No this is not to do with African nations turning their
people into aliens. Well at least not in the term it is commonly used
for. I may not be speaking for the majority of people,but I speak of
a growing mindset within our people. A mindset that is based on
despising any foreigner outside the continent of Africa and creating
our own form of a bubble, in efforts to incorporate a sense of a
developed Pan-Africanism.
By just reading the above you may think of this mindset
as utterly ridiculous, but there are always the advantages and
disadvantages of each and every mentality within the world.
This mindset in a general summary is one whereby
African nations focus on solely developing the continent and severing
any ties with any nation outside of this beautiful continent. The
perspective incorporates ideas such as leaving the colonial mindset
and understanding our true rich identity, culture and resources which
we can then use to the most of our advantage.
A good example of an outline for what would be
implemented is seen in the speech of the first President of the
independent Republic of Ghana, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, whilst attending
the opening ceremony of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU, which
is now known as the African Union, AU). In this speech he emphasise
the factor that Africa is rich enough to depend on its self only if
it is willing to do so with full co-operation between nations. He
stresses the fact of how Africans are deceived to believe that they
are incapable of finding and developing the resources needed, when in
fact the truth is most of the resources the 'colonial power'
(developed countries in this context) have been imported from Africa.
Another argument is the factor that foreigners do not
incorporate educating their people on all matters of Africa, yet they
still manage to become successful in most if not all sectors that can
be measured. Therefore, is it then reasonable for Africans to
incorporate the study of the 'foreign way', instead on focusing on
our own matters first? If foreigners are able to encompass themselves
in a bubble of their own and not know a single thing about Africa,
why then must Africans know practically every detail of what occurs
in the foreigners nation? The suggestion is that Africa should
alienate itself from the study of non-African areas and be more
specific to their surrounding, because the system in place outside of
Africa may not be particularly suitable for Africa.
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On the other hand, it can be argued that the reason we study foreigners ways of living is because we have implemented their system in many if not all of our nations. Due to this situation, we must then learn from them on how to make this system successful, by learning everything they have done to arrive where they are at this present time. It is more than obvious that “The West” and “The East” are more developed than Africa and therefore Africa should be the student and learn from the teacher. After all the way we have founded the system and way of living, is in attempt to fully reflect the nations of those who colonised us.
There are others who would rather argue that we should
not disregard foreign history as it would help us both learn positive
aspects that we can implement and negative aspects that we can avoid.
At the same time, we can manage to bring mixture of both the foreign
knowledge, as well as the Africans. In essence creating a balance,
whilst producing a generation that is more equipped with a higher
level of knowledge that they can adapt nearly anywhere. However, what
is to determine what is taught and passed down to younger generations
and what is not, if we are truly to have this acclaimed balance?
In conclusion, my simple question is should Africa
alienate itself from foreigners in order to develop and prevent
further exploitation without development? Or is there truly another
way?
4 comments:
Africa is truly in trouble because the foreigners always hold the aces with their econonmic patnership agreements that simply condemn africa to underdevelopment......and the last thing we want is to write post-mortem analyses of doom and gloom years later.....we just need to cooperate among ourselves and move forward. we can do this
I wholly agree with you wakio cindy. Its like we produce our high quality products then they are the ones who determine their price and in real sence we are the ones who are supposed to determine the price, since we as the producers know the producing cost. We need to sell this products among ourselves as African nations, so as to realise the profits and move a step ahead economically, thus influencing infastructuaral development positively..
I tend to disagree simply cause they have the brains to manipulate us Africans. Instead of us viewing the trouble let us get to school for solving the trouble. The mind set is everything so no need to back up Cindy
To Furious your arguement does make sense but in some case it can be stated as flawed. My question to you is that isn't returning to a school system mainly influenced in a way to manipulate your mindset not just going through the same cycle you have stated. Do not get me wrong I have nothing against the people we generalise as "colonisers", "westerners" and "The North Division". However, education is a necessity and it should be accessible to everyone and more precisely the education should have a curriculum with a perspective on our areas of living.
The question about how the idea of Pan-Africanism comes with the notion of alienation, as of present time we are seeing the sense of it in some ways, such as the AU's stance on the ICC. There is always at least one way in which both the implementation of pan-africanism and international partnerships can be present. As much as I do agree with Cindy about the negative aspect of it, take a look at what Africa would have done if not for the aid and for the use of it, even with the 'corruption and mismanagement'. Where would Africa be? We need to realize that we can achieve pan-africanism but we can steer clear from dicriminating against other continents. African are intelligent and we know it, the only issue is how the intelligence is used. However that is just my opinion.
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