An African dilemma every Monday.
Analysis 48 hours later.
The Baobab of choices is an editorial series of moral, political, social and existential reflection. Every week, BAOBIZZ publishes an African dilemma without a perfect solution : a limited situation, a difficult arbitration, a fracture of consciousness. Then, forty-eight hours later, comes the analysis.
Here, it is not a question of choosing between good and evil, but of facing situations or each option has a lossmoral cost, renunciation or betrayal.
Monday: A new dilemma.
Wednesday: the corresponding analysis.
The current dilemma
— Soigner ou légiférer : le serment impossible
When saving lives today prevents you from protecting millions tomorrow, what do you choose?
Archives (46 episodes)
— Ta peau ou ta place : le prix du pouvoir
When climbing the social ladder you have to erase the color of your own story.
— Coder pour eux ou cultiver sans eux
The algorithm promises abundance, but who really reaps the fruits of your intelligence?
— Stay in Dakar or go back to build in the village
You left your village for Dakar, but Dakar crushes you without freeing yourself.
— Soigner ou armer : le budget impossible
When protecting your people forces you to choose between their bodies and borders.
— Your skin or career: no choice
When your own color becomes the obstacle between you and your professional dream.
— cobalt or school: choose your future
When the wealth of the basement finances the misery of those who extract it.
— Stay or return: the tearing of the diaspora
You send money every month, but your mother dies without recognizing your face.
— Develop quickly or democratize first?
What if the modernization of your country required temporarily to sacrifice the voice of your people?
— Cream or mirror
Your skin is a battlefield, and nobody asked you for your opinion.
— Your cobalt, their batteries, your conscience
When the transparency you defend threatens the people you wanted to protect.
— Staying in Dakar or returning to build in the village
When the love of the native country comes at the price of your own survival.
— Develop quickly or democratize first?
What if freedom and progress could not move the same way?
— Cream or mirror
Your skin is a battlefield: who chooses the color of your freedom?
— Cobalt or consciousness
When transparency threatens those it should protect, truth becomes a dangerous luxury.
— Stay in Dakar or go back to build in the village
When your Dakarois rent costs more than the house your mother will ever have.
— Develop first or democratize first?
What if building a prosperous country requires temporarily sacrificing the freedoms you love?
– Pardonner ou poursuivre
Il y a quinze ans, un homme a tué ton père lors des violences post-électorales. Il n’a jamais été jugé. Aujourd’hui, il est devenu un notable respecté dans ton village — il a fait le pèlerinage, il finance des puits, ses enfants sont à l’école avec les tiens. Les anciens du village te demandent de ...
– L'investisseur ou l'autonomie
Tu diriges depuis trois ans une coopérative agricole au Mali. 80 agriculteurs. Des résultats corrects. Une réputation solide. Un investisseur étranger — fonds d’impact basé à Paris — t’offre 500 millions de FCFA. En échange : 60% des parts, les décisions stratégiques lui reviennent, et une clause de rachat total dans cinq ans si les ...
– Rembourser ou reconstruire
Il y a deux ans, quand tu montais ton petit restaurant à Cotonou, ton ami d’enfance Kofi t’a prêté 400 000 FCFA sans intérêt, sur parole. La pandémie a tout balayé. Tu as fermé. Tu as tout perdu sauf ta famille et ta dignité. Aujourd’hui, tu recommences. Tu as trouvé un associé, un local moins ...
– Vote against his conscience
Les élections législatives approchent dans ton pays. Deux candidats principaux s’affrontent dans ta circonscription. Le premier est du parti de ton ethnie et de ta région. Il a soutenu ta communauté lors des inondations, aidé des familles dans le besoin, financé la mosquée du quartier. Mais tout le monde sait qu’il est incompétent, corrompu, et ...
– The school or the Koran
Your son Ibrahima is twelve years old. He's first in his class. His teacher says he has the potential to integrate the region's high school of excellence. But your father — his grandfather, patriarch of the family — demands that Ibrahima join the Touba daara for three years of exclusive Koranic teaching. It's a tradition in ...
– The sea or factory
You're a fisherman in Mbour. For three generations, your family has lived from the sea. But for the past five years, industrial trawlers — flying foreign flags, operating under opaque licences — emptied the seabed. Catches fell by 70%. Your canoe often returns empty. Your kids eat less. A congressman is contacting you. ...
– Organ donation
Your only 19-year-old son was the victim of a road accident. Doctors call you, he's in a state of brain death. He's not coming back. But his organs — kidney, liver, cornea — are healthy and can save four lives, including two children who have been waiting for years. Doctors...
– Confiscation
You have a nine-year-old son, brilliant, curious, full of life. Your older brother — Without children, after years of marriage — Ask you, according to tradition, to entrust your son to him to raise him. It is an ancestral practice in your family: the first nephew returns to the eldest without descendants. You...
– Start-up or functionalization
You're 28, a graduate in computer science from Dakar's ESP. You spent three years developing a mobile rental payment and property management app adapted to the African market. The product is ready. You already have ten donors interested. A tech accelerator in Abidjan offers a six month accompaniment. But...
– Staff member integrates
You've been working at the Treasury for eight years. You're known for your integrity. One day, when you cross payment files, you discover something irrefungible: your director general diverts the equivalent of twenty million CFA francs each month for school canteens in three regions. Thousands of children eat less, or don't...
– The scholarship or family
You're 27. After years of hard work, you get a doctoral scholarship from the University of Montreal, in your preferred discipline — development economy. It's the opportunity of your life. A full four-year scholarship with an international employment perspective on return. But the day before you left, your mother is hospitalized. ...
– The dam or villages
You are a traditional leader of a territory of three thousand souls in Guinea. The state, supported by an international consortium, wants to build a hydroelectric dam that will electrify four regions and supply two million people with drinking water. But the project involves the submersion of four ancestral villages — of which yours — and the displacement of ...
– The healer or doctor
Your seven-year-old son is seriously ill. Regional hospital doctors diagnosed acute appendicitis with the risk of peritonitis. They recommend surgery within 12 hours. The operating risk is real, the anesthesia is uncertain, and the hospital lacks equipment. But your wife — and all his family — I don't think so. Your...
– The cursed legacy
Your father just died. He was respected in the neighborhood, generous with neighbours, pillar of the mosque. But by settling his estate, you discover the real origin of his fortune: the embezzlement of public funds carried out over twenty years within a national government. Millions stolen from the state. To hospitals without...
– The embarrassing witness
You're a taxi driver in Dakar. One night in December, around midnight, you see a scene that ices your blood: the son of the Minister of the Interior fatally strikes a travelling salesman in an alley of the Medina. You're the only witness. The victim died instantly. The police...
— Numbers or earth, you have to choose
When financial transparency threatens those it should protect, the truth becomes a slow poison.
— Staying in Dakar or returning to build in the village
Your salary feeds your family, but your absence slowly devours it from within.
— The post that can save or destroy
When your truth can trigger a fire that no one can extinguish.
— Your skin or career: no choice
When successful professionally demands betraying the skin in which you were born.
— Numbers or silence: accountant in grey zone
When your own accounting records become the weapon that can free or destroy your country.
— Staying in Dakar or returning to build in the village
Your salary feeds your family, but your absence slowly devours it from within.
The Baobab of Choice #9 — The tweet or the silence: talking under the storm
When truth threatens order and silence protects injustice, who are you really?
The Baobab of Choice #8 — Your skin or career: no choice
When successful professionally demands betraying the color you've always worn.
The Baobab of Choices #7 — Ore or memory
When the richness of the basement threatens to engulf the truth of the ancestors.
The Baobab of Choices #6 — Stay in Dakar or go back to save yours
You left Senegal to survive, but it's your absence that kills slowly.
The Baobab of Choice #5 — Tweet or silence: talking kills too
When denouncing a regime on networks can save or condemn an entire movement.
The Baobab of Choices #4 — Cream or mirror: choose your face
When protecting your daughter makes you betray your own skin.
The Baobab of Choices #3 — Accounting records or open mine
When transparency threatens employment, does truth still have a bearable price?
Baobab des Choix #2 — Your sister or your city: who are you saving?
When to protect your own people, you're forced to abandon those who look like you.
The Baobab of Choice #1 — The Colonel or the Constitution: who will save the country?
When the street applauds the boots, democracy asks you to choose your side.
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