The Africa Centre

The New York Times has a story about the Africa Centre in New York run by Uzodinma Iweala (NOI’s son) and its struggle to find a purpose for its existence. The centre is located in a very nice building on 5th Avenue with luxury condos that have sold for as high as $15.5m.

From the NYT article:

In its current form, the Center has received $4 million in city funds. But through the years, more than $32 million in public money and tax credits have been steered toward the project, most of it when the Center had a vastly different goal and even a different name: the Museum for African Art.

Not much seems to have been achieved and — not to sound mean or anything — the main thing going on there (so far) seems to be an admittedly nice sounding restaurant:

As a new CEO, Iweala’s first mission was to get people into the building. He started by opening Teranga, luring patrons to view art on the walls of the restaurant that serves West African food with a menu designed by Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam.

“One of the best ways of getting people together is showing who you are. And food is culture, food is policy, food is economics,” Iweala said.

So it has money, a good location, good food and counts Lupita Nyong’o, Halima Dangote and Chelsea Clinton as it board members but is still only occupying about 20 percent of the space allocated to it in the building.

Maybe it will eventually come good — Uzodinma Iweala is clearly a smart guy — but I remain skeptical. One of the problems with ideas like this is that it is trying to recreate something for which there is no excess demand i.e. the available demand is already being met, but elsewhere. Organising around ideas and topics has never been easier for Nigerians and Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora that there is not much a physical centre like this can add to it other than getting some big names to do a talkshop now and again.

To use but one example: a group of Nigerians in the UK recently decided to put a group together for black parents navigating the educational system in the country. In only a couple of days, the group had picked up well over 300 members leaving the organisers to scramble to organise it outside of Whatsapp where it started (it has now exceeded 1,000 members)

Viewed in that light, there is very little an Africa Centre in New York is adding to a discussion about Africans in the diaspora other than for socialising.

But I will be sure to try out the food whenever I’m next in New York and let you know how it goes.