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."
對於非洲長期受苦受難的人民而言, 從落後的現狀到繁榮富足的未來, 阻礙是什麼? 一個詞: 知識。 如果非洲想要成為 為人類提供最佳生活的大陸, 就必須要轉變成一個知識型社會, 並且迫在眉睫。 我將此稱為「非洲的知識重塑」。
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.
我們大學應該少花些精力在 培養能夠管理社會、 經濟和政治制度的人才, 而應該將主要精力放在知識創造上。 如果培養出來的土木工程師 得不到土壤學家和地質學家的支持, 無法以創造出關於土壤 和岩石的知識為己任, 那又有什麼意義? 如果我們只是培養出來律師, 卻沒有陪審團 來解釋司法體系背後的 哲學基礎及相關知識, 那有什麼用? 我們必須要探求知識。 我們必須在處理知識問題時, 帶著近乎瘋狂的執著, 沒有任何妥協或者遲疑。
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.
我們必須要探尋 解決已知問題的知識, 我們更要去探尋知識, 在沒有發現問題, 尤其是在沒有發現問題時。 我們必須要探尋 所能知道的萬物之知識, 除非因為人類天生的不足而受限, 而不是只在出現需求時 才想到要探尋知識。 在沒有需求時就不探尋知識的人, 書到用時方恨少。
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.
非洲現今最大的危機就是知識危機: 如何創造知識、 如何管理知識, 以及如何高效地利用知識。 譬如,非洲並沒有用水危機, 卻存在水知識危機。 哪裡有水、什麼類型、 如何管理它,以便隨時隨地 供給一切有需要的人。 作為世界上水資源 最為豐富的大陸之一, 非洲如何因地制宜,發揮優勢。 擁有如尼羅河、 尼日河、 剛果河、 尚比西河、 奧蘭治河等, 為什麼還被認為存在水資源危機? 包括這些河流流經的國家都是如此? 而且那些只是表面水而已。
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?
當我們把精力誤用在 對抗錯誤的危機時, 所有那些給我們做知識投資的人, 卻忙著解決 如何將利比亞地下蓄水層的水 用導管輸送走, 以解決歐洲的口渴問題。 因為我們對水資源的知識是這樣, 我們有許多國家已經放棄 不再嘗試將自來水 變成非洲日常生活的必備品, 無論是富有還是貧窮, 上層還是下層, 郊區還是都市。 我們急切地接受著這樣的信息, 那些無良的商人、 全球非洲研究陸地遊獵專家, 以及他們的支持者, 分佈在政府部門、大學和社會上的 害怕自治,毫無主見的奴隸, 告訴我們大自然對於非洲這片土地, 在水資源分配上是如何的吝嗇。 我們滿足於在城市 和鄉村的住所附近打井鑽孔, 僅憑打井和鑽孔 如何規劃治理大都市?
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.
非洲有糧食危機嗎? 答案同樣是否定的。 這又是另一個知識誤區, 關於非洲的農業資源、 農業資源是什麼?在何處? 如何管理好這些農業資源? 讓非洲人民過上他們應該的過的、 更有質量的生活。 不然,要如何解釋 大自然將尼羅河放在衣索比亞, 而那裡的人民生活卻沒水可用? 同樣,大自然賦予加州沙漠地貌, 而那裡卻糧倉殷實。
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.
很顯然,差別並不是在地理。 而是知識。 科羅拉多地下蓄水層 能讓加州盛產開心果。 為什麼不能讓利比亞的地下蓄水層 滋養奈及利亞的高粱? 為何奈及利亞不立志於 向全世界,而非僅為自己供給糧食﹖ 如果非洲的土地真像 我們聽說的那樣貧瘠, 為什麼那些 從阿拉伯聯合酋長國 直到韓國的外鄉人, 要大量購買我們的土地 來種植糧食 供給他們的人民, 而且是在地理環境 更加受限的地區種植糧食﹖ 新的地主並沒有打算 要進口新的地表土 使他們在非洲取得的土地 更適於耕種。 這又是知識匱乏的又一明顯例證。
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.
在十九世紀, 我們的前輩, 僅僅在從奴隸制度和奴隸貿易 解放出來數年, 就在探索尼日河和剛果河資源, 他們的願望是要把 非洲的資源轉成人民的, 甚至是整個人類的利益, 在二十世紀,他們的後代夢想著要 利用剛果河發電, 來照亮整個大陸。 而現在,只有來自歐洲的資本家 在策劃著做同樣的事情, 但卻是為了將電出口到歐洲及南非。 他們甚至暗示 不許剛果人從這計畫受益, 因為據他們所言,剛果地方太小, 以至於供電給這些地區 並不是切實可行的重要事項。
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.
怎樣解決呢? 非洲必須要變成一個知識型社會, 這就是現在這個時代的主要特色。 對於成為知識型社會這條路, 革命尚未成功, 我們甚至都沒有在路上,
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.
事情並非一直如此, 尤其是涉及到非洲和知識創造時。 古時候全世界都會去非洲尋求智慧。 那裡曾有著名的學習中心, 吸引來自當時世界各地 充滿疑惑的追尋者, 探索關於那個世界的知識。 那時發生的事, 對我們的現狀有很多啟示。 譬如, 在二世紀到四世紀期間, 統治非洲的羅馬人如何管理 當地人和外來定居者的關係, 這對於我們現今面臨類似問題時, 有很強的參考性。 但在我們的大學中有多少 古希臘羅馬文學系所? 因為我們不投資在知識上, 現在人們來到非洲時, 不是把它當作吸收智慧的地方, 而是當作滿足新奇感的地方。
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.
但是在上半個世紀, 非洲一直在流血並輸出知識 到世界其他地方。 儘管被廣為描述為人口販賣血淚史, 歐洲跨大西洋奴隸貿易及奴隸制度 仍然是歷史上最激進也最長久的 非洲智力出口活動。 美國的奴隸主可能認為 非洲奴隸僅僅是牲口, 是造成負擔的野獸, 在他們的帳簿中 幾乎將奴隸和其他無生命 且笨重的農具歸為一類, 那就是他們的做法。
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.
而另一方面,作為奴隸的非洲人, 知道他們是知識的化身。 他們是鐵匠、詩人, 他們是政治顧問、王子和公主, 他們是神話學者、草藥學家, 他們是廚子。 這清單是無限長的。 舉個簡單的例子, 他們把耕作稻米的知識 帶到美國南部。 他們創造了一些最原創的文明元素, 都是美國現在競相傳頌的。 他們通常無償地運用他們的知識。
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.
上半個世紀,從奴隸貿易開始, 非洲就一直出口智慧, 同時打破了非洲大陸本身的 知識傳送鏈條, 造成非洲的知識生產制度 相當悲劇性的後果。 後代與其先輩 具有的智慧生產連結被切斷。 我們一直為外部市場生產, 卻不能滿足我們自己的需求。 目前大部分關於非洲的頂尖知識 並不由非洲創造或收容, 即使它的生產者可能是非洲人。 對於我們所需要掌握的知識, 由於我們受到眼前需求 以及相關解決方案的支配, 所以我們很樂意把 創造知識的責任交給其他人, 包括關於我們的、我們擁有的 以及將要使用的知識, 並且在這條路上越走越遠。 我們迫切渴望消耗知識, 哪怕是只有一小部分 不用擔心受所有權或使用地的限制。 非洲大學現在都太心滿意足了, 滿足於可以連接到 世界各地的圖書館, 已經不再有野心建立自己的、 能讓世界各地人前來 尋求啟迪的圖書館。 誰來決定書架上要放什麼, 以怎樣的方式連接到其他資源﹖ 只有取得了這些事情的控制權, 才能建立起我們 和合作伙伴間的真誠與信任, 他們才不會在半路就拋棄我們。
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.
這點必須要改變。 非洲必須要再次成為知識之地。 知識生產實際上會拓展經濟。 用考古發掘及其對遊客的影響為例, 我們如果想挖掘出古代遺物, 尤其是那些遠古時代、 沒有書面記錄的文物, 就需要投資在考古學及相關學科上, 譬如古生人類學。 雖然我們是在追尋過去, 了解過去, 透過純粹的機緣, 考古學也許可以 用來解釋全球人類經驗, 產生出經濟效益, 這些都不是最初考古發掘的理由。
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.
我們得要找到一種方式, 來讓知識及知識生產 變得迷人並且有回報; 這裡說的回報,並非單指賺錢, 而是讓沉迷於知識探索這件事 本身變得有價值, 支持那些創造知識的團體或傑出者, 以確保非洲大陸 能變成知識生產、傳播 以及利用的大本營和根據地, 而不是讓知識儲藏在 非洲大陸邊界之外, 而要讓世界各地的人再一次來到非洲 來向我們學習,即使是用虛擬空間。 我們是代表整個人類, 以管理者的身份在做這一切。
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.
在非洲創造一個知識型社會, 對我而言, 是提倡並且強化多樣性的一種方式, 具體的做法是永無止境地 用素材及工藝品充實它, 我們自己裝飾這些工藝品, 並且盡我們所有的努力, 致力於知識世界。
Thank you very much.
感謝各位的聆聽。
(Applause)
(掌聲)