Gaborone — "The Challenge for Africa: A New Vision".

The Challenge for Africa: A New Vision is Wangari Muta Maathai's third book. The second is Unbowed: A Memoir (Mmegi March 23, 2007). The movie on her life and the Green Belt Movement, Taking Root was shown as part of the Human Rights Film Festival (Mmegi March 13, 2009).

Wangari Maathai now extends the insights and concerns that she held for Kenya to the whole continent in her "call to action to save Africa". With 53 countries this is an enormous task. This is not the first book to tackle problems of development in change in Africa, nor will it be the last, but it is one of the best. There is something in it for everyone. It is written clearly and succinctly and its message is there for the taking.

Maathai's clarion call will be heard by some, but perhaps not by enough. As she states in her introduction, we're on the wrong bus, and one of the tragedies of Africa is that we don't want to get off it.

Since being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 she has spread her wings over Africa, being co-opted and becoming part of various movements and meetings, both within Africa and across the globe. Hers is a manifesto for change, renewal and recovery that should be summarised into a tight pamphlet and distributed to every government and civil society movement across the continent. She has laid down a challenge to leadership in Africa. Who will take up the gauntlet?

There are half a dozen references to Botswana, all positive, but also challenging."Botswana, so long a beacon of political stability and economic growth is challenged by the fact that a quarter of its citizens are HIV positive, a key factor in the decline of life expectancy from 65 to 40 years" (page 55).

What is more challenging are the ideas she presents that apply to Botswana that are so far being ignored. For example, in the opening chapter On the wrong bus she says, "For decades, Africans have belittled or ignored the fundamental cultural and psychological importance of micro-national identity, instead using ethnicity for political gain. I call for Africans to rediscover and embrace their linguistic, cultural and ethnic diversity, not only so their nation-states can move forward politically and economically, but so they may heal a psyche wounded by denial of who they really are" (page 6).

To be on the wrong bus means you arrive at the wrong destination and experience unanticipated problems. This book is about how to get on the right bus, and these challenges apply to the world, not just to Africa.

"Those in power - the presidents, prime ministers, politicians, and the other elites-have to recognise that the way Africa has been conducting its affairs of state has neither protected nor promoted the welfare of the continent's citizens nor provided for the long-term growth and stability of nations ... how to work for the benefit of all citizens rather than the advantage of a few" (page 18) is what this book is about.

Maathai claims that what is lacking is "a sense of service to their people". "No longer should African leaders play politics with ethnicity, grab public lands, sell off national resources, and loot the treasury-or tolerate such actions by others" (page 19).

For the African Renaissance to happen the environment must be at "the centre of all decision making". Leaders must work to "remove the causes of why so many continue to live in fear". What she calls the Legacy of Woes must be overturned. "The power of the gun was the new form of administering 'justice' ... in this way a dictatorial regime was cultivated, imposed, and, in time, increasingly tolerated" (page 27). In Botswana this began in 1986 when the BDF was sent on patrol against poaching. She notes that 1966, the year of independence here, was marked by coups in Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Ghana; with civil wars to follow in Nigeria and Sudan.

She says that because of the absence of a "culture of writing, it has been easy to promote a culture of forgetting" and gives as an example how people are "shocked to discover the truth about their ancestors during the slave trade" (page 43).

"Few African leaders recognise that what they call the 'nation' is a veneer laid over a cultureless state ... they are urged to shed the identities of their micro-nations and become citizens of the new modern state" (page 46). Who protested that Danile arap Moi ran unopposed because he locked up anyone wanting to run against him, or the genocide against the Ndebele in Zimbabwe in the 1980s?

To Maathai Africa needs to rest on three legs like the African stool: "democratic space"; "sustainable and accountable management of natural resources"; and "cultures of peace".

To her neither democratic space or cultures of peace are nurtured when the media is throttled by repressive laws and the state establishes and runs secret intelligence agencies, usually designed to sustain those in power, not because of any external threats. "Citizens in such states live in fear, they are reluctant to take steps to hold their leaders accountable, which means that those leaders can, and often will, do what they wish with what ever funds flowing into their countries. The democratisation process is frustrated, political and economic leadership is destructive, and conflict and insecurity are entrenched" (page 58).

She notes that in Africa, "The average civil war costs a country and neighbouring nations about $64 billion ... once the vicious cycle of violence, vengeance and hatred starts, it can quickly become unstoppable .. and the consequences last for years, if not decades" (page 61). In the last 50 years the OECD has spent "more than $650 billion in development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa". Where has it gone? In Africa nearly a million children die each year of malaria. HIV and AIDS is still exacting its toll - 1.6 million died from it in 2007. There are water and power crises. "Donors' money can further corrode responsibility". Corruption and misuse of donor funds is endemic in some countries.

"Obasanjo estimated that $140 billion had been stolen from Africa through the privatization of loans and aid to the state and kickbacks to corrupt officials since the main wave of independence" (page 91). Maathai notes that Nigeria earned $400 billion in oil revenues since 1960, but that $380 billion had been mismanaged. In 2007 Africa's debt burden was $255 billion.

The time has come for Africa to engineer its own solutions, to do the right thing. She reiterates Jeffrey Sach's "Big Five". The foundation for change and development lies in:

.agricultural takeoff;

. basic health;

. improved education;

. reliable power, transport and communication; and,

.clean drinking water and proper sanitation. She finds that instead of these five priorities, "governments are more concerned with funding and staffing ministries of defense, provincial administration, finance and security" (page 74).

Next she looks at indebtedness and unfair trade. How can countries advance when they are cutting resources for health and education. How can civil society play its role when regimes are repressive? In Kenya government was called "sirikali" or "a big secret" because "all issues dealing with the government were shrouded in secrecy" (page 90).

Africa's share in world trade has fallen between 1970 and 2005 from four to two percent.The greatest challenge is that of leadership. "I firmly believe that unless Africans from all levels of society recognise and embrace the challenge of leadership, Africa will not move forward" (page 111). She ties this to a "crisis of national identity" and land use.

She sees the future in the African family and notes that in another desert country, Niger, women have planted trees covering three million hectares. Many positive examples that bode well for a future are cited, where "everyone would begin to reap the benefits of unity and diversity".