I hadn’t been to a Rose Cafe event last semester but I enjoyed attending one this past week, so I think I’ll likely be attending more of them. The guest was one of our Cornell professors who had notable experience working with and within governments of African countries. Although I have very little knowledge of the topics he spoke about, I found the mini-lecture and following discussion intellectually accessible.

Among the various topics Professor van de Walle presented, what I found most interesting was the corruption that is apparently rampant throughout the governments of African countries. Although I’m sure it can be said that corruption is present to various degrees in likely every national government, the case of certain African governments was somewhat unique in that corruption is blatant. So much so, that it seemed as though corruption was just an acceptable aspect of governing (from what I understood, this may be wrong) that faced no opposition, whether from officials or citizens. However, as I think about it now, I wonder how different this kind of government corruption is from that of the US. Perhaps because there’s structure to the corruption, and a pseudo-legality about certain aspects of it due to loopholes or suspicious lawmaking, it seems less severe.