Africa still failing Africans

Image Credit: hdwallpapers-3d.com

For a continent that is deemed to be rich in natural resources which include diamond, gold, chromium, cobalt and manganese to name a few, Africa is a home to over one billion of people who are only seen but not heard. The richness of the Mother continent are enjoyed by few Africans whilst the lion’s share is being devoured by aliens. Both the continent’s governments and multinational firms engaged in fraudulent schemes have plundered Africa of its resources. According to the African Union’s report, the African continent loses more than $50 billion every year in illicit financial outflows.

Puppet and corrupt Leadership

Most of African leaders are totally compromised, non-progressive, lack vision and mostly selfish people. African leadership has been turned into cult – the natives have fallen into the deadly trap of hero worshiping their leaders. They have lost the ability to evaluate their leaders’ capabilities and abilities – they have simply derailed from the Africa First vision. True visionaries have either long gone or have simply gone silent and in their place stand storytellers who are feeding the people with lies after lies.

Most of the continent’s leaders’ systems fall under the following:

• Despotism: The so-called leaders who are planted by outside power in order for them to take control of the states. These puppets later appoint their friends to take over and continue the vicious corruption cycle
• opportunistic looking for ways to maximise their personal gains who rule with absolute power
• those who have turned a blind eye to the cry of their own people
• and the rare types who have made it their life mission to be servants to their people – these are what we call conscious leaders who live their lives in pursuit of the truth

On daily basis, they make poor decisions that only enrich the already rich few and their families and friends. They make fatal choices that leave more and more Africans enslaved to poverty and diseases. The tendency of African leaders to shy away from the truth in important issues just goes to highlight the consequences of who got into power through force whether directly or indirectly, those who have the sense of entitlement to power. These so-called leaders arrogate leadership roles to themselves. Sigmund Freud summers up these narcissistic leaders’ behaviour in a precise way, "because of early frustrations, they arrogate to themselves the right to demand lifelong reimbursement from fate."

African leaders need to go back in time and remind themselves the important role of a community leader. They need to awaken their memories because it seems as if they have forgotten that the whole reason for them to be holding the office is that they should be a vase in which ideas are dropped by the subordinates and then selected in accordance to their merit and relevancy to the need of their people.

A great deal of the continent’s leaders are good speakers but fail dismally when it comes to delivering their promises; Africans are at a point where they need to know that speeches alone, no matter how genuine they are, have never and will never build the much needed infrastructures or eradicate poverty. Leaders who are African in the outside but non-African in the inside need to be done away with. To further explain the above point, does a leader who knows the pain and suffering of their people but still goes ahead to steal the only opportunity their followers had to a better chance of better lives including education, access to the much needed medication or putting food in their table be pro-African? No, they are simply African by their heritage and physical appearance but deep inside there is nothing African about them. The raison d'être of every African (and African American) is and always have been ‘Africa for All Africans and its Descendants’.

Many questions have arisen from the system of African leadership – many questions without answers;

• Why is the blind leading the sighted?
• Why is the child teaching the elderly wisdom?
• Why submit yourself to self-bondage, why tie your neck with a chain and still expect to survive?

In short, these kinds of leaders are corroding the continent’s development by shrinking the hope of many natives.

Poor Industrialism

It is true that Africa is a rich land as it produces tons and tons of raw materials but most of the benefits do not reach the man in the street because the resources are exported to developed countries that in turn transform them to usable goods and then sell them back to Africa at exorbitant prices. Foreign organisations, individual aliens and their naïve African yes-men own hundreds and hundreds of mines all over Africa whilst the majority of natives work every day to enrich this minority. This goes to show that the Motherland loses twice; first is the day-light robbery committed by having the riches taken from the continent and secondly these nations control their markets by selling the end goods back to Africa at prices that they have set without consulting African stakeholders.

It is high time that the issue of total ownership of the land’s resources is re-addressed.

This year, 2015, the United Nations will be celebrating the 26th Africa Industrialisation Day but what is to the name? How industrialised is the continent? And how much that have been industrialised belongs to its people? Where is the evidence of industrialisation in Africa? Although it is not a public holiday, Africa Industrialisation Day is commemorated globally on the 20th of November every year since its inception in 1990 during the 25th Ordinary Session Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and then by UN General Assembly. Every year, almost all African leaders and international stakeholders come together to evaluate the African industrialization progression.

Most African countries have no industrial development policies put in place in order to advance their industries. Little or no form of actions have been taken to come up with ways to identify factors that limit industrialisation or initiate systems to mitigate the already identified constraints.

Lack of Foreign Investment

Civil wars, political instability, acts of terrorism, outbreak of fatal infectious diseases and religious conflicts have not really painted Africa as a diamond that it is. What they have achieved is chasing away many authentic potential investors and this has made it hard for Africa to develop as most of its countries either remained stagnated or getting poorer.

Peace uncertainty in most countries has made it hard for private investor to invest in the continent’s economy including the manufacturing industry.

As much as conflicts may be blamed for little private investment in African industrialisation or lack thereof, the questions still remain, ‘What are African nations doing about it? What economic development reforms and investors’ incentives have the nations put on the table in order to attract more investors?’

The 20th and 21st centuries has seen Committee for Development Policy (CDP) of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) declaring most of African countries as developing countries moving them from being least developed countries (LDC). This caused many governments and not-for-profit organisations that were hooked on the Western aid to panic as they had been used to the hand out system and mostly had a dependency mentality and a sense of entitlement to many donations they received from these donors. This decision has benefited most of it ‘victims’ as it allowed them to stand on their feet and reinvest in themselves in order to survive. Unfortunately the benefit comes with a big but; the bigger piece of the pie has gone to the donors as it has benefited them the most. Most private firms donors reprioritized their aiding agendas – they halted most of their industrial development aid and focused on their line of business environment leading to inadequately and ineffectively restricted investments thus from the industrial development view. This has opened the door for many predatory organisations.

African nations should come together as a continent:

• Create its own innovators and inventors
• Craft a ‘Made in Africa’ brand that embraces and represents all the different Africans cultures. How about we start to support African firms that make Pan-African clothing apparels (prêt-à-porte or haute couture, your choice)?
• Implement and promote industrial development and structural policies that increase industrial exports
• All African nations to unite and aggressively enter the manufacturing industry and global market as one and form distribution power to support each other. Southern African Customs Union (SACU) is a customs union that was established on a great vision; to support the free interchange of goods between Member States. African countries can commit to a custom union which each member state is awarded to trade with what it is capable of supplying with the aid of others.
• Take ownership of its mining rights and detect how the resources benefit all native Africans.
• Take ownership and control of the Motherland – Africa for native Africans vision

• Take ownership and control of the Motherland – Africa for native Africans vision