Why there is no list yet.
A hundred names is the easiest thing this institution could produce and the fastest way to become indistinguishable from everybody else. So the number has to be earned before it is printed.
We could publish a list of a hundred Africans within a month. So could you. It is not a difficult exercise, and that is exactly the problem with it.
How those lists are actually made
Somebody assembles names from the people they already know, the people their colleagues already know, and the people who appeared in last year's version of a similar list somewhere else. A few nominations arrive from the public and are mostly ignored, because the sender is usually the nominee. The names are sorted into categories so that every region and sector appears to be represented. A short paragraph is written about each one, drawn from a website and a previous interview.
The result is published, shared widely, and repeated back by the people on it. Everybody is pleased. Nothing has been learned by anybody.
Influence is not the same as contribution, and neither of them is the same as having done something that will still matter in twenty years.
What is wrong with it, precisely
Three things, and they compound.
It measures visibility. The people who appear are the people who were already visible to whoever compiled it. That is a measure of proximity to media and capital, and in most African countries those two things are concentrated in about four cities.
It cannot be checked. There is no method to inspect, no criteria to argue with, and no evidence attached to any entry. You are asked to accept the judgement because of who is making it. That is the opposite of how anything credible works.
It teaches nothing. A hundred names and a hundred paragraphs leave a reader knowing that these people are considered important. They do not leave anybody knowing what those people did, how, at what cost, or what somebody else could learn from it. The list is the end of the enquiry rather than the beginning of one.
What we are doing instead
Recognition is a consequence of this institution's work. It is not its purpose, and it is not the first thing we will produce.
The order matters. First find people through work that can be examined rather than through a network. Document them properly, in their own words, with the material kept. Study enough lives that patterns become visible instead of anecdotes. Publish the method, the criteria and the evidence standard so that anybody can argue with it. Then, and only then, is a number worth printing.
A first group of twelve to twenty people, researched deeply and documented completely, is worth more to this continent than a hundred thin entries. It is also considerably harder, which is the point.
What would have to be true first
Before #PeopleMakingHistory 100 exists, the following have to be settled and public:
- A definition. What "making history" means here, written tightly enough that it excludes people, which is the only test of whether a definition is doing any work.
- Criteria. What is being assessed, and what is deliberately not, such as wealth, office and follower count.
- An evidence standard. What counts as proof of a contribution, and what is only a claim about one.
- An independent selection structure. People who can say no to the founder, with conflict of interest rules that are published rather than assumed.
- Editorial independence in writing. Funders support the institution. Funders do not decide who enters the record. This has to exist as a rule before it is tested, not after.
- Geographic and sector honesty. Not a quota, but a stated method for looking outside the four cities where this work is usually done.
The uncomfortable consequence
Doing it in this order costs us the thing that would grow an audience fastest. A list travels. A method does not.
We think that is the correct trade. An institution that becomes known for a list has to produce the list every year, and the second one is always weaker than the first. An institution that becomes known for how it works can eventually publish a list that people trust, and that trust is the only asset in this field that compounds.
There is also a simpler reason. If we start by deciding who Africa's most important people are, we have assumed we already know. The entire argument of this institution is that nobody does, and that finding out requires work rather than opinion.
The method has to earn the recognition. Until it has, a number is just a number.