By Dr. Samuel B. Artley DMD. FAGD
Imagine Africa since its conception into a multi states venture was a corporation. Each state is a department within the corporation starting from Angola, Algeria etc all the way to Zaire. After 30+ years of not making profit or at least being able to hold its own, in the normal cause of event such a business venture would have been dissolved, unless daddy got some money and is propping up the company, such is the case of Africa today; it is being propped up by foreign aid. This commercial venture of multi state Africa has failed to yield profit, we must therefore start to consider its dissolution from the current status quo.
Governmental institutes particularly the ruling governments have been cited, blamed and held responsible for Africa’s failure, others have blamed the people collectively for being corrupt. I refuse to believe it is corruption because corruption has been with mankind since the beginning of time. Globally every society has its corrupt members yet most of these societies have become profitable ventures, with the overwhelming failed venture residing within the continent of Africa. The blame on the government is overstated; again I attempt to make this point with another business model.
African states today are like a business man (entrepreneur) who goes out to shop for a location to set up his business, he eventually settles for a back road location cause the rent is cheap, his business idea is great he is definitely not lacking in idea. But he begins to wonder why the business is not bringing in much revenue as projected, at that point he starts to blame the economy or the people of cause forgetting about its choice of location., such is the case with African states today, we all as Africans always forget we are starting out with a built in flaw in the African design. ie. multi- independent African states.
At first glance, it seems the poor governments are the problem, when in reality a poor government is responsible for only 1/10 of her problems. The remaining 9/10 reasons, for the lackadaisical performance of all African enclave globally, is in its inherent design, basically the individual states are performing exactly as they were design to perform, that is to fail periodically, they will continue to do such , until when the overall design is changed, rearranged and overhauled.
Economic and political integration will provide an opportunity to change such a flawed system into a practical and viable system. By built in flaw in the design we go back to the partition and fragmentation of the continent [1885] into multiple weaker and unsustainable little enclaves, called countries, eventually pulling the continent and its people in all directions.
At the end of the day, years and generation, the net result is some motion, some stagnation, and some islands of progress but mostly chaos.
In today’s politically correct societies, a flawed design is an acceptable status quo, as long as that design flaw does not affect the interest of the designers. [I.e. colonial nations]
Redesigning and correcting all design flaw of the continent will have to come under the umbrella of unification and centralization of whatever resources are left. It is only when the continent and her people converges to move in a single direction ,that the great march forward (Mao Tse-tung) will begin .Then and only then will La Gazelle Africa begin to take “ the great leap forward”. Anything else regardless of how successful and isolated an enclave or country is, any such success are temporal because, the plug could be pulled at any time by only one or two opposing forces, mostly by extra-African nations, this inability for any African state to sustain itself in the absence of external influence will always bring into question the independence of any African country.
On the final analysis, today’s 50 years old post colonial Africa should be viewed as a model of Africa, design in the image of extra- African nations.
Therefore whatever perceptions of Africa are out there, these will always be directly related to the model type that Africa presents at that time. The more we continue with a faulty design the more negative the perception will continue to be, the sooner we change the existing African design to a realistic flawless model, the sooner a positive perception will emerge.
In defining Africa; modern day Africa is that model with an inherent flaw in its design. However all is not lost, hopefully with the help of social media, we the citizens of Africa, might one day muster enough courage to push our proudly independent governments into a truly functional integrated Africa, may be within our life time this fundamental correction will be made.