Giving up on Africa: Is it possible?

It is easy to give up on Africa! And that is what I think a lot of our brilliant people do when they train and work in America and the West! There are cogent reasons why.

I wrote this piece quickly in response to a young brilliant man this morning and can share it without his name.

My broda- You see how many would even contribute to an aspiring Presidential candidate’s team?

Most have given up and it's sad because our generation was the first to challenge the white man toe-to-toe in academics and industry. And many were top of their classes even in Engineering and Science in America here!

Yes! I can cite many Scholarship students of the 1960s from Achimota, Prempeh, Adisco, Mfantsipim, Owaas, Mawuli, etc who were top students at famous places like University California at Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard or Stanford and many other top Universities.

But once again the white man won as our own people in leadership in the 1980s could not solve the practical ECONOMIC problems and sought advice from the white man who then told them:

1. You don’t need Free K-12 Education for all

2. You cannot afford to have underground sewage systems, and

3. Mosquitoes will always be in Africa- we will donate or sell you mosquito nets.

4. Libraries cost money oo! You cannot afford it!

5. Landscaping the grounds and providing public parks is not a priority!

6. You don’t have the technical manpower to mine your own gold and diamonds and bauxite and oil- we will let the Private Western companies come in and help you and give you a percentage!

And our brilliant men at home signed on the dotted line sometimes without reading all the 20-50 page legal documents! Why? Because they are educated men and as Osafo Maafo once admitted, even a contract in German, a language he did not know, he signed it!

These men are afraid to ask because the African educated man feels culturally it is a shame or animguaseɛ to say they do not know! Most of them were thus left behind as the age of Computers and IT emerged. Our culture oo! (Such people can manage your nation to global competitive success ?).

This is what one of my nephews calls keeping it real. There is a mismatch of talent trained since the 1960s, all fading away, and the African leadership and remnants of the days of patapaa and buga-buga of the military coup era of 1960 to 1980s. True Leadership has been missing for decades and generations now as explained in my book “Leadership Concepts and The Role of Government in Africa: The Case of Ghana” (Danso, K.A., 2007).

Can the nation of Ghana survive?

May God be with Ghana and our motherland Africa.