A SUMMIT of world intelligentsia on the African socio-economic and cultural crises has advocated a blend of western values with indigenous political institutions to tackle the challenges posed by globalisation. The scholars and experts in development studies, who converged in Lagos for five days to proffer solutions to the continent's multifarious problems, unanimously called for a systematic interaction between Africa's traditional institutions and enviable western practices to evolve a social and economic blueprint capable of rebuilding its ruins. The discussants focused on the theme "Under Siege: Four African Cities - Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa and Lagos". They were drawn from civil society groups, writers' bodies, urban development authorities, government agencies, universities and the arts. In a key note address, Nigerian-born Artistic Director of Documenta II, Okwui Enwezor said "Under Siege: Four African Cities" is a series of public dialogue in six cities of Europe, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa to generate materials for Documenta II which opens in Kassel, Germany on June 8, 2002. He said: "By inaugurating this process of exchange between the (art) exhibition based in Kassel and other locations outside Europe, it is our intention and commitment to embark on an extensive relocation of discourses of globalisation and culture to the specificity of sites within which particular questions and issues are inscribed. "Our hope is to dramatise and demonstrate on an immediate level the interdependence of the global paradigm, by revealing how local specificities create new orientations in the global discourse". In his projection, the current trend of globalisation, piloted mainly by information technology advancement is uni-directional by favouring mostly, ideas from a section of the globe. But the truth, he said, is that globalisation is not strange or new. The only factor is that it is time the flow of globalisation aggregated the yearnings and views from other ends of the world, apart from the West," he remarked. Prof. Carolo Rakodi of the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom (UK) and Rakodi Sheila Bunwaree, Director of Research and Documentation of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), admitted that globalisation is not new to Africa. The only snag, according to them, is that the system of social administration and national politics on the continent is yet to blend with Western values imposed by colonialism. Rakodi, who refuted the hypothesis that African urban cities are characterised by choas and crises, however, observed that the re-occurrence of turbulence emerging from land distribution and absence of transparency in political changes make African cities to be under perpetual flux. She, therefore, recommended a systematic interaction between evolving political and land organisations and "practices in the formal, traditional and informal sectors to develop social rules that can reposition the continent". Using Freetown and Kinshasa as case studies, Prof. Ibrahim Abdullah of University of Western Cape, South Africa and N'Landu blamed colonial legacies and the emerging youth culture and celebration of "wealth gotten from and through any means" as the cause of Africa distorted growth. On the other hand, Abdul Mahiq Simeon of New School University, New York, USA, visualised globalisation as a "ghost" infesting horrendous mysteries on African cities. Citing the January 27, 2002 explosions in Lagos as an example, the New York-based economic development scholar, noted that for Africa to come out of the woods, it must look beyond the "ghosts" of Western values represented by globalisation, and fashion out its indigenous socio-economic policies. The conference, which is the fourth in a series of discourse hosted in major cities across the world by organisers of Documenta II, an art festival, drew 17 speakers, who presented papers and slide demonstrations at the event. Other speakers were Prof. John Godwin of the University of Lagos, Prof. Rem Koolhaas of Harvard University, Lagos-based architect Koku Konu; Maxine Reitzes, Research Director on the Democracy and Governance Prorgamme at the Human Sciences Research Council, Johannesburg, South Africa; Samba Mukoko, Adjunct Co-ordinator of the Ministry of Planning and Reconstitution, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (CDR) and Filip de Bocck (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium). There were also Mayamba Theirry N'Landu (University of Kinshasa, CDR) Lindsay Bremner (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg), Alfred Babatunde Zack-Williams (University of Central Lanchasite, Preston, UK) Dr. Babatunde Awonsi and Tade Aina of the Ford Foundation, West Africa and Kenya, respectively.