Luke-ing the Beast in the Eye: Re-thinking Africa: Are we a rising continent?

Tomorrow is Africa Day, that hallowed day when we celebrate our beloved continent, its diverse people and cultures as well as its varied but rich resources that ought to bring positive change in the lives of the citizens of this blessed land.

The Africa Day theme for this year is Re-thinking African Education systems for the 21st Century: Building resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality and relevant learning in Africa.

Quite a great theme there. But for me, before we even get to the learning systems of our school-children and tertiary students, the re-thinking of our education ought to start with a re-think and a re-education of African leaders so that they hold legitimate elections and prioritise the people and their welfare.

Indeed, before we even talk about the education systems of our students, we must first educate our African leaders to appreciate why they are in office in the first place.

There is a prudent reason why our leaders must be educated and properly oriented to their key mission and purpose as they hold the levers of political power. .

It is sad that we have seen our African leaders, their families and their acolytes spiriting away for their selfish benefit their countries’ vast mineral wealth while the citizens can hardly eke a living.

Africa’s huge population of educated youngsters, the so-called “youth bulge” has become a stressful and stressed demographic group contributing to the continent’s mammoth unemployment figures as the political elites dismally fail to create jobs on such a rich continent.

We cannot be a rising continent when the only rising epithet , among others, is the rising statistics of unemployment and drug abuse by the continent’s young population.

We cannot be a rising continent when Africa’s sons and daughters who want to invest in their own continent are facing deliberate bottlenecks from a discriminatory travel system on the continent.

Our systems favour foreigners at the expense of prudent African investors who are keen to develop their continent.

Only last week, Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote told a bemused Africa CEO Forum summit in Rwanda of the travel difficulties faced by African investors in their own continent.

Pointing to Total Energies Chairman Patrick Pouyanne who attended the same summit, Dangote said while Pouyame could freely and easily travel around Africa, he needed at least 35 visas to travel around his own continent for investment opportunities.

We cannot be a rising continent when Africans are not safe on their own continent, including in South Africa where they are being killed, maimed and harassed as if they were foreigners.

Yet these are Africa’s sons and daughters who are being killed and maimed on their own continent.

How can we rise when Africans are not safe in Africa?

Is Africa a rising continent ?

There has been some progress in some areas in Africa.

At the Men’s Football World Cup Finals in November 2022 in Qatar , Rwanda’s Salima Mukaransanga was among the first ever three female referees to officiate at the most-watched global football fiesta.

Salima, Africa’s girl child, was officiating at the global football showcase, far away from Kampala or rural Uganda where she probably grew engaging in child play games (mahumbwe) .

That an African girl child would blow the whistle at world football’s grand bonanza was unthinkable only a few years ago.

Africa Day always comes amid a perennially growing optimism around the globe about our beloved continent, never mind the negative reality that those of us who slug it out on Africa’s soil have to endure every day.

Yet we all love our Africa. We were born here, we grew up here. And we will die here, never mind that we continue to receive the body bags of patriotic sons and daughters who have died elsewhere in search of greener pastures which their countries failed to afford them by dint of the misgovernance and corruption by the political elite and the oligarchs connected to them.

Yet there are some pockets of positive news about our beloved continent.

In the last few years, there has been phenomenal economic growth rates among the so-called African Lions; namely Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya.

This growth appears to show a continent on the rise, never mind that some of the leadership faces fronting this growth are sometimes branded doyens of tyranny. Paul Kagame and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni are a case in point.

In recent years, six of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies have been African nations. Only recently, the IMF was projecting a growth rate of 5,4 percent in Africa, against a global average of 3,6 percent.

All these impressive figures seem to show a continent on the rise. In 2014, the IMF chose to host its conference in Maputo that was aptly dubbed “ Africa Rising : Building to the Future .”

Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda more than doubled their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 1989 and 2009. All very impressive.

Sadly, the impressive economic figures have not transformed the lives of the citizens on the ground. They remain impressive balance sheet figures in the ledger book, with no relationship whatsoever to the daily toil of the struggling citizens in Kigali, Cairo, Addis Ababa, Mogadishu, Abuja and Harare.

And yet, whatever our frailties, we all love our continent; its scenic beauty and vast mineral wealth that is being looted and spirited away by Africa’s ruling elite.

A rising sovereign continent cannot depend on foreigners especially in building its regional headquarters.

For me, it is embarrassing that the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa was built with massive help from China, which is emerging as a new colonial power on our beloved continent.

Moreover, the Chinese strategy of swapping the sponsorship of massive infrastructure projects for our vast mineral resources across Africa has stripped the continent of its mineral wealth.

The so-called “Angola model” has seen the large influx of the Chinese into Africa who are spiriting away our vast mineral wealth for a song. And this over and above their poor labour rights record in the capital projects that their companies undertake in Africa..

Africa must never allow foreigners, whoever they are, to benefit from her wealth at the expense of her citizens. It is shameful that despite her huge resources, Africa has dismally failed to prosper herself and her citizens.

We must seriously reflect on this, particularly on this special day that we ought to be reflecting about our beloved Africa.

Yet despite the negatives, we unashamedly retain our adoration and pride in our Africa with its scenic sea shores, the pyramids of Egypt, the majestic Victoria Falls, the great Mount Kilimanjaro as well as the loving and hospitable people of this great continent.

I am not sure if among the hospitable Africans we should include the rogue elements in South Africa who continue to give their fellow African brothers and sisters a torrid time.

Just how do Africans become unwelcome on their own continent?

I have refused to refer to what is happening in South Africa as xenophobia because the nomenclature will not be correct.

Xenophobia means an unreasonable dislike of foreigners. Yet some foreigners of European, Chinese, Indian, American or Japanese descent are welcome in South Africa.

What is happening down there is Afrophobia, an unreasonable, primitive hatred of Africans on their own continent, sadly by their fellow African citizens.

On this Africa Day, South Africa must seriously reflect on whether it makes sense to shoot and kill fellow African brothers and sisters on their own continent.

And yet I love South Africa, the land of Nelson Mandela, the icon.

For Madiba was a soft man with a big heart. Love him or hate him, Mandela represented the best of our African values. I have heard him being chastised as a lackey of whites.

But Mandela etched Africa’s name in the history of mankind.

To suffer so much and yet continue to love so much is the best of our African values;. His was a life lived in strict conformity with my favourite scripture in 1 Corinthians 13.

Mandela’s legacy will remain contested but for me, he represented the best of our African values.

He spent almost three decades in prison but did not allow bitterness and vengefulness to diminish his humanity.

Some may regard that as a weakness but for me, Madiba will always remain the embodiment of the true African heart. A heart that has ample space to accommodate the trinity of love, tenacity and adverse experiences all in equal measure.

On this Africa Day, I remember this iconic African, with whom I had the privilege and opportunity to meet, shake hands and engage in a conversation, albeit very briefly.

On this Africa day, maybe because I knew him so well, I remember yet another great son of this continent, one Morgan Richard Tsvangirai.

He won an election but chose to serve in a junior position to the man he had defeated; the man who countless times attempted to have him killed.

It takes a great heart to be able to live that script.

He may have been scorned by some in his own country, but the world saw the great African in him. He was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, a respected global accolade.

In 2009, the then US President Barack Obama pipped him to the grand prize but he had made his global mark by merely being nominated twice for this coveted global award. .

Oh yes, MT left his own indelible footprints on the sands of African history.

There appears to be a huge disjuncture between the rhetoric of a continent on the rise and the reality of the parlous lives of Africa’s citizens.

For example, an estimated 48 percent of Africans live on less than US$1 a day. Gross State-sponsored human rights violations by Africa’s governments, the growing spectre of terrorism by religious fundamentalist outfits and the prospect of the continent failing to meet the SDGs are all factors that do not point to a continent on the rise.

Given the situation on the ground across Africa, the SDG of eliminating poverty by 2030 now appears a pie in the sky.

For me, the biggest fall on the continent has been dramatised by the rising number of coups across the continent. Coups were a dying phenomenon as most African countries had embraced electoral democracy.

Only last week, there was an attempted coup in the DRC.

In the past five years in Africa, the bullets are fast replacing the ballot as a means of installing governments across the subcontinent. We have resurrected a dying practice.

Prominent civil-military relations scholar Miles-Tendi (2019) states that between 1956 and 2001, there were 80 successful coups, 108 failed coups and 139 reported coup plots across sub-Saharan Africa.

Between 2001 and 2019, only about 12 coups occurred, indicating a decreasing coup frequency compared to the 1960s and 1970s.

But in November 2017, Zimbabwe had its first-ever coup, meaning coup risk exists, even in countries without a coup precedent.

Since then, we have seen other coups in Sudan, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Burkina Faso and several other countries.

A continent on the rise cannot be seen to be sliding back to the spectre of coups that were popular on the continent as far back as the 1960s.

It’s a startling regression!

But as long as we do nothing about those who steal elections, such as in Zimbabwe, coups will remain with us for a very long time. Once the electoral route becomes fraught with rigging and brazen pilferage of the people’s will, we inadvertently open the flank for other unwelcome routes for regime change.

Rather than being a continent on the rise, Africa is instead a continent on the fall, thanks to poor leadership.

In 2022, we learnt that African governments lost US$2 billion in revenue by arbitrarily shutting down the internet for political convenience.

Zimbabwe was listed among the 12 African countries notorious for stifling internet usage—-and this at a time when most government and economic activities are now happening online.

In a May 2022 report, Quartz Africa reported internet shutdowns in Africa have had a serious effect on already struggling economies.

Among the 12 named notorious countries that arbitrarily shut down the internet are Zimbabwe, Sudan, Algeria, Chad, DRC, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Egypt, Benin, Gabon, Eritrea and Liberia.

As for Tanzania, at one point the country shut down its internet for 1 584 hours in a blackout that cost the country’s economy US$ 600 million.

While others are embracing e-commerce, Africa has chosen to ignore the utility of the Fourth Industrial revolution by choosing to be digital aliens and not digital natives.

On this Africa day, where the theme is about re-thinking our education systems, I posit that we must begin by preliminary tutorials for our leaders so that they fully understand their mission and purpose while in office.

The theft of Africa’s vast mineral wealth by her leaders, their families and friends must be stopped now.

Africa’s wealth does not belong to the political leadership. It belongs to her citizens and to future generations, not to these clowns in the palace.

Happy Africa Day Zimbabwe.

Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava and a change champion. You can interact with him on his Facebook page or on the X handle @ luke_tambo.