THE “AFRICANIST” CHALLENGE…
There has been so much talk about Pan-Africanism and the need for Africans to come together and build the continent to rub shoulders with the rest of the developed world but the challenge persists.
This write up is a piece of my mind and a challenge to challenge the challenges we are confronted with as a collective.
The pan-African dream, propounded by our forefathers during the days of fighting for independence from our colonial masters, is still being preached today, though not loud enough anymore. Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah reinforced the need for a united Africa and he was on his way to proving it until he was overthrown and subsequently died. This dream of his can be seen through his plan and action of sharing some Ghana’s rich resources with other African countries like Guinea, Togo and Nigeria.
Kwame Nkrumah did not care whether the countries were French or English colonies. He only saw “One Africa” and that should be our vision as Africans.
Other African greats like the late Lybian Leader, Muamar Ghadafi. We watch on as these great men and women with their great ideas just go six feet under the ground without any significant achievement. This brings to the fore the fact that there are certain challenging hurdles that we need to overcome before we can achieve what our forefathers started.
First of all, I believe we need to start reviewing the history of the African family system. Before the white man found his way to Africa, Africans had their own way of life. The family system was one close-knit institution that people did not joke with. The family here was not just made of the wife, husband and children. No, it was made up of all uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, nieces, nephews and an entire clan.
This way, it was easy to depend on each other and communally help raise and discipline children. Children were taught to abide by the cultural norms and customs of the community. This way, the child learnt faster and more practically about his or her identity and principles of life. There was no formal education system but the night fire-side stories and folk songs the children were taught offered great lessons of life and enlightenment, a great value that the modern education system can learn from.
Unfortunately, children of today are exposed to so much information from diverse sources via the internet that it is getting them confused as to what the right things of society are from the wrong things.
I do believe in advancement and that is what technology has done for us but I also believe that we can learn to apply certain historical practices that our ancestors left for us. One being the value of the family system. Social Scientist of today have even propounded that the first and best learning institution for a child’s total development is the family system.
It is never too late to revive the family system in order to make honest, hardworking, disciplined, and Africanist-minded citizens out of the younger generation, I mean our children.
Practically, I believe our journalists, especially our bloggers should help in this matter because majority are not doing so. In my about 20 years of Journalism practice, I can safely conclude that Sensational, controversial, “beefy” and conflict-ridden stories do not form the silver lining of the profession. The mantra that “bad news sells” is very much outdated as it is false.
There are good stories of development, ordinary people doing extraordinary things and positive events happening all around us that journalists can focus on to help build our already damaged society. Don’t we want to fix the damage??? How can we fix it with more damaging content.
Stories about divorce sequences of celebrities, who is beefing who in politics, entertainment and other areas are just stories that are disrupting the thinking faculty of our children as they grow up because as they are exposed to these stories in the media, they begin to think that life is about divorce, beefing and negativity. It becomes their reality whereas we know that is not the truth.
The aim of Journalism is not to sell stories no matter the cost, but to build a better society with inspirational stories that promote the family system and reshape the mindset of Africans towards developing their continent.
Secondly, Africans need to adopt the principle of self-reliance and independence. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah wanted to prove to the white colonialists that Africans were capable of relying on themselves for survival.
It is sad to note that Africa abounds in all the natural resources that developed countries would kill for and yet the continent cannot boast of major developments that are at par with the rest of the developed world.
We sit down and allow the Western world to exploit us and give us pittance for us to fight over our own resource and sell it to them ( the western world).
I watched an interview on Facebook of a South African traditional scientist who made it emphatic that in Africa, abundant of resources are rather a curde than a blessing. This is because all the terrorists attacks and insurgencies witnessed across Africa are all about the scramble for resources like oil, minerals, lands and water territories.
The most painful aspect of it all is that we fight over these resources, and yet we sell them off to foreigners who own and control everything while giving us pittance.
Independence and being economically self-reliant starts from first knowing the significance and total uses of the resources you have and then finding out how these resources can be multiplied and enhanced to serve the greater good of you and your community.
We need to strengthen our research institutions and scientists to dig deep into how we can modify our natural resources though our own means to benefit various countries on the continent of Africa.
We can learn from the manufacturing industries of the Europes, Americas and Asias, so that we can import their ideas and technology to refine our natural resources. This is possible and doable.
Let us put our shoulders to the wheel as Africans and prove to our ancestors that we can carry on their ambitious legacies.
Viva Africa. God help us all.
