Online Reporter
Nyasha Mangava
Career Navigator
MANY people think that Africans are poor people, but poverty is a mindset.
There are people outside Africa who also live in poverty. Poverty is not about the African skin colour. If you can change the way you think, you can also change your lifestyle.
How do you change the way you think? You do it by reading books and then acting on what you have learned.
Most people do not read, yet they blame everything around them for their problems.
Today, books can be freely downloaded from the internet.
However, if you ask most Africans about their reading habits, most are not reading at all.
In 2020, I managed to read at least 10 books per year. What do you do when you are free?
If you spend most of your time scrolling through social media just to laugh, you are not adding value to yourself. If you do not add value to yourself, you will stay in poverty.
Anyone can come out of poverty, no matter who they are, but only if they invest in what truly matters. Be a reader. Value knowledge. Many people are afraid of being left behind in this Artificial Intelligence era. If asked about which Artificial Intelligence sites one knows apart from ChatGPT and Gemini, most Africans would not know the answer.
As long as you are not a minor (18 years and above), do not blame anyone for your situation, including your upbringing.
Yes, the starting point matters. Yes, there are unfair systems. But how one responds to these challenges is in their control. Taking charge of our own growth is the first step to change.
The solution is simple: read something useful for at least 10 minutes every day. Ten minutes may seem small, but when one does it consistently, it becomes a powerful habit.
Those 10 minutes daily add up to over 60 hours of reading each year — enough to finish many books and greatly expand one’s knowledge.
To quote from Moffat Machingura, a prolific writer with more than five books. He said that knowledge is not power, but knowledge becomes power when you are the only one who has it. In other words, spend time reading books and learning things that many others are ignoring. When one knows what others do not know, one becomes valuable and irreplaceable.
Professor Arthur Mutambara said: “Africans are not writing and they are busy not reading at the same time.”
This double problem: not creating knowledge and not learning from what exists — explains many of Africa’s challenges. When people neither write nor read, they disconnect from opportunities and growth.
Breaking free from poverty needs more than money or help from outside. It needs a personal change in how we use our time. When we choose to read daily, apply what we learn, and keep growing our skills, we choose success over poverty. When we understand that where we are today does not control where we can be tomorrow, we take back control of our lives.
The way forward is simple, though not always easy: value knowledge, become a dedicated reader, and take responsibility for your own growth. Ten minutes today, ten minutes tomorrow — these small investments add up to real change. Poverty may be real for many today, but it does not have to be our future. The choice is ours to make.
Start today. Put down your phone after reading this. Find one useful book or article. Read for just 10 minutes. Do it again tomorrow. And the next day. Small steps, done consistently, create big changes. The power to escape poverty is already in your hands — it is called the decision to read and learn.
