"Formed by the people to help our people

Center for Diseases Control and Prevention in Africa (Cdc Africa) is a collaboration of volunteer medical professionals in the US working alongside their Third World Countries (particularly in Africa) local counterparts to bring basic health solutions to the dire medical needs of millions of suffering people in Africa and also making attempt to offer a platform for emergency medical relief efforts around the world during catastrophic situations.”

I copied the above, including the caption above it from African CDC website.

To the above, I say a big, big shame on us. I have for quite a while been writing on our need to unite Africa so that we will be able to do things like this under one “African government”. We have blue suits sitting in Addis Ababa flying around the world from conference to conference on someone else’s dole, (or should I say on our dole) acting like they are holier than thou. I have questioned politicians who have not found the need in their agenda to discuss the need for African unity and how it will impact our future. I saw a picture of President Mahama being received by a crowd some carrying placards with a laughable line, “JM the next Kwame Nkrumah”. Well I say, I know Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Nkrumah was a friend of mine, and JM, you are no Kwame Nkrumah.

If you don’t know where the last line of the above paragraph came from, let me add this disclaimer: The only brush I ever had with Kwame Nkrumah was when I was a little boy, 7 or 8 years old when Queen Elizabeth came to Ghana and She and Kwame Nkrumah came to Cape Coast and I as a school boy had to join others to line the streets and wave Ghana and British flags as they drove by. After they passed us, we ran to Victoria Park to listen to them speak.

Back to my point; when ever did John Mahama advocate African unity? When ever did he work passionately to bring about African unity? When ever did he suggest that African Union is not bearing any fruit and therefore should be re-looked at? When ever did he threaten to withdraw Ghana from the African Union if it is going to remain as it is? (If you flip through my articles on Ghanaweb, you may come across my article on if Ghana should remain in African Union). When ever did anyone think that Kwame Nkrumah did not or would not do the above to see his life’s dream a success? Why then would anyone so shamefully call President Mahama the next Kwame Nkrumah? To be in that realm to be called the next Kwame Nkrumah, you have to earn it and I do not see any politician in all of Africa who has even began to do the work it takes to earn anything close. Let’s not even dream to go there.

On African CDC, I can see our leaders rushing to seek that the center be located in their countries. Of course just as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf rushed to offer Liberia for a US military base because she saw the dollars association, so will many leaders see dollars in their own pocket rather than see the need for the center because if they saw the need for it, we would have been talking about it long before Ebola. It took people from other continents to bring the idea to us in Africa: And we have had African Union for how long? And please bear in mind that OAU was merely three years old when Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown.

Just as I believe my past discussion of the need for African unity was a waste, so do I believe this effort is a waste; but a little hope is worth the waste. I hope that we the people of Africa will demand a discussion of this topic in our politics across Africa. I hope that our journalists will ask those who are running for President, if nothing at all, at least to express an opinion on the topic and for them to say if belonging to African Union is beneficial and why. Finally if you are interested, and you didn’t get to read it, you may read my article titled “Ghana’s Interest Is In United Africa” published in Ghanaweb on January 10, 2014. I hope people reading this opinion article will see it as my opinion and think a little about it before they go knee-jerk on me.

Long Live Africa

Tony Pobee-Mensah
tpmensahr@yahoo.com