Despite Afrca Union’s failures, we must transform our continent

As I pondered over the goings on at the just ended Africa Union summit, my mind was drawn back to David Lamb’s book – The Africans – that I read several years back. Whereas I found his analysis of Africa hilariously true and very eye opening, there is a paragraph that cut me to the quick and has never left my mind whenever I think about Africa and Africans.

Reviewing Africa’s way of doing things, Lamb wrote: In Africa, you quickly realise that those things you learned in the West about punctuality, efficiency and rational thought process don’t have much to do with Africa. Africa can only be explained in terms of Africa. It is a different world where the shortest distance between two points is seldom a straight line, where patience is more than a virtue; it is a necessity for survival.