Which way forward for Africa?

Just from watching the goings on at the Pan Africa Media Conference today and some of the media coverage that the sponsoring media house is giving it I’m left with questions, hope, expectations and even frustrations.

Is this conference going to be all talk? Just another widely publicised event that has no meat or achieves nothing. One of those events that leaves everyone saying “well that was great fun” but with no lasting outcomes? I sincerely hope not. I truly believe that if the participants are committed this could actually lead to something of a turning point moment for Africa.

The thing is, I listened to our so-called visionary leaders make great speeches, written for them by great speech writers who think they know our hearts about things they are not really passionate about.

I listened as they defended themselves or attempted to respond to questions that if they WERE visionary passionate leaders they would have known inside out and wouldn’t have belted out the usual rhetoric on.

I watched the media defend their ‘right’ to make politics and the political elite their headline stories, I even heard a hint of what sounded like ‘we just can’t help what we talk about’ creep into their defense.

I felt a little bad. I’m not sure if it’s because of what they (the collective ‘they’) said or that I expected different words and ideas to come out of them.

I don’t know. I’ll figure it out yet.

But I do have hope. Not in them, oh no. I have hope that there is an awareness, a consciousness sweeping across our nations in Africa that they are not the solutions to our challenges and they are not the answer to our questions and that they are not responsible for us realising our dreams and achieving our ambitious goals.

As individuals and even corporate bodies you and I are in charge: we vote, we choose to watch and listen and believe or challenge. You and I have a passion for a future that is better than the one that our current ‘leaders’ have in mind.

We are empowered, educated and vocal now and because of that we are going to forge ahead and make that future come to pass, whether they like it or not.

All the world loves Africa

You know how you know a relationship between you and a loved one is dying? They don’t care enough to tell you that you have issues, or that they want you to try harder, or that they are unhappy with you. They stop trying, period.

The level of the world’s interest in Africa is on the up, despite all the drama we see around us and despite all the complaining they do. I’m not naive, I mean obviously there’s a lot they need from us, it’s not just an all-out love affair for the sake of loving us. There’s much that we can do as a continent to advance their economic and political positions. My point is that they haven’t thrown in the towel because they need us.

That’s what I feel our leaders oftentimes forget… that the world needs our resources. If they could they’d move us all off to some other location and take over the running of Africa Inc.

So, why doesn’t Africa love Africa? Why is it that we can’t see what beauty and power God has blessed us with and remove ourselves from these patterns of dependency that we get into? Why do we still turn to country x to build our roads and country y to sort out our water supply?

We have spent the last decade or so pillaging the west and orient in terms of education and skills, but our children still insist on remaining ‘out there’ instead of coming back home to apply what they have learnt back home. I know the vast number of Africans in the Diaspora will say “Oh there are no jobs back home” “Oh the benefits of living here are better” “Oh the pay back home is bad”… I say “Oh shut up!!”.

There’s nothing worthwhile that’s easy to come by. We have to slog a bit and sweat a bit and lose some kilos in order to build a mansion and that’s what we need. You also forget that the nation that you are insisting on living in is actually denying your people back home of your skills, time, energy, passion, abilities, education… your best years.We’re lacking Africans who are so hungry for Africa or their individual nations to turn around that they’re willing to do what it takes to make that happen. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few individuals who are pioneering, yes. But my dear a few drops in a bucket are not going to make a flood!!

The kind of people-revolution Africa needs is the kind where hundreds of thousands of Diaspora-dwelling Kenyans, Ugandans, Tanzanians, Nigerians, South Africans, Botswanans etc wake up one morning and realise they just need to come home NOW!

We need Somalia and Chad to wake up and say “Enough destruction, let’s build now!” for the everyone with a gun to stop and say “Hang on, I’m killing my people.” We do need solidarity, we need it like we need an AIDS vaccine.

I’m not saying flush out western and eastern countries, businesses, people – no. I’m saying Africa needs to realise that we were meant to be equal partners at the deal making table and that if the west is so interested in us, it must mean we have something they want… and that, my friend, is leverage.