Our Place on Earth

In the first decade of this 21st Century, the global picture shows that all regions have made significant economic and social progress in recent decades except Africa. In fact, the record on Africa shows that some of the gains made by African countries after independence have all been lost, leaving Africa and Africans apparently worse off than they were under European colonial rule.

It is partly in response to this decline that Africans are dying in the millions from preventable and curable diseases and others making treacherous journeys to foreign shores to escape the poverty, misery and the tyranny of hopelessness the decline has caused. The hope of the post-independent Africa where her University graduates and other trained professionals from abroad flocked home to build their new nations have been replaced with the specter of a new generation who seemingly want nothing to do their various home countries. This situation is the more puzzling when the wealth of Africa is put side by side with the poverty, misery and hopelessness of its people. The questions this situation raises are many and cry out for a response, this time from none other than Africans themselves.

In fact, one can truly, for the first time in recent African history say that the European exploitation era is coming to an end in Africa, leaving Africans with the opportunity of being responsible for their own destiny for the first time in more than 500 years. This is evident by the frustration western governments and leaders like Tony Blair have expressed in controlling the actions of African leaders like President Robert Mugabe. The situation in Darfur is another example of western lack of effective control over African affairs where they have been unable to get their way with the Sudanese President, Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir. Even the French who just a few years ago said they understood the soul and mentality of Africans and therefore are better managers of African affairs than other Africans like Mr. Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, have reluctantly come to the same conclusion: that France would not make a thousand years in Africa as originally designed. When the new French president Nicolas Sarkozy talks of creating a new relationship with Africa, he is not making a declaration of a new French policy for Africa, he is admitting what the writing on the wall already spells out for him.

However, any talk today of European exploitation of Africa coming to an end tempts one to look back at the 1960s, when the same predictions were made at the dawn of independence and dismiss what is being said now as yet another false prediction. It is a temptation that must be resisted because the truth is that this is not 1960 and the African of today, even under these trying circumstances is not the same African who in 1960 was emerging out of decades of a brutal colonial control and centuries of being hunted down like animals for the slave markets of the Americas and Europe.

We may not yet be able to talk of Africans free from European exploitation and marginalization after more than 40 years of “independence” but it is unwise to deny that Africans are not better equipped today than they were before to be the masters of their own destiny. Africans, and in greater numbers and more specialties, are better educated today; they have more and better means of communication; more and better means of transportation, and have traveled the world more than they did before the 1960s. These realities have given Africans a better understanding of who they are beyond what the slave and colonial masters intended them to visualize. They have a better understanding of their environment and the contributions it can make to their progress and development, and a more comprehensive understanding of who and what their real challengers and challenges are and how to better engage them.

It is also note worthy to mention that the enemies of Africa do not have the same opportunities to cause as much destruction and damage to Africans today as they did during slave and colonial rule. It is therefore not by coincidence that France and French business interests are no longer running the Ivory Coast the way they did just a few years ago, for example. It is not by coincidence that apartheid South Africa is a different country today ruled by a black majority government, and it is certainly not by accident that President Paul Kagame governs Rwanda now and is able to send home the French Ambassador accredited to his country. The destiny of Africa is increasingly in the hands of Africans today than it has ever been at any other time in modern history.