Interview with Professor Claire Adida on African immigration trends and immigrant exclusion

Hi everybody and welcome to another edition of the Janet Foster Show. I'm your host and remember this is the show where you get real talk you can act on. Right now we are coming to you live here in Los Angeles and I want to let you know you can get social with me right now. You can catch me on Facebook at Janet Foster and please if you have any questions or any comments please do. You can post there. Also you can hit me up on Twitter which quite a few of you do and I appreciate the love that you give me before each show and after each show and during each show and you can hit me there at Janet D Foster and that's D for Deborah and also on Instagram at Janet D Foster and I know Instagram you guys keep telling me that I don't give you enough love but I do appreciate the love and I promise I will continue to do that and you guys get to see a lot of my football posts so I really enjoy the comments that I get from you so get social with me right now and what I wanted to do was kick off you know this is by popular request a lot of power listeners have asked for some more global discussion and you like to have global discussions that I bring here this series that we did on Haiti was very well. Very well appreciated and I thank you so much for that and and a lot of a lot of requests have come in just in the last two months about hey why don't you do something covering Africa you know start start talking about what's going on on that continent and what the country's in that continent and you know quite a few of you just based on your based on your comments a lot of you are in business and some of you are in tech medicine and you know I'm going to start talking about that in a little bit but I really appreciate that and I appreciate that you're here and I appreciate that you're here and I appreciate that you're here and I appreciate that you're here and also there are some of you who are investors I wonder if your angel investors because maybe I might want to invest in I might need a little investment assistance but a lot of you are really interested in getting more information about the continent and one of the things that I thought would be interesting for us since I'm Gen Xers and Millennials we really we really as we were growing up we didn't really hear very much about the continent most of what we identify if we do identify with the continent is either based on what we may have learned in college because for most of us unless unless you were in Advanced Academic Studies you really didn't cover a lot on Africa in terms of looking at the different countries and the peoples of that continent and I have a wonderful guest today who has done work extensive work at looking at immigration trends and I know when we think of immigration just as Americans and we think we think about people wanting to come to the states and one of the things that is a growing trend right now is a lot of immigration within the continent of Africa and a lot of the shifting there are some obvious moves in terms of either technology or the technology that's being used to make sure that people are able to get to the state. And this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this kind of facilitate movement. And my guest today is Professor Claire Adida. She's the assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. And she wrote a book. The book is called Immigrant Exclusion and Insecurity in Africa, Co-Ethnic Strangers. And a lot of her work has been watching these trends, looking at historical information. And I'd like to have a great conversation with her. And I'd like to introduce her to you. Professor Adida, how are you today? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. Great. And I just wanted, if you could just share some things with our audience about your book, because I know your book is... I assume too, because when most professors write books, they're writing books to be the textbook for a course. And I'm also assuming too that, because there really aren't that many books that talk about immigration in Africa. So your book that you've written, I assume that you're also teaching from that as well in your classes. Well, the book that I wrote comes out of my PhD dissertation. So it's much more... specialized. It's a much more narrow topic than what you would find in a textbook. A textbook would probably be textbook on conflict in Africa or African politics more generally. And my book really hones in on one topic of immigration and immigrant exclusion in Africa. So I do draw a little bit from that book in my classes on conflict in Africa, but I don't I don't yet offer entire classes on that. Oh, wow. Wow. Because I thought, oh, this is so... Her students are so lucky, but they're still lucky that they have a professor who's done this kind of work, as well as they're introduced to this, and they're able to converse with you on things like that. So I'm sure that's fun. You have an extensive resume. And one of the things for today, I want to focus on immigration. And I know that you've done specific work on immigration. And I know that you've done specific work on immigration. And I know that you've done specific work on immigration. And I know that you've done specific work in certain countries or focusing on certain countries on the continent. And most of us, Gen Xers, we're very familiar, as well as millennials, we're familiar with what's happening in West Africa versus other parts of the continent. And a large presence of why we know about West Africa is Nigeria. And a lot of that has to do with its population, as well, as it's the largest voice on the continent in terms of oil. And that's probably the most valuable resource that they have right now. And with them being an OPEC nation, that's sort of where I think a lot of Gen Xers, basically everybody under 50, kind of identifies when we think of Africa, economically, we think of Nigeria first before we think of anything else. And then, you know, depending on how you grew up, you think about famine, you know, the whole heal the world, if you know, with Michael Jackson, and, and just, you know, that that is pretty much based on some of the the initial, we did an initial survey with our listeners. And that's kind of that kind of drove why people want to know more information. If you could, could you talk to us about some of the historic drivers of immigration on the continent? And, and just give us some history and background for us? Sure. Before I do, I wanted to let you know that it was interesting that you did a survey with your listeners, because at the beginning of my class, my Africa conflict class, I asked my students to write down three words that come to mind when I think about Africa. And I actually got this idea from it from a friend, professor at Colby College. And, and then I do a word, a word doodle to that show. And I think it's a really interesting idea. And I think it's a really interesting idea. And I think it's a really interesting idea. And I think it's a really interesting idea. And I think what the most frequent words are that come up. And over the past two, three years that I've done this, it's always the word poverty that comes up. Poverty is there in the middle, and everybody's thinking about poverty. It's interesting that you bring up Nigeria because Nigeria is such a dynamic country. You mentioned oil, but I think another thing that Nigeria has is a very educated and entrepreneurial population. And so Nigeria tends to send a lot of people abroad, and I'm sure that you're thinking about Nigerians in the United States, but the communities that I followed in West Africa were two Nigerian communities. And so Nigerians are also very present within Africa. So to answer your question about kind of the history of migration in the continent, before colonialism, the movement of people was very common. You didn't have national boundaries, and there was a... A lot of land. Land was abundant. And so communities, entire communities would migrate whenever they encountered hardship. They would just get up and migrate, and it wasn't a big deal. You didn't have concepts such as citizenship or immigration laws because you didn't have nation states yet. But migration was very much a part of everyday politics. Whenever you encounter problems, you migrate. There was also a lot of migration, of economic migration, so the migrant communities I followed in West Africa are communities that settled over a century, started settling over a century ago. So these are communities of traders, people who sell goods, who've moved throughout various West African cities to sell their goods. And what's interesting is that with colonialism and then with independence after colonialism, what that's done is it's created narratives, it's created national boundaries, it's kind of closed off boundaries, and so you end up having... Communities who've always been there, who are welcomed, and who are always there, who all of a sudden are immigrants, even though they've been there for generations. And so that's created some of the tension and the contention that you might've heard of when you think about Idi Amin in Uganda, expelling Indians in 1972, There's actually been a lot of mass expulsions on the continent. And increasingly, you see immigration politics also playing out in democratic African countries. Oh, definitely. You know, when you talk about the expulsions, have you seen that that may be a trend that certain governments do to keep, I guess, keep the majority, keep things in check? And I guess where I'm going with this is, is it something that they do to prevent because of colonialism, colonialism? That's happened where they keep things in check. So there's a few different reasons why African leaders have issued mass expulsions. So in my book, I have a chapter on this. I've collected data on all mass immigrant expulsions decreed by African leaders since 1950, between 1956 and 1999. And, you know, there's more than 40 of them. There's a lot more. More. More than half of sub-Saharan African countries have expelled, have done one of those expulsions at least once. So, so, yeah. So to answer your question, there's a number of different reasons why you see these expulsions happening. You do see kind of a burst of mass expulsions early on in the 60s and 70s upon independence, once these countries gained independence. And a lot of that had to do with. policies, backlash against the communities that had been brought over by colonial powers to either be bureaucrats or to, for the Indians in East Africa, it was to build a railroad. So there was, there was a lot of backlash against these communities, even though these communities had been there for, for generations. Wow. You know, that, that's exactly what I was looking for. And so. Yeah. immigration. And a lot of us have the context of here in the U.S. how immigrants are welcome. Well, so the Statue of Liberty says so. You know, looking at the current presidential race, you would wonder. But how immigrant populations are welcome. They've been able to thrive. And then you hear about expulsions. And, you know, noting as late as 1999, so that something like that happened, it is kind of, it's kind of interesting that that would happen. And that it actually goes on. Because just thinking about how do you, when we associate certain things with the continent, we're thinking, how did people just say, hey, I'm going to. pick up and go and live in Africa. And that the fact that this was happening as late as 1999, that that's interesting in itself. When you when you think about, you know, through your work, what have you seen as the biggest trend in immigration? So, so just to just to make sure I understand the question, what are you so what have I seen in terms of the the the biggest trend of how people respond to immigration? Yes, how they respond to it. And, you know, I guess when when when there are, I guess the word I'm coming up with are people who are not natural citizens or natural immigrants. how are immigrants able to assimilate? Yeah, so being an immigrant is a very vulnerable thing to be in many African countries. And so the mass immigrant expulsions will give you an idea of that already. But then when you go to the more micro level, when I spent time in three West African cities, getting to know these two Nigerian immigrant groups, you realize that they really are very vulnerable. And a lot of times it doesn't matter how long they've lived in the country. It doesn't matter if they were born in the country. It doesn't matter how assimilated they are. They are vulnerable to police harassment. And, you know, actually we saw this, quite recently last year in Kenya, Kenya has a group of ethnic Somalis. So they're Somali ethnically, that's what they speak, but they're Kenyans. And because oftentimes they are associated with terrorism, they get scapegoated whenever there is a terrorist attack in Kenya. And so last year there was a couple terrorist attacks. And a number, a number of Somali Kenyans were rounded up and placed in a stadium and kept there for days, even though they were Kenyans, a lot of them were Kenyans. So my sense is that it's a very vulnerable position. And what's interesting as well is that immigration politics and anti-immigrant politics are kind of the same everywhere. So the rhetoric that you hear, especially in the presidential race here, the fact that when you have democratic politics, a lot of times there are minorities who become scapegoats. This happens everywhere. It happens here in the US and then it happens increasingly in Africa as more and more African countries become democracies. This is kind of the dark side of democratic politics, where these minorities become scapegoats. Yeah. Yeah. I can completely, that's exactly how I was patterning it. And, you know, hearing you talk about that and the example of in Kenya, that's the first thing I thought was this is a people, a human being problem that people do basically either out of fear or in some cases, just out of a way of maybe curbing something or trying to create the illusion of dealing with it. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. That's crazy. Now, in your book, you talk about immigrant exclusion. Is that an example of what you define as immigrant exclusion? Are there other exclusions in that concept? You know, this is actually a very good question because the concept of immigrant exclusion is poorly defined. And so us academics, we use that word a lot. We talk about immigrant exclusion, but it can mean different things and we can capture it in different ways. And so what academics have done is, what they mean by exclusion is they could be referring to people's anti-immigrant attitudes. So, you know, how they feel about immigrants in general, attitudes. Towards increasing or decreasing the number of immigrants in the country, attitudes such as favoring a ban on certain types of immigrants. So those are exclusionary attitudes, but there's also behavioral measures. So behavioral versions of the concept of exclusion. So in my book, I talk about mass expulsions. That's a behavioral form of exclusion. You could talk about deportations. That's another way. So it's a concept that's been measured in many different ways. And in my book, I try to look both at people's attitudes and behaviors. I did a number of surveys where I measured how tolerant people would be of various immigrant groups. And then I also looked at these mass expulsions. Yeah. Do you, in your work, have you found that maybe countries that tended to have a higher level of tolerance? And maybe supporting behaviors for immigrants? Are those countries, are they considered the most successful? Or is there any kind of variance between that? Have you noticed anything with that? So my research actually doesn't look at country level characteristics, but I'll cite you another piece of research that does do that in Africa. And that finds that countries that are more economically developed are actually more intolerant of immigrants. And countries, yes, and countries that are more democratic are around election time, intolerance of immigrants grows. So this is what I'm saying. I think it's very, it's, there's nothing unique to Africa here. It seems like patterns that you see kind of everywhere. It's part of the democratic politics. It gets worse around elections. And it gets worse with economic, when there's a sense that there's economic competition. Oh, wow. I guess competition for jobs, competition for opportunities. It's more of, you're the new guy, you need to wait in the back of the line, everybody else. Oh, and seeing, just thinking in just regular kind of common sense terms, you would think the more tolerant, more open community would be the more successful. And that's, you know, that's a very interesting point. Now, do you, in looking at your work and you followed the, the two groups that you followed, what were some of the, what were some of the ahas or things that I think, I think anyone who doesn't know anything about the continent, what are some key things that you kind of picked up out of that? Yeah. So my claim in my book is, is a little bit counterintuitive. So a lot of the research on immigrant assimilation in the US or in Europe will tell you that immigrants who are more culturally similar to their host societies have an easier time integrating. So for, you know, if you, if you, if you can speak the language, if you speak the same language, then it's easier for you to integrate. And so I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. If you share a religion with a dominant religion, then it's easier for you. What I found is that it, this doesn't tend to hold in the communities that I studied where cultural similarities can actually hurt integration. Yes. And, and this is counterintuitive and this is something I had a bit of a hard time selling to my audience, especially my, my grad school advisors. Um, but, um, I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. Uh, but, but it's not, this is, again, it's not unique to, um, to Africa. So, uh, uh, there's a famous research in, in the U.S. context. Uh, Mary Waters has done work on Caribbean immigrants to the U.S. and has found that Caribbean immigrants to the U.S., the first generation actually did, were better off resisting assimilation because assimilation would have meant assimilation into, uh, a minority, the African-American community, a minority that, that is marginalized. Um, and so I think that's a really good point. And so for them, it was better to be immigrant than to be black. Um, and, and so what you see is for some communities, it's sometimes better to be different, um, than to, um, assimilate, uh, and then, and then have to, and then compete with, with, uh, the, the community in, in, in, in which you would be assimilating. Um, and so in, uh, in the, the communities that I, that I studied in West Africa, uh, for different reasons, uh, cultural similarities didn't really help. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. leader protects his immigrants. He protects them from the police. He usually has, I say he, because it was always a he. He usually strikes deals with the police and says, look, I'll turn in the bad apples, but then you need to trust me that I can vouch for my people. And so these immigrant community leaders were pretty powerful figures and had an incentive to remain powerful. I mean, this was a good gig for them. But what that meant is that their members, the members of their community had to identify as immigrants in order. Did we lose her? Yeah. Can you hear me? We can hear you now. We lost you at, we lost you at community members had to identify as immigrants. That's right. So in order to receive the benefits, in order to receive protection from their community leaders, they had to be active members of their immigrant communities. And so identify as, as immigrants. And so it's, it's kind of this, it's this strange tension between being protected by not, by not assimilating. Got it. And you know what, and that's where it sounds similar. If we mirror it here in the States, that's similar to what the Irish did. The Italians did along with the church, with the Catholic church, with both of those groups, kind of the speaking, I won't talk about the, the, the organized crime aspect, but the church kind of was the foundation for those particular groups. And that it's kind of amazing that your work, your work has kind of proved something similar that we're able to relate to in terms of Africa. And you can also see though, potentially where issues of corruption can happen within those communities as well. You know what I, you know, with assimilation and the work that you've done, have you found that, I guess, that you've, you know, you've, you've, you've found that there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, I guess, with, you mentioned earlier that around election time, there seems to be heightened issues with, with immigrants. And I know in your book, you, you kind of mentioned a little bit about a lot of times there are, in some countries, there are limited opportunities for immigrants to participate either in government, running for government, or even participating in certain areas. And so this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this I think we lost you right before you talked about the two groups, right when you were beginning to describe the two groups. Okay. So do you hear me now? I can hear you now. Okay. So the two groups I studied tended to stay away from politics in their host societies. The sense was that this was too dangerous and they needed to kind of keep quiet. The few who did, so I remember one of my interviewees in Accra in Ghana was a Muslim Yoruba. So a member of a group originally coming from Nigeria, but who had lived in Ghana for a really long time and identified as Ghanaian. And he was running for a kind of a local political position. In his neighborhood. And inevitably it came up that, you know, what his opponents did is they said, well, you're not Ghanaian. You know, even though he very much is Ghanaian. So it's such an easy target. A lot of times the communities I was with whom I was interacting were not communities that were getting involved in politics. Now, there's another phenomenon that happens, which is that. When immigration becomes a political issue, that can lead to backlash against communities. But not because immigrants are trying to get involved in politics, but rather because political candidates who are trying to run for office are accusing each other of not being a native of the country. Right. So this is actually what explains the civil war. In the 90s, it had to do with one of the political candidates was a somebody from the north was a Muslim. And his opponents accused him of not being a true Ivarian because he was from the north and because supposedly one of his parents was born in Burkina Faso, the neighboring country to the north. This this became a very contentious issue. He was barred from running in elections. By the way, he is the current president of Cote d'Ivoire. So they didn't stop him. Right. So, I mean, but it did take a civil war. Okay. Wow. That is very interesting. That's something that, you know, relating here in the States, you kind of wonder about that. And what you describe, they're more in your face up front about it. And here, sometimes there can be some covert things about that. That's very interesting. You know, in your book, you talk about something called South-South migration on the continent. Can you explain that to us, what that means? I mean, just looking at it, I kept thinking. South-South, does it mean moving south or countries to the south? It's kind of cool, but I don't really understand it. Yeah, I'm sorry for the jargon. Oh, that's okay. We want to be in the know. Well, so most of the work on immigration or even when anyone thinks of immigration, they're thinking about an immigrant who comes from the developing world and who comes to the U.S. or Europe, usually a richer country, a high income. So that's what we call South-to-North migration. So South, it means the global South. It means low income countries or the developing world. Those are countries that are sending immigrants out and they tend to look for a better livelihood in the north, which means the north being a higher income country. And a lot of the research on immigration is research on this kind of immigration. So, you know, we're talking about immigration. We're talking about immigration. South-to-north. But what the numbers are showing is that almost half of all migration flows are South-to-South. That means a Nigerian going to Ghana or a Zimbabwean going to South Africa or a Bangladeshi going to India. So it's an immigrant from a developing country, a lower income country, going to another low income country. And so that's what we mean by South-to-South migration. And there are a lot of migration flows that are intra-South. And there's very little research on this because it's harder to do research in places where there's not a lot of data that's being kept. Oh, you know, and we don't think of that. And I think just this whole concept of immigration to within the continent in itself, when we're so... accustomed to knowing that they're sending people either to here to the States or to Europe and not thinking about that. You know, in West Africa, in the work that you've done, what's been, and just in your opinion, what has been the biggest change? Because Ghana... Ghana and Nigeria are, they're huge. They're definitely huge. I mean, even in the world of entertainment, no one thinks about the world of entertainment. And, you know, Ghana and Nigeria. Nigeria has this movie production. They're actually number two in the world. They're behind Bollywood. There's Bollywood and they've actually dubbed Nigeria's movie production. They have the same production of their dramas as they call it, Nollywood. And they're number two in the world. And then the United States comes in at number three. I mean, just in your opinion, just with them, you know, with the work that you've done between those two countries, what's the success? What are the successes that you know about with immigration and contributions that immigrants are making? So you're asking me about a positive story. So, first of all, you mentioned Nollywood. So the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie, whose work I really enjoy, describes Nollywood as the best example of Nigerians consuming what they produce. And it's true. I mean, it's a huge industry. And it's... It's amazing because it's, you know, it's movie directors producing movies under very... With very few resources, under difficult conditions. But the Nigerian audience loves it. And not just the Nigerian audience. Actually, I remember when I was doing my fieldwork in that part of the world in 2007. And I was doing a lot of traveling because I was following these communities. I traveled between Ghana and Nigeria. And I was in a bus traveling by road. And in the bus, they showed movies during the very long road trip. And the movies were all Nollywood movies. I mean, it was just... It's a pretty dominant industry in the region. So you're asking me about success, immigrant success stories? Is that the question? Yeah. Just in anything that you've come across as positive things. I mean, it's... I know that a lot of your work has been looking at... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. those two countries, because they've got so much going for them right now, and they're capturing the attention, definitely of the business world, you know, there's got to be some positive things that could come out of immigration. Well, oh, I think we lost you again. I was, I mean, now? Yeah, I can see now, before you were getting ready to start, is when you, when we lost you. Okay, so I would say that the regional community, the economic community of West African states, known as ECOWAS, and in general, kind of the regional cooperation that you're seeing, so, what ECOWAS is doing is it's making it easier for people to move within the member states, and making it safer for them, right, because Nigerian can go to Ghana, it's not a big deal, you don't need a passport, it's just like the European Union, and, you know, ECOWAS has become a very important regional player, especially, and this I'm going to diverge a little bit from your original question, but, especially in the kind of leadership role it's played whenever there's been instability in the region, so when there's been coup attempts, like in Burkina Faso recently, ECOWAS has played an important role in discouraging that, and bringing countries back to regular democracy, and what's encouraging about that is that increasingly you're seeing, African heads of state, and African countries, taking on these leadership roles, to solve problems in Africa, so, you don't need the U.S. to come in, you don't need the former colonial powers to come in, and to solve the problems, increasingly, you're seeing regional solutions, to regional problems, and I think that's quite encouraging. Oh, definitely, and that, that's sort of where I was going with that, because I, I was just thinking about how, basically, the state of the, was just thinking about how basically the state of the continent is because because of what we as Americans initially identify when we think of the words like poverty and things like that colonialism did that it's just it and a lot of these countries have have had their independence they haven't really had a full cycle and when I think of a cycle I'm thinking they definitely haven't had 100 years a lot of them haven't had the 100 years of being able to cycle through most of them are pretty young in terms of their independence when you're thinking in the 50s some gaining independence in the 50s and 60s and even some as late as in the 70s and then you have a lot of this either civil unrest or things like that that have kind of either thrown them backwards and things like that but the the the the the the the the the the the the root, I think the root issue were the effects of colonialism that put these countries in this place. So, and just thinking about how, when you described at the very beginning of how before colonialism, people could just go any and everywhere they wanted to go or, you know, before, and then colonialism put boundaries in place and I think started restrictions and things like that. When you talk to your students, what's some of the main, kind of, if you were to give students advice about if they were looking to visit certain countries and kind of look at the community from an immigrant's point of view, what kind of tips would you give them? What would you give them, say, if they were going to Nigeria and maybe going to certain communities? Tips for approaching immigrant communities? Approaching them and just not so much to interview them, but more of if they find themselves with work, because a lot of people, particularly the tech industry, a lot of people are becoming experts. They're becoming expats in the country. And that's why we have a lot of people who are interested in this topic, because they may not know, they may not know kind of the ins and outs of the different communities. And I think just being aware of an immigrant community and maybe how you as even an outsider of the immigrants, I mean, the immigrants are more at home than, say, an expat from the U.S. would be. Yeah, that's right. So although depending on the color of your skin, I think if you're an expat, you're probably if you're a white expat, you're probably afforded a lot more free, a lot more leeway than if you're an immigrant who's been there for decades. Wow. Even I wouldn't get any love. That's right. And interesting enough, my genetics. I mean, I have a genetic background. My genetic markers have me of my African blood that I am. It's mostly Nigerian. That's the crazy thing. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, so I don't I haven't worked with the business community at all, but but I think in the end of the day, my suggestion would be the same than than advice that I would give to a researcher, which is that these are communities that are well organized. And as I said, they have to be well organized because that's how they perform. Right. Right. Right. Right. They protect themselves. And so the way that I got into these communities is I went to the embassy. I went to the Nigerian embassy in Accra, in Cotonou, Benin, in Niamey, Niger. And I introduced myself. I introduced my project and I asked to be put in touch with the different community leaders. And oftentimes what they have is they have different community groups by ethnicity. So they'll have so so, you know, if you want to simple if you want to paint a simple picture of a community, you can paint a picture of a community. And so that's what I did. And so I think it's really important to have a simplistic picture of ethnicity in Nigeria. You could say that while there's the Igbo's, there's the Yoruba's and the Hausa's kind of the three main ethnic groups that we hear about in Nigeria, although Nigeria is much more diverse than that. And so what you have, you have a Yoruba community leader, you have a Hausa community leader, you have a Igbo community leader. And it's really through the leadership. I mean, I think any work you do in in these West African countries, you have to go through the leadership. You have to go through the authorities, even even the informal authorities, because a lot of these groups are just informal groups to to to get an in into the the community. Oh, wow. OK, that that's good advice, because, you know, in the business world, everybody keeps referring to the continent as the sleeping giant. And and that's the next business frontier. And and. People think about that and and obviously the resources that's in that continent, whether it's oil or it's agricultural resources. A lot of people do need to understand that and kind of understand that level of immigration. I definitely enjoyed our talk. And what I wanted to do is just offer you offer you an opportunity to share with something, share with us something that you'd like. For. You know, I think it's really important for us to know that maybe I haven't had a chance to ask you. Well, you know, I guess I'm very glad you asked me about a positive story because so I teach two classes on Africa here at UC San Diego. My first class is about conflict in Africa. And after teaching that for a couple of years, I decided that that this was this this was just a very negative picture of Africa that I was portraying to students. And that I didn't want to. I didn't want to. I didn't want to. Reinforce this notion of this this this this continent in despair. And so I created a new class of a couple of years ago called Africa Success Stories, where we look at various success stories, whether it be in information technology, agricultural reform, democratization. We pick various cases and these are group projects with the students where we. We talk about a success story. Why was it successful? How what are the takeaways from this success story? And it's been it's been one of my most rewarding experiences was to teach this class. And so I guess my my my takeaway message here is that is that I think we should focus on on success stories a little bit more. Yes. We all know that there's conflict. We all know that there's famine. And this is important. But there's also it's also a continent with incredible dynamism. It's it's got very resilient, resilient people who have who are very creative and very entrepreneurial and who will who will surprise you if you if you let them. And I'm glad you mentioned that. And that's that was one of the things that I was hoping that that we could talk about was some successful success stories. So thank you. And this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this sure if they are students at UC San Diego, they will definitely check you out. And there are, I'm learning that we've got some high schoolers. So if some of these high schoolers, if they're waiting for their acceptance letters to UC San Diego, I got a funny feeling that they'll want to take your class. Now, is your class available to undergrads? Oh, it's definitely an undergraduate class. I make it as open as possible to as many undergrads as possible. But one thing I will say is I started that class with showing the Newsweek cover. I don't know if it's Newsweek or The Economist. I can't remember. From 10 years ago, that was basically like Africa, the dark continent. And then the same newspaper cover 10 years later, that was something that has a rainbow on it and Africa. Is it Africa's time? And, and my, my takeaway here is we, we paint these very broad narratives about Africa as either continent of despair or a continent that's rising. And hopefully, you know, this is a, a, a, a huge area. This is a huge region, lots of countries, lots of diversity. And we can, we need to learn to be a little bit more nuanced in our understanding of the region. Well, definitely. And you have, you have helped. You have shared immensely with a lot of things that you've shared with us today. And I want to thank you, Professor Adida, for taking time out to join me today for today's discussion. And definitely, we'll, we'll have to, we'll, we'll keep a microphone open for you as things, as things change. And certainly, as things that come up, definitely let, let us know. And listeners, please do let us know. But thank you so much for your time. It was my pleasure. Thank you. You have a wonderful day. And everyone, that was Professor Adida. She's assistant professor of political science at the University of California in San Diego. And she shared wonderful information with us about the continent. And this series that we've started here on Africa is a series that we've been working on for a long time. And it's a series that we've been working on for a long time. And it's a series that we've been working on for a long time. And it's a series that we've been working on for a long time. And it's a series that we've been working on for a long time. And it's a series that we've been working on for a long time. And this series this series that we've been working on for a long time. And this series that we've been working on for a long time. And this series that we've been working on for a long time. And this series to focus on not only the opportunity within the continent, but also give us a real deal view. And that's something that I, you know, when we launched this project and we focused on certain subjects and a lot of the feedback that a lot of you have given me, that you appreciate the real journalism and also the real conversations that we have with real experts. We want to get further into that and we will be bringing other experts in on this series on Africa. We're going to do, we're going to talk about politics. We're going to talk about conflict, conflict, whether it's regionalized or in also look at the different countries at where conflict exists and also look at some of the modernizations. So, I'm going to start with you, Dr.! Thank you. I'm going to start with you, Dr. I'm going to start with you, Dr. I'm going to go to this slide. And this slide speaks to this. And this slide speaks to this. And this slide speaks to this. And this slide speaks to this. So we're going to bring that to you as well. And I also want to just thank a couple of listeners for a lot of your good, just a lot of your encouragement. Julianne in Savannah, Georgia. Thank you so much for the kind words and that you enjoy listening to the show and you like catching up. And definitely everyone keep hitting me up on Facebook, on Twitter and Instagram. And I also want to thank my sound engineer extraordinaire. He did wonderful things tonight for us. Jeremy Hansen, you always hold it down. You always keep everything together. You keep the sound to go. And I just thank everyone and thank you for listening. And with that, we'll catch you same place, same time next week. Thanks so much. Bye.