Born in an environment of great prospects, huge resources, invaluable intellectuals and an ever-hopeful energetic citizenry; it is safe to admit Africa as a continent has been a failure. The reasons while not far-fetched, are unfortunately, also preventable.
In a continent of many dreams, but little to non-accomplishments, it would have been expected to express a hope of a light at the end of a dark tunnel for the black continent. However, as many admit, all hope is not lost though in the midst of failed generations, non-productive leadership and a struggling citizenry, the failure of Africa, as rightly pointed out is not far-fetched from the abundance of inept leadership and managers of resources. For how long then shall the backward trend be forced to continue, even without tangible results?
It thus becomes fail-safe to suggest for the continent and its people to embrace a pragmatic change in their held beliefs and founded ideologies which were for long being forced to work in the midst of glaring failure.
Going by the amount and quality of expressed ideas aimed at development, government parastatals, human and natural resources, and election promises, the continent would have comfortably achieved monumental progress and socio-economic success. However, lackluster administration of available human and natural resources have condemned the continent to the depths of under-development, continental deceits, dependent on government largesse and a growing number of non-creative, unexposed and confused populace, including the few that managed to mount exclusive positions of leadership.
While foreign assistance continued on an upward inflow towards lifting a resource-rich continent out of poverty, scarcity of management abilities continue to ensure these efforts are only second to increasing poverty and insecurity.
While countries like China are constructively flooding the African economy, tapping into the abundant energetic labor force and readily available natural resources, thereby creating man-made economic progress, western countries led by an unwavering financial surplus from the US and Europe meant the year 2013 for Africa will be dominated by external military occupation.
This thus begs the question, how and when the resource-rich continent did reach this level of magnanimous decadence?
The answers are not far-fetched from the mass level of illiteracy among the African populace. The level of intellectual decadence, which has been transmitted from older generations to the younger generations, gives credence to the abundance of ineffective leadership whose only interest is to benefit from the largesse of continental cake readily available at the realm of leadership.
While it is improbable to say the continent is not rich enough to take care of itself, or should be considered incapable of meeting its own security challenges, the dominance of a top down system of governance, in which the leaders are void of enriched systems of leadership that creates value to both the region and the people inevitably amounts to a continuing decayed people and resources.
Investing in the adolescent generation becomes a task for all that is concerned in not only sustaining them from infant mortality, but also setting the right standards as platform to attain the level of intellectual understanding which has been largely missing in the crop of younger and current older generations.
This brings a huge level of responsibility to the civil society, to awake in its responsibilities on not only condemning malicious government policies, but setting the standards and platforms for the adolescent generations to grow and develop into.
A massive enlightenment of the citizenry takes a lead with an all-inclusive education sector reform, by training young people in vocations that will not be preparing them for service in the public sector, but of self-sustenance that will yield entrepreneurial energy towards providing services of value to meet the needs of their society, and by extension, personal profits.
Achieving a dream continent of this nature will not only benefit the current generation, but provides a solid foundational platform for younger, adolescent and unborn generations to grow and thrive towards meeting their desires goals aims in life of a productive contribution to the society at large.
This is the African dream worth embracing.
Fiyinfoluwa Elegbede is an AfricanLiberty.org columnist most writes under the Voice of Liberty Africa platform
