Seth Singleton will give a talk titled “Hippos, Cheetahs, and the Passing of the Development Paradigm” at the Belfast Free Library on January 12 at 6:30 pm. The lecture is free and open to all.

Westerners have been taught to think that they are responsible for poverty, violence, corruption and other African ills, and that the solution is more Western aid and paternalism “helping” Africans.  But the post-colonial “white man’s burden” now perpetuates African problems.  As Africans realize, the continent needs a revolution in governance, from Big Man winner-take-all government greased by corruption to bottom-up accountability and local control of resources. This reform must be built by Africans from Africa’s own traditions.

Seth Singleton teaches international relations at the University of Maine. He studied Russian history at Harvard and African politics at Yale. His dissertation on the Congo crisis of the 1960s won a national prize.  He taught at the University of Dar es Salaam and traveled the backlands of eastern Congo on single-track railway lines and wood-burning paddle-wheel steamers. His research for many years was on Soviet foreign policy in Africa, with grants at Harvard and the Kennan Institute in Washington. The US government sent him to lecture on foreign policy in Sudan, Somalia, Madagascar, Liberia, Ghana, South Africa, and Ethiopia. Singleton has been academic dean at universities in the US and abroad and has held Fulbright grants in Vietnam (1999-2000) and Bolivia (2007) and a Soros Foundation grant in Mongolia (2005-2006).

This presentation is hosted by the Belfast Free Library and offered as a free community event in in anticipation of the 29th Annual Camden Conference: The New Africa, February 19-21, 2016.