What stands between Africa's current prostrate condition and a future of prosperity and abundance for its long-suffering populations? One word: knowledge. If Africa is to become a continent that offers the best life for humans, it must become a knowledge society immediately. This is what I have called "Africa's knowledge imperative."
对于长期受苦的非洲人民来说, 是什么阻碍了这块大陆 由目前的衰败状况 通向繁荣富裕的未来? 一个字: 知识。 如果非洲想要成为一个 能够为人民提供优质生活的大洲, 那它必须变成一个知识型社会, 越快越好。 这就是我所说的 “非洲的知识普及势在必行”。
Our universities must reduce emphasis on producing manpower for running our civil society, our economy and our political institutions. They should be dedicated mainly to knowledge production. What sense is there in producing civil engineers who are not supported by soil scientists and geologists, who make it their business to create knowledge about our soil and our rocks? What use is there in producing lawyers without juries who produce knowledge of the underlying philosophical foundations of the legal system? We must seek knowledge. We must approach the matter of knowledge with a maniacal commitment, without let or hindrance.
我们的大学必须不再过分强调 为保持我们的公民社会, 经济 和政治的运转而培养人才。 大学的重中之重应该是创造知识。 如果我们培养的土木工程师 没有土壤学家和地理学家 关于土壤和岩石的知识的支持, 那还有什么意义? 如果没有陪审团 创造司法系统背后的哲学基础知识, 那么培养律师又有什么用呢? 我们必须寻求知识。 我们必须走进知识的本质, 以一种近乎疯狂的献身精神, 毫无阻碍地追求知识。
Though we must seek knowledge to solve problems we know of, we must also seek knowledge when there is no problem in view -- especially when there is no problem in view. We must seek to know as much of what there is to know of all things, limited only by the insufficiency of our human nature, and not only when the need arises. Those who do not seek knowledge when it is not needed will not have it when they must have it.
虽然我们必须追求知识 用来解决已经出现的问题, 但是对于那些暂未出现的问题, 我们仍然必须追寻 其背后的知识。 我们必须尝试着去了解 世间存在的一切事物, 唯一的限制应该是人类天性的不足, 而且不应该仅仅是 因为有需求出现才这样做。 但对很多人来说, 都是书到用时方恨少。
The biggest crisis in Africa today is the crisis of knowledge: how to produce it, how to manage it, and how to deploy it effectively. For instance, Africa does not have a water crisis. It has a knowledge crisis regarding its water, where and what types it is, how it can be tapped and made available where and when needed to all and sundry. How does a continent that is home to some of the largest bodies of water in the world -- the Nile, the Niger, the Congo, the Zambezi and the Orange Rivers -- be said to have a water crisis, including in countries where those rivers are? And that is only surface water.
如今,非洲的最大危机就是知识危机: 如何创造知识, 如何管理知识, 以及如何有效地运用知识。 比如说,非洲不存在水资源危机。 真正的危机是水的相关知识的危机, 水源自哪里,是哪种类型的水, 如何把这些水引入水龙头, 使得所有人随时随地都有水可用。 非洲是全世界拥有最多水域的大洲, 其境内的河流包括: 尼罗河, 尼日尔河, 刚果河, 赞比西河, 以及奥伦治河等。 这样的一个大洲, 包括这些河流所在的国家, 怎么会出现水危机呢? 而且这些还仅仅是地表水。
While we wrongly dissipate our energies fighting the wrong crises, all those who invest in knowledge about us are busy figuring out how to pipe water from Libya's aquifers to quench Europe's thirst. Such is our knowledge of our water resources that many of our countries have given up on making potable water a routine presence in the lives of Africans, rich or poor, high and low, rural and urban. We eagerly accept what the merchants of misery and the global African Studies safari professoriat and their aid-addled, autonomy-fearing African minions in government, universities and civil society tell us regarding how nature has been to stinting towards Africa when it comes to the distribution of water resources in the world. We are content to run our cities and rural dwellings alike on boreholes. How does one run metropolises on boreholes and wells?
当我们在为一个错误的危机 而浪费精力的时候, 所有那些研究与我们相关的知识的人 都在忙着思考 如何从利比亚的地下蓄水层 引水到欧洲解决干旱问题。 这就是我们的水资源的相关知识。 我们中的很多国家已经放弃研究 如何让饮用水成为非洲人民 日常生活的基本资源。 不论富有或贫穷, 不论地位高低, 不论身处农村或城市。 我们急切地相信了那些黑心贩子, 全球非洲研究野外考察教授们, 以及他们的头脑昏乱的 害怕自治的非洲“下属”, 他们来自政府、大学以及公民社会。 这些人告诉我们, 自然对于非洲是多么的吝啬, 尤其是水资源在世界上的分布。 我们心满意足地钻井取水, 并且在各种水井上 治理我们的城市和乡村。 然而,怎么可能在水井 和钻孔上建立都市呢?
Does Africa have a food crisis? Again, the answer is no. It is yet another knowledge crisis regarding Africa's agricultural resources, what and where they are, and how they can be best managed to make Africans live more lives that are worth living. Otherwise, how does one explain the fact that geography puts the source of the River Nile in Ethiopia, and its people cannot have water for their lives? And the same geography puts California in the desert, but it is a breadbasket.
非洲存在粮食危机吗? 再一次,答案是否定的。 实际上这是另一场关于 非洲农业资源的知识危机, 农业资源究竟是什么,在哪里, 如何管理它来让非洲人民 过上更美好的生活。 否则该如何解释这一地理事实: 尼罗河的发源地在埃塞俄比亚, 然而埃塞俄比亚人却没有水喝? 同样的地理事实是:加利福尼亚州 大部分地区坐落于沙漠之中, 但它却是重要的产粮区。
The difference, obviously, is not geography. It is knowledge. Colorado's aquifers grow California's pistachios. Why can't Libya's aquifers grow sorghum in northern Nigeria? Why does Nigeria not aspire to feed the world, not just itself? If Africa's land is so poor, as we are often told, why are outsiders, from the United Arab Emirates all the way to South Korea, buying up vast acreages of our land, to grow food, no less, to feed their people in lands that are truly more geographically stinting? The new landowners are not planning to import new topsoil to make their African acquisitions more arable. Again, a singular instance of knowledge deficiency.
很明显,区别不在于地理, 而在于知识。 科罗拉多河的蓄水层 促进了加利福尼亚开心果的生长。 为什么利比亚的蓄水层就不能 在尼日利亚北部促进高粱的生长呢? 为什么尼日利亚没有立志于 喂养全世界人口, 不仅仅是自己国家的人口呢? 如果非洲的土地真的像 其他人所说的那样贫瘠, 为什么局外人, 近至阿联酋人,远至韩国人, 竟然大规模地购买我们的土地, 在这片所谓的更贫瘠 的土地上种粮食 来养活他们自己的人口? 这些新地主没有打算 进口新的表层土, 让买来的非洲土地更适合耕种。 再一次重申,这就是 一个知识贫瘠的例子。
In the 19th century, our predecessors, just years removed from the ravages of slavery and the slave trade, were exploring the Niger and Congo Rivers with a view to turning Africa's resources to the advantage of its people and to the rest of humanity, and their 20th-century successors were dreaming of harnessing the powers of the River Congo to light up the whole continent. Now only buccaneer capitalists from Europe are scheming of doing the same, but for exports to Europe and South Africa. And they are even suggesting that Congolese may not benefit from this scheme, because, according to them, Congolese communities are too small to make providing them with electricity a viable concern.
在19世纪, 我们的先辈, 在刚刚脱离奴隶制和 奴隶买卖之后的几年, 开始探索尼日尔河和刚果河, 希望通过非洲的资源 来造福非洲人民 以及全人类。 后来,20世纪的继承者梦想着 利用刚果河的电力 来点亮整个大洲。 然而现在只有来自 欧洲的资本主义掠夺者 还在规划着这一愿景, 但是是为了出口到欧洲和南非。 他们甚至提出 刚果人可能不会从这一规划中获利, 因为,据他们所说, 刚果的社区太小了, 以至于完全不用担心 电力不能自给自足。
The solution? Africa must become a knowledge society, a defining characteristic of the modern age. We neither are, nor are we on the path to becoming, a knowledge society.
那么解决方案是什么? 非洲必须成为一个知识型社会, 它是现代的界定性特征。 我们现在既不是知识型社会, 也没有向着这一方向迈进。
Things have not always been this way when it comes to knowledge production and Africa. In antiquity, the world went to Africa for intellectual enrichment. There were celebrated centers of learning, attracting questers from all parts of the then-known world, seeking knowledge about that world. What happened then has implications for our present. For example, how Roman Africa managed the relationship between settlers and natives between the second and fourth centuries of our era might have something to teach us when it comes to confronting not-too-dissimilar problems at the present time. But how many classics departments do we have in our universities? Because we do not invest in knowledge, people come to Africa now not as a place of intellectual enrichment, but as a place where they sate their thirst for exotica.
非洲的知识产出状况 并不一直都这样。 在古代,世界各国 来到非洲寻求丰富的智慧。 非洲有许多著名的学习中心, 吸引了来自当时 已知世界各地的探求者, 来到这里寻求关于世界的知识。 曾经的历史对我们的现在 也产生着影响。 比如说, 公元二世纪到四世纪之间的罗马非洲 处理移民和当地人之间关系的方式 会启发我们解决 目前的类似问题。 但是现在,在我们的大学里有多少个 研究古希腊罗马文化的部门呢? 因为我们不投资知识, 人们现在来到非洲 不是为了追寻智慧的滋养, 而是为了满足一种 对异族事物的猎奇心理。
Yet for the last half-millennium, Africa has been hemorrhaging and exporting knowledge to the rest of the world. Regardless of the popular description of it as a trade in bodies, the European trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery was one of the most radical and longest programs of African brains export in history. American slave owners may have pretended that Africans were mere brutes, beasts of burden, almost as inert and dumb as other farm implements they classified them with in their ledgers. And that's what they did.
但在过去的五百年中, 非洲一直在向世界上的其他国家 产出和贡献知识。 尽管其流行的说法是“人口贩卖”, 欧洲人横渡大西洋 的奴隶买卖和奴隶制度 是历史上最重大 且持续时间最长的 非洲人才出口项目之一。 美国的奴隶主可能声称 非洲人就是野蛮人, 驮货物的野兽, 几乎就像分类账薄里 的其它农具一样 迟钝沉默。 他们就是这么做的。
The enslaved Africans, on the other hand, knew their were embodiments of knowledge. They were smiths, they were poets, they were political counselors, they were princes and princesses, they were mythologists, they were herbologists, they were chefs. The list is endless. They, to take a single example, brought the knowledge of rice cultivation to the American South. They created some of the most original civilizational elements for which the United States is now celebrated. They deployed their knowledge, for the most part, without compensation.
他们奴役了非洲人, 同时明白非洲人是知识的化身。 他们是金属匠,诗人, 政治参事,王子和公主, 神话学者,草药学家, 厨师等等, 角色数不胜数。 举一个简单的例子, 他们将水稻种植的知识 带到了美国南方。 他们创造了让美国至今仍在赞美的 最原始的文明元素。 美国人应用了他们的知识, 却没有付出任何报酬。
For the last half-millennium, beginning with the slave trade, Africa has been exporting brains while simultaneously breaking the chains of knowledge transmission on the continent itself, with dire consequences for the systems of knowledge production in Africa. Successive generations are cut off from the intellectual production of their predecessors. We keep producing for external markets while beggaring our own internal needs. At present, much of the best knowledge about Africa is neither produced nor housed there, even when it is produced by Africans. Because we are dominated by immediate needs and relevant solutions when it comes to what we should know, we are happy to hand over to others the responsibility to produce knowledge, including knowledge about, of and for us, and to do so far away from us. We are ever eager to consume knowledge and have but a mere portion of it without any anxiety about ownership and location. African universities are now all too content to have e-connections with libraries elsewhere, having given up ambitions on building libraries to which the world would come for intellectual edification. Control over who decides what should be stocked on our shelves and how access to collections should be determined are made to rest on our trust in our partners' good faith that they will not abandon us down the road.
在过去的五百年里, 从奴隶买卖开始, 非洲就在出口人才, 同时打破了这片大洲上 知识传承的锁链, 这就是非洲知识生产系统的可怕后果。 接连几代人都从前辈们 知识生产的传承中 遭到了隔离。 我们一直在为外部的市场而生产, 内部需求却无法得到满足。 现在, 大多数关于非洲的最佳知识 既不是生产于非洲,也不存在于非洲, 尽管最初是非洲人生产的。 一提到我们所应该知道的知识, 我们就会被眼前的迫切需求 和相关解决办法所支配, 我们乐于把创造知识的责任 转交给其他人, 其中包括关于我们 和对我们有利的知识, 让他们在遥不可及的地方创造知识。 我们急切地想要运用知识, 但是完全归我们所有, 并且处于我们的地盘的知识 却只有一点点。 现在非洲的大学都太满足于 与其他地方的图书馆建立网上连接, 放弃建立属于自己的图书馆, 让全世界的人到这里追寻智慧的启迪。 我们的书架上应该摆放哪些书籍, 如何确定书籍的使用权, 在这些问题上, 我们选择相信其他伙伴的善意, 相信他们不会在半路抛弃我们。
This must change. Africa must become a place of knowledge again. Knowledge production actually expands the economy. Take archaeological digs, for instance, and their impact on tourism. Our desires to unearth our antiquity, especially those remote times of which we have no written records, requires investment in archaeology and related disciplines, e.g., paleoanthropology. Yet, although it is our past we seek to know, by sheer serendipity, archaeology may shed light on the global human experience and yield economic payoffs that were no part of the original reasons for digging.
这点必须要改变。 非洲必须再次成为知识的宝地。 实际上,生产知识能够扩大经济规模。 比如考古挖掘, 以及它对旅游业的影响。 文物考古挖掘, 尤其是来自无书面记载 的远古时代的文物, 都需要在考古学 和其他相关学科投入资金, 比如古人类学。 然而,尽管我们探寻的是过去, 某种机缘巧合之下, 考古学可能会为全人类带来启发, 并且由此产生经济效益, 但那并不是考古挖掘的最初原因。
We must find a way to make knowledge and its production sexy and rewarding; rewarding, not in the crass sense of moneymaking but in terms of making it worthwhile to indulge in the pursuit of knowledge, support the existence of knowledge-producing groups and intellectuals, ensuring that the continent becomes the immediate locus of knowledge production, distribution and consumption, and that instead of having its depositories beyond Africa's boundaries, people once more come from the rest of the world, even if in virtual space, to learn from us. All this we do as custodians on behalf of common humanity.
我们必须想办法让知识 及知识生产富有吸引力且回报丰厚; 这种回报不仅仅是指赚钱, 更是让追求知识、 供养生产知识 的人才和群体变得有价值, 从而确保这个大洲 成为生产知识、传授知识以及 应用知识的中心。 我们要摒弃超越非洲边界 的知识储藏地, 即便是通过虚拟空间, 也要让世界各地的人们 能够再一次从我们这里获取知识。 所有这一切都是为了 捍卫我们共同的人性。
Creating a knowledge society in Africa, for me, would be one way to celebrate and simultaneously enhance diversity by infinitely enriching it with material and additional artifacts -- artifacts that we furnish by our strivings in the knowledge field.
在非洲创建一个知识型社会, 对我来说,是一种通过无限丰富 物质和额外的手工制品 来庆祝并同时增强多样性的方式—— 那些手工制品来之不易, 靠的是我们在知识领域 不懈的努力。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)