Africa: Land of Career Opportunities

African American aviation pioneer, John Robinson, who constructed his first airplane out of spare automobile parts in the 1930s, found opportunity in Africa when he went to the aid of embattled Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia before World War II. Today Mr. Robinson is known as one of the founders of Africa's most reliable premier Ethiopian Airways.

     Like Haile Selassie, in 2017 Neema Mushi, founder of Licious Adventure in Tanzania, was eager  to make a U.S. connection. She was looking for U.S. companies willing to carry the African textiles and other items her shop sells to the tourists her company's guides lead up Mount Kilimanjaro and to the beaches of Zanzibar. Now, however, not U.S. companies but Chinese ones, such as Anningtex, Buwanas, Hitarget, and Sanne, fill Ms. Mushi's shelves with mass produced, Chinese-made "African" textiles, called kitenge. Locally-owned African textile producers in Nigeria and Ghana, unable to compete with lower-cost Chinese goods, have gone out of business.

     The point is: if you are an importer; photo journalist or documentary filmmaker looking for a story; someone interested in trying out a new teaching or low-cost home construction technique; a miner or an adventurer seeking opportunities of any kind, Africa welcomes you.

     Two essential ingredients help you get started: money and contacts. With a nest egg, car to sell, or Sugar Daddy, you can plunk down $1000-plus for an airplane ticket and head for Africa immediately. Although a crowdfunding appeal, saving from a job, or persuading a media outlet to fund your project, will delay your take off, keep an eye on the prize.i Also consider submitting a Scholar Registration to Birthright AFRICA at birthrightafrica.org. This new non-profit in New York City is the brainchild of Walla Elsheikh, an immigrant from Sudan who began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs. His vision is to send young African-Americans on free trips to Africa to explore and connect with their cultural roots. On these trips, young adults also have an unique opportunity to discover ways they could begin their careers in Africa.

      Economic officers in foreign Embassies and consulates should be able to provide helpful local contacts in Africa, but don't neglect seeking assistance from missionary communities. Religious orders in your home country can put you in touch with their superiors in African host countries. For example, in Namibia, Africa, China built a container terminal and nearby oil storage installation at Walvis Bay, and South Africa's De Beers Group extracted 1.4 million carats from the offshore coastal waters. I also saw Sister Patricia Crowley, at the St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, was about to leave for Windhoer, Namibia, to serve as spiritual director on a one year assignment at a Benedictine missionary community there. An appointment with Sister Patricia in Chicago could lead to a letter introducing your purpose and background to those who could help you in Namibia.

     Likewise, visiting communities of Dominican nuns in a home country could provide contacts with the nuns who teach girls to make a living by sewing and using a computer in Bukoba, Tanzania, and the nuns who teach farmers to plant hybrid tomato crops that withstand heat and insect infestations in Nairobi, Kenya.

     On their outposts in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, the Jesuit order can provide inspiration and information for those investigating Africa careers. While assigned to the Jesuit Refugee Service in East Africa, Father James Martin, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, helped set up tailoring shops, several small restaurants, a bakery, a little chicken farm, and the Mikono Centre that sells African handicrafts. By following in the path of African-inspired Picasso and a Mozambican wood carver who sold a three-foot-tall ebony sculpture at the Mikono Centre, artists from around the world may find fulfillment working in Africa.

     In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah would appreciate a visit from a journalist willing to investigate the complicated land ownership rights, deeds held by chiefs, and government's incomplete database of mining concessions. Although the bishop thought the church held a legal deed to land a chief donated for a clinic and nursing school, Chinese miners began digging "Mr. Kumar's" gold mine on the property.

     Ghana is not the only African country in need of land use planners, legal assistance, doctors, teachers and others willing to discover career opportunities in Africa.

   

   

I'm A Little Airplane

Singing children running through fields with arms outstretched, kids flying kites, and youngsters folding paper airplanes all are following in the tradition of inventors around the world who looked up at birds and tried to imitate their ability to fly.

     We know the Greek myth of Icarus whose feather and wax wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. In Renaissance Italy, Leonardo da Vinci, who designed an airplane but lacked an engine to fly it, had such respect for the birds his design mimicked that he bought the caged birds he saw in Florence in order to set them free.

     Birds have inspired the realistic drawings of John James Audubon and the new stylized paintings of Dutch artist, Jeroen Allart. Gardeners plant a mix of trees, shrubs, grasses, vines, and flowers to attract a variety of bird species and to protect them while they feed. Guided by experts from World Birders (worldbirders.com) in the UK, bird watchers, known as birders, travel the globe to see as many species as possible, especially those that are endangered.

     Earthbound people have found ways for birds to help them. As far back as 2200 B.C. there is mention of the Chinese use of trained falcons. Marshaling their birds' speed to fly high, dive onto prey, and kill with beak and sharp talons, hunters have taken to the field with falcons and hawks to procure a wide variety of game birds, hares, and even small deer and wolves.

     During wars, soldiers have used the natural instinct of pigeons to return to a home loft to carry messages that deceived the enemy (Read Double Cross by Ben Macintyre). Today, drones (See The Art of Intelligence by Henry A. Crumpton) and the robotic spy drones that are shaped like hummingbirds seem somewhat like descendants of the homing pigeon.

     Nowadays, kids who send messages in helium-filled balloons follow in the tradition of the French Montgolfier brothers who showed people they could fly by filling a large silk bag with heated air in 1783. Flying balloons drifted at the mercy of wind and air currents until the Brazilian, Alberto Santos-Dumont, powered his dirigible, or airship, with a gasoline engine in 1898. Germans used dirigibles in World War I, and, when the war ended, airships began to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. Famously, the Germans' hydrogen-filled Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937.

    The Pilot and the Little Prince by Peter Sis not only tells young readers 6 to 8 years old about the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, but also covers the early days of aviation. In the years following the brief flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903, military, passenger, mail, and freight use of airplanes and helicopters has expanded. There have been constant improvements in engines, pilot and flight attendant training, flame resistant plane interiors, safety regulations, and "black boxes" used to determine what went wrong in the case of crashes. All these areas present career opportunities for young people interested in aviation. (Those interested in a career in space, might enjoy my earlier post, "Space Explorers.")

     Understanding the broad appeal of flight, even to those whose career interests are not in aviation, filmmakers have tapped a variety of sources to make Superman movies, tie balloons to a chair to go Up, create a flying suit for Iron Man, and play on national stereotypes in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Disney/Pixar's film, Planes, has inspired a line of remote control planes, such as Mattel's Dusty Crophopper.