A Rebuttal To: Is Africa Ready To Enter The Civilized World?

[Mimbari]

A Rebuttal To The Above Article:

January 06-2008:


TOPIC: Is Africa Ready To Enter The Civilized World?

Derryck:

Thank you for your blog/editorial posting concerning Africa. I wanted
to add my two cents, but direct to you since I haven't figured out how
to get me name from showing up online through the group and I don't
feel comfortable in my profession being out there like that. Please
forgive me.

I have been on and off living in or traveling to Africa for about four
decades. Lately, I have been working in Ghana for technology
development and reforestation, after having attended the University
there back in the 70s.

I grew up in Kenya, a couple years after independence in the late
60s. The Luos were being disrespected then by Kenyatta and his people
(Kikuyu), deriding them in public with a pop song of the day because
Luo men are not circumcised! I heard on NPR that the issue was
brought up in the recent campaign against Odinga.

Ethnic divisions are no joke everywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, as in
the rest of the world. African groups were pitted against each other
big time during the slavery and colonial eras. They were ignored in
the carving up of Africa between the European powers. American
journalists refer to African ethnic groups as "tribes" and in so doing
perpetuate in the minds of Americans that Africans are somehow
primitive, uncivilized. When it comes to Europeans, their "tribes"
are referred to as ethnic groups. The solution to ethnic/tribal
conflict in Europe these days, particularly Eastern Europe, seem to be
about making a separate country for each. It was the long-standing
solution to keep the Germans and French and English and Dutch and
Spanish and Italian civilly separated from each other. (It's only
been fifty or so years since that all disintegrated into WWII.)

African societies, which has been described in the historic literature
as industrious societies trading with each other in relative peace,
were plunged into inter-ethnic warfare for hundreds of years with the
advent of the trade in humans. These societies lost their most
productive men and women during this time. These ethnic groups, one
would imagine, suffer lingering, if not unconscious, historic
animosity over these vicious wars.

In the post-colonial/independence era Africa continues to lose most of
its productive, intelligent, talented, ambitious, educated men and
women. American and European embassies gladly pass out residency
visas that will lead to citizenship for qualified applicants resulting
in a continual brain drain out of these countries that so much need to
keep their bright and talented. In Ghana, I've been told, 85% of
medical doctors that graduate from the universities there leave the
country for a promise of a better life abroad. As a result, there are
few doctors, health care is pay-as-you-go and unavailable for many,
and life expectancy is in the 40/50s. (Everybody I know there wants
to get a chance to travel, if not live, here or in Europe. Few
ordinary citizen can get a visitors visa and most Ghanaians are
essentially prisoners in their own country, with no chance to travel
nor choice to emigrate.)

Don't forget that the industrialized nations/multi-national
corporations continue to make whatever deals that will benefit them
with the ruling elite of these countries to secure resources such as
oil and precious minerals for themselves, further destabilizing
democratic "civilized" development. China has now entered the arena
in a big way, contributing to Sudan's entrenchment. Watch for the US
Africom military campaign to counter China's influence.

Human development anyone???

S M.