Dr Helmut Danner's recently launched book: End of Arrogance: Africa and the West - Understanding their Differences, attempts to spur dialogue aimed at making Africa and the West understand each other. The book generously castigates the West's condescending attitude towards Africans, a stance that has made Africa bitter, suspicious and distrustful to the West.
While it is true that both the West and Africa carry tenets of arrogance, the scope of this essay shall harp on African arrogance.
The West's attitude towards Africa is to a greater extent informed by its 1885 Berlin resolve to watch over "the preservation and modernisation of Africans".
The General Act of Berlin supports the narrative that the West knows best what is good for Africans.
This narrative as seen in IMF and World Bank dictates has largely advanced the West's socio-political and economic interests. It is therefore not in the best interest of the West to give it up. Doing this would be tantamount to committing suicide.
The West should, however, know that with rapid globalisation, its relationship with Africa is not exclusive.
Other emerging powers such as Brazil, India and China are fast winning over the continent. The West must therefore change its rules of engagement.
Africa on the other hand has helped sustain the West's arrogance towards the continent. Sample this: In January 2012, Al-Shabaab militants killed at least six Kenyans in Kenya's North-east region and abducted a government district officer.
In spite of pleas by the abducted officer's family to have him rescued, this has not happened. Later, four Norwegian Refugee Council (NFC) aid workers were abducted by similar militants in the region. In a flash, the government launched a major manhunt using all machinery at its disposal. The aid workers were rescued.
Sample this too: African employees in Saudi Arabia are tortured, maimed, abused, raped, murdered with impunity and robbed of their travel documents by their employers. The victims report this to their home governments. They even show video clips that highlight their plight. Their governments take no action.
The same scenario plays out among African immigrants and workers in Italy.
In 1999, the Austrian government ordered the deportation of a Nigerian, Mr Marcus Omofuma, on flimsy grounds. Police officers beat him up before bundling him into a plane. They used adhesive tape to tie him to his seat in the plane and to seal his mouth.
Omofuma suffocated and died while in police custody.
His country was not moved.
What does this say about foreign lives vis-à-vis local lives? If we do not value our nationals, how will foreigners value them? If we are arrogant to our own, what will stop the world from being arrogant to us?
Despite the fact that we are prone to acute famine every year and have to beg for food aid, we sell millions of acres of land to feed populations in China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Qatar, among others. Doesn't it show that something is amiss in our thinking?
Despite the fact that our continent carries 25 percent of the world's diseases, we ill-equip our hospitals, de-motivate our health workers, import 70 percent of our pharmaceutical needs from abroad and seek medication in expensive hospitals abroad. Doesn't this show something is amiss? We easily forget that we are Africans and divide ourselves along Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone lines, and analyse issues using these prisms. Doesn't this create room for dividing the continent?
We invest in high-rise buildings but seek rescue missions from abroad when the buildings collapse. We are bribed with cigars, whisky and satellite phones to turn guns against ourselves. None of the natural resources our continent is blessed with is under our control.
When will we ever learn? While China has studied Western capitalism and forged an alternative capitalism that has made it a superpower, our interaction with developed and emerging economies has not changed our lot for the better. While China has converted its huge population into a resource, we see ours as a time bomb and seek foreign aid to reduce it.
While India has utilised its Diaspora links to develop the country, Africa's higher education linkages with foreign universities have not translated to a third of our universities ranking among 100 top global universities.
Our delegates occupy most seats in the UN General Assembly but we have little say on crucial UN decisions.
Our scientists in Nasa help Americans to go to the moon yet back home, we cannot access fellow African countries easily, let alone make essential goods to reach our populations.
What makes us despise our own? What makes us shirk responsibility? What makes us bask in inferiority?
As the late Sudan People's Liberation Army leader John Garang put it, sometimes it is necessary to go back like sheep in order to gain the momentum to go forward and lock horns. We must urgently retrace where we lost our footing, identify where we are, why we are there, where we want to go and how to get there.
We must nurture long-term strategic thinking and equip ourselves with the right tools to make geopolitical systems work for our good. Failure to plan and prepare will hand us stock and barrel to other peoples' plans.
The task of reclaiming Africa's Century squarely lies on African shoulders.
Comments Post a comment
The West is NOT good for Africa and will never be! From the Imperialist empires, Royal Geographical Society, to the so called Democracy - Africa has been a playing ground for Western arrogance and manipulation. Our visionary leaders have been eliminated and we are left with puppets of the West. We have been turned into consumers of Western ideology and finished goods. Eurocentric education and currency fills our streets while our people go hungry and shoeless.Unless the peole of Africa value themselves - and demand their governments do the same, we still have a long way to restore the African human dignity. The paaradigm has been that a Western life equals 100 African lives and this depends on the market rate! Judeo-European lives have always been precious in the world market.We relax our rules and sovereignity to accomodate the Western captilaists and plunderers - give them visa waivers and fast-lane access at airports, while locals que for hours an attended. The struggle continues - it is not yet uhuru as put by Comrade Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
The West owes Africa nothing. Talk is cheap for the African and what stupid shots you take against the west just to make yourselves feel good for your own uselessness.
Why are your people hungry when your leaders have two stomachs and 12 chins? Those of your own Africans with sense and gumption you suppress. Bloody morons, you cannot even see further than your stupid noses. Let the west totally wash its hands off Africa and see what happens. EVERY African country is afloat only because of western financing. Just being alive: without Western medicine, without every aspect of western infrastructure, without western mode of transportation, and western style education, Africa would not be boasting a billion live people today and this is a fact. Blame your failures on your yourselves for your own stupidity and blindness of not being able to see when your leaders shit all over you. Your children scratch in the dirt with no shoes and tatty clothing, but where are the children of your leaders and what is THEIR condition? Sent by your leaders to other countries of course spending millions of dollars getting every advantage over YOUR children. Kiss ass to your dictators and get what you deserve for your stupidity.
KJRS Don’t you start with your white, racist rubbish. It is a fact that your kith and kin have for decades subjugated Africans in their own land and have amassed millions in the act. How much was the old man working in your father’s garden or farm getting per month? Does he own a decent house or a car? Did his children go to universities?
You are nothing but a bitter Rhodesian who sees nothing good with Africa because you got kicked out of the land which your ancestors stole from the original, rightful owners, grouped them in arid terrains while you occupied arable land, denied them education and subjected them to slavery on farms and white factories.
To show that you were so evil, sadist and selfish, you never put anyone (your puppets) in the developmental top position to teach them democracy (which you never knew) or rather, how to run a country. Not that you knew, because the only rule that whites know is war-mongering. Yet, because we are good people, forgiving Africans we allowed you to stay on our land when we attained freedom from you Satans. And what do you do? Stand on top of the Soutpansberg mountain range (in South Africa where you are now a refugee of your own making) and call Africans stupid and corrupt.
Who are you trying to fool?
All the ills on the African continent are a white man’s creation. After realising that the economies of our hard-earned democracies are flourishing and your mother continents are bound to be crippled by the discontinuity in flow of timber, diamonds, oil, Cassava, cocoa, ivory, cobalt, timber etc. to your mother continents, your cousins in Europe and America came up with dirty tricks. Like witches at the door of the sick, they had been waiting patiently for nationalist leaders to age. Those who refused to bulge were assassinated or taken out of power. After they have installed their puppets to run our states, your uncles came back claiming to be ‘messiahs’ with ‘new innovations, development projects and clever ways to run a country’, introducing the briefcase (corruption) culture, diseases, drugs and poverty in Africa.
Africa is probably too small for you now and the heat is going to your brain. Others emigrated to your home continent Europe and Australia at the advent of democracy, why don’t you follow suit before you and your obese family loose the last of the fortune you made at the expense of Africans on their land?
Without noise, fly home...And next time, think first before writing stupid comments because Africans’ patience is running thin! Comment only on things you know because when it comes to racism that you are frothing, diplomacy does not work, not to me.
Go on, fly home...because even there in Azania, the sand is slowly shifting!
KJRS
Don’t you start with your white, racist rubbish. It is a fact that your kith and kin have for decades subjugated Africans in their own land and have amassed millions in the act. How much was the old man working in your father’s garden or farm getting per month? Does he own a decent house or a car? Did his children go to universities?
You are nothing but a bitter Rhodesian who sees nothing good with Africa because you got kicked out of the land which your ancestors stole from the original, rightful owners, grouped them in arid terrains while you occupied arable land, denied them education and subjected them to slavery on farms and white factories.
To show that you were so evil, sadist and selfish, you never put anyone (your puppets) in the developmental top position to teach them democracy (which you never knew) or rather, how to run a country. Not that you knew, because the only rule that whites know is war-mongering. Yet, because we are good people, forgiving Africans we allowed you to stay on our land when we attained freedom from you Satans. And what do you do? Stand on top of the Soutpansberg mountain range (in South Africa where you are now a refugee of your own making) and call Africans stupid and corrupt.
Who are you trying to fool?
All the ills on the African continent are a white man’s creation. After realising that the economies of our hard-earned democracies are flourishing and your mother continents are bound to be crippled by the discontinuity in flow of timber, diamonds, oil, Cassava, cocoa, ivory, cobalt, timber etc. to your mother continents, your cousins in Europe and America came up with dirty tricks. Like witches at the door of the sick, they had been waiting patiently for nationalist leaders to age. Those who refused to bulge were assassinated or taken out of power. After they have installed their puppets to run our states, your uncles came back claiming to be ‘messiahs’ with ‘new innovations, development projects and clever ways to run a country’, introducing the briefcase (corruption) culture, diseases, drugs and poverty in Africa.
Africa is probably too small for you now and the heat is going to your brain. Others emigrated to your home continent Europe and Australia at the advent of democracy, why don’t you follow suit before you and your obese family loose the last of the fortune you made at the expense of Africans on their land?
Without noise, fly home...And next time, think first before writing stupid comments because Africans’ patience is running thin! Comment only on things you know because when it comes to racism that you are frothing, diplomacy does not work, not to me.
Go on, fly home...because even there in Azania, the sand is slowly shifting!
Pfize, I see nothing "racist" in what KJRS120 said. What is racist about being called African? We ARE Africans and believe it we HAVE messed up big time. We welcome dictatorship and corruption in our own governments and we suffer as a result. As KJRS asked for instance that where are the children of those in government and why are they in foreign countries, not attending our local schools and assimilating with our kids? Because their fathers loot us blind, amass the wealth, do nothing for the nation but find it inferior to educate their children.
Where is our minister of finance today? I believe begging South Africa for a loan. But why? If one of us who was just a millitary officer such as Solomon Majuru can die leaving assets worth over US9 BILLION DOLLARS, then how much more for all the other ministers of our government? Greed and corruption. I cannot get over this because here we are begging other nations for money.
The whole of our continent is run by ourselves, black Africans, with the exception of Zambia with a white African vice president. WE the Africans are in charge. WE DECIDE with whom to trade and with whom to keep relations. AS we trade, WE decide what rules to put in place to protect our countries. WE make our own immigration rules. How we run our countries from within, that too is our decision. Let me shout this to you, "WE ARE IN CHARGE OF OUR OWN NATIONS NOW AND NO ONE CAN MAKE US DO WHAT WE DO NOT WANT." It is there absolutely ridiculous to blame western countries for our own failures to take care of business in our own countries. We suck!
See All Comments