New York Times foreign editor Roger Cohen has an interesting op-ed column this week on Africa. An excerpt:

In my lifetime, conditions have grown immeasurably better, freer and more prosperous for a majority of humanity, yet hand-wringing about the miserable remains the reflex mode for most coverage of planet earth.

Nowhere more so than in Africa, from which I’d just returned when the e-mail landed. During a short stay in Ghana, which will hold free elections in December, Vodafone had bought a majority stake in Ghana Telecom for $900 million (entering a fiercely competitive mobile-phone market) and I’d heard much about 6 percent annual growth, spreading broadband and new high-end cacao ventures.

Accra, the capital, is buzzing. Russian hedge funds are investing. New construction abounds. Technology enables people in the capital to text money transfers via mobile phone to poor relatives in the bush.

I don’t think that picture is exceptional these days for Africa, where growth averaged close to 6 percent last year and I sense a fundamental change in attitudes to governance, trade, the private sector and political accountability. Sure, corruption is still rampant; Omar Bongo has been ruling Gabon for 41 years; Robert Mugabe wants to emulate Bongo; and a commodity boom has helped the numbers. But if averages meant anything, Africa would be a good-news story these days.

Not least, because Africans care about democracy. They know tyranny too well to be tempted by the so-called new authoritarianism.

For a second year, the 92nd Street Y is presenting the series, Africa: Conversations with a Continent. Participants are introduced to African art and culture and the contemporary realities of life in North America and Africa. Each session, devoted to a specific country, fosters a dialogue among audience members, scholars, artists, policymakers and Africans living in the United States.