Penkelemesi: An FAQ

What is Penkelemesi?

Penkelemesi is a publication dedicated to analysis of African politics, international affairs, political economy, culture and so much else that is written from the prism of Africans who live on the continent.

Awesome. There aren’t many of those around.

Aye aye. This publication was borne of my observation that there is a dearth of scholarship and journalism about Africa relative to the continent’s vast size, large population and centrality to the history and future of the modern world.

There is a tiny volume of what I consider to be good-quality coverage and analysis of African affairs that is accessible and readily available to lay readers. Few mainstream commentators and outlets cover Africa with the appropriate depth, rigor and even-handedness. My objective is to get beyond superficial, uninformed and monochromatic discourse about Africa and present better ways to think about the continent, its people, the bright spots, myriad challenges African countries face and the potential solutions to them. If you are seeking broad-minded storytelling and commentary about Africa that is forthright, nuanced and avoids the exoticized and dehumanizing frameworks that are commonplace in international coverage of Africa, then you’ve come to the right place.

Dang. Why is international coverage of Africa as bad as you say it is?

Well, there isn’t a single reason. But a major factor — by no means the only one — that explains the poor quality of Africa’s global coverage and analysis is who shapes its narratives and what the world believes about the continent. Very few Africans hold decision-making powers regarding the stories about Africa that the world consumes. The overwhelming majority of international journalism, research and analysis about Africa is NOT produced by or for Africans. This means that nearly everything about the continent and its people is defined by outsiders whose work is blinkered by a range of biases that are accepted as objective knowledge even by many Africans. As I have written elsewhere:

… international coverage of and discourse about Africa tend to be overwhelmingly shaped by Western voices, who generally lack the deep knowledge and appreciation of local languages, traditions and cultures, and the nuances that come with them. In addition to having major blind spots regarding local and regional variations within and outside different countries, their analysis is colored by normative biases, including colonial frameworks that have become institutionalized over time, as well as geopolitical baggage they can scarcely detect and aren’t accustomed to stepping outside of.

The combination of these tendencies produces reporting, coverage and analysis of African affairs that is simplistic, poorly informed and counterproductive to the mission of creating knowledge about an important part of the world.

When Africans are the focus of global discourse, they are spoken for and about far more than they are spoken to. Foreign observers generally struggle to understand Africa on its own terms. Instead, the continent and its people are conceived of mainly as a point of comparison with others or as appendages to the narratives, interests and machinations of foreign actors. Africans are rarely thought of as possessing the full range of human complexity as their peers elsewhere in the world, but as exotic, simple-minded creatures whose peculiarities are uniquely pathological.

This publication aims to be a departure from those conventions. Instead, I seek to use this space to produce and share valuable knowledge and commentary about Africa, prioritizing underexplored, humanizing insights by Africans. I will write from an Africa-centered point of view that places the continent and its people at the heart of discourses about them.

Sounds like quite the challenge you decided to take on.

Indeed! But like my mom once told me when I was a young boy, when you see what you don’t like, you can choose to like what you do see or find something else that is what you would like to see. For the purpose of this newsletter, I have clearly chosen to do the latter. I have no illusions about the scale of the challenge nor do I think that this publication alone will by itself overturn the status quo, but I would rather demonstrate an example of the pathway I would prefer to see more people take than wonder what could be.

Cool! But what makes Penkelemesi different from other outlets that do cover Africa?

There are many sources from where one can get headlines and a quick take on the latest conflict, national election or where the next military coup in Africa has taken place, and there is no inherent harm in paying attention to such stories. But in order to gain a better understanding of events, developments and trends across such a vast continent of approximately 1.4 billion people, we need to scratch beneath the surface; cast a wider net; think systematically; ask better, more meaningful questions; and update our priors.

Doing so will necessarily involve a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom and go outside of one’s comfort zone. It will also require one to have a broader knowledge base of life across Africa beyond what happens in big cities or the halls of power in national capitals. This publication will explore the broader economic, political, social and cultural undercurrents that shape the world in which Africans find themselves. Put simply, my main task with this newsletter is to go after the story behind the story of events across the continent.

Sounds YUGE. What will your commentary look like and what topics will you write about?

There won’t be a singular, predictable pattern with this publication. The aim is to keep things as loose and free-flowing as possible. Its coverage might be gloomy at times, occasionally cheery and some of the coverage will be something in between. There will be intermittent musings on matters that are to the side of politics, international affairs, political economy and security—a.k.a the core topics I’ll be writing about—but are nonetheless relevant and noteworthy, whether it’s culture, sports, technology, religion or any other topic that captures the attention of Africans and is deserves deep consideration. Crucially, I will aim to make my posts (relatively) short and sweet. There will be long posts from time to time but in a world where we are drowning in a flood of information, my commentary will try to maximize the economy of word and time.

The publication will have a considerable Nigerian and broadly West African prism, reflecting my biography and the part of the continent I know best, specialize in and spend most of my time. But by no means will my commentary be limited to West Africa. I am as interested in Mali and Malawi as I am Algeria and Tanzania, and this page strives to reflect such a continental outlook.

There will be irreverence, indignation, passion and nuance. But there will be no equivocation nor a lack of clarity about what I think.

Ambitious. So who is the author behind Penkelemesi?

Good question. My name is Chris Ògúnmọ́dẹdé. Some of you might be familiar with my writings for World Politics Review, where I worked for two years as an editor, writer and author of the weekly newsletter Africa Watch. Others might know me from conferences, my public commentary and media appearances on a range of African and international media, while some folks might have become familiar with me from Twitter.

I often describe myself as an “Afrorealist.” In my formulation, that broadly refers to a rejection of both racist, determinist framings of Africa as a “dark” or “hopeless” continent as well as the kind of similarly cartoonish conceptualization of the continent that can broadly be described as “Africa Rising” and “The Africa You Never See on TV.” The two perspectives might appear to be in tension with one another but they are in fact opposite sides of the same coin. I don't have much patience for either binary. I am interested in holistic, reality-based and humanizing reflection about Africa and Africans in all their complications, contradictions and totalities as afforded to people elsewhere, especially Europe and North America.

I am a scholar-practitioner of politics, diplomacy and international development, with a focus on Africa and a specialization in West Africa. I don’t identify with a profession or career path, but I’m a political economist by professional training. These days I am happy to be thought of as a storyteller about Africa. I have spent most of my professional career working in three continents across those fields, with and for governments, multilateral institutions, think-tanks and non-profit organizations, with the occasional stint in the private sector. A large chunk of that experience has been in Africa and/or Africa-facing and left me even more disillusioned with the so-called liberal international order and its treatment of Africa. The mainstream international media and scholarly discourse on Africa is no better, has scarcely improved in my lifetime and does not reflect my own knowledge, interpretation and experience of the continent.

The coronavirus pandemic marked a turning point for me professionally. Being stuck at home for months on end gave me the opportunity to think about my career and what I wanted to spend my time doing. I decided that the tiny bubble of credentialed folks—in academia, government, international organizations, NGOs, corporations, etc.—that I occupied was insufficiently cognizant of the shortcomings of the status quo. Thus, I started to pivot from the world of diplomacy and made a foray into public commentary for a broader audience. Today I am more active on social media, write and edit articles for newspapers and magazines, consult for organizations, make frequent media appearances and presentations at academic and professional conferences, lectures and seminars. I have also now launched this publication as part of what I anticipate will be a continuous form of public engagement on my part.

Does Penkelemesi have an ideology?

It does. Now before I go into that I must emphasize that there will be no neutrality here or any tilt toward impartiality or “both sides.” I am entirely partial to and biased in favor of the values I hold and beliefs that inform my worldview. Every commentator has prejudices even if they refuse to acknowledge them. As a reader of my publication, you deserve transparency about my background, guiding principles, biases and views on the topics I write about and this is my opportunity to lay my cards on the table.

Now to your question. To the extent that my views can be categorized into single concepts, “Pan-Africanist” and “Third-worldist” would be the closest approximations of my beliefs. I bring a decolonial lens to my analysis of global politics and the distribution of power in the international system. This means that I am critical of the liberal international order especially as it pertains to Africans—including the policies of foreign powers, international organizations and even African states—as well as the journalistic and academic discourses that revolve around this order. Much of my skepticism of the liberal international order and its relationship with Africa is the product of my career in international affairs, but a considerable part of it dates much further back to a lifetime observing the way Africa and Africans are observed, talked about and treated—including by other Africans.

You’re not saying your analysis won’t be balanced, are you? Don’t you think good analysts need to be objective?

In this publication, there will be none of what some scholars call “the view from nowhere,” in which a purported intellectual agnosticism gives equal weight to competing arguments or viewpoints under the premise of a debate. Nor will there be any pretense toward “dispassionate analysis,” where amoral distance from an issue is presumed to be the “logical” way to analyze it. I have no desire to do that, nor do I think it is needed to produce rigorous, thoughtful and facts-based commentary. I will treat the issues I write about not with a sense of detachment, as a spectator sport or an academic, intellectual or professional enterprise, but as fundamental matters with major consequences for millions of people including myself. In other words, I am not afraid to take sides on issues important to the lives, fate and future of Africans.

Hmmm. Okay. Anyway, what does Penkelemesi mean and why is that the title of this Substack?

The publication takes its name from an adulteration of the phrase “peculiar mess” as uttered by Adegoke Adelabu, a prominent Nigerian politician, orator and anti-colonial activist. Adelabu was said to have used the phrase in a set of public remarks, after which some section of his audience — many of whom did not speak or understand English — registered his words as “penkelemesi” using Yorùbá-language phonetics. The word stuck and “penkelemesi” came to be associated with Adelabu, who died two years before Nigeria formally gained independence from Britain in 1960. Penkelemesi is also now a byword in Ibadan — where Adelabu hailed from — for incompetent and/or corrupt governance.

Adelabu is one of the many African figures who have shaped my political philosophy. As such, I considered Penkelemesi to be a suitable title for my newsletter, as a tongue-in-cheek homage to an intellectual hero and because “peculiar mess” is a fairly apt description of much of Africa’s circumstances particularly on issues like poverty reduction, industrialization and the climate emergency.

Gotcha. So should I subscribe to Penkelemesi?

Yep, you should. It would make me very happy, in fact. But more importantly, it would make you so much smarter about events and developments in a dynamic, consequential but undercovered part of the world. There are many people who want to know more about Africa beyond what is published in outlets like The New York Times or The Economist. Over the years, few things have proven more fulfilling to me lime when someone reaches out to commend a piece of my written work or social media post from which they learned something they didn't know, had never come across or seen articulated in a particular way. This gets to the heart of why I do what I do, and if I can guide even one person toward better ways of thinking about and engaging with Africa then my mission has been successful.

Will subscription cost me anything?

This publication will be entirely available for free to all readers—for now. One reason I started Penkelemesi is my desire to make its content—analysis of African politics, international affairs and political economy—as accessible and available to lay readers, especially the many Africans and/or young students who cannot afford to pay for the expensive textbooks and paywalled publications that proliferate the international academic and media ecosystem. I would love to keep this space readily available for as long as I can and will only ask for a small token of support if you value the content of this newsletter and would like to help to keep it going.

Penkelemesi is in its infancy stage and will likely evolve with frequent tweaks. I would love for this journal to expand over time to include podcasts, Q&As with smart, interesting folks; and regular AMA series with me. I am currently unable to commit at this time to any guarantees regarding the frequency with which I shall publish, as I spend a considerable amount of time on the road and have offline commitments just like everyone else. But I aim to publish as frequently as is possible.

I hope you find this publication to be worth your time and that you can use it to make sense of events and developments across Africa. Happy reading, and don’t forget to share this Substack widely!

How can readers and other interested folks contact you?

For enquiries, media appearances, speaking invitations and all other requests, please email C.O.Ogunmodede@gmail.com.