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
— Le cobalt ou la conscience
When transparency threatens those it should protect, truth becomes a dangerous luxury.
Archives (29 episodes)
— Rester à Dakar ou rentrer construire au village
When your Dakarois rent costs more than the house your mother will ever have.
— Développer d'abord ou démocratiser d'abord ?
What if building a prosperous country requires temporarily sacrificing the freedoms you love?
— Your skin or career: no choice
When your own color becomes the obstacle between you and your professional dream.
— Ton cobalt, leurs batteries, quel camp choisis-tu ?
When the transparency you demand threatens your community's only use.
— Rester à Dakar ou rentrer construire au village
When your Dakarian rent devours the money your village expects every month.
— Développer d'abord ou démocratiser d'abord ?
What if freedom and progress could not move the same way?
– Le confiage
Tu as un fils de neuf ans, brillant, curieux, plein de vie. Ton frère aîné — sans enfants, après des années de mariage — te demande, conformément à la tradition, de lui confier ton fils pour l’élever. C’est une pratique ancestrale dans ta famille : le premier neveu revient à l’aîné sans descendance. Tu as ...
– La start-up ou le fonctionnariat
Tu as 28 ans, diplômé en informatique de l’ESP de Dakar. Tu as passé trois ans à développer une application mobile de paiement des loyers et de gestion immobilière adaptée au marché africain. Le produit est prêt. Tu as déjà dix bailleurs intéressés. Un accélérateur tech à Abidjan t’offre un accompagnement de six mois. Mais ...
– 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.
Receive the dilemma of Monday and his analysis of Wednesday
Subscribe not to miss any episode.
Subscribe for free
