Re-imagining Africa

Dr Obert Mpofu

WE are at a point where we are required to reimagine Africa; as it was before, as it is now and its future. This is a crucial step that we need to move the continent forward.

In doing so, there are some harsh realities that we need to contend with. There are also some counterproductive actions that we need to shed off. We must start with an exercise of introspecting and picking out some important lessons.

There is so much that has not gone according to plan for our continent, mostly due to circumstances beyond us. For most of us, we have been operating under harsh conditions where our detractors have been making concerted efforts to reverse the gains of our hard-fought independence. This has slowed down the continent’s progression over the years. But, this need not be the case. In the fight towards total emancipation amid the machinations from our detractors, we have managed to survive and pick up some important lessons along the way.

For Africa to prosper, there are several truths that we need to accept. Our continent holds so much potential that needs to be unlocked. We occupy the richest continent in terms of both natural as well as human resources.

The tragedy with our continent is that we have not yet fully unlocked the continent’s full capabilities. This is crucial for Africa to save itself. We should by all means get rid of the dependency syndrome as we will not prosper that way.

The solutions to our success lie within us and we must do everything we can to ensure that we move our continent forward. In this endeavour, there is a lot to learn from friendly and progressive nations such as China who at some point in time were in a similar situation to that of Africa. It took China looking within for it to turn around its fortunes.

A quick look at the African continent in today’s world shows a glaring disparity in terms of the intention of the forefathers of this continent and where we are as a continent. Suppose we are to be completely honest with ourselves, in that case, the African continent seems to have abandoned one of the most important traits that are required to ensure the success of our continent, which is Pan-Africanism.

The continent is slowly forgetting that Africa has the inevitable task of catching up with the rest of the world. History hasn’t been kind to our continent nor has it been patient with us, and this has necessitated that we move at a much quicker pace than the rest of the world to be at par.

Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to Africa’s aspiration are the artificial colonial borders that were imposed on us as our continent was being carved up during the Berlin Conference. Up till this day, our beloved continent has not recovered from this imposition. Most of our problems emanate from the fact that we are divided along artificial borderlines.

Africans are a highly communal species, and such an inclination has been key to how we have evolved as a civilisation over time. The coming in of the colonialists and their carving up of our beloved continent as per their own conceptualisation has been the greatest injustice ever done to the African.

“We have Africans of the same bloodline residing in two countries that identify differently. The Europeans came and carved up our beautiful nations, decimated our way of life, and cut in half villages that had existed for the longest time thereby separating our people. As is common knowledge, a people divided can never prosper. Our people will find it difficult to get to where they need to because of these artificial borders as much of their energy is spent on attempts to regain what was lost and achieve the previous connections that we once shared.

It is up to the current crop of African leaders to come up with solutions to this challenge that we face as a continent.

The same people are living divided yet they share the same bloodline, history, and aspirations. In economic terms, Africa with its population of approximately 1,5 billion people is potentially the largest market in the world. Its practical integration will have tremendous benefits and has the potential to turn around the fortunes of all our people. But in order to achieve this seemingly difficult task, we need to break all barriers and find solutions to our plight or we may never prosper as a people.

So much has been said about Africa lagging behind, but if we are to be honest, Africa’s current situation was engineered a long time ago. The remnants of colonialism still exist with us today, long after we achieved our political freedom and it is perhaps the time to rid our continent of all forms of suppression.

I am of the conviction that Africa will not develop as the rest of the world has done. Africa’s case is different, we have all the resources we need and we are moving towards a position wherein if we just get all the elements right, then our economic boom will be so rapid and the continent will prosper at an exponential rate than has ever been experienced before.

We are but just a few steps away from realising our full potential as a continent. We only need to break down some of these colonial misconceptions that have separated our people and slowed down our progress.

Dr Obert Moses Mpofu is an academic and the Secretary-General of Zanu-PF. He writes in his own capacity.