A few weeks ago, I was invited by the African Development Bank to their 50th anniversary celebrations in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, as a panellist in one of the sessions focusing on ICTs and women.
I
took a day flight that left Nairobi at 7am. After flipping through the
newspapers, I was disturbed by the morning sunshine piercing through the
window, bringing unwelcome warmth.
Forced
to look through the window, my eyes met Africa’s raw beauty. Acres upon
acres of dark green forest canopy passed below a blue sky, when
suddenly the pilot’s voice came through the system, “to the left you can
see the Ruwenzori Mountains.”
The
snow-capped mountains could be seen below, lying astride what I knew to
be the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
For
the next three hours, I looked keenly for any sign of human habitation
here. The forest was interrupted by few villages with a few, worn-out
dirt roads, but there was no urban living.
The
Belgian colonists never built any infrastructure in the Congo and
successive postcolonial governments didn’t do much either. They all
raped the country, maimed the people and stole what they could.
White
colonialists and African dictators alike were particularly vicious in
their rape of the land, siphoning a lot of wealth and hiding it away in
Europe.
As
a consequence, most of the Congo forest remains as it was before
colonialism – pristine and largely untouched – except by
hunter-gatherers and the fighters of Congo’s numerous stupid wars. There
is perhaps a case for thanking the British for the little they did
within their colonies.
My mind flies back to my high school history where we learnt of Congo, which had been renamed Congo Free State by the wrathful King Leopold II of Belgium. He is principally known for his exploits in the Congo, where more than 15 million Congolese people lost their lives.
In his mind, King Leopold thought that he was the sole owner of the Congo Free State and treated it as his own private property.
Every
single soul in Congo worked for the King, and those who failed had
their hands chopped off. His divide-and-rule tactics divided the
Congolese people irreversibly.
Independence
in the Congos did not help as the colonialists ensured they had their
cronies in place to perpetuate the plunder of resources.
AFRICA 'NOT RISING'
By
the time Mobutu was leaving what was then Zaire, he had stashed more
than $10 billion in Europe. To date, the Congo people are a divided
people, with constant conflicts that mean there is no meaningful
development taking place.
Africa
is land of contradictions. No matter how optimistic one is, there is
always something pulling us back. There are contradictions between the
new and optimistic African narrative and what is happening on the
ground.
Seemingly
democratic nations like South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are battling
internal conflicts, although democracy was supposed to provide
much-needed safety valves.
Just as we were beginning to savour the new narratives of “Africa Rising” and “Africa’s turn,” disappointment barges in.
Inside
these deceptively calm jungles are African killing fields. These are
the consequences of dysfunctional African governments and leaders
wanting to extend their terms beyond those set by national
constitutions.
Burundi is headed for catastrophe, following in the footsteps of
Central African Republic the Republic of South Sudan. DRC, Darfur, Mali
and Somalia are bleeding.
Parts
of West Africa are ravaged by disease and northern Africa is wobbling
under the tyranny of radicalism. As I reflected on the many challenges
we face, the greenery disappeared as we entered the Atlantic Ocean,
hugging the shore of the Gold Coast.
We
re-entered the rain forest just as we were about to land in Abidjan.
The plane landed and taxied to its parking. As I stepped out of the
plane, two men were waiting, holding a paper with my name on it.
VISA OFFICE CLOSED
They
led me to a waiting Mercedes-Benz and whisked me to the VIP lounge. A
few people, mostly protocol, are around. Most of the dignitaries had
already arrived and been spirited away.
“Passport”,
one of the protocol gentlemen announces. I give him my passport. He
says, “Not diplomatic.” I respond, “No”. Ooh, there is a problem. Visa
office closed.
I ask, “What do we do?” No response, but the entire protocol team congregate.
After
a few minutes one of them walks to me and tells me to go to Police
Headquarters to get a visa. Where is it, I ask. “In town,” he says.
“Ok, let’s go”.
I
have two young men in the taxi to escort me to Police Headquarters.
They are pretty nice, and informative. “This is Laguna,” one of them
says, pointing to an open waterfront. “See there? That is Charles de
Gaulle Bridge. The other one isHouphouët-BoignyBridge”. My attention is disrupted by many billboards, virtually all of them bearing French brands.
It
is raining as we reach the police headquarters. We dash inside as one
of the young men drags my brief case, and we go through security into a
ground floor office.
A
lady of medium built talks to my escorts and announces that I should
leave the passport and pick it after three days. I say no. “I don’t have
three days here,” I plead. They switch to French and I am finally asked
to pay the visa fee of 20,000 francs ($50).
TRANSPORT FOR 7000 FRANCS
She
picks my passport and disappears for 30 minutes, before returning with
bad news. There is no stamp. The stamp is with the boss at Sofitel, the
conference venue. I offer to take all of them to their boss since I
did not want to leave my passport behind.
At
the conference venue, the boss stamps the passport. I ask where the
receipt is. “Ooh, receipt! We go back to police headquarters, then to
the airport so that you come into the country formally,” they tell me.
It
had taken me three hours to get the visa and if I wanted the receipt, I
needed another three hours. Maybe I could come into the country
informally then leave formally in two days, I suggested.
The young men asked me politely to give them transport to the airport. When I ask how much, I am told it costs 7,000 francs.
At
this point, one of them tells me, “Corruption is many in our country.”
The World Bank says Ivory Coast is one of the fastest growing African
countries. Just like Kenya it went through post-election violence in
2010/2011 but it has miraculously recovered.
There
are new bridges and by-passes being built. Abidjan is a well-planned
city that is recovering from post-election violence. French presence and
influence here is heavy, as can be deduced by the number of French
brands on billboards.
JUA KALI 2.0
The
import of my write-up today is three-fold. My first point is that for
Africa to succeed, we must adhere to international standards of
governance and build institutions to enforce those standards.
It
is not difficult for Ivory Coast to remove the inefficiencies in their
service delivery. It benefits the country to be effective.
Let me clarify this further. The World Bank ranks global economies on the ease of doing business.
The ranking is important for investors, who create jobs. There are only
two countries, South Africa and Rwanda, in the top 50. Majority of
African countries are at the bottom.
We
lead the globe in unemployment, which is why our young people would
rather die in the Mediterranean Sea trying to cross to Europe than trust
their leaders to come up with solutions.
Second,
if we have to succeed, we must begin to build our own brands, allow
entrepreneurship to flourish, and begin to export our local cultural
content. We must have a deliberate policy to develop Jua Kali 2.0.
The
Ministry of Industrialisation and Enterprise Development (MOIED)
should, for example, get university students to go round Kenya’s
hospitals, list all the products we use in them and announce a national
industrial development challenge to redesign these health products.
The
challenge is to reverse-engineer products whose patents expired more
than 50 years ago. To replicate a faucet or gauze for example, does not
infringe on any intellectual property, since the products are now in the
public domain.
GENOCIDE OF 15 MILLION
The
biggest expenditure in healthcare is not the equipment, as our
governors would want us to believe. It is the low-cost supplies like
cotton gauze, faucets, gloves, syringes etc., that eat up the budget.
This will create demand downstream to the extent that the cotton industry would be relived.
India
has done this very successfully. This is how we can create new brands
to add on to other local brands like Equity, Nakumatt, Safaricom,
Brookside, Bidco, Family Bank, Naivas, Seven Seas, Mabati Rolling Mills,
Jamii Telkom and several others.
My
third point, and the most important one, is that the African Union (AU)
must begin to deal with the scars of colonialism. There is abundant
evidence that Belgium owes the Congos a great deal.
The
discourse of the human rights violation of the people of Africa must be
up in the people’s mind every day. The genocide of 15 million people
created a culture of violence that remains up to date.
Exploitation
of these mineral rich countries continues even as I write this piece,
yet it is Africa that takes the shame when her people die in the high
seas.
The
absence of sustained formal education means that it will take many
years before Congo joins the rest of the world in the 21st century. It
is fair to look inwards and shape our agenda.
Africa needs a disruption, and I have a solution. The AU must seek reparation from Belgium for the Congolese people.
THE INGA DAM
European
countries should commit to use the resources that were stashed there by
African dictators to build a railway line that cuts across the
continent of Africa in order to open up the Congo, and buildInga Dam, to unleash the greatest amount of green energy ever seen on the continent.
This
can create sustained revenue to run a sustainable education system in
the Congo and build a comprehensive communications infrastructure
throughout that country. The AU must also create a continental army to
build peace in the Congo.
Gary Zukav, an American spiritual teacher and the author, once said:
“We are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing the world. When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority.”
It is time Africa looked inwards to see what ails her.
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