diasporic dough" below and find it live on the Roads and Kingdoms website here. 

THE BREAKFAST STAPLE THAT TRANSCENDS ALL BORDERS

Bofrot in Accra

Across Africa and its diaspora, certain recipes and techniques stretch across borders. The most famous diasporic staple is likely West Africa’s okra stew, which shares similarities with New Orleans’ gumbo and caruru in Brazil’s Bahia, the hub of the Afro-Brazilian culture. But less well-noted are African and diasporic variations of fritters.

Louisiana has its beignets. Kenya, its mandazi. In Ghana, the fried dough of choice is bofrot, also called togbei, or “goat’s balls” in Ga, the language of one of the ethnic groups native to the Accra region.

Each morning, in the congested Accra traffic, street vendors weave in and out of the treacherous maze of cars selling on-the-go snacks. Boxes filled with bofrot and other pastries are balanced precariously on their heads. Drivers and passengers crammed in trotros, the local form of public transport, dive into their pockets in search of a few coins to exchange with hawkers before traffic begins moving again.

But you can’t get your bofrot from just anyone. A tried-and-true bofrot connoisseur, I find the bofrot sold on the street to be soggy after sitting too long. I prefer to purchase mine from a lovely lady named Ama, who starts deep frying the delicious round doughnuts each morning in Osu, Accra’s hustling, bustling “Times Square.” By now, Ama and I have a steady rhythm. Rolling down the car window in the morning, I’m always greeted with a warm smile and a raspy voice saying “εte sεn? One cedi?”

For the equivalent of twenty-five cents, I get two warm bofrot. Not the healthiest of foods, I (regretfully) indulge sparingly, just two or three times a week. While a popular breakfast snack, alongside other popular go-to’s like kooko (maize porridge) or kye bom (fried egg and bread), bofrot is also a staple at parties and weddings. As a sweet finger-food, it stands out in a culture dominated by salty and savory dishes.

Some Ghanaian friends tell me that traditionalists use palm wine in place of yeast, which gives it a distinctive taste. An uncle with a sweet tooth advises rolling the bofrot in powdered sugar to make it sweeter. As I perform my own gastronomic experiments at home, I dip the bofrot in a passion fruit glaze and delight in the sweet-and-tart taste.

Growing up, I was accustomed to bofrot’s Kenyan cousin, mandazi, which often features coconut milk and spices like ginger and cardamom and is frequently cut into triangles. Mandazi is more dense, with a consistency similar to cake rather than a beignet. Less sweet than bofrot, mandazi are often served with chai tea, a nod to Kenya’s fusion of Indian and African culture.

Different regions call for twists that alter the texture and taste, but the core components to diasporic dough always follow the simple formula: flour, yeast, sugar, water. The omnipresence of such a simple snack across the globe ensures that a piece of home is never too far away. A Kenyan-American in Ghana, my bi-weekly trip to Ama’s bofrot stand cures even the worst bout of homesickness.

The Case for African Liberal Arts (Infoboxx)

My latest column for Infoboxx on how liberal arts can help address some of the continent's human resource challenges.

Full disclosure: This column is admittedly biased because I'm the product of a liberal arts institution, but there's some research (cited in the column) to support the pro-liberal arts argument.

To compete in the globalized economy, many African government officials are apt to say we need more scientists and engineers, doctors and architects. But we also need more writers and historians, artists and activists. Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen of ReD Associates, a strategy and innovation consulting firm, note that the humanities focus on the “hard skills of understanding other people, their practices and context.” Both groups should be equally prized in our globalized economy, and we do not need to sacrifice the latter to support the development of the former. We can help spur the development of diverse African professionals through liberal arts education.

Read more. 

The Hidden Power of Social Enterprise (Infoboxx)

My latest column for Infoboxx on the hidden power of social enterprise to impact development, and how Ghana can learn from socent magnets like Kenya and Bangladesh.

Social enterprise’s unique hybrid focus on social and economic factors can often make it better suited than conventional private sector or public sector actors to address the multifaceted nature of poverty. As private sector companies focus on profit maximization, they often create problems such as environmental pollution or low wages that perpetuate the poverty trap. Decades of inefficiency in the NGO world have lead to a proliferation of barometers to access intervention and a narrow focus on indicators over long-term strategic projects.

In some countries like Bangladesh, home to microfinance heavyweights Brac and Grameen, or Kenya, home to up-and-comers such as Ruby Cup or Totohealth, social enterprise has made a big impact.

Totohealth, for example, uses mobile technology to detect child development abnormalities and improve access to maternal and child health information for the marginalized communities. The SMS-based platform monitors indicators on milestones to help in timely detection of abnormal growth in children below 5 years.

However, elsewhere in the Global South, like in Ghana, the social enterprise trend has been slower to catch on.

Read more. 

From Farm to Table: Waste Not, Want Not (Infoboxx)

My latest column for Infoboxx on farm waste in African food supply chains, with a focus on inefficiencies in Ghana and Nigeria.

Growing up, children around the world are admonished to finish their dinner plates with the common reproach, “Finish your food. There are starving children in Africa.” With the pervasive images of African poverty and malnutrition, it may come as a surprise, even to some Africans, that Ghanaians alone waste $8.9 billion worth of food each year. In the region that can perhaps at least afford to waste food, a great portion of it goes uneaten or is thrown away.

Read more.