Reflections on slavery: past, present and future

This reflection[i] has three main purposes:

• to emphasise the long and diverse history of slavery across the world, and to highlight its differing historical expressions and complexities;
• to recognise that we cannot change the past nor know the future with certainty, and can only act in the immediacy of the present; and
• above all, in the light of the above, to encourage us all to do much more now to eliminate the scourge of modern slavery.

Context

It is easy to say or write that slavery is fundamentally wrong because of the loss of freedoms and violence usually[ii] associated with it.  It is far more difficult, though, actually to do something constructive about eliminating slavery at the only time over which we have any control, the present.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-blm-protesters-acquitted-over-pulling-down-slave-trader-statue-2022-01-05/

The Black Lives Matter and associated anti-slavery protests in the UK in 2020 raised many questions (see image above). I was particularly challenged, for example, by the emphasis of those protesting on the past rather than on contemporary slavery.  The majority of banners likewise seemed to highlight the wrongs of past slavery more than they did the wrongs of present slavery.  My reflections here seek to grapple with why this was, and why it remains so.[iii]  In the years since, there has been much more visible concern in Britain over reparations for past slavery, especially relating to the 18^th and 19^th centuries, than there has been real action to eliminate contemporary slavery: statues of people who had once been slave-owners have been torn down; streets have been renamed; universities, such as Manchester  and Cambridge that have benefitted from donations from people who gained from the  slave trade have undertaken enslavement inquiries; and institutions such as the National Trust have published reports on their links with historic slavery. 

In part this is because of the overlapping interests between the Black Lives Matter movement and those protesting against slavery.[iv]  However, slavery matters in its own right; it is not just a racial matter.  In this piece I therefore seek to disentangle the issues of slavery and racism.[v]  I want to focus primarily on slavery rather than race.  I fully recognise that the two are often intertwined, and there are good reasons why people feel strongly about this intersection, but here I focus on broader issues relating specifically to slavery, and how we respond to the past.  I begin with some personal reflections on the origins of my own interest in slavery, and then provide a short conceptual framework that includes a note on definitions of slavery, before highlighting what I see as some of the most difficult and problematic issues concerning slavery past, present and future.  My purpose is to encourage us to shift our focus from the past about which we can change nothing, to the present where we do have the option to do something.

My interests in slavery

I have long been interested in slavery, from my days as a boy reading the Bible about the unfairness of Joseph being sold into slavery (Genesis 37) and my difficulty in trying to reconcile my own emerging moral views about slavery with some of Paul’s comments on slaves being obedient to their masters (Ephesians 6, Colossians 3, 1 Timothy 6, and Titus 2).  However, I have taken a much more serious and academic interest in slavery since the mid-1970s.  Three factors have been particularly important in helping to shape my current understanding of these issues. 

• First, my doctoral thesis in historical geography written in the second half of the 1970s focused in large part on the changing economic and social structures of medieval Midland England.  I was fascinated to learn that slaves could sometimes have had better lifestyles than villeins within feudal society.  In this I was heavily influenced by the writings of Marc Bloch (both his seminal La Société Féodale first published in 1939, but also in essays that have recently been collated under the title Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages) and in the historical records with which I was working.
• Second, some 20 years ago I encountered modern slavery in England for the first time as I sought to support someone who was trying to rescue a person who had been forced into slavery on their arrival to work in our country.  This opened my eyes to the widespread existence of modern slavery in many parts of the UK, and it continues to haunt me as I continue to see such slavery within the country that I call home. 
• Third, my experiences working in Africa during the last 20 years have inevitably forced me to confront issues of colonial history and slavery, especially in Sierra Leone and Ghana.  Despite its fraught history both as a Crown Colony until 1961 and then as an independent state since, Freetown and Sierra Leone always cause me to think about the potential for freedom in the human mind and the abolition of slavery;[vi] it is also salutary to recall that it is the home of Fourah Bay College which was founded in 1827 as the first western style university built in Sub-Saharan Africa.[vii]  I like to think that there is a connection between freedom and knowledge.

Freetown, 2009

Likewise, I have many fond memories of working in Ghana.  A visit to Cape Coast Castle in 2008, though, remains etched in my mind because of one very specific conversation that I had there while visiting the Castle and Dungeon.  Initially the castle had been established as a small fort by the Swedish Africa Company in the middle of the 17^th century, and it later became one of the most important “slave castles” along the former Gold Coast.  Watching a group of European women who were very upset by what they saw, one of my close Ghanaian friends commented that he never quite understood why many Europeans became so emotionally distressed when visiting the castle.  I was initially perplexed, but he went on to say that, after all, it was the African people living in the surrounding areas who had sold their awkward cousins and uncles, or people captured in conflicts as slaves to the Europeans in return for guns and other items that they wanted. Slavery had long been a way of life in the region, and had most definitely not been introduced by the Europeans.  His matter of fact comments challenged much of what I had previously rather taken for granted about the Triangular trans-Atlantic slave trade.[viii]  This trade was undoubtedly coercive, violent and exploitative, but its transactional character and the collaboration of African communities who were willing to sell other Africans for a price to European slavers needs to be recognised in any discussion of this particular expression of slavery.[ix] 

Cape Coast Castle, 2008 (as rebuilt by the British in the 18^th century)

On concepts and definitions

I have long enjoyed reading Onora O’Neill’s inspirational philosophical writings (see especially the collection of essays published as Justice Across Boundaries, 2016), and have found that many of my own ideas coincide quite closely with hers, especially around obligations, rights and justice (although I have tended to focus on the notion of “responsibilities” rather than “obligations”).  In particular, she highlights the difficulties that arise in discussing the rights to compensation for actions in the distant past that are widely considered to be wrong today. Her work is well worth reading at length on this topic; I frequently return to it for clarity on these difficult issues.  What follows is in part sparked by reflections on slavery in the contexts of these wider philosophical and conceptual debates.  Three challenges seem particularly important.

• First, no individual has any effective power over what her or his distant ancestors did in the past.  If they have no power to change the past, what are their responsibilities? We might have had some influence on our own parents’ actions, and those who have known their grandparents might also have had a little influence on their lives.  However, we cannot have had any actual influence on the lives and actions of those we never knew.  If we have had no such influence, can we have any responsibility for their actions in the past?  If we have no responsibility for those actions, why should we be criticised and condemned by others for the actions of our ancestors (individually and collectively)?  These are real challenges in the context of slavery.  It is not easy to clarify the logical reasons why the descendants of slave owners (and institutions they benefitted) should have received the opprobrium that has been cast on them by many of those today condemning slavery.  This is regardless of how one might “judge” (itself a very problematic notion) those who were children of slave owners, but who argued vehemently for abolition in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, or even those who had owned slaves but then championed abolition.[x]  Even John Locke, widely seen as being one of the founders of liberal democracy, has recently been savaged by historians and others because of his role in administering the British colonies in North America in the 17^th century where slavery was widely practised.[xi]

• Second, there are profound difficulties in “judging” the past by the standards of the present.  As Hartley wrote in The Go-Between (1953), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”.  All societies evolve and change, but they all have mechanisms through which the few rich and/or privileged extract a surplus from the many poor and exploited (Karl Marx’s modes of production remain a powerful theoretical model of such change; for Marx and Engels, slave society was the earliest form of class society).  There are, though, many conundrums within the idea of “criticising” past societies, not least because our present societies have emerged from them, and would be different if they had not existed. There is nothing we can do about changing past societies.  Hopefully our present societies have evolved positively and are better than those of the past, although this is by no means always so!  The key thing is that we need to learn the lessons of history; we need to understand the past so that we do not make the same mistakes our ancestors made then and there (at least as “judged” by our own societies).  “Now” is the only time when we can actually do anything, and the choices we make in the present need to be made in the light of the past so as to help make a better future.  As Tolstoy (1903) wrote in his short essay Three Questions, “Remember then: there is only one time that is important – now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power”.  Such reflections also force us to consider how future generations will perceive our own actions.  How, for example, will they consider our ineffectual efforts to abolish modern slavery?  Might they see our enforced addiction to digital tech as but another, les immediately brutal, form of slavery, and today’s digital barons as equivalent to the slave masters of the past?

• Third, these considerations also make it important to try to define what exactly slavery is.  It is, though, very problematic to provide a clear and all-encompassing definition of slavery, not least because of the ways in which the notion and practices have varied and evolved over time (and may continue to do so in the future).  Two key elements are central to any definition: a lack of “freedom”, and being under the absolute control of another person.  Exactly what types of freedom and control are necessary to be considered as slavery are disputed and have changed over time.  One way of addressing this is to define certain practices as being indicative of slavery, as with chattel slavery (treating someone as the personal property of another), bonded labour (where someone pledges themselves to work for another to pay off a debt), or forced labour or marriage (where someone is forced in some way to work or marry against their will).  Another approach has been to adopt legal definitions agreed by conventions.  The 1926 UN Slavery Convention, thus defines slavery as ”the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching the right of ownership are exercised”.  In practice, it may be best to consider a spectrum of characteristics that comprise slavery, recognising that different people may choose to include some or all of these in their definitions.  “Servitude” is thus considered by some to have many of the characteristics of, but to be less severe than, “slavery”. The European Court of Human Rights (2022), for example, has recently argued that servitude “is a particularly serious form of denial of freedom”, although it should be considered as an aggravated form of forced labour, and therefore although related to slavery it is not to be confused with it. “It includes, in addition to the obligation to provide certain services to another, the obligation on the “serf” to live on the other’s property and the impossibility of changing his status”.[xii]  The relationship between “slavery” and “serfdom” has, though, also evolved over time.  In origin, the words “serf” and “slave” come from the same root, namely the Latin servus (meaning slave; and from which the word servitude is also derived).  However, serfs and slaves have generally been seen, at least from medieval times onwards, to be rather different categories.  For some, the word “serfs” is a generic term to describe the group of people originally known as coloni, or tenant farmers in the late Roman period onwards, and whose status had generally become increasingly degraded.  For others, it is even broader, and is often equated with the word “peasants” to refer to the mass of people at the bottom of the emerging class system in medieval and early-modern times, but above the status of slaves.[xiii]

These three conceptual framings underlie the ensuing sections on slavery in the past, in the present and in the future.

Roman collared slaves (Ashmolean Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roman_collared_slaves_-_Ashmolean_Museum.jpg)

Slavery: the past

Four important observations about past slavery are all too frequently ignored or downplayed in contemporary public discourse, but I suggest should be considered in any reasoned discussion of slavery:

• First, slavery was a normal and accepted aspect of society in many parts of the world for well over six millennia, whereas the abolitionist movement in Europe only really began in the mid-18^th century, less than three centuries ago.[xiv]  It must have been as unthinkable for the majority of people for most of history (and indeed pre-history) to have challenged slavery as it is now for someone to try to promote slavery.

• Second, slavery was practised at some time in the past in most parts of the world.  Slavery existed in most ancient civilizations as in the Babylonian and Persian Empires.  It was common throughout the Roman world; slaves from what is now the UK were paraded in Rome.  In the early Islamic states in West and North Africa it has been estimated that about one-third of the population were slaves; in East Africa, Zanzibar was the main port for slave trading to the Arabian peninsula.  Slavery was widely practised in the Pre-Columbian cultures of Middle and South America.  It formed a crucial element of the Ottoman Empire; in the 17^th century it is estimated that a fifth of the population of Constantinople was probably slaves. Slaves remained fundamentally important throughout the Ottoman Empire until the 19^th century, notably as the much feared Janissaries (elite infantry soldiers). Slavery was widespread for centuries in China, and was only abolished in 1909.  The Triangular trade between Europe, Western Africa and North America, which features so prominently in current popular discourse on slavery was thus only one example of the very widespread pattern of global slavery.  It is often forgotten that between the 15^th and 18^th centuries white Europeans from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and England had also been sold into slavery by North Africans. Frequently slaves were captured as a result of warfare, sometimes there were regular expeditions to capture slaves, and often people sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts.  This ubiquitous character of slavery raises interesting questions about the payment of reparations.  Should Italy pay England for taking slaves during the period of Roman occupation?  Should Turkey pay countries in the Balkans for the devşirme (blood tax) through which Christian boys were taken to become Janissaires? Should the rulers of states in the Arabian peninsula pay reparations to the countries of eastern Africa?  Should Israel pay reparations to the surrounding countries from whence their ancestors took Canaanite slaves?  The usual response to such questions is “No”, on the grounds that such reparations only apply to the recent past.  But when is the past recent?[xv] 

• Third, it must be recognised that everyone in societies where slave ownership was practised benefitted to some extent from slavery, and it is not possible just to attribute blame to slave owners or traders and their descendants.[xvi]  The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker all benefitted from the wealth gained by those who invested in estates that used slave labour.  All societies, past and present, have mechanisms and legitimation systems through which the rich can exploit the poor, and can thereby afford to live “better” lives and purchase luxuries.  Slavery is just one mechanism through which such surplus extraction and exploitation occurs. Indeed, life for the poor in 18^th and 19^th century Britain was unbelievably harsh by modern standards.  However, everyone (apart from the slaves) takes a share of the trickle-down financial benefit.  The elite pay architects, artists and jewellers to produce what many societies now cherish as their cultural heritage, but this enabled these craftsmen to afford to buy paints, or beer, or clothing, which in turn benefitted the brewers, merchants and clothiers.  Ultimately, almost everyone in the past, and not just slave owners or institutions that received gifts derived from slave ownership, benefitted in some way from slavery.  It therefore seems highly problematic to pick out certain slave owners or institutions (and their descendants) in certain societies for retribution.

• Fourth, it is likely that in most cases slavery did not generally collapse purely for moral grounds, but rather also for economic ones. The ultimate reason that slavery collapsed was often because it became too expensive to obtain and maintain slaves.  We like to think that it resulted exclusively from some kind of enlightened belief, or a rise of moral virtue in the 19^th century, and this may indeed have helped in some cases (as with the abolitionist movement in Britain), but there is little evidence to support the argument that a sudden rise in moral concern was usually the primary reason that slavery ended.   As conflicts and wars reduced in frequency, it became less easy to capture people and enslave them.  Moreover, the costs of feeding slaves could become prohibitive, especially at times of rising basic staple prices. Forcing slaves to cultivate land to feed themselves was also problematic since it took land and labour away from other forms of production, and yields were in any case often not high.  Most importantly, new more efficient forms of labour exploitation (such as the factory system in the 19^th century) and the mechanisation of agriculture, reduced the economic benefits of slave production.

Slavery: the present

As noted in the quotation from Tolstoy cited above, the present is a very special time, because it is the only time when we have any power.   How we act in the present, though, depends very much on our understanding of the past.  Four problematic issues seem worthy of reflection here about how we are acting in the present with respect to slavery.

• First, it must be recognised and acknowledged that slavery still exists.  It was not eliminated by the abolutionist movement in the 19^th century.  According to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, there are about 49.6 million people living in modern slavery, mostly in forced labour and forced marriage.[xvii]  Roughly a quarter of these are children.  To be sure, definitions of slavery have changed over time, but these figures compare with best estimates for the number of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas of around 12.5 million.[xviii]  Modern slavery is real and present at a very large scale.  We can choose to do something real and practical about it.  It is as violent and horrendous as are most forms of past slavery.  While much current media attention and political activity focuses on black slavery, colonialism and issues around restitution and reparations, we also need to focus on the reality of modern slavery across the world and do something to bring it to an end.

• Second, the timing of the sudden upswelling of interest in slavery, the recent actions taken by many people and organisations to try to atone for the past, and the vehemence of commitment of many of those campaigning for reparations and against past slavery seem in part to represent a collective failure to understand and appreciate the impact of slavery, both in the past and at present.  Having learnt about slavery as a child, and written and taught about slavery through much of my career,[xix] I find it hard to believe that so many people in Britain seem to have been unaware of the impact of slavery on our economy.[xx]  Why did they not protest before 2020? The apparent sudden discovery of our role in the Triangular Trade, seems in part to reflect a failure in our education system to address the complexity of history, and especially to consider slavery in a global and holistic framework.  In a society increasingly dominated by scientism (science’s belief in itself) it becomes more and more important for young people to study the disciplines of history and geography which play such a crucial role in shaping their sense of time and place.  A good historical understanding of slavery throughout history and across the world would also help people have a much more nuanced and sensitive approach to understanding its complexities, and the reasons why we need to respond urgently to the continued existence of modern slavery. 

• Third, it is always easier to criticise people who cannot respond, especially in the past, than it is to act wisely in the present.  As any political leader knows, it is much easier to criticise others, than it is actually to deliver policies that have positive outcomes.  In the context of slavery, it is easy to stand up and protest, it is easy to adopt slick slogans, it is easy to blame people in the past, and it is easy to post critical comments on social media.  This is especially so when those who lived through those times are completely unable to respond or tell their side of the story.  It is very much more difficult to change existing practices, such as modern slavery, because that takes considerable time and effort, it is tough to do, it is expensive, and it is not easy to understand what really needs to be done.  However, given now is the only time when we can influence things for the better, we should surely concentrate on what we can actually do something about, rather than spend so much time bemoaning something that we can never change.  We can learn from the past to change the present.

• Fourth, it is difficult to justify criticising people in the past, because we were not there and have no way of knowing how we would have behaved ourselves at that time.  We might like to think that we would have acted in the past in accordance with our present moral compasses (if we recognise that we have such things), but the reality is that it is highly unlikely that we would have done so.  We simply have no real way of knowing what we would have done if we had been living during past epochs when slavery was rife.  Perhaps our biggest fear would have been the chance of being captured and sold into slavery ourselves.  If we cannot guarantee that we would have opposed slavery then, it seems difficult to justify the opprobrium that we cast on those who benefitted from slavery in the past, especially if we are doing little to prevent it in the present.

In short, the logic of the above comments seems to point to a conclusion that we should focus our attention more on trying to stop modern slavery, because we can indeed do something about this, rather than spending most of our time criticising the actions of people in the past about which we can do nothing.

Slavery: the future

Such arguments have interesting implications when slavery in the future is considered.  Again, four comments seem appropriate.

• First, we might be able to reduce the extent of slavery in the future if we take action to do so now, and at the very least those who do indeed believe that slavery is wrong would then be acting according to their moral principles.  This in itself raises many further difficult issues.  Given that slavery still exists, and has therefore probably done so ever since human “civilizations” first emerged, is it somehow a “natural” human condition?  Will slavery always exist?  Even if this is the case, though, those of us who believe it is wrong can nevertheless still seek to take action now to reduce its extent in the hope that this will happen in the future. 
• Second, how will those in the future look back and see our actions today with respect to slavery?  Just as we cannot influence the past, we will not be living when those in the future think about us. At one level, this question will not really matter, because we will be long dead and the thoughts of people in the distant future can have no real influence over us.  Nevertheless, many people do wish to be remembered kindly. For those who do care how history will see them, if only the near history of their children and grandchildren, taking action now at a time over which we do have some control or power, would seem to be wise (although of course many people may not wish to be wise). How will our offspring and descendants judge us most positively: for acting to reduce the slavery that does exist and we can do something about, or for merely protesting about a past over which we could never do anything to change.
• Third, if we do nothing about slavery today, there is a chance that those nearest and dearest to us might be forced into slavery in the future.  This may be an unlikely scenario for many reading this post, but it is at least a logical possibility.  Every one of the nearly 50 million people currently in slavery has parents, and possibly grandparents who may still be alive and know them.  At least some, perhaps most, of these relatives will grieve that their offspring are enslaved.  By acting today, we can reduce the chances of our children and further descendants becoming enslaved.
• Finally, it is worth asking what future generations may consider about the nature of freedom and slavery in our societies today?  I have recently spent much time pondering this question, and writing and speaking about digital enslavement as a new mode of production.  Put simply, if we cannot live without using digital tech, have we become enslaved by the owners of the companies and governments who force us to use such technologies?  If we cannot spend a day, let alone a week, without using digital tech, have we not become enslaved by those who make it?[xxi]  Have we not willingly become “unfree”?  The new slave masters expropriate a vast surplus from our data and everything that they know about us, and we seem unable to escape from giving this to them at no charge.  Indeed, we have to pay significant amounts to be connected to the internet, just so as to enable them to exploit us further.   What will future generations think?  Will the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos also have the work of their foundations and donations castigated, their virtual statues torn down, their reputations smashed, and their children’s children hated for the actions of their ancestors?[xxii]

In conclusion

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the above reflections, and everyone will have somewhat differing views about them.  They are intended to raise difficult questions and encourage open debate on them.  I have tried to focus on slavery alone, although clearly this intersects, especially at this time in history, with other categories of contemporary interest such as race and colonialism.  However, these reflections are explicitly not intended to address either of these other two categories in any detail.  Slavery has existed between and within many different races; it has transcended most modes of socio-economic, political and cultural formation.  It is not unique to the Triangular Trans-Atlantic slave trade. There has been a considerable amount of research done on the history of slavery and very much more that needs to be done.  However, history alone is not enough.  It is the moral questions that we ask, and how we use them to shape the futures of the societies in which we live that, to me, matter most.

The above arguments suggest to me that it is more important to focus on trying to reduce contemporary slavery (and its possible variants in the future) than it is only to protest about the horrors and injustices of past slavery.  Both are important, and this is not to belittle the value of highlighting the undoubted injustices of slavery in the past.  However, we cannot change what has happened in the past, and it is surely therefore our responsibility to past slaves that we act now, when we can, to prevent slavery continuing into the future.   Protesting is the easy bit; changing the future is when the going gets really tough. Others may well feel differently, and I certainly accept that we need a sound understanding of the past if we are to act wisely in the present.  I began by reflecting on my surprise at how few of the anti-slavery and anti-racism protests that I saw in 2020 and 2021 focused on modern slavery. My hope is that those who read and engage with what I have written here may turn their anger at what they cannot change into energy to reduce the extent of slavery that remains all about us today.  I also hope that they will strive to maintain the perceived freedoms that so many now cherish and take for granted, and yet are in very real danger of being taken away from us through the increasingly all-pervasiveness of digital enslavement. 

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[i] I am immensely grateful to several friends and colleagues who took time to comment on an earlier version of this draft and have undoubtedly helped me to improve it.  I know that the issues it addresses are sensitive, but I hope that this final version strikes an appropriate balance as I seek to encourage us all to refocus our attention on how we eliminate the modern slavery (and especially violence against women) that continues to exist across the world.

[ii] I have deliberately used this word here because I remain struck by the reality that the lives of some slaves in the past were in many ways better than the lives of the poorest agricultural labourers.

[iii] There were indeed some banners relating to modern slavery, but from the protests and images that I saw these were in a minority.

[iv] This was also associated with transfers of ideology and practice from the US to the rather different context of the UK. 

[v] This is not in any way to downplay the horrors of the slave trade between Africa and the Americas between the 17^th and 19^th centuries, but it is to try to explore fundamental principles associated with slavery per se rather than racism.

[vi] See for example, Abraham Farfán and María del Pilar López-Uribe (2020) The British founding of Sierra Leone was never a ‘Province of Freedom, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2020/06/27/british-founding-sierra-leone-slave-trade/. It is also important to note here that it was actually in the UK, a colonial and later imperial power, where the abolutionist movement first gained considerable traction, initially in the late 18th century and then especially from the 1830s onwards.

[vii] The Province of Freedom in what became Sierra Leone was first settled in 1787 by formerly enslaved black people, but this early settlement collapsed, and it was not until 1792 with an influx of more than a thousand former slaves from North America that the settlement of Freetown was firmly established through the agency of the Sierra Leone Company.

[viii] See also Trevor Phillips’ important essay in The Times (18 September 2020 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trevor-phillips-when-you-erase-a-nations-past-you-threaten-its-future-xx9rqzqh9) entitled “When you erase a nation’s past, you threaten its future”, in which he suggests that “Those who have African heritage might do well, before they denounce long-dead British slave owners, to find out which side of the vile transactions in West Africa’s slave ports their own ancestors stood”.  See also his review “Colonialism by Nigel Biggar: don’t be ashamed of empire”, in The Sunday Times, 5^th February 2023, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/colonialism-by-nigel-biggar-dont-be-ashamed-of-empire-lp83ptqtd. More research needs to be done on the origins of slaves from West Africa in the Caribbean and North America, and how they were enslaved.

[ix] This also reminds me of the continuing African slave trade across the Sahara today.  See for example https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/07/africa/un-sanctions-migrant-traffickers-intl/index.html, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/29/african-refugees-bought-sold-and-murdered-in-libya/, and https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/29/african-refugees-bought-sold-and-murdered-in-libya/.

[x] See for example the life of John Newton who had been a slave, a captain of slave ships, and then championed abolitionism, as well as writing the famous hymns Amazing Grace and Glorious things of Thee are spoken. 

[xi] See Brewer, 2018.

[xii] https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/guide_art_4_eng.pdf, p.8.

[xiii] In my own work on medieval society, I found it helpful to avoid the generic word “serf” and stick to the terms actually in use at the time, such as villeins, cottars and bordars.  In very general terms, in 11^th century England there were two broad groups of rural people beneath the level of knights and lords: the free peasantry (freemen and sokemen) who comprised about 12% of the population recorded in Domesday Book of 1066; and the unfree (villeins representing about 40% of the population, alongside the poorer cottars and bordars) who worked the land in return for onerous obligations and services to the Lord.  Beneath them all were the slaves, comprising perhaps 10% of the population, who had no property rights and could be bought and sold.

[xiv] Although Louis X of France published a decree in 1315 declaring that any slave arriving on French soil should be declared free, the widespread rise of abolitionism is usually dated to the emergence of The Enlightenment in the mid-18th century, and the activities of the Quakers in England and North America in the latter part of that century.  Interestingly, although slavery was abolished during the French revolution, Napoleon restored it in 1802 as one means to try to retain sovereignty over France’s colonies.

[xv] Complex legal debates around statutes of limitations are one way on which attempts have been made to answer this question.  See for example the UN’s OHCHR “Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law” https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation.  See also Shelton, D. (2002) Reparations for human rights violations: how far back?, Amicus Curiae, 44, 3-7

[xvi] I have deliberately concentrated here on slavery in a global context, and not just on the current emphasis in European and North American societies on the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  The horrors, misery and death associated with slavery in the context of European colonialism should not be trivialised, but at the same time their needs to be open and honest discussion about the existence of slavery in Africa long before the arrival of white Europeans.

[xvii] See ILO, Walk Free and IOM (2022) Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage, Geneva: ILO, Walk Free and IOM. See also https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/.

[xviii] See https://www.slavevoyages.org/, as well as extensive other research by Franz Binder, Ernst van den Boogart, Henk den Heijer and Johannes Postma, James Pritchard, Andrea Weindl, Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Manuel Barcia Paz, Alexandre Ribeiro, David Wheat and José Capela.

[xix] especially in the context of my teaching of Marxist theory between the mid-1970s and the end of the 1990s.  See also the work of the UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.

[xx] There has been very substantial research on slavery in the past, and the extent to which British society and the economy were shaped by it in the 18^th and 19^th centuries has long been well known.  See for example the work of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ which emerged from earlier funded research projects in the 2000s and 2010s, and also the useful short  note by John Oldfield (2021) on abolition of the slave trade and slavery in Britain, https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/abolition-of-the-slave-trade-and-slavery-in-britain, which draws heavily on research dating back to the 1930s.

[xxi] Do consider using #1in7offline to promote the practice of having a day a week offline.

[xxii] See my 2022 piece on Freedom, enslavement and the digital barons: a thought experiment.

“Open Science” Keynote for WACREN

It was a real privilege to have been invited to give a keynote on “Open Science in Africa and for Africans: addressing the challenges” this morning at the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) 2022 conference held in Abidjan. The role of a keynote is to provoke and challenge, and so I took the opportunity to share some of the reflections and challenges that I have been struggling with over many years, and especially since I first met the inspirational CEO of WACREN, Boubakar Barry, some 18 years ago in Dakar, Sénégal at an event we participated in on Free/Libre and Open Source Software convened by Imfundo.

Participating online in the hybrid WACREN 2022 conference

The six challenges on which I focused in the Keynote were:

• Whose interests does Open Science really serve?
• The rise of individualism: is it too late for communal science?
• Which models of publication best serve Africa?
• How valuable are Open Data, and for whom?
• The dangers of Scientism?
• Who pays?

Underlying my thoughts are two fundamental concerns:

• If you don’t have access to, or cannot use “Open Science”, can you really benefit from it? Does “Open Science” really empower the poor and marginalised?
• Is Open Science mainly a means through which the rich and powerful continue to maintain their positions of privilege? This is typified by the ways through which global corporations and companies persuade governments to make their data about citizens available as Open Data, so that these companies can then extract considerable profit from them.

The full slide deck in .pdf format is available here, and the slide below summarises my final thoughts about the ways forward.

The advantages of being unconnected to the Internet: a thought experiment

The 2021 ITU Facts and Figures report highlighted that 2.9 billion people, or 37% of the world’s population, have still never used the Internet. Implict in this, as in almost all UN initiatives relating to digital technology, is the ideal that everyone should be connected to the Internet. Hence, many global initiatives continue to be designed to create multi-stakeholder (or as I prefer, multi-sector – see my Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development) partnerships to provide connectivity to everyone in the world. But, whose interests does this really serve? Would the unconnected really be better off if they were connected?

Walking in the Swiss mountains last month, and staying in a place where mobile phones and laptops were prohibited, reminded me of the human importance of being embedded in nature – and that of course we don’t really need always to be digitally connected.

Although I have addressed these issues in many of my publications over the last 20 years, I have never articulated in detail the reasons why people might actually be better off remaining unconnected: hence this thought experiment. There are actually many sound reasons why people should consider remaining unconnected, and for those of us who spend our lives overly connected we should think about disconnecting ourselves as much as possible. These are but a few of these reasons:

• Above all, we were born to be a part of the physical world in which we live. Virtual realities may approximate (or even in some senses enhance) that physical world, but they are fundamentally different. Those who spend all of their time connected miss out on all the joys of living in nature; those who are unconnected have the privilege of experiencing the full richness of that nature.
• Those who are unconnected do not have to waste time sifting through countless boring e-mails or group chats to find what is worthwhile, or the messages in which they are really interested.
• The unconnected cannot give away for free their valuable data from which global digital corporations make their fortunes.
• Being unconnected means not harming the physical environment through the heavy demands digital technologies place on our precious natural world (see the work of the Digital-Environment System Coalition – DESC)
• Those who are unconnected do not suffer the horrors of online harassment or digital violence.
• The unconnected are not forced by their managers to self-exploit by doing online training once they are home after a day’s work, or answer e-mails/chat messages sent by their managers at all hours of the day and night.
• Those who are not online don’t have to run the risk of online scams or phishing attacks that steal their savings – and the poor suffer most when, for example, their small amounts of money are stolen.
• The unconnected can largely escape much of the digital surveillance now promulgated by governments in the name of “security” and “anti-terrorist” action.
• The unconnected do not suffer from digital addictions to online games, gambling, or pornography.
• Ultimately, being connected is akin to being enslaved by the world’s digital barons and their corporations; if you cannot stop using digital tech for a few days, let alone a week, surely you have lost your freedom?

Despite the fine sounding words of those leading global connectivity initiatives, is it really the poorest and most marginalised who are going to benefit most from being connected? Surely, this agenda of global connectivity is being driven mainly in the interests of the global corporations that will be paid to roll out the tech infrastructre, or that will benefit from exploiting the data that we all too willingly give them for nothing? Does not, for example, digital financial inclusion benefit the financial and tech companies and institutions far more than it does the poorest and most marginalised? This is not to deny that digital tech does indeed have many positive uses, but it is to ask fundamental questions about who benefits most.

I remember visiting a village in Africa with colleagues who couldn’t understand why the inhabitants didn’t want mobile phones. Walking over the hills to see their friends was more important to them than the ease of calling them up. This post owes much to that conversation.

We all need to ask the crucial questions about whose interests our often well-intentioned global digital connectivity initiatives really serve. If we wish to serve the interests of the poorest and most marginalised, we must become their servants and not the servants of the world’s rich and powerful; we must be humble, and learn from those we wish to serve.

And the world’s rich and privileged also need to take care of ourselves; if we have difficulty living a day without being connected, surely we have indeed become enslaved? We need to regain our freedom as fully sentient beings, using all of our senses to comprehend and care for the natural world in which we live. May I conclude by encouraging people to think about using the hashtag #1in7offline. Take one day a week away from digital tech to experience the wonders of our world, unmediated by the paltry digital alternative. Or try taking a week away from the digital world every seven weeks. If you cannot do this, ask yourself why!

A differentiated, responsibilities-based approach to living with the Covid-19 pandemic

Rosa Graham Thomas – in UK lockdown

The United Kingdom has among the worst COVID-19 infection and death rates in the world (see Financial Times, 28th May 2020).  This is in part because of very serious errors of judgement made by the UK Government (see my list of questions to which they must answer, 27th April 2020), but it is also a result of the behaviour of substantial numbers of UK citizens during “lockdown” who, for whatever, chose not to self-isolate  (including the Prime Minister’s Senior Advisor, Dominic Cummings).  The UK government at the end of May also made another serious error of judgement, relaxing the restrictions, even for those who had previously been told to shield themselves, when  daily numbers of new infections and deaths were very much higher than they were when other countries had begun to “open up” (BBC, 31st May 2020).  This is despite the advice of many senior scientists who said that it was too early to relax the restrictions (BBC, 30th May 2020).  Estimates by the Office for National Statistics (28th May 2020) suggested that there were then at least 8000 new cases a day in England, excluding those in care homes or hospitals.  The daily average number of deaths from COVID-19 in the UK to the week ending 31st May was 242 (gov.uk, 31st May 2020).

Countries cannot stay locked down for ever, though, and it is essential for people to go back to work; indeed, it may well be that a vaccine or cure for COVID-19 will not be found in the short term, and societies may have to learn to live with this coronavirus for the foreseeable future.  Difficult decisions will therefore need to be made about how to manage daily life and reduce the number of deaths caused by SARS-Cov-2.  These decisions will need to vary depending on the specific contexts of each country, including its demographics (see my post of 7th May 2020) and environmental factors (see my post of 3rd May 2020).  In the UK, the government has used fairly crude measures, trying to ensure that large numbers of people stayed at home (even though most of them would not be seriously ill if they caught COVID-19), rather than varying the strategy according to risk.  Most actions and discussions have also adopted a human rights based approach to considering how decisions should be made (see for example Morley et al.’s paper on the ethics of tracing apps, or Lord Sumpton’s discussion of why lockdown is despotic).  Instead, I suggest here that we need to adopt highly differentiated strategies, based on our responsibilities (or obligations, as Onora O’Neill suggests in her 2016 book Justice Across Boundaries).

Differentiated risks of COVID-19

There is increasingly sophisticated analysis in various parts of the world to suggest that different groups of people have substantially different risk factors.  While anyone can die from COVID-19, the following generalisations about who is most likely to die seem to have widespread support:

• Older people are more at risk of having serious complications or dying from COVID-19.  Public Health England (PHE) in their early June 2020 report on disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19, showed that “Among people with a positive test, when compared with those under 40, those who were 80 or older were seventy times more likely to die”.   Dowd et al. (2020) likewise show that “Currently, COVID-19 mortality risk is highly concentrated at older ages, particularly those aged 80+”.  Case Fatality Rates (CFRs) generally increase significantly with age, especially for those over 60; in Italy 96.9% of deaths by the end of March were for those over 60 (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, 2020).  In South Africa 80% of the COVID-19 deaths reported by 2nd May were for people over 50, with a quarter of deaths being in the 60-69 age group.  There is, though, still uncertainty as to whether there is something specific about age itself, or whether these figures are because older people are more likely to have other comorbidities.  It is also interesting to note that the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) Infection Survey pilot suggested that the highest percentage of those testing positive in the UK between 26th April and 24th May were in the 20-49 year age group.
• Men are more vulnerable than women.  This may well be because women have two X chromosomes (The Guardian, 7th June 2020), although there remains some dispute about the influence of gender on infection and mortality.  The PHE report cited above shows that in England “Working age males diagnosed with COVID-19 were twice as likely to die as females”.  Most surveys seem to suggest that men are more at risk than women, but the ONS survey of those testing positive interestingly indicated that “there is no evidence of differences in the proportions of men or women testing positive for COVID-19”.
• People with comorbidities are much more likely to be seriously ill or die from COVID-19 than are those who are otherwise healthy.  Data for March reported by the US CDC indicates that almost 90% of all patients hospitalised that month had one or more underlying conditions, with 49.7% having hypertension, 48.3% being obese, 34.6% having chronic lung disease,  28.3% having Type 2 diabetes, and 27.8% having cardiovascular disease.  These five health problems are associated with higher death rates in most places where the data have been studied, although precise percentages vary quite considerably between populations (for a review of underlying metabolic health see Lancet, 2020; for a useful South African perspective, see Cullinan, 2020).  The UK authorities have defined clinically vulnerable people as follows:
  • “aged 70 or older (regardless of medical conditions)
  • under 70 with an underlying health condition listed below (that is, anyone instructed to get a flu jab as an adult each year on medical grounds):
    • chronic (long-term) mild to moderate respiratory diseases, such asasthma,chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), emphysema orbronchitis○chronic heart disease, such asheart failure
    • chronic kidney disease
    • chronic liver disease, such ashepatitis○chronic neurological conditions, such asParkinson’s disease,motor neurone disease,multiple sclerosis (MS), or cerebral palsy
    • diabetes
    • a weakened immune system as the result of conditions such as HIV and AIDS, or medicines such as steroid tablets
    • being seriously overweight (a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or above)
    • pregnant women
  • As above, there is a further category of people with serious underlying health conditions who are clinically extremely vulnerable, meaning they are at very high risk of severe illness from coronavirus”
• Ethnicity does appear to have an effect on the seriousness of health impacts of COVID-19, even taking other factors into consideration, but the precise reasons for this are not yet known.  In the UK, more people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds have been seriously ill or died from COVID-19 than have people of white ethnicity, but this could be partly explained by deprivation, cultural factors (such as religious and family interactions), and comorbidities (such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes).  England’s PHE report concludes that “An analysis of survival among confirmed COVID-19 cases and using more detailed ethnic groups, shows that after accounting for the effect of sex, age, deprivation and region, people of Bangladeshi ethnicity had around twice the risk of death than people of White British ethnicity. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Other Asian, Caribbean and Other Black ethnicity had between 10 and 50% higher risk of death when compared to White British”.  More recently, the ISARIC CCP-UK study has shown convincingly that: (i) “Ethnic Minorities in hospital with COVID-19 were more likely to be admitted to critical care and receive IMV than Whites”, and (ii) “South Asians are at greater risk of dying, due at least in part to a higher prevalence of pre-existing diabetes” (see Harrison and Docherty, 17th June 2020).  Insufficient detailed studies have yet been undertaken in other parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Asia, to see whether ethnicity is indeed also a risk factor there.
• The risk of being infected is higher indoors than out of doors.  This is mainly because there is generally more air movement to disperse SARS-Cov-2 outdoors (although air conditioning systems indoors do spread it in the direction blown by a fan), and people are usually in closer juxtaposition for longer indoors than outside.  It is also easier to maintain sufficient distance between people outdoors than indoors (see inews, 11th May 2020).  However, there is still some uncertainty about this.  Thus, the UK ONS survey claimed in late May 2020 that “Individuals working outside the home show higher rates of positive tests than those who work from home”.  This is, though, probably because those self-isolating and working at home simply don’t come into as much contact with potentially infectious people outside the home.

Much of the research on which these conclusions are drawn is based on early evidence from China, as well as more recent evidence from Europe and the USA where the infection and death rates have been so high.  A particularly interesting issue is therefore whether these generalisations may also apply in other parts of the world, and especially in countries in Africa and South Asia which have yet to experience very serious rates of infection (see my previous post on On ageing populations, “development” and Covid-19).  It may well be that their governments could learn from the mistakes made in the UK and the USA and develop a more nuanced approach as outlined below.

A differentiated risk- and responsibilities-based approach to managing COVID-19

This post makes two core suggestions: states need to adopt nuanced and differentiated responses to living with COVID-19 in the foreseeable future, and that human rights considerations should be balanced by a responsibilities agenda.

A differentiated risk-based approach to COVID-19

Most governments have adopted stringent lockdown policies in response to COVID-19 that have been applied to everyone, regardless of their health risks.  This has caused considerable damage to their economies, as well as other serious health issues.  Many deaths resulting from the existence of COVID-19 are thus not actually being caused by the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus.  Numerous businesses are failing, and fit elderly people have complained vociferously about not being permitted to partake fully in “normal” society.

Now that more is known about the health risks of COVID-19, it makes considerable sense to develop context specific solutions that take into accont the risk factors noted above.  Governments must first ensure that they have an adequate and robust health service capable of dealing with the number of people who are likely to get infected, but wasteful fiascos such as the construction of new Nightingale Hospitals in the UK that were never really needed, or the numerous projects across the world to create novel designs for new venitlators for which not enough nursing staff are available (and when many people on ventilators actually die), must not be repeated.  The hospital services in some countries will come near to being overwhelmed (as in Italy), or may indeed collapse (see recent reports from Brazil, India and Pakistan which seem near this point).  However, even where countries are unable to manage the health requirements of the majority of people affected, it is still vital that what services are available are used to treat those most in need and most likely to survive treatment.  Is is also crucial that a responsibilities approach is inculcated and adopted at all scales from the state to the individual if the impact of the pandemic is to be mitigated.

It would thus seem wise to introduce comprehensive risk-based schemes through which everyone can evaluate their likelihood of being seriously ill from COVID-19 and their risk of infecting other vulnerable people, so that they can take appropriate actions to reduce such risk.  At present, and as noted above, the key risk factors seem to be:

• age,
• gender,
• comorbidities,
• ethnicity, and
• location

Put simply, and based largely on European and North American evidence, elderly men with comorbidities from BAME backgrounds spending all their time indoors would seem to be most at risk, and we should all do what we can to help protect them.  Young, fit, active white women spending most of their time outdoors would seem to be least at risk.

This has implications for work, transport, and social life, and carefully nuanced schemes should be introduced to enable as many people as possible to live the lives that they wish to.  For example, where resources are constrained, working-at-home policies could first be made available to the most at risk, encouraging those least at risk to stay at work, or indeed to return to work as previously.  Tourism, travel and entertainment is much less risky for the fit and young, so they should be allowed to take those risks if they want to, while alternative arrangements are put in place for the most vunerably elderly Bangladeshi men (such as support for online tourism or special take-away meals for celebratory occasions).

Responsibilities- rather than rights-based approaches

For too long, rights-based approaches have dominated global and national policies, and insufficient attention has been paid to the responsibilities that are essential to ensure the extstence of well-functioning societies  (see my Prolegomena on Human Rights and Responsibilities).  All too often when a “right” is claimed, it is uncertain who has the “responsibility” to deliver it.  Many, for example, have commented on the human rights aspects of COVID-19 (see Human Rights Watch, 19th March 2020; Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, 6th May 2020; The Guardian, 29th April 2020) , but rather fewer on the human responsibilities dimension.

This is particularly reflected in the tension between individual privacy rights and communal responsibilities in terms of the imposition and use of tracking apps to identify COVID-19 contacts (Human Rights Watch, 13th May 2020; Privacy International, no date; Morley et al., 2020).  However, it also lies at the heart of discussions about wearing masks: all to often such usage is criticised for not really protecting the individual, which completely misses the point that their main use is to protect the community from infected individuals.  People thus have a responsibility to wear masks so that if they are asymptomatic their chances of infecting many others are reduced (see my Face masks and Covid-19: communal not individual relevance).

Two main implications of a shift to a more responsibilities-based approach are important:

• The first is that governments have a fundamental responsibility to care for their most vulnerable and at risk citizens.  The shocking way in which the UK government placed its focus on “saving the NHS” above “saving vulnerable people” is an all-too-visible example of a failure to adhere to such a principle.  It was a serious injustice for UK policy to have sent elderly people with COVID-19 back into care homes and the community from hospital, as a result of which many of them died, many others were infected, and many more certainly died sooner than they would otherwise have done.  This principle, though, is also of crucial importance in countries where the health services have difficulty, or will have difficulties in the future, in coping with the COVID-19 crisis.  It is absolutely the responsibility of governments to recognise that many low-risk people will survive COVID-19 with little or no lasting health implications, and that they should be allowed to continue if they wish to in the productive economy.  However, at the same time, governments must put in measures whereby those at risk are protected, and given the wherewithall to sustain themselves.
• The second, and closely related principle is that individuals also have fundamentally important responsibilities to others.  Some positive evidence of communal responsibility and action has been visible in countries across the world during COVID-19, but support for at-risk people has been less than many had hoped for or expected.  Moreover, there have also been substantial numbers of explicitly negative communal actions: digital-attacks on health care organisations have proliferated during the pandemic, and doctors and nurses have been victimised for spreading the coronavirus in countries as diverse as Mexico and Pakistan.  Almost always, the emphasis has been on the rights of the individual (to enjoy the beach or to party) rather than on their responsibilites to others (to protect others from the actions of the self).  Put simply, all of us have responsibilities to protect everyone else from being infected, and to enable as many people as possible to continue to live active and fulfilled lives.

Is it too much to hope for that one of the results of COVID-19 may be the creation of societies where we shift the focus more to our responsibilities towards others than attention on ourselves?  In the short term, this would mean that we should all be:

• Thinking that we could be asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19, and take actions to prevent us from infecting others;
• Caring for and serving vulnerable neighbours who cannot benefit from the freedoms that we enjoy; and
• Taking action to self-isolate and get tested immediately we think we might be infected with COVID-19.

Whilst this is written primarily from the perspective of someone living in a country that is now coming out of lockdown, these principles apply globally, and if adopted in countries that have not yet encountered serious outbreaks of COVID-19 might help them escape some of the more serious impacts of economic shutdown.

Masai children learning in Tanzania

[Updated 19th June 2020]

 

On ageing populations, “development” and Covid-19

There is increasingly clear evidence that older people are more likely to die from Covid-19 than are younger people: on 17th February,  the China CDC weekly report showed that among the cases known in China by then, the ≥80 age group had the highest case fatality rate at 14.8% (with the 70-79 age group being 8% and the 60-69% age group being 3.6%); and in early April, the WHO Regional Director for Europe highlighted that over 95% of Covid-19 deaths occurred in those over 60, with more than 50% in those aged 80 years or older.  In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported in mid-April that mortality from Covid-19 increased consistently with age, with only about 13% of deaths being of people under 65.  Significantly, though it noted that men had a death rate double that of women; more recent ONS reports have also shown that (when taking into account age) Black men and women were more than four times as likely to die from Covid-19 then were those of White ethnicity, and that such differences in mortality were partly a result of socio-economic disadvantage.  These data are stark, and are as yet still not fully explained.  As people grow older, they generally have greater comorbidities, and it may be the impact that Covid-19 has on these other health problems that is more significant than age itself.

However, this is an important reminder that Covid-19 is primarily an old-people’s disease.  It is striking to recall that in 1951 life expectancy at birth in England and Wales was only 66.4 for men and 71.5 for women; in 1901 the figures were 48.5 and 52.4 respectively (ONS, 2015).  Put simply, people born 70 years ago were not expected to live to the age at which most people are now dying from Covid-19.  This has important ramifications, and raises very difficult questions.  Have people, perhaps, become over expectant about longevity?  Will Covid-19 temper our aspirations to live for ever?  Will it be a check on the ambitions of companies such as Novartis, Alphabet and Illumina to extend life well beyond 100 years (CNBC, 2019)?  Is the main problem of Covid-19 that most people living in the richer countires of the world have become too cosy in their expectations of living to a ripe old age?

Implications for Europe and north America: too many old people

Thought experiments can be a helpful means of highlighting challenging issues.  Suppose, for example, that there had been no lockdowns in Europe and North America.  It seems very likely that substantial numbers of elderly people would have died already (see projections by epidemiologists at Imperial College which suggested that without mitigation strategies Covid-19 would have resulted in 40 milllion deaths globally in 2020).  If a vaccine or cure is not found, then it still seems likely that large numbers of elderly people will indeed die in Europe at an age well short of what they and their families have grown accustomed to expecting.

However, think of the impact that this will have on the economy and health services.  Once large numbers of elderly people have died, national pension bills will fall, the burden on health services will be reduced, the percentage of people within the economically productive age range will increase, and the economic vitality of their countries will be revitalised.  If Covid-19 (or its successors) become an everyday part of life, the economic “burden” of older people will be dramatically reduced.  It is scarcely surprising that rumours  circulated about the intentions of UK government policy in early- to mid-March.  As Martin Shaw noted at the time, it had been credibly reported that the “Government’s strategy was ‘herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means that some pensioners die, too bad’; or as summed up even more succinctly by a senior Tory, ‘Herd immunity and let the old people die’”.  Whilst the government strenuosly denied this, there is a realistic logic to the idea that letting large numbers of old people die would have clear economic benefits, and would avoid the very considerable costs that are accruing as a result of economic shutdown.

I should stress that this is definitely not a scenario that I would want to encourage or endorse, but in the early part of May, the balance of popular opinion (or the influence of the business community and mainstream media in the UK) does seem to be swinging towards a view that the costs of lockdown are too high to continue to protect the elderly, especially in those countries where there have already been very high death rates (as in Belgium, the UK, France, Italy, Spain and the USA).  Yet, the 20th and latest Imperial College Covid-19 report  concludes for Italy that “even a 20% return to pre-lockdown mobility could lead to a resurgence in the number of deaths far greater than experienced in the current wave in several regions”.

Implications for Africa and South Asia: youthful countries

The real purpose of this reflection, though, is to consider the implications of the above arguments for some of the economically poorest countries in the world.  Data about Covid-19 infections and deaths in Africa and Asia are likely to be even less reliable than they are in Europe, and the countries in these continents are in any case much earlier in their encounters with Covid-19 than are those of Europe.  Recent reports, for example, suggest that the real number of deaths related to Covid-19 may be many times the number that are currently reported (see The Guardian‘s recent report on Somalia).  Nevertheless, we do have relatively accurate data about the demographic structures of most countries in the world.  The chart below therefore shows the relationships between current density of Covid-19 deaths and the percentage of population aged ≥65 for a sample of countries.[i]

This graph is striking, but difficut to interpret (and can be misleading), mainly because most countries in Africa and Latin America are only at an early stage in their Covid-19 outbreaks.  We simply do not know how many deaths they are likely to witness, and few models have yet been published that predict the likely outcomes.   However, with the very notable exceptions of Japan, Greece and Germany, it re-emphasises that high percentages of Covid-19 deaths are mainly found in those countries that have more than 15% of their populations aged ≥65.  Even Brazil, where the death rate is currently growing rapidly, is still nowhere near at the level of mortality that has occurred in Europe and the USA.  The quite remarkable achievement of Greece, with only 147 deaths by 7th May, is also highly noteworthy because despite a fragile health service and an elderly population it has managed to achieve something that most other European countries have been unable to do.  Most commentators suggest that this is mainly because it imposed a dramatic lockdown even before the first deaths were recorded.

Most countries of the world have intiated lockdowns, and these are having particularly significant impacts on the poorest and most marginalised who can least afford it. An obvious question therefore arises: if Covid-19 mainly affects the elderly, should countries with young populations (such as most of those of Africa, Asia and Latin America) follow the “older” countries in imposing strict lockdowns that will have damaging effects on their economies and the livelihoods of those who can least afford it?  Put another way, are the mitigating actions of European and North American countries, where more than 15% of their populations are ≥65, relevant to economically poorer countries with less than 10% of their populations in this age group?

It is far from easy to answer this.  Perhaps the very small numbers of people reportedly dying in Africa at present is only because the coronavirus has not yet gained a grip, and any loosening of the mitigating measures would unleash the pandemic at a scale similar to that seen in Europe.  The WHO, for example, has warned  that the Covid-19 pandemic might kill as many as 190,000 people in Africa in the year ahead (Al Jazeera, 8th May), with many more dying subsequently.  This may well be true, but there is at least a chance that the youthful populations of Africa will be better able to deal with Covid-19 than have done the older populations of Europe.  It must, though, be emphasised that many younger people who are infected with Covid-19 do indeed have serious illnesses, and some die.  We also do not yet know the long-term health impacts of this coronavirus.  Moreover, the evidence that socially disadvantaged people are also more likely to die than their more affluent neighbours further suggests that the poorest and most marginalised in these countries may well have higher death rates.

As I have illustrated elsewhere, there is some (but by no means conclusive) evidence that environmental factors may also play a role in limiting the spread of Covid-19.  If the environments of Africa and South Asia are indeed not particularly conducive to the spread of Covid-19, then their youthful populations might not need to endure the very tight lockdowns imposed in many European countries. That having been said, the rapidly increasing number of infections and deaths in Brazil (with 121,600 cases and 8,022 deaths as of 7th May), which has physical environments and climates similar to many parts of western and southern Africa, does not bode well for the future spread of Covid-19 in Africa.

Conclusions

In conclusion, there remains much that is unknown about how Covid-19 spreads and who it affects most damagingly.  The evidence from Japan, Greece and Germany shows that even when countries do have a high percentage of elderly people, it is still possible to contain and limit the spread of Covid-19, thereby preventing very large numbers of deaths.  The abject failures of governments in countries such as the UK and Belgium to manage the pandemic and save lives likewise indicate how not to respond to the pandemic.  The governments of African and South Asian countries, with their youthful populations who appear less likely to suffer severe symptoms, may well therefore have an advantage over their European counterparts.  If they can draw lessons about what has worked and what has failed, then they are also in a good position to bounce back swiftly from the economic harm caused by economic and social lockdowns.

 

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[i] The selected countries included the ten most populous countries in the world (in descending order of total population, China, India, USA, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico), a selection of European countries with mixed trajectories (listed alphabetically, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland), and a diverse sample of African (alphabetically, DRC, Egypt, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania), and other (alphabetically, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Turkey) countries.

Short guides to literature on technology use in education: both the positives and the negatives…

Infant school in Cocody, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Far too many initiatives using technology in education fail to learn from the experiences of others as they seek to be innovative and novel.  Consequently, the same mistakes tend to be replicated over and over again.  Far too many researchers likewise fail to read but a fraction of the vast literature that has been published on technology and education, and bibliographies in PhD theses in the field are increasingly often only sketchy at best.

In 2017 and 2018 I had the privilege of being asked to write a report for UNICEF on how the organisation might respond to the future interface between technology and learning.  This involved reading hundreds of reports, interviewing numerous people, and drawing on my experiences across the world over the last quarter of a century.  It made me realise how little I know, and how much still needs to be done.

However, in order to help others on this journey of discovery and learning, I thought it might be helpful to share a shortened version of the footnotes (34 sides) and a short summary bibliography (10 sides) that I included in that report.  Many of the links to the original literature or examples are included (please let me know if any are broken so that I can try to update them!).  Not least, I hope that this might reduce the flow of questions I receive from people beginning to get interested in the field, either for research or because they have a great idea that they would like to introduce in practice on the ground – most of whom have never actually read much before asking me the question!  These are but starting points on a lifetime of learning and discovery, but I hope that people may find them useful.

• References and links for understanding the use of technology in education, especially in deprived contexts
• A short bibliography of important literature on ICTs and education

I have previously posted summaries of some of the content of my UNICEF report elsewhere on my Blog as follows:

• Why we don’t really know very much about the influence of ICTs on learning and education
• Interesting practices in the use of ICTs for education
• The dark side of using ICTs in education

I must stress that these are very much my own views, and in no way represent the opinions of UNICEF or those with whom I have previosuly worked.  They are offered here, though, to get us all to ask some of the difficult questions about ways through which some of the poorest and most marginalised can benefit from the use of technology in education, if indeed that will ever truly be possible (at least in a relative sense).

ICTs, sustainability and development case studies: M-KOPA Solar

Earlier this year, I was privileged to work on a co-authored book project for the ITU.  This was published by the ITU as ICT-Centric Economic Growth, Innovation and Job Creation, and was launched at the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Argentina in October.  The chapter that I led was entitled ICTs, sustainability and development: critical elements, and provided a challenging account of ICTs and sustainability.

Each chapter was accompanied by a single case study – although I had argued strongly that there should be more than one case study for each chapter, so that a range of different examples and perspectives could be included.  I had worked with several colleagues to produce great examples that would exemplify some of the key arguments of the chapter, but sadly these were not published.

Hence, as a supplement to the book, I am including these now as blog posts.  This is the second, and focuses on the way through which M-KOPA is making sustainable energy available to poor people in eastern Africa.  Since this was first written almost a year ago, new data are available, but I hope that this will provide some insights into an important commercial initiative that is indeed using ICTs to contribute to sustainable development.

M-KOPA Solar: using ICTs to enable poor people and marginalised communities to access sustainable energy

M-KOPA Solar has developed a highly innovative solution for using ICTs to deliver on sustainable energy provision, especially for previously unserved poor people.  It is therefore an excellent example of the ways through which ICTs can indeed deliver on some of the critical challenges identified in this chapter at the interface between ICTs and the SDGs.  Above all, it indicates how new technologies can create novel and disruptive opportunities for those with entrepreneurial and innovative approaches to develop new business models that can indeed deliver valuable services to previously marginalised people.

M-KOPA Solar is a Kenyan solar energy company founded in 2011 by Nick Hughes, Chad Larson and Jesse Moore, and its mission is “to upgrade lives by making high-quality solutions affordable to everyone”.  Nick Hughes was previously responsible for creating the very successful M-PESA mobile money solution for Vodafone, where Moore had also worked.  As of July 2016, M-KOPA has connected 450,000 homes in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to solar power, with more than 500 new homes being added every day.

Three factors have been central to M-KOPA’s success: the ability of its founders to identify a viable and innovative business model; their identification of a real need for which people are willing to pay; and then their skills in creating an innovative cost effective solution.  At the heart of their model is the ability for people to use their mobile phones to pay a small amount each month through mobile money transfer to buy the equipment, and then to own it after a year’s usage.  Their 2016 basic model is the M-KOPA IV Solar Home System, which has an 8W solar panel, providing energy for 3 LED light bulbs, a portable rechargeable torch, a home charging USB with five standard connections, and a rechargeable radio.  In Kenya users pay a deposit of 2,999 KES (£22.45) and then 50 KES (£0.37) a day for a year, during which time there is a full warranty for the equipment.  Prices are similar in neighbouring Uganda and Tanzania.  The actual equipment is available through local dealers, and there is also a customer care team that supports customers, agents and retail partners.  A more expensive version of the model, the M-KOPA 400 also has a 16” digital television, which requires a deposit of 7,999 KES and a daily payment of 125 KES.

The company estimates that current customers will make projected savings of US$ 300 million over the next four year, and are enjoying 50 million hours of kerosene-free lighting per month.  This has important environmental ramifications by reducing harmful emissions and the risk of fire causing serious burns to people using kerosene.  They have also created some 2,500 jobs in East Africa, thereby contributing to the wider employment and economy of the region.  One of the most striking features of M-KOPA is that it has developed a business model that delivers on a real need, and does so in a cost-effective manner through the use of mobile money payments.  It estimates that more than three-quarters of its customers live on less than US$ 2 a day, and this is therefore an innovation that really delivers on the needs of some of the world’s poorest people.  Providing light extends the time people have both for social activities and also for productive education and information gathering, thereby potentially enabling many other SDGs to be achieved, including those related to education and health.  The use of radios puts them in touch with what is going on in the wider world, and their recharged phones enable them to communicate with others whenever they have connectivity.  The indirect contributions of M-KOPA thus go far beyond merely the provision of affordable light for poor people.

 

Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation’s Digital Broadcasting Switchover Forum, Arusha

Just under 200 people (including regulators, the private sector and civil society groups) have come together to discuss critical issues surrounding the switchover/transition from analogue to digital broadcasting at the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation’s Digital Broadcasting Switchover Forum (#DBS2014) taking place from 11th-14th February 2014.  We were delighted that Hon Dr. Fenella E. Mukangara (Minister of Information, Youth, Culture and Sport of the United Republic of Tanzania) was able to open the Forum this morning.

In my welcome address, as well as thanking the government of Tanzania and especially the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority, I took the opportunity to highlight four particular issues:

• The importance for Africa –  digital transition/switchover has considerable potential, especially in terms of the diversity of services it can offer, as well as the digital dividend it will provide through the reallocation of spectra.  However, it must be used to  serve the interests of all of Africa’s people, especially the marginalised, such as people with disabilities and those living in sparsely populated rural areas.
• The potential for Africa – people living in Africa should not be only learning from the experiences of other parts of the world in terms of good practices (part of the purpose of this Forum), but should also be developing innovative solutions for the context of Africa, that can in their turn be used in other international contexts. We must build on the richness of African innovation.
• The challenges facing Africa – some of the many challenges facing Africa include:
  • it is not easy to deliver transition/switchover solutions at a cost that everyone can afford;
  • we must not fall into the trap of being forced to deliver to a time-schedule that may not  be realistically feasible;
  • ensuring indeed that the poor and marginalised – those who often currently benefit most from analogue radio and television – can indeed still afford to do access digital broadcasting;
  • ensuring quality standards of equipment such as set top boxes; and
  • ensuring that appropriate information is shared with everyone in a diversity of languages.
• My own experiences of switchover – I recall my parents being really concerned about switchover in England, not fully understanding what was involved, but they were grateful that a free service for elderly people was provided to put in a set top box and help them to use it effectively.  My mother can now benefit from all that digital TV can offer! This particularly reminds that it is not so much the technology that is the challenge, but rather that the most difficult thing to get right is how to ensure that everyone, and particularly the elderly, the spatially marginalised and those with disabilities, can really benefit from digital switchover.

Image from session on the future of African broadcasting

Barriers to learning through mobile devices in Africa

I had the pleasure of participating in the Planet Earth Institute‘s discussion on mobile technology for education in Africa, held on 5th June at the House of Lords.  It’s interesting how such occasions, where one has to speak on the spur of the moment about important issues, provide a spur for innovative and creative thinking.  The mix of the people, and the sharing of ideas really can generate new thoughts.

The main point that I tried to convey throughout the event was that it is the learning that matters.  Far too many initiatives are technology-led, rather than needs driven.  Hence, mobile devices are absolutely not the solution for African education, although they can indeed help to deliver certain new kinds of learning opportunity.  After all, as I mentioned, many years ago I engaged in mobile learning when I read books on long car journeys!

At one point, we were asked to think about the barriers preventing the spread of m-learning in Africa, and I want here to expand a little on the five ‘Cs’ that I came up with.  To be sure, they are a little contrived, but I do think that if these barriers can be overcome, then some real progress can be made:

1. Connectivity.  To me, this is one of the biggest challenges for any ‘mobile-‘ initiative.  Certainly people have developed simple SMS based learning solutions, and games that can function on basic phones and devices, but the difference between these and what can be done on smart-phones is huge.  Smart-phones enable engagement with the wealth of resources on the web, and offer a completely different learning experience for people of all ages and backgrounds – if they can afford them (Cost!).  So, providing mobile broadband solutions that everyone can access seems to me to be the most important challenge facing those who want to deliver high quality learning experiences through mobile devices.  Hence, initiatives such as the work of the Broadband Commission and the Alliance for the Affordable Internet are of particular importance – but we must turn the rhetoric into reality!  That’s one reason why the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation has placed such emphasis on the importance of mobile broadband in its current strategic plan.
2. Charging (electricity).  By this, I mean the importance of ensuring that it is easy and cheap to charge mobile devices everywhere.  Electricity is absolutely essential for all digital technologies, and is all too often insufficiently considered when developing such initiatives.  For those off the main grid, it is essential that simple, cheap and accessible means of recharging devices are developed and shared widely across the continent. Likewise, developing batteries that last much longer than at present is also an important consideration.  My experiences in 2011 in rural China have given me lots of ideas about how this can be achieved – and where there are supplies of running water I have been very impressed with some of the micro-hydro initiatives that have been developed in south-east Asia.
3. Communication rather than content.  I have often written about this, but it seems to me that the really innovative thing about mobile-phones is that they enable entirely new ways of communication.  Yet, far too often they are seen primarily as devices to supply/enable content consumption.  I believe passionately that learning should not simply be about learning and regurgitating – yet our education systems seem to focus more and more on encouraging people to take on board accepted ‘truths’.  Learning, should be about thinking for oneself, and coming up with new solutions to old problems!  This is often best achieved through communication and interaction – the debating of ideas – and not just through digesting existing knowledge.  Far too often, digital technologies associated with learning have reinforced regurgitation, rather than encouraging new ways of thinking.  Hence, I want to shift the balance towards using devices for communication – they are, after all, mobile phones – rather than just for content consumption.
4. Calculating (effective monitoring and evaluation).  This is a bit contrived, but I could not think of a better ‘C’ for ‘monitoring and evaluation’!  By ‘calculating’, I mean that we need to calculate the impact of our initiatives on learning achievements.  Although many people talk about the importance of monitoring and evaluation, there is far too little good and effective work in this area.  If we do not understand the real effects, including the unintended consequences, of the use of mobile devices in learning, then we cannot really determine how best to implement initiatives at scale.  We must also be much more open about our failures so that others can learn from our experiences.  Hence, the lack of quality monitoring and evaluation is a real barrier.
5. Commitment.  This is hugely important.  There must be real commitment to using mobile devices effectively for learning, rather than simply using content provision as a means of selling more mobile devices!  I fear that all too often, ‘m-‘ initiatives are driven  too much by commercial interests, often in alliance with those who see ICTs as some kind of silver bullet that will transform society for the better, rather than by the real health, learning or governance needs and aspirations of people.

At the end, I was asked by Lord Boateng to sum up my thoughts about barriers, and simply said that the biggest barrier of all was our imagination!  If we really focus on the learning, and develop innovative solutions whereby everyone can use mobile devices to enhance their lives, wherever they are living, then, and only then, can we talk about real m-development.

Speech at the launch of the British Academy’s Working with Africa Report

Following Professor Graham Furniss’s opening remarks, I was invited to speak in my role as Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK at the launch of the British Academy’s new report entitled “Working with Africa: Human and Social Science Research in Action” on 3rd March 2011.  My  short speech outlined the importance of the British Academy’s funding programmes, the difficulties facing African universities and academics, and the ways through which the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) is seeking to support them in partnership with like-minded organisations.

I began by thanking  Graham Furniss, not only for his work at the British Academy in driving forward many of their African initiatives, but also for joining the CSC as a new Commissioner.  I then emphasised the quality of the research featured in Working with Africa and thoroughly recommended it to the audience as a good read.  I highlighted in particular the value of the British Academy’s past small grants programme, noting that small amounts of funding can go a long way in supporting outstanding and innovative research in the humanities and social sciences.  This is particularly true for UK researchers near the beginnings of their careers, but it is also very important for establishing networks and partnerships as exemplified by the Academy’s support for research in Africa.

Despite such funding, I emphasised the many challenges faced by African researchers, and the very difficult financial, infrastructural and capacity issues that African universities had to overcome.  I argued  that years of global emphasis on primary education in Africa had left the higher education sector in a very diminished state.  I also made the point that whilst much international emphasis is placed on support for scientific research designed to reduce poverty, research in the social sciences and humanities is at least as, if not more, important.  Such research helps develop understandings of critical issues concerned with governance, social equality, the law, cultural diversity and economic change.

Finally, I highlighted the critical role of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in supporting research and professional development in Africa.  The last decade has seen a transformation in the Commission’s activities, so that far from being a traditional awarder of basic scholarships, it now provides seven different kinds of award, including distance-based studentships as well as professional and academic fellowships.  Moreover, evidence from the CSC’s monitoring and evaluation programme clearly indicates the value that these have in terms of development impact.  The Commission is delighted that it continues to have the strong support of the UK government, and that DFID will be providing some £20 million a year towards its programme of awards in developing countries in the 2011-15 period.  To be effective, though, it is important that we work together in partnership.  I concluded by reiterating my thanks to the British Academy and also emphasising the need for the Commission and the Academy to work closely together in the future to achieve our shared objectives of enhancing scholarship in African universities.