By Cliff Kodero
The scramble for Africa that happened in Africa in the late 19th century is once again knocking on the door. The reason behind is discovery of commercially viable resources such as oil in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Liberia, and others, natural gas in Tanzania and an assortment of other mineral which are of critical importance to the technology age such as colton in Congo, land in South Sudan as well the wild life of Africa ( rhinos, elephants, lions and others).
This scramble is likely to continue in the coming years. As things stand, western nations are losing battles on multiple fronts such as economy and maintaining the insatiable greed for national resources and just like it happened, in the 19th century, Africa would be the easy way out. China is coming to Africa pretending to be a friend, a rather cunning friend but with interests far much bigger that one would imagine. Slithery, China is taking over Africa with little concern for the rule of law, human rights, and conscious for environment sustainability.
One would think, just like Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta, that the west is our enemy. However, while critically examining this statement, it almost obvious to conclude that Africa is its own enemy. Africa is involved in wars that it should not be fighting. Instead of embracing nationalism, patriotism, and national identities, African people focus on ethnicity.
The ethnic group assumes the sovereignty of a state and gains a protected status as the ultimate symbol of an individual’s identity as opposed to the state. The state is relegated to an abstract entity, a conglomerate of warring ethnicities.
In Kenya, “the tyranny of numbers†argument led to the election of two ICC indicted leaders with a coalition of two major ethnic entities. Instead of embracing the Kenyan national interests, which is moving forward, the electorate decided to focus on politics of justice and revenge. The result is that instead of spotlighting on day to day running of the state, Kenyan leaders are fifty percent of their time finding ways of vindicating themselves from the trials.
The same happens in Nigeria where northerners and southerners are constantly fighting over religious fanaticism, in South Sudan, the new brother in town has not learned either to escape the woes of ethnicity. The government is on the brink of a shut-down thanks to ethnicity and corruption. The argument is that we make our selves weak my fighting ourselves, and this retards our growth potential.
The last argument why I smell a rat on the good prospects for Africa is because of the consequences wrong or poor leadership. In most African countries, the argument on social contract as John Locke envisioned is reversed, instead of power belonging to the people, the people belong to the government.
In essence, the government owns the populace. The reverse should be true. Knowing that the populace knows very little, politicians exploit the common citizens by passing laws that directly benefit themselves. Africa’s MPS are the most paid politicians all over the world. For example, the Governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon makes Kshs.892, 140 ($133,821 a year).
Missouri’s economy in terms of median income is $46,867 a year. Compare this to Kenya, the average Kenyan MP makes Kshs. 1,000,000 ($16,000) a month for basically singing praises of the ICC indicted president. Kenya’s economy has a GDP (rounded off) of $1000 a year.
Now tell me if our enemy is the west for real, our enemy is US, and not the United States. Our presidents either stay to long in power like Museveni, Mugabe, or Dos Santos of Angola, or basically rig elections and continue to do nothing.
The African Union is one of the most bogus organizations ever created. The essence is this, our future is bleak, and unless we correct the ills as a people of Africa, we will be re-colonized and children will continue to have pictures of flies on their mouths and empty bowls beside them in western newspapers.
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