Page 36 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 32

Art & Culture
And we need to learn from that. The present world
system is designed to stand on the faulty Western
foundation or philosophy that says only the strong
survive in the jungle. If this is true like they make
it appear, how come they don’t ever start such
statements by calling themselves wild animals who
live in the jungle who must use the faulty ideology of
the jungles? Instead, they tell you they are developed,
and civilized and your African countries are third-
world and poor. But we have seen what happens in
the streets of these so-called civilized nations when an
incident happens and there is a power cut. The streets
are instantly wild with human-wildlife looting shops
and smashing vehicles parked on the streets.
My point is, that the so-called civilization of the West
or Europe, for which they flaunt their muscles and
poke their noses in things that should not concern
them in Africa and also get away with doing so,
is because no African nation presently has enough
military power to stop foreign military aggression.
So, when an Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso or an
Assimi Goïta of Mali decides they have had enough
of the madness, they are painted with the brush of
“dictators” and “militias” and not as patriots who are
fighting to liberate their nations from age-long foreign
oppressions.
Trade in local resources among themselves: This
is one of the major reasons why ancient kingdoms
and empires became very wealthy and expanded
beyond what was possible in their time. They knew
the power of trade to generate both physical wealth
and the influence that comes with such wealth.
Present-day African countries are still failing in this
regard. We speak of unity and the many advantages
of unity among Africans, but we love too much the
chicken and chips of Europe, and it’s making us
blind and weak in tackling global issues that directly
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affect us. The idea of the unity and
partnership of African countries in
trade is not some luxury idea, it’s a
way of survival. The balkanization
of the landmass called Africa was
an intentional idea of the Berlin
conference to make sure Africa never
could summon its entire population
to unite for anything meaningful.
And this was more than a century
ago. But why are we still giving
power to this idea that is not helpful
for the emancipation of Africa? It
does not make sense to fly out of the
continent of Africa and then route
back to connect with another African
country, simply because we told
ourselves that the so-called airspaces
belong to our various African
countries and we determine who we
want to pass through. How stupid
that sounds. Really!
Foreign debts were unknown:
In all my reading about African
kingdoms and empires or even
simple African communities, foreign
debts are never mentioned as a thing
or a modus operandi for nation or
community building. They lived
within their means and the madness
of individualism and consumerism
that has become a cancer in the bones
of the people of the world was not
known then. As we all can see from
the various information that shows up
in the public domain every now and
then, modern-day debt that nations
are compelled to take is not because