Giving shame to whom honour is due

The honour due to today’s African youth - for exceptional progress across fields and sectors - has been mostly obscured by the shame brought on by Africa’s leadership. The more manifest ignobility of Africa’s decision-makers has overshadowed the numerous ways the African youth has – practically unaided - succeeded in breaking through barriers in the fields of science, technology, economics, culture, the arts, communication, to mention few.

Africa and world attention remain erroneously focused on the lackluster leadership, cronyism, apathy to citizens’ plight and other manifestations of mal-administration that, as a smokescreen, pretentiously positions itself over the tangible efforts of Africa’s young people.

The result is that in the place of celebration of the achievements of the African youth, denigration of everything African thrives. Where recognition and honour ought to flourish for the extraordinary achievements of the continent’s young population, disgrace and dishonour are general terms for classifying most things authentically African.

But young people of Africa have been working hard and excelling. The successes occur notwithstanding minimal support from governments, which instead of offering mentorship and support appear bent on stifling creativity and innovation. Instead of looking up to the older generation or to leadership for role models, African youth have had to look outside of the continent, around, among their peers or below, among the children of Africa, to draw inspiration and strength.

Take technological innovation, for instance. From scrap metals, sand, discarded products, young people of Africa have been able to build useful products that have transformed the lives of their communities, and if upgraded will bring about affordable but highly important improvements in living standards across the world.

With information gleaned from their mobile phones, African youth have scorned the huge libraries of Harvard, Yale and Oxford universities and developed and manufactured products that are – in some instances – of much more usefulness than their counterparts who had access to the best libraries and archives.

One thinks readily of Way-C, the first African tablet, which was invented in the Republic of Congo by 26-year-old Verone Mankou. The $300 device, which went on sale in January 2012, was designed in Congo and means “the light of the stars" in a language of northern Congo.

A young Malawian William Kamkwamba has built several windmills that generate electricity and pump water in his hometown, from scrap metals. Kicked out of school for non-payment of his $80 tuition fees, William used his time to browse his local library where he came upon pictures of a windmill used to generate electricity. "I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try, too.'" The rest is what William achieved by sheer hard work and belief in himself.

William’s words are uttered daily by several African youth as they go about their daily grind, fully aware that they are without any form of institutional backing or support. A young Kenyan boy Richard Turere had the exact same thoughts when he ingeniously invented a low-cost solution to the problem of lions that attacked his father’s cattle. Three young Nigerian girls have built urine-powered generators and are in the process of developing them to full commercial usage. Reports abound of African youth building helicopters, dialysis machines, cars, blenders, juice extractors, biomedical equipment, etc. These are not pockets of progress; these are everyday normal occurrences of young Africans using their brains, bare hands and any available resources to make life better for themselves, their families and their community.

In the arts, the African youth has, for the most part, shunned Western music, and Western movies in favour of their own. From Nigeria, Uganda, Congo, Senegal, to South Africa, African youth are beginning to create and celebrate their own stars and heroes. Nigeria’s P-Square and 2face are household names across sub-Saharan Africa. Congolese music remains highly celebrated across the continent and South African gospel music stars are much adored by fans in East, West and Central Africa. Nigerian and Ghanaian films have become the staple of most African homes. The positive thing is that it has engendered the growth of the local film industry across other African countries. Omotola Ekeinde, a Nollywood star, was nominated as one of Time Magazine’s 2013 100 most influential people in the world, not because Americans or Europeans bought her movies, but because hundreds of millions of Africans love to watch her, blog about her, tweet about her and post her updates on Facebook .

Soon, young African writers will go viral. The liberation brought about by self-publishing through blogs, tweets, journal articles, essays, books, pictures and other forms of self-expression have loosened the tape previously used to seal the lips of African youth. Young Africans are now being empowered to put their thoughts on paper, or rather on the screen, and they are not shying away from that opportunity. Through the activities of technologically savvy young Africans, authentic stories are emerging from the continent that are more and more proving reports from mainstream (oftentimes western media) to be biased, one-sided and comprising much more of propaganda than facts and figures. Young Africans are publishing fiction, poetry, non-fiction and reporting on the true situation of issues across the region – oftentimes as a labour of love, without being on the payroll of any NGO or United Nations or the World Bank. Gone are the days, African youth seem to say, when we had to wait for Western publishing houses to accept our manuscripts; we do not have to wait for government to support our publishing industry. Instead, we shall place our fingers on the keyboard and publish our stories ourselves. Several blogs owned by Africa’s young people are becoming reference points for serious intellectual conversations , exemplary literary works, or factual news reporting.

In the field of business, intra-African trade continues to rise. This growth in the flow of trade among African nations is not necessarily because big businesses have decided to finally start trading within the continent, but because more and more African young people are beginning to trade across borders. East Africans are taking advantage of the East African Community; Kenyan young people are exporting made-in-Kenya products to Rwanda and Burundi, saving the two smaller economies from a perpetual dependence on Europe and Asia for products they are unable to manufacture. Ugandans are heavily involved in agribusiness in South Sudan, the newest African country with very minimum, by way of any form of self-sustaining enterprise. Nigerian young people are daily crossing the border to neighbouring countries selling Nigerian wares and buying products needed in Nigeria from other countries. Travelling on inter-state buses from country to country, one is accosted by young people filling the luggage spaces with slippers, pens, books, clothes and other goods for trade.

In fashion, more and more African young people are viewing African prints as trendy, and many fashion houses headed by young, savvy Africans are daily springing up in Lagos, Accra, Johannesburg, Nairobi and other capital cities. Some of these designers are from the diaspora, young people who were born or raised in either Europe or the United States, but who watched their parents suffer the indignities of being African in such societies and took a decision to reconnect with home and live out their days with some measure of dignity.

More young Africans are taking interest in farming too. Despite the colonially bequeathed inclination by the older generation to view agriculture as “uncool,” young Africans are rising to debunk that claim. Using ICTs, modern technology and with minimum paid up capital, young people are forming themselves in groups to set up agricultural communities. In Kenya, three young Africans in their mid-twenties developed the M-Farm as an application to help farmers in agribusiness. The iCow is another product that helps cattle rearers to track their cow’s gestation period. If the ongoing land grab across the continent, as aided by the leadership, does not completely give over Africa’s arable land to foreign capitalist interests, then there is hope that sooner than later, Africa’s young people would be able to meet the food security and nutrition needs of the continent and export surplus products.

Cultural pride lies at the root of national transformation. In Culture Matters Lawrence Harrison and Samuel P. Huntinton posit that development is a cultural phenomenon. There is a measure of truth in that statement. The lack of pride in African culture has been at the foundation of several contradictions and base dispositions witnessed across sub-Saharan Africa. Many young people are slowly, gradually, but surely beginning to ask questions about value orientation and beliefs, as distinct from that being communicated by the west. Politics is a strong platform for value reorientation, but this is an elusive platform for the segment of African youth that can make a difference.

Indeed, politics remain an area of exclusion for young people. When an octogenarian is still interested in leading a nation, or when politics is a drawn out war among bitter enemies, then most intelligent, hard working, honest and productive young Africans would rather invest their energies in some other form of peaceful and “worthwhile” venture.
It is far from “Uhuru” for the African youth; a convoluted form of mentorship by the older generation, has indeed transferred the culture of conspicuous consumption, contracted from the colonialists, to Africa’s youth . There is still a lot of work to be done in this area. Negative western influences in certain sectors will also take quite some time to challenge, but this is where the right kind of education is needed.

The worst blow that Africa has dealt its young people is the mis-education being dished out from the nursery school to university level. Education in Africa has robbed the young African of authenticity, of self pride and the ability to be creative and innovative. The urgent need is for the youth of Africa to begin to place more emphasis on indigenous knowledge, to search out and know oneself, their environment and how they can apply change to the environment. Like a wise man said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and learn…” African young people must unlearn certain things they have been taught in schools and learn new things needed for them to continue to make progress.

The stunted growth being experienced in Africa today is as a result of misinformation. For it is said that to be informed is to be transformed and to be uninformed is to be deformed. Schooling has failed the African youth. They must now begin to educate themselves at both the formal, non-formal and informal levels. The word educate is a derivation of the latin word “educo” which means to draw out, to develop from within. Education means to bring out what is within a person and use it to bring about change within his environment. Being armed with three PhDs does not make one an educated person; it is how much transformation one has been able to bring about in one’s social, political, cultural, economic and physical spaces.

In all, there is much to be celebrated among young people of Africa. Despite the centripetal and centrifugal forces that constantly seek to discount their numerous achievements, the results are encouraging and the prognosis is good, very, very good.

* Dr. Chika Ezeanya blogs at www.chikaforafrica.com Her book, ‘Before We Set Sail’ is available on www.amazon.com and other leading bookstores, www.beforewesetsail.com

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