The Foreign Service Journal, May 2004

M A Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 35 F O C U S O N A F R I C A T HE A NATOMY OF C HANGE IN A FRICA I N SMALL EVENTS AND EXPERIMENTS ACROSS THE CONTINENT , THE VOICE AND STRUCTURE OF CIVIL SOCIETY ARE STEADILY EMERGING . B Y C HARLES C OBB J R . o to the grass roots to get the best measure of Africa’s “successes,” for the most mean- ingful developments in Africa are often small and practically invisible. Rarely are they considered “newsworthy” by the Western media. Indeed, even highly visible, praiseworthy efforts that are continental in vision, like NEPAD — the New Economic Program for African Development — or the awkward beginning steps being taken within the African Union toward what seems like a complete rearrangement of government-to-government relations on the continent, have their roots in steady, slow-moving currents that have been flowing from village to village and across national borders over the G David Dean