THIS week we carried a story on calls by China Network for International Exchange deputy secretary general Shi Guohui for African countries to be self motivated and map out strategies to find home grown solutions to the problems they are facing.
Mr Shi who was speaking when he addressed 20 journalists from African countries attending the Africa Media workshop under the auspices of People’s Daily said Africa should not allow external forces to influence its decisions because some western countries have hidden agendas in the guise of promoting human rights.
He said tangible benefits could be realised by China and African countries only if the two peoples understood each other’s social and economic situations.
True to Mr Shi’s observation, African countries have been courted by many lovers from the Arab invaders, the European explorers, slavers, colonisers, missionaries, captain of industries, corporate CEOs, Multi-National Corporation CEOs, humanitarian aid workers, Christian charity workers, NGO workers, experts, expatriates, Hollywood celebrities all these characters find the continent a lovely damsel.
It is only China who treats Africans as equal partners with several so called benefactors being ill bent on reaping the continent blind.
With this grim picture, it is time for African leaders to implement what the visionary of Pan Africanism Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana recognised as the need for some brand of African regional security arrangement as early as the 1960s.
African countries need to form a federation that would safeguard the continent’s interests in politics, culture and economics.
Although Nkrumah’s suggestion for coordinate regional security efforts has largely failed to materialise, African leaders and scholars need to revisit the calls by changing their approach in making it bear fruit.
Whatever the problem, what is clear is that African problems call for African solutions if we are to forge ahead and be at par with western countries.
We deplore the lip service that has been given to this requirement whose absence has seen western countries not only dictating what we should do but at what pace we should move.
At independence, African states found themselves with poor prospects for sustained economic growth with many countries especially those in sub-Saharan Africa running back to their former colonial masters bowl in hand for financial assistance.
It is this over dependence on our former colonial masters that has made economic emancipation elusive since most exported primary commodities obtained in Africa has its values priced on the world market.
Coming back to Africa solving her own problems, we feel there is no way out in this quagmire.
We feel the period of western intervention has been long. We are talking about the late 1800s when the western world really started to explore deeper into the heart of Africa.
What the explorers found was an abundance of land and resources with only primitive people with spears as the only thing standing in their way.
Through this technological advantage, Europe was able to successfully claim Africa, its people and its resources as its own.
Seeking only to reap the economic and territorial advantages, settlers created quick local governments and didn’t bother industrialising Africa.
When countries in Africa began to win their independence, these newly formed countries were left hundreds of years behind the western World.
As Mr Shi Guohui has noted, it is now time for Africa to look inwardly instead of casting her eyes to the West. OPINION