9 December 2008
editorial
THE donation from Nigeria for a humanitarian cause in Zambia is a sign of true friendship and underscores the Pan African vision that Africa's destiny lies in the continent to solve its own problems.
The donation, albeit small, is a response to a call made earlier in the year for assistance to help mitigate the humanitarian crisis the country was faced with as a result of the floods.
In Africa, we believe that if your neighbour's house is on fire, you are obliged to move in quickly and help extinguish the inferno. This is what our Nigerian colleagues have demonstrated.
For decades, Africa has been viewed as a continent that could not survive on its own, always looking up to the West for assistance in times of disasters.
While the assistance from the West is much appreciated, it also brings with it a sense of dependency and low self-esteem among the recipient countries.
Some of the assistance from the North also comes with a number of strings attached, which could partly be blamed for the present status the continent is in.
What immediately comes to mind are the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) imposed on most of Africa by the lending body, the International Monetary fund (IMF) in order to access the much-needed economic assistance.
The rest is history as the SAPs were a flop and blamed for impacting negatively on the social sectors and consequently, hurting the most vulnerable in society - children, women, disabled and aged.
What Africa now welcomes is assistance that is not sugar-coated but genuinely meant to uplift those rendered vulnerable by natural calamities like floods.
That is why the Nigerian donation is most welcome.
As Vice-President George Kunda said when he received the donation, the gesture was proof that Nigeria was concerned about Zambia's plight and underscored a vision, which the two countries shared, of Africa finding solutions to its own problems.
This is not the first time Africans are helping each other in times of crises. Zambia is on record as having sent humanitarian assistance to Mozambique when devastating floods ravaged that country some years back.
If Africans could continue to pool their resources and chipping in when a neighbour on the continent is in trouble, there would be little need to always cry for help from the West.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Times of Zambia. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
