By Kilemi Mwiria
Last night, I read a depressing depiction of Africa by Field Ruwe, a US-based Zambian journalist, author and PhD student. For him, Africa is a continent of largely sleepy, dreamy, lethargic and poverty stricken citizens.
Unlike elsewhere in the world, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions or innovations. There is too much hopelessness and the only light that flickers in the tunnel is a warning about approaching death due to poverty, disease and tribal warfare.
Yet we are rich in natural resources (minerals, water, energy) and now a highly educated population. Tragically, the most hard working Africans are the poor and uneducated ones who are on the streets selling merchandise, in informal urban settlements manufacturing goods with their bare hands, in villages tilling barren land and with women and youth crashing stones and transporting passengers on risky motorbikes. Urban workers walk miles to work and have lunch of bread and water. It is plainly frightening.
This is happening after more than 40 years of independence and after building many universities that turn out graduates who should be at the forefront of resolving basic survival problems that are now foreign elsewhere in the world. Why are these scientists, wonders Ruwe, not inventing simple stone crashers or water filters for poor villagers or discovering cures for tropical diseases and Aids?
It is these well educated elite that are to blame for Africa’s misery because most subscribe strictly to an 8am to 5pm work day, prefer to sit comfortably behind a desk in a huge office where they hang their degrees on the wall, are totally dependent on the Government pay cheque and spend most nights drinking and gossiping.
Ruwe agrees with many before him that part of our problem is bad politics. I however do not agree that our educated elites have no control over their governance. This is merely another extension of our laziness and failure to invest in shaping the kind of politics that will create the environment we like to have.
It is not enough to just continually blame it on poor pay; it is more important to ensure that we are in control of systems that determine that pay and that of others. In any case, it is quite possible to be creative and to invent with the available resources. After all, necessity is the mother of invention.
Attitude change among us the elite, the ordinary citizen and the political leadership is paramount; we must believe that together we can.
I agree with Ruwe that little will be accomplished unless those Africans aspiring for top leadership are technologically alert, bold risk takers, selfless ready to show us the way and instill discipline and to lead by example by creating workhorses in those that are lucky enough to be government payrolls.
It is only with such transformative (not status quo leaders) that we shall dream big enough to make simple crashers, water purifiers, harvesters, tropical medicine, tractors, cars, planes and thus bring hope to African generations of the future. This is what we should be asking of our presidential candidates rather than urge them on in sharpening their ethnic prowess; it is not the expertise we need to make progress!
The writer is MP for Tigania West and Assistant Minister, Ministry for Higher Education, Science and Technology
