We can save Africa from self-destruction

By BITANGE NDEMO


   
I watched a CNN bulletin on the Central Africa Republic crisis as human beings savagely killed others. A woman nursed a wounded man. The photography was so good that it looked like a scene from the 18th century.



Indeed some of our own deeds makes Africa look like her people though similar live in three different centuries.

While a few in Nairobi are developing 21st century mobile applications, in Bangui people are killing one another using 18th century weaponry like spears and machetes with support from 20th century guns.

Leaders in a dozen other countries are trying 19th century domination tactics. This is as a result of our exclusive and opaque approach to development.

Anyone who cares about Africa is in constant state of fear that conflict will arise any moment as it has happened in South Sudan. Even those countries that in the face of it look stable, tensions are rising because of inequality and exclusive development practices.

Africa is by far the richest continent in terms of natural resources, but the poorest continent in terms of income distribution. There is a sea of people living on less than $2 dollars a day, but we are not able to account for all its riches.

In my mind many questions linger. Are we doomed to fail? Is liberal democracy the right thing for Africa? What about benevolent dictatorship and how do we get one?

The African discourse is changing to a more positive one, but Africans are still being exploited. The more the mineral resource a country has, the more the crisis often fuelled by invisible non-citizens.

Africa has not been able to leverage on its wealth to fight poverty. For example, in October last year, The New Yorker reported that “1,200 Zambians gathered on a sunny morning in August of 2012 to protest at Coal Mine Company, which is located in a rural southern province and, at the time, was owned by foreign nationals.

They were angry about the working conditions in the mine. The company had been cited several times by Zambia’s government for labour violations, and miners said that they felt unsafe working there.

They were also upset about annual wage increases that they said amounted to only a single Zambian kwacha—the equivalent of 20 cents.”

Resource rich Zimbabwe’s currency has been reduced to nothing even when commodity prices of diamond are high. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is in permanent conflict over its vast natural resources.

From 1989 to 2003, Liberia was engaged in a civil war. In 2000, the UN accused then Liberian president Charles Taylor of supporting the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) insurgency in neighbouring Sierra Leone with weapons and training in exchange for diamonds.

In all of these, selfish intentions run high. No one will clean our mess but us. We also must learn from past mistakes and create an inclusive future.

Unfortunately, we continue to encourage new and informal organisational structures of cartels that are exclusive in nature and often leave the majority impoverished.