Journalist, writer and curator of the Wall of Great Africans
What you need to know:
We are so obsessed with Trump, Boris, Brexit — and China during the commercial break — we barely have time to brush our teeth or do anything else.
The result is that progressives are largely absent from other areas of ideological contestation. It’s like we are fighting in the locker room as the game is going on in the field.
I just spent several days in Trumpland, and the extent to which both the liberal and conservative media are obsessed with the controversial American president is worse than when I was in the US a few months back.
There is nothing I could watch that was not serving up Trump. Occasionally, one got a glimpse of what the US media portrayed as the rise to office of another Trumpian figure across the pond in the UK – hardline Brexiteer Boris Johnson bagging the prime ministership.
Trump, Johnson and other populist leaders in the world have sent progressives (I consider myself a disloyal member of the club) into hysteria, as we watch globalisation and the promise of one world united by enlightened sentiment, seemingly collapse.
And that has been their greatest success. They have been able to unhinge the progressive forces. I read in horror as a respected British author, writing in a thoughtful publication, lost it and was reduced to calling Johnson and Brexiteers poo.
GLOBALISATION 5G
We are so obsessed with Trump, Boris, Brexit — and China during the commercial break — we barely have time to brush our teeth or do anything else.
The result is that progressives are largely absent from other areas of ideological contestation. It’s like we are fighting in the locker room as the game is going on in the field.
Yet, if you move away from the locker room feuds, and look at the game going on outside, there is reason for celebration.
You see, globalisation isn’t in retreat. The old version has floundered, but it had to make room for what we might call “Globalisation 5G”.
The old globalisation mostly reshaped markets, and the biggest beneficiaries were the fellows trading in money, hi-tech goods, and big knowledge.
And so we had the rise of the giant tech giants, mega banks, mega corporations — and mega inequality.
Globalisation 5G is softer, built, among others, around cultural goods. This year, though corrupt FIFA still badly scheduled the women’s football World Cup in France, and the teams still got far worse pay than the men, something changed.
NEW WORLD
In some markets, the audience for the women’s game was up between 600-1,000 per cent! It was very interesting football.
At this rate, in the next 20 years, it will close up on the men’s game.
Coming at a time when the #MeToo rights movement has touched many corners of the world, Globalisation 5G is clearly distinguished by the movement of women’s endeavours to the centre.
In the week, Marvel Studios, the chaps behind the “Black Panther” phenomenon released a schedule of upcoming movies, with a dizzyingly diverse cast — more women and black actors in superhero leads roles, first lead roles of Pakistani, Latin and Middle Eastern origin, as well as the first deaf hero.
Marvel has probably not had the proverbial conversion on the road to the Damascus. It has likely been woken up by the smell of big money, and the lesson from Wakanda. It understands that Old Globalisation was a triumph of the leadership of white men. This new world we are in is white, black, brown, yellow, queer, female, almost in equal measure.
In Globalisation 5G, the new agent 007 in the upcoming James Bond is a woman and black. It’s understandable why many don’t recognise it.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs. Twitter@cobbo3
