Expectations and Excellence: Africa's Western Dilemma.

What is 'good' to Africans and to the different tribes and cultures within Africa, is not always what is 'good' to the Western world. Africa is not a homogenous experience and we do not have a homogenous culture so why would we ever assume that there could be a monolithic conclusion of what excellence is? - Motunrayo Onafowokan

Hello, and welcome to the first article in this newsletter.

Today we will be exploring the First Umbrella, if you are new here these are our 4 umbrellas of exploration.

Today, our flow of thought is centered around the theme of excellence and expectations.

But, before we get into it, as a lover of Jazz, Blues and, all things Soulful, I invite you to read this article with a special Afro-Jazz playlist I will be curating each time I write. For each new article, a new song will be added that hopefully opens and eases your mind as you read the following words.

So here is the song for you.

Now, these are my words for the world.

Introduction

For the last couple of decades, there has been a duopoly in the Nigerian Aero Market. One too many Nigerians have found it frustrating as market prices continue to rise and many more Nigerians spend months if not years away from home, due to these ridiculous air ticket fares. This duopoly has been held by Virgin Atlantic and British Airways , two foreign companies leading the way with their direct flights from Lagos to London.

That, however, changed two weeks ago.

On the 30th of March Air Peace Limited commenced their inaugural flights from London Gatwick Airport to Lagos Murtala Mohammed Airport.

Safe to say many Nigerians will be coming home for #Detty December

(Detty December is a festive period at the end of every year filled with parties, music, and traffic where Nigerians and visiting Nigerians -IJGB’S or “I Just Got Backs” don’t hold back on their enjoyment and excitement )

Inspiration

There has of course been much commentary on Air Peace's success. We have even seen the foreign competitors and their counterparts, engage in price wars posing a threat to Air Peace’s entry and survival in the market.

Nonetheless, we are made of tough stuff and Nigerians support their own so, AirPeace is prevailing, at least for now.

One commentary that caught my eye however was that of Mr Olajide Iyaniwura . He was on their inaugural flight from London to Lagos and had much to say about the experience [ Click to read an overview of his commentary ].

Mr Iyaniwura gave us the download on everything from checking in to pre-boarding, his encounters at the counters, and so forth. What particularly stood out to me was his notion that the experience was designed by people in high places to make Air Peace appear inefficient. Now while I do not know whether or not this is true (although there is much to point to its validity), it made me wonder how our expectations determine our experiences and judgments of excellence.

You see the reason why Mr Iyaniwura's testimonial stood out to me so much is because it told a different story from many of the other passengers who shared their experiences. While a passenger, @philipenyinnay on Twitter was sharing his plate of Jollof rice and yearning to take the flight once more, Mr. Iyaniwura was highlighting the operational shortcomings and aero politics going on at the airport. I found that interesting. But how does it feed into our topic for today?

The answer is expectations.

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What is expectation?

Expectation is the?feeling?or?belief?that something will or should?happen.

Source: Cambridge Dictionary

We all have expectations, some of our expectations are guided, some are unguided and some others are guarded.

Guided expectations are made with established assumptions between the expectant and the one [person, place, or thing] in whom expectations are placed. Unguided expectations are made without validating the assumptions through which the expectations are birthed.

Guarded expectations are expectations made with or without established assumptions as they are based less on the agreed assumptions but on the internal state of mind of the one expecting, they are expectations made with self-preservation and care at the centre.

You see Mr Iyaniwura, like many of us who may have spent much time in the West, has come to expect efficiency because, excellence in the West has for decades been rooted in efficiency and profitability. For an African however, (I will at least speak for Nigerians), cultural understanding, food, music, and a sense of belonging and community tend to cut it for us. That is why no matter how late a Nigerian artist is to a concert, you will see Nigerians there waiting for them bright-eyed and ready to Fàájí [which means enjoy in my native language, Yorùbá]. Don't get me wrong now, we will still complain; because it is in our nature after all but, did we have a good time? Sure we did, will we do it again? Yes, we will because, for us, community far outweighs efficiency.

If your lack of efficiency means we meet 5 new people one of whom will probably be a cousin of a cousin or a friend of a friend then don't you worry, by the time we leave, we will have long forgotten the inefficiency but will remember the connections. And, to many of us, that's what matters. If somehow the inefficiency is so bad, not to worry we will still use that as a medium of connection through collective complaints, insults, and snide comments, whether in person or on our favorite Social Media platform, Twitter or should I say, X. All in all, for Africans, the sense of cultural and social belonging will always trump efficiency.

This however is not to say that efficiency does not matter to Africans, that is far from the case. Africa is increasingly influenced by Western Media and Culture and the modernization of Africa has meant that many capital cities like Lagos, Cape Town, Abidjan, and beyond have lost most of this strong cultural and social essence. We complain because we care.

That being said, Africa is still about 51% rural , and much of the urbanized civilization has been newly urbanized within the last few decades. So while this is not a call to abandon our strive for efficiency, it is a reflection of what metrics we use to define excellence in Africa. What are the guided, unguided, and guarded expectations we have of excellence in Africa?

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What exactly is excellence?

Excellence is the quality of being extremely good

Source: Cambridge Dictionary

Not a very helpful definition because to define excellence, you must define what good is.

A philosopher's nightmare.

I intentionally refrain from referring to any scholars or critics as I write because this is purely a reflection. However, if I were back in my philosophy seminars, the questions we would be asking are; who is the object of good? Who is it good for and who determines the experience of goodness? We have so many theories of good, which one do we adopt?

I believe in definitions and in a sense, this article is a call to definition. You see, if excellence means extremely good, what is excellence in Africa? Africa has been and remains in an intellectual tug-of-war between the White Man's Wisdom and the Wisdom of the Old, often found in our African tales and folktales. We see, again and again, a modernization of African Wisdom, as scientific and industrialized intelligence. The Culturally Imperialistic ways of our Colonial forefathers have birthed monolithic understandings of different concepts such as what is and isn't good. To the Western man, a mix of chemicals and artificially created things in a little pill or many is the key to health, side effects aside. To the traditional man, the right herbs, which may take long to grow and sometimes even longer to find, when mixed in the right ways, can bring about healing with little to no side effects.

So what is good? And thus what is excellence? If goodness is defined as efficiency and profitability, then Air Peace just about cuts it. But if goodness has more to it than money and time but considers people and places, then Air Peace more than achieved it because they considered not only the convenience of a direct flight from London to Lagos but they imagined a world where the consumer, the Lagosian in this case, enters Lagos once they step on the plane. An experience none of its counterparts ever considered.

There is a global awakening, activating the minds of individuals whether African or Non-African, causing us to carefully examine the monocultural and monolithic pathways that have been drawn out for us. Our expectations are being challenged and we are being questioned on what they are and who exactly defines them.

For me as an African, I am being awoken to what I deem as good, and thus where I conceptualize my understanding of excellence. As I build my life and navigate through my global experiences, I check myself when I judge my environments and the people in them. I ask myself, where are my expectations coming from? What is the metric for what is good and what isn't good, in this land that I step on? Am I being robbed of my experience of excellence because of my unguided expectations? And above all, how can I guard my expectations from the monolithic and monocultural definitions and assumptions around me?

I think about this for Africa a lot. I think about how Africans are being held to standards their DNA was not created to meet. How Africans miss out on the excellence their land was meant to produce because we are focused so much on reproducing another man's land within our own. I see businesses, founders and organizations yearn for excellence that is based on a Western understanding of what is good, which many times does not consider the African man and his experience.

So, what are my strategic recommendations for Africa in this long-winded reflection?

Strategic Recommendations

I've got three and here they are:

1. Africa (and Africans too) needs to know its target audience. Is it the elite, the masses, their former colonial masters, or better still the UN? We need to answer the question, Who is ’African Development’ for? Africa is either a slave to its people or a slave to its colonial masters but it cannot serve two masters. As Matthew 6:24 says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other…” NKJV. As an individual, business, and organization you must define this for yourself, your team, and your enterprise. I leave the government out because it goes without saying what they must do although time and time again, they disappoint. So, it is up to us private citizens to answer these questions and define the Africa we want to see and what excellence means to us.
2. Once you have decided where you stand, once you have segmented your target audience for whatever development cause you serve, I implore you, to adopt some C4D techniques (Communication for Development). You cannot serve people you do not understand so you need to start carrying out some social listening and invest in understanding your audience. Stop solving, start understanding!
3. Last but not least, it is time to find African and non-African allies to help champion your cause. The development of Africa is a big mandate, one no one African Nation can spearhead let alone one individual. So you have an idea? I encourage you to think about allies in the diaspora whom you can partner with because they often have access to resources and a desire to reconnect with home. That will take you far. Don't stay within your African Nation, branch out and build an African network not just a national network; this means that when you launch out you can go further for the cause of the continent. And yes of course, do not forget our non-African allies, some of whom only do it out of guilt, others of whom feel a responsibility not because of the past but because of their insight into the future. If you didn't know, know now; Africa is the future. So, who are you going to partner with?

Conclusion

Going back to the spark of this whole article, we know now that we all have different expectations, different definitions of 'good', and thus different metrics for measuring excellence. For some passengers, efficiency is what attributes excellence, for others, it was the sweet and succulent Nigerian food. But in the mode of reflection, tell me, what is it for you? If you were on a flight going from London to Lagos, what would be your metrics for measuring excellence?

I’ll start, you finish in the comments!

As someone who does not like flying, for me, it is getting home in one piece....

óDàBò, ó DI òSè TI ó NBò [Goodbye and See you next week in my native language, Yorùbá]

Motunrayo Onafowokan.