Are we Africans really in charge of our destiny?

While this question and perhaps this article may intimidate many people,
it’ll also be an article of interest and an eye-opener for most.

Careful listening and meticulously analysing news events emanating from my dear country Ghana and Africa as a whole, I am tempted to ask first myself, and then others, whether we Africans are really in charge of our own destiny?

Those familiar with news events coming out of Africa may agree with my question, and thanks to the surge in social media, you don’t have to be a PhD holder to be able to draw your own conclusion on the question.

Norman Douglas once said, "You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements." If he’s right, and I think he is, then we Africans will have to reconsider, revisit and maybe reconstruct our societal mechanism and our way of thinking and of doing things.

History has taught us, and sadly, it’s still telling us that we’ve failed greatly as a people, as a race and as a continent.

We’re greatly blessed as a continent with our land filled with riches and resources. However, we’re cursed as a people lacking integrity and standard. We’re so easy to be confused and so-so cheap to deal with. Our continent has become a graveyard where the world buries its dirtiest. We are so cheap a people that our leaders and people of authority have become pawns being moved on boards by others for their benefits.

Or, does it mean that our academicians and scholars are not competent in their acclaimed fields of studies? Or does it mean that we as a people do not like better things or do not know how to live a good life? We have so many riches in our land yet we’re the poorest in the world even on our own land.

People who themselves left their nations in times of social unrest to seek safety and greener pasture in our land have now become lords over us; and are treacherously manipulating and looting us using our people of authority as turnkeys. When someone controls your commerce and income, that person automatically controls your life and destiny.



Nations have forcefully colonized and milked us over the years, but to think that we’ve entered into a neo-colonization and happily giving away our birth rights and natural resources to people and nations who are themselves under developing is sickening and heart-breaking.

Behind 95 percent of all thriving companies in all African nations is a foreign individual, a group of foreign individuals actively engaged-in, and monopolising our ministers and system to amass wealth for themselves.


We are not in charge of our own destiny, we don’t rule ourselves, we have no plans as nations, and neither do we know where we are heading as a people. These words are hard to say, but they’re an absolute truth. There are secret offices, ironically in the least expected places in the world where some people or groups of people sit 24 hours around the clock with cheap telephones in hand sadly telling our so-called ministers and people of authority what to do.

Our politicians have become so incompetent or perhaps so weak they’ve become turnkeys being used by fake business entities.

Years back, it’d be fair to say we’re still young independent states therefore we need to grow, but today we’ve grown. Over 50 and more years of independence and we still don’t get it, why?

While I strongly believe that education is the key to advancement and improvement for both the individual and the nation, I equally believe that our lack of advancement as people is a mentality rather than education.

There is never an effect without a course, and charity, they say begins at home, so Africans need to sit down and think real hard, redefine our way of thinking; reshape and restructure our societies. We lack so many qualities as a people, among them, love for country and fellow citizens.

Patriotism, in defined normally as, devoted love, support, and defence of one's country; national loyalty. But definition for us as Africans is: hate for country and fellow citizens, denial of human right and justice for our own people, while struggling to please to the highest level the foreigner who has come to seek greener pasture by treacherous means, and amassing of individual wealth instead of collective good.






While others strive to use their knowledge to bring about developments, success and stability for self and nation as well as, let’s say achieve global recognition and fame for self and for country, we on the other hand strive with our knowledge to boast to fellow cohorts, cheat them, become pawns being used by sadly people who in their own countries of origin are dents. Our ministers and people in authority have become turn-keys being exploited by others to open the doors to our God-given treasures.

Just recently, India hosted a summit of all 54 African nations. And to see leaders of a whole continent being assembled like school children waiting to be given a task by a single country, India for that matter, who is finding a way to get a piece of the African “cheap pie” is both disgusting and a shame.

When will we as a people think and develop our raw materials so we can also assemble other nations and tell them what to do and not the other way round.

Western countries saw our weaknesses and helped themselves out with our raw materials and riches as well our human power to enriched themselves and build magnificent cities, and when they had enough and saw that we’re beginning to have a little sense, they then adopted rules and regulations and a clever way of going about their looting and modern enslavement while imposing stricter regulations on how to get to their enclaves.

This is followed by others, perhaps the most dangerous of all the African treasure hunters, who I simply term “wolves in sheep’s clothing. ” Unlike Western looters who used force to loot us, these people come with smiling faces, sweet voices and a very cunning way of manipulating our leaders and people of authority.

These owe practically every principal and flourishing businesses in the continent, sadly though they have local turnkeys who do their dirty works for them.

Then came the Chinese, and now Indians…are we insane? So none of the 54 nations in this continent is capable of standing up and demonstrating some kind of superiority? I’ll not be surprised if the next nation to neo-colonise us is Indonesia.

Until we value ourselves, become our brother's keeper and account for every individual with dignity and respect as it's done in others parts of the world; the world will always look down on us and control our destiny and we'll continue to suffer.