There is a common quote that says “everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” You can add that if a fish spends its whole life trying to climb a tree, it must be stupid.
Chinese business mogul, co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma said in a keynote that the advantage Africa has is that there is really nothing to destroy in Africa. I get his point but I would have preferred he said ‘nothing has already been destroyed, yet.’
What is with the tall glass buildings anyway?
I hope you get where I am going with this. Africa is trying to develop but I believe we are generally developing in the wrong direction - hence my idea of fish trying to climb trees and me correcting Jack Ma because I would love for us to not let others define for us what a developing and a developed Africa should look like. What is with the tall glass buildings anyway? Are we building old American cities or future African cities?
I hear some African countries in the west will continue using the FCFA under a new name ECO. I’m still trying to understand why the effort for such a cosmetic solution. Why is it so hard for us to get out of a deal that even the dumbest of nincompoops can identify as a scam? I mean, in November last year, the African Union fired its U.S. ambassador Dr Arikana Chihombori-Quao . A AU report alleges abuse of funds and office but it could be anything - like that anti-colonial speech. The AU headquarters in Addis Ababa is a donation from China and its key technical staff are all Chinese. If I have to do the math for you then its probably still bed time for you. Fifty something African countries cannot afford to build their own meeting house?
I hear Trump while spending state funds on vacation at his own resort gave the order for one of the military power brokers in the Middle East to be ousted using some of the beautiful weapons the US has spent trillions of dollars acquiring. You’d think Iraq should have reacted by now but they really have to think about this one. You might be wondering why I am talking about this when it has nothing to do with Africa. I’m trying to say this is why we cannot have our own currency. I don’t want to call names but Sankara is something to think about.
Whats with the glass buildings anyway? Like we are going to try and beat the burj khalifa? I’m really talking about what leverage we have that we are not using. That idea of nothing has been destroyed yet. People. Culture. The internet. You may begin to ask if the internet is really ours. Good question. If it is not, what are we doing about it? I figured if America is going to use its drone and the drone is piloted using a piece of software, if I can get into that piece of software, I have a chance. I hope I am not saying too much.
And the old men. I get it, you came up different, but all the time we have been coming up, you have been here too. I say of them that they have one year of experience 40 times and not 40 years of experience. Ok, let’s give them experience but the problems we are facing here today do not need more experience to solve. They need creativity and the old guys we must admit are kind of rusty. They have experience in staying in power though and that kind of doesn’t need creativity to do. Violence is something they have a closer relationship with. They lived closer to the world wars. So they are going to be there for a while. What do we do in the meantime?
This is the point where I try to sound like an expert on social mechanics if that is not something I just came up with. I like to say we need to start creating the system of the future within this system. This is obviously something that will take a whole book to explore or maybe a series of articles. But we really need to, as africans, think about pivoting our revolution (if I can call it that) on people and culture. When I keep asking what the glass buildings are for anyway, I am just wondering if that is what people will leave New York to come see in Africa. So when I talk of people and culture, it is really for us to see it through multiple layers of how they fit into our development goals and start asking the right questions.
This is not a piece to get you to act on anything. Just something to get you thinking. We must always be thinking about our condition if we want to find solutions. Happy thinking.
- Norbert Foy