Colonization has, in fact, deeply scared African people but I think what needs to be done is to get Africans to start believing in themselves again, to work together, to appreciate the greatness of their own culture, to stop trying to be what they are not, overall, to stop wishing for a development western-style. Slavery in its original sense was abolished over 40 years ago; it’s time to move on. We have to get the African youth to start building up their self-esteem again. They will have to love who they are, they will have to love each other and they will most definitely have to start loving their own countries for any development to occur. Africans don’t have interest in building themselves a sustainable society and this needs to change. They receive international cooperation as a gift, they take it for granted but their is no cooperation. They think foreigners have the power to change a society… they don’t, they can build very superficial stuff but real changes will only start when Africans will roll up their sleeves and undertake their own development. (But then, I admit it must be hard to get people to mobilize when some can barely feed their family!) Nothing will ever change if Africans don’t take part in it and help create the world they want to live in. Africans have learned not to care about their culture, everything's always about the colonist's culture (and I totally understand why that is so.). Still, people are ashamed of what they are or they have no interest in finding out who they really are. I believe we will never see a culture develop itself in someone else's culture. They will have to accept who they are before accessing to something better.
If we want a great new world, we’ll have to deconstruct some conceptions and beliefs that now make up African people's mind. (And I won’t even start with what needs to be deconstructed in western people's minds!!)
Never, in our world’s history, has there been such a long and cruel genocide as the one Africa has been living since the first foreigners set foot in Africa. Generations after generations, African people have been brought down to an inferior race. Now, when you repeat something to someone for such a long time, they will truly believe it. This is what needs to be unlearned. Africa had thousands of years of healthy, respectful and very admirable development (they actually lived for thousands of years on the same continent without destroying it as we, in the west, did in a couple hundred years!) But then, they got enslaved, abused, raped, and killed to the profit of the brave new world. Once that new world had a satisfying head start and was powerful enough, slavery became socially unacceptable, Africans are let back down in a global system they never heard of, with the obligation to keep up and play by the rules which they know nothing about. Consequently, another problem came up; African countries adopted the western political and development models as their own even though they never can be.
I really know nothing about politics but I think African people don’t want to get involved or take position because of what African politics and its leaders represent (corrupted selfish liars or something like that) Also, I think present African leaders are only there to serve foreign commercial needs. This being said I think slavery in modern Africa comes from both urban African centers, (people get educated, and they learn how to apply western capitalist methodologies in their favor, in their country) and also as a result of western commercial demands. African leaders don’t manage their countries as they should; they still manage them under the same system put up by colonizers. The objectives have not changed. During the colonization, westerners could take anything they wanted off the African continent but since their independences, they had to find a whole new way of doing so. The method they found not only covers-up the exploitation but also gives them an image of good-doing. This new method is called International Aid and cooperation.
It is just a very westernized term used to cover-up a very capitalistic and political oriented business. And that’s what it is, a business. It is used to profit the donor’s economy (As a general rule, 60 cents out of a dollar given to development projects comes back to the donor’s pockets. It is called linked aid (e.g.; in a famine, Canada will give well publicized amounts of money to the needy country but what is not publicly announced is that beneficiaries will have to buy the food from Canadian producers, even if they could get it cheaper in or around their own country)). It is used to keep commercial and political agreements well greased-up (e.g.; Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) sends money to countries where it has important commercial agreements or interests. (e.g.; Mali and its mines)). It is also sometimes used to benefit to the donor’s private sectors (France has a development program that implants the use of chemical fertilizers in many rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa (the farmers now depend on an expensive product which has to be imported (of course no one told them about the long term effects of such products on the fertility of the soil)). Over all this, international cooperation only accentuates the inferiority complex African’s live with. This aid is also taken for granted by southern populations; *why bother to do it ourselves when the white man always takes over everything?*
On the westerner’s point of view, it’s sort of a very subtle way to cover up our egotistical and greedy lifestyle. How else could we, 20% of the earth’s population, be able to justify consuming 80% of the world’s resources??? This being said, here is what I think cooperation between the north and the south should be all about. Cooperation should teach young westerners and young Africans what international Aid is really about and how it has to change. They should also put the *real* reality of one to the other and vice-versa. Young westerners should be shown how great and non-miserable the African people and culture are and young Africans should be shown how life in the west is not Dallas-like as they seem to think. Problems are everywhere, just of very different nature and at very different levels.
Cooperation is all about the links and exchanges that are created in between the cooperant and the African. It’s all about the exchanges of information, intercultural comprehension and the pacification of humanity. We got to stop talking about individuals and profits and start talking about exchanges, equality, partnerships and freedom. Everyone needs to stop thinking westerners have the key to the great African development (starting with the westerners themselves!). Even if they had that key, I really doubt they’d want to use it. If we compare our present society to the animal kingdom, the western society is the most dangerous of them all. Any animal will stop hunting once its basic needs are satisfied. All what westerners are doing right now is killing everything they see even though they are not hungry anymore. Not a very sustainable lifestyle I would say.
Let’s stop kidding ourselves! Africans are living what the western society tells them to live. Plus, look at what we have done in the west! Is this really what we want for them? Is this really what they want for themselves? Would this really be possible anyways?? They should know there is more to it than what they see in American soap operas. For a society to live the way we do in the west, others, a lot of others have to suffer and live in poverty. Plus, I know it’s hard to imagine for them but I think Africans should realize the chance they have of being the last society holding the opportunity to a better development. We now know, in the West, that our lifestyle has great consequences and very tangible limits. Wouldn’t it be wise to learn from this mistake instead of wanting to jump off the same cliff as us? But anyways, if you want my advice, at least forget about western aid and the American Dream. Accepting it is like agreeing to slavery and dependence, if Africans want changes in their lives, they will have to do it themselves and in a more sustainable way. This is not a recommendation, it’s a fact. They will have to open their eyes to the real world, hold hands and put their feet down and say: “No thanks, we’ll do it.”
« return.