In New African magazine:
Even the most fervent and optimistic pan-Africanist cannot help but be despondent at the state of affairs in Africa today. The continent cannot continue to rely on its historic oppressors to right the wrongs besieging Africa today, writes Femi Akomolafe, arguing that Africa needs to find unorthodox solutions to its current predicament.
Femi Akomolafe image courtesy of Silicon Africa
While the horrendous wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone have been doused, more such conflicts have been ignited with a vengeance in several parts of the continent. Nigeria is menaced by the scourge of Boko Haram. Christians and Muslims are murdering each other with Old Testament fury in the Central African Republic. Newly-minted South Sudan is engulfed in mindless internecine civil war.
DRCongo is yet to overcome almost five decades of civil strife, and al-Shaabab is wreaking havoc in East Africa. In the meantime, there are more foreign troops rampaging around Africa today than at any time since the ostensible end of colonialism in the 1960s.
And while the elites and their supporters/sponsors in the West continue to tout self-generated impressive macro-economics statistics that purport to show how good things are, the reality on the ground, at the micro-economic levels, is still the abysmal and shocking poverty in which citizens are forced to live...[continue reading]
