AFRICA: THE ECONOMIC SLAVE

Africa: The Economic Slave

31 March 2012, 22:29

Each person I have spoken to concerning the state of our continents economies seems to allude to the one thing, bad governance.
But let’s critically look at the countries in Africa, not everyone is doing badly, there are some countries that are in actual fact far from the poverty line.
The fairly knowledgeable individual will most definitely indicate to those countries natural resources but what about DRC, Senegal, Guinea, Angola and Nigeria. Undeniably leadership is one and I repeat one key element. When you study the history books closely you come to see that slavery was not orchestrated by one country, upon a closer look there were other nations apart from the United Kingdom and United States of America.
These nations include France, Germany, Italy, Austria and several other European countries that played a “joint” part in enslaving us. My point is not to open freshly healed wounds but it’s to express the collaboration of nations to achieve a single goal, something that we have failed to see and emulate. When you look at individuals like Bob Mugabe (one of my favourites) Juju (all passion and no direction) Gaddafi (A brilliant mind turned savage) and few others we don’t have time for, you notice there is a shared vision of bringing Africa to point where we are no longer dependant on any one (not just the west).
The sad part of this story is the pathetic execution of this economic liberation vision that has not only humiliated the parties involved but has also taken us several paces back due to the fear that has been instilled in those that have tried to achieve this on their own, which is nothing short of insulting.
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince people he doesn’t exist and in this case the notion that keeping African countries dependant on the west so that they can plunder our resources is just a conspiracy theory for people with an over active imagination is the very tool that keeps us blinded.
Nothing in this world happens by coincidence nor by chance, the one thing humans have in common is the desire to foresee the future and those that manipulate it can control the world, hence in a time when we have machines that can predict the weather months in advance, an element that is completely independent of manipulation, I don’t think matters of economic dominance can be left to chance, I sincerely hope you are not that naïve.
If we are to even consider an uprising worthy of a fight for economic freedom or just to open negotiations with the “imperialist” governments we need to cross a lot of things off our primary needs, water for one, hunger, education the list of things is not unachievable individually but can be done quickly as a unit. Am not one to preach Africa should becoming one country (at least not yet) what I am saying is no man is an island and 52 now 53 sets of hands can achieve a lot in short period of time.
What I find ridiculous is we are arguing yellow books when the last yellow fever outbreak in the USA was in 1905. Even as am writing this I find we shouldn’t even bother talking about economic freedom when we cannot facilitate cross border trade, for example in 2007 Kenya alone imported 30,000 vehicles from Japan why? when South Africa manufactures cars.
Let’s take page from our Asian counter parts, most of the countries succeeding right now generally have the same economic structure, problems and even the same governance issues as Africa but their ability get past their minor differences and learn from each and develop as a region has accelerated their development tenfold, even mortal enemies like Japan and china are able to sit at one table and negotiate trade agreements. Our fore fathers would weep at the sight of our continents state, we bathe in pride and arrogance with no hesitation to fling useless insults at each other.
More than once we were able to put heads together to rid ourselves of slavery and again to be free of colonialism and apartheid, why can’t we unite for the betterment of our future? As the famous strategy applied by the roman army states “you are only as weak as the person standing next to you”, the wealth one country enjoys is short lived due the neighbour’s short fall, need an example? Look at South Africa and Zimbabwe’s relationship. There are many more cases like that on this beloved land. We have brilliant minds on this continent that are being wasted, let’s get a few those people and see what they can come up with TOGETHER, I promise we won’t be disappointed.