₦airaland Forum

davitogreat:
They only know how to run to foreign lands, worship foreigners and bi.tch moan and complain.

America and the other developed countries are great today because ordinary citizens moan and complain for the government to be better. Silence in the face of societal ill is the worst disease.

YungwizzzyPt7:
phock u

Thank you. But please note that those unable to take criticism in stride cannot make positive changes. You are a real Nigerian.

Omexonomy:
Pleas kindly do us a big favour by not coming back from afganistan that have awarded you citizenship.

Those unable to take criticism in stride cannot make positive changes. You are a real Nigerian.

davitogreat:
I thank God there are africans like dangote, Mitchell elegbe, innocent chukwuma, tunde kehinde, wale tinubu, ladi jadesimi and many others

I thank God for them too. But let me ask, using Ebola as a case, what have they done with their billions to TRY to solve the problem? I just read some where that other countries and individuals are donating to an Ebola fund? Where are the African billionaires? http://www.cgdev.org/blog/how-much-actually-being-spent-ebola

I have always been thinking:

Is the African culture part of the problem of Africa? Africans are family-oriented but not society-oriented.
They build individual families but have not been able to string that together to develop their societies. Because of their familism (meaning penchant for family), the financial head of a family is forced to ''work'' for members of his immediate and extended family. A western professor of mine who lived extensively in Africa once told me that family problems are one of the main reasons why middle class Africans are as good as poor. I had argued with him back then with a fervor bothering on pan Africanism, but now I know better.

There is so much dependency that, oftentimes, the bread winner has to steal public money to satisfy his family's needs. Relatives troop in and out, putting people under pressure to give and give and give. Now with smart phones, Facebook and twitter, they come in your face on cyberspace with requests. There is now no hiding place, except you get off cyberspace. It is such that even if you earn a good monthly pay, you end up an impoverished employed person, month in, month out.

There is total lack of the culture to compete for the common good. In contrast, there is breath-taking competition to be corrupt and to be able to lord it over others with the stolen wealth. On top of that, there is the tendency to blame others for African problems.

They say it's due to colonialism and slavery. But hey!! Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Philippines, and virtually all South American countries were colonized too. Indians were enslaved by the Dutch and taken to Suriname in South America. These people and countries have since moved on, and have become self-sustaining in many development indices that African countries can only dream of. But Africa remains the basket case of the world, beset with hunger, malnutrition, grinding poverty and disease. Moreover, Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonized. Are they any better than the colonized African countries?

Even ordinary Ebola, Africans cannot contain on their own after 40 whole years of its first discovery in remote Central Africa. Admitted that Nigeria was able to achieve that feat. But it was largely mother nature at work for them. One is regaled with images of dirt and squalor on Western media covering the Ebola crisis in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. From those images you would conclude every single individual in those countries are dirt poor and live under the most horrible sanitary conditions. But there are presidents and leaders governing these countries. There are the rich and mighty. Have they been sleeping?

What excuse does Africa have to remain poor, dirty and a perpetual underdog? Africans on the street often say their leaders are corrupt. But leadership does not exist in a vacuum. Every leader was once a follower, and many new leaders, just followers a few years ago, have become even more corrupt than veteran leaders. How can you get good leaders from bad followers? The question then is, are Africans naturally wired to be what they are today?

What is the role being played by religion in certain African countries such as Nigeria? Virtually all the prosperous countries are those not overly enmeshed in all sorts of religion in equal numbers. They are either 100% (at least nearly so) Christians, 100% (at least nearly so) Muslims, or completely devoid of any religious affiliations. Nigeria has pursued the path of mixed religiosity in equal measure; yet all the religions that Africans ''die'' for are foreign to them. Why do they bear religion on their shoulders with unprecedented burdensomeness?

Election is coming up in Nigeria and everyone has become entrenched in their primordial positions. Common sense has been thrown to the dogs, and failed leaders, past and present, are doing all they can to recycle themselves. They throw crumbs at you and you fall hook, line and sinker for them. Where is the rallying for intellectualism and leadership quality? Where is Fasola, Utomi and the rest of the few good ones? Why are they not contesting and why is there no one promoting their candidacy? You all, ordinary Nigerians, have either been bought over by the corrupt and bigoted elites on both sides of the divide, or you are too ignorant and loving of the status quo to know any better.

Today, the president of Burkina Faso was chased out, and the parliament building set on fire. It was all because that president, despite having stayed 27 or so years in power, was angling to stay longer and sought to be backed up by lawmakers. That is the African system most like to live with.

Well, so much for my rambling. I just wanted to share what I have bottled up all these years.

PS: Today, I received my US citizenship; I am glad that I did, but I am not giving up on Nigeria and Africa, not yet.

itstpia1:
All africans are just as likely to be ostracized at some point if this keeps getting out of hand.

Doesn't matter where you claim, as long as you have black skin ( includes bleaching) and are african.

You make a valid point. However, I think it is human nature to beat down on the already fallen, the weak. I remember when Sawyer brought Ebola to Nigeria, Nigerians were fuming and ranting (AKA stigmatizing) against Liberia. Therefore I believe that if Ebola takes hold in America among all races, then not only Africans would be stigmatized, but all those who do not have it will stigmatize others who do. Hopefully, the virus is contained soon.

The article is from today's Express newspaper published by the Washington Post. The paper specifically cited Liberians, Sierra Leoneans and Guineans as being stigmatized.

Are you a Nigerian living in the DC Metro area? Do you face ostracization and stigmatization due to Ebola virus?
A Nigerian friend of mine recently called me to tell me that until further notice he has adopted being a Zambian (far away from Ebola zone ) if he is ever asked by anyone that would not require to see his Nigerian passport.

Ajanlekoko, back to the topic of African people's wickedness and vindictiveness

The Spaniards, led by Henardez Cortes, conquered South America and Mexico. So that was something akin to war where the better equipped person should win. However, that conquest led to colonization and not slavery. In contrast, before colonization came to Africa, Africans already were capturing fellow Africans and selling them to outsiders. Do you see a difference? Did you ever hear of Mexicans, Arabs, Chinese (Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau) capturing and selling themselves to Europeans? That is the wickedness and vindictiveness in us.

AjanleKoko:

"They were not available for enslavement" and yet the entire Central and South America speaks Spanish and Portuguese.

Now I'm beginning to get the impression this is a sentimental rant. Bros, try to research very very well.
I'm out. Hand dey pain me

You can speak Spanish without being tagged a slave, no?. The British also colonized parts of China (yes, China of all places), India, Pakistan, and many other Arab States. But those people were not enslaved, not as Africans were. I hope we can separate slavery from colonialism.

AjanleKoko: So Cortes did not conquer Mexico or Spain did not colonize Mexico?

Bud, what are you arguing?



LOL.
Refer to my earlier link, the very first one about indigenous peoples.
Lots of information there for you about Native Americans and what the colonialists did to them. Which in fact increased the need to import African slaves on wholesale basis.

Just tell me in plain terms why Africans had to be the ones that are now considered slaves (to white people), despite living 1000s of miles from America at that time. You are putting all the blames on others and none to yourself as a black person. I will not buy that, sorry.

AjanleKoko: So Cortes did not conquer Mexico or Spain did not colonize Mexico?

Bud, what are you arguing?

Cortez Hernandes conquered Mexico after a fight of course. Not so? How many African groups fought against being conquered? But the real question to ask is, why did the slave masters not use native Americans as slaves? Why did they not use Hispanics and other Amerindians? These people lived in the American jungles of then, and so were supposedly accessible for enslavement. Why did the colonialists have to ship slaves across the ocean all the way from Africa? It is because, unlike Africans, those folks, the true owners of North and South America, were not available for slavery.

A question to ask is, why did the slave masters not use native Americans as slaves? Why did they not use Hispanics and other Amerindians? These people lived in the American jungles of then, and so were supposedly accessible for enslavement. Why did the colonialists have to ship slaves across the ocean all the way from Africa? It is because, unlike Africans, those folks, the true owners of North and South America, were not available for slavery.

chulla12: Care to explain why Liberia and Ethiopia are colossal sh*tholes despite their many years of independence?

I was coming to that. Thanks for asking him. I wonder too.

AjanleKoko: The fellow Africans sold other Africans to the white people not as a matter of choice. Slavery was a wholesale business, not a pastime as you seem to think. And it did not start with Africa.

Have a look at this: Genocide of Indigenous People - Wikipedia.
It's good for us to study some history before we make sentimental assumptions. There is more than enough information available online.

Dude, the Mexicans (Aztecs) resisted slavery and fought colonialism even to their deaths. What stopped Africans from doing same? There was no way slavery would have been sustained in Africa if Africans were actively unwilling to toe the line. There were already natural barriers (thick jungles and forests brimming with malaria and other tropical diseases) to deter the Whites from making inroads into the hinterland. But alas, our own forefathers facilitated slavery by capturing and selling themselves. If you did not value your live, how can I value it for you? Of course seeing how willing the Africans were, the next step was colonization.

Nigeria has been independent for 54 years now, and let's be truthful to ourselves, have we had any value for all that time?

mickyarams: Greed and wickedness is embedded in the DNA of the blackman.
Look at a country like Nigeria where the average politician earns over 100times the national average wage while the UK prime minister earns about 5 times the average wage in the UK.

Just look at any of the great countries in the world, black people are always at the bottom. Asians and Latinos also experience the same racism directed at black people but they'll always find ways to succeed in their communities. Look at the Indians living in England, they've taken over the hospitals and GP surgeries while black people are busy stabbing and shooting themselves.

Thank you. Here in America the blacks are at the lowest rung of the ladder too. America used to be about White and Black. But the latinos, Indians and Chinese have since displaced blacks. Shame!!!

Still a surprise how Nigerians in America, including myself, have managed to stay at the top of what we do. But back home in Africa, our people wallow in poverty, ignorance, wickedness and vindictiveness.

AjanleKoko: Let me put you and your generations in a pigsty for 400 years, and let's see if you won't behave like a pig, grunt like a pig, roll around in the mud, for the next 100 years.

Even if the whole world keeps telling you, guy you no be pig, you would be too scared to venture out of the pigsty.
Don't under-estimate the power of progressive dehumanization

Please permit me to interject here, and I am not speaking for the person whom you quoted. I understand your drift. But keep in mind that the slave traders did not come to your household and seize your children and enslave them. It was fellow Africans who captured other Africans and sold them into slavery to the white people in the coasts. Or did you read of any white men raiding African villages and capturing slaves? So, our wickedness and vindictiveness transcends the trans Atlantic slavery and colonialism.

Unionised: None of the above.

Just Poverty...

...and the Despair we feel when our peer seems to be pulling out of it.

PHD - Pull him down syndrom.

Who made you (I mean Africans) poor?

igbo2011: Inferiority complex self hate, low self esteem, negative images on media, schools religions. It is more psychological.

Of who? Me as the poster, or Africans?

Are Africans wicked, ignorant and vindictive?

Although I asked this as a question, I know that the answer is yes.

The combination of wickedness, ignorance and vindictiveness is one that can send you to oblivion in one second. It is a potent weapon to keep you subjugated by yourself, for ever.

I love being a black man and would do anything to return as a black man, if reincarnation is to be believed. However, I regret being an African because Africans are wicked, ignorant and vindictive to themselves and to others. I prefer being a black man from the Caribbean. They are much more reasonable and measured blacks than Africans. They have been tempered from their long stay away from the African mainland.

What am I blabbing on about here? It is about Ebola and the response of Africans, Nigerians in particular, to it. Here are the scenarios making me mad:

Ebola has been with Africa for many years. It has killed hundreds of folks in Congo and Uganda in many different outbreaks. Fourty years after, these countries still have no cure for it. I admit that they have managed to contain it each time it erupts.

Then Ebola came to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, all in West Africa. How it did so bypassing countries enroute from Congo and Uganda remains a mystery.

When Ebola came to those countries, they virtually raised their hands up in submission (ignorance), allowing the virus to kill off thousands of their compatriots. Then a black man took the virus from Liberia to Nigeria, and low and behold, Nigeria became an Ebola country. Then it went to Senegal, adding them to the list. Recently, another black man took it to the United States. In both cases, that is Nigeria and United States, it was Liberians who had either lied or denied ever having been in contact with patients. It turned out they had in fact been in contact with Ebola-infected folks. So they lied (wickedly) and spread the disease to hitherto safe countries.

Speaking specifically about Nigeria, when the disease hit home, we did all we could to contain it. We did not have any vaccines or drugs, but somehow we managed. I believe it was because we took the decision, for the first time in my life time, I must add, to do something right on time. I believe we were goaded by having seing the ravage it is causing in other West African countries. If it came to Nigeria first, thousands would have died because we are simply not a prepared nation. I believe also that fate played a major part in the containment because if the late Dr. Adadevoh had not stopped the Liberian Ebola importer from flying out to Calabar from Lagos, the story would be different today. She practically sacrificed her life while potentially saving those of millions of Nigerians. For that, I give thanks to her and pray that she finds peace with her maker.

But the story is not ended with the present containment because as long as Ebola is in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and infecting and killing people, it could return to Nigeria. It takes just one sloppy event at the boarder in Lagos or elsewhere in the western part of the country, or a slip by an airline, or a lie from an infected patient in those countries, and we are back to square one.

When Ebola came to Nigeria, we were medically and unscientifically unprepared. We did not have good labs for studying viruses and still do not, at least in the public sector. We did not have vaccines or drugs. In fact, Nigerian doctors were on strike at that time. We cried to the West for help, as usual. When ''ZIMMAP'' did not come, we cursed at Obama and America. When Ebola was contained we joyed in the fact that ''we did it without America'' but we forgot that CDC/ WHO scientists/medics were in Nigeria helping out during that time. I wonder how it would have played out if it was 100% Nigerian effort to try to contain Ebola.

When Ebola got to America, many Nigerians were gleeful that it got there. You can see several threads on that, even here on Nairaland. That behavior was the zenith of ignorance, wickedness and vindictiveness. How low can some of us Africans get? You are trying to get back at America, but do you Nigerians in Nigeria realize how many Nigerians live in America and who among them could become a victim? How about your US-based relatives who used to send you dollars every now becoming infected with Ebola and possibly dying from it?

Nigerians were angry because America did not provide drugs for them, despite all the explanations that the drug in question was not available in sufficient quantities, and had not been tested on humans at that time. The more serious question though is, why are Africans not shamed by being perpetually dependent on the West for help? Why are we incapable of solving our own problems? Now that Ebola has dissipated somewhat, what is Nigeria doing in terms of research and development towards finding a lasting medical solution to forestall/reduce future deaths? Or do we just it back and wait until the next Ebola outbreak, and then we start begging America again?

How would you Africans feel now if the US closes its boarder against West Africans? I know, you will call them racists, ignoring the fact that other Ebola-free West African countries already closed their boarders against their neighbors.

I conclude with the opinion that Africans can only grow to the extent of rubbing shoulders with the West when they eschew ignorance, wickedness and vindictiveness. These vices have entrenched themselves in Nigeria so much that ethnic groups are constantly at each others throats. The earlier we start helping ourselves and doing something towards solving practical problems, the sooner we will be able to solve our problems ourselves.

And, for those of you laughing at America, just sit back and watch how they will handle the situation. They are by far more prepared than any country in Africa in these things. I hope you do not go back to them asking for help in the likely event of another Ebola outbreak.

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ofeco: it is regrettably lugubrious that we (Africans ) are bereft of ideas, I feel pained by the fact that I cannot help out either, @ op what should we do?

Some possible things to do are outlined in the article. But note that the issues around Africa are multiplex with no single easy solution.

Reserved

A narrative on Africa’s denizens, land, food and socio-medical realities

By
Spectroscopic

It is no longer news that several international agencies such as the UN have estimated that there would be about 9.6 billion people in the world in 2050. In Africa, the current population is projected to double within that time. During the period leading up to 2050, African countries would be the only ones growing in population; others would be nearly stagnant, stagnant, or in decline. Such decline is already happening in Western Europe and among the white population of the United States. It was also projected that by 2050, one out of three of the global workforce would be African.

Yet, these billions of people need to be fed. There is an estimate that agricultural production needs to be increased by 70% in 2050 to meet the population growth. Presently, however, the African agricultural system is very weak, and use efficiency of farm inputs is at its lowest in Africa, compared to any other continent on planet earth. This combination makes Africa the most food insecure continent in the world. Most African countries, even at the current continental population of about 1.1 billion, cannot feed themselves, let alone have surplus food to store or export for revenue. How will Africans, as things stand today, cope in 2050 when an estimated 2.5 billion of them populate the continent? It is bad enough now that one is often regaled with newspaper stories of parents killing their kids out of anger because one out of their many kids usurped and ate food meant for the entire family. There are also pockets of news stories of some Africans killing their relatives for stealing something as little as 10 dollars equivalent. Given such scenarios, one can only imagine what would be happening as the line-in-the-sand year of 2050 approaches.

Evidently, the low agricultural productivity in Africa is not due to lack of cultivable land. For example in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia only 12% of the cultivable land is actually cultivated. Same can be said for countries like Nigeria. There is so much arable but unused land all over the continent, explaining the current surge by foreign companies and governments to acquire land in Africa. Between 2000 and 2011, Africa recorded about 948 land deals, covering 124 million hectares, which is larger than France, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. These lands have been sold or leased to countries like the UK, US, China, South Korea, UAE, Saudi Arabia and others (see Figure; courtesy http://www.bqdoha.com/2013/12/land-grabbing-food-security-future-challenges-qatar). From that Figure, you can see that even Israel, one of the countries with the most unfavorable immigration policies towards Africans, buys land from the same Africa. Incredible!!


To their credit, I see these foreign African ‘‘land grabbers’’ as smart folks. The sold or leased lands are meant to be used to produce food that would be exported back to their native lands to satiate their own food or raw materials needs. The main culprits in this nonstrategic sale of African lands are Madagascar, Ghana, Ethiopia, Sudan, Mali and a few other countries. In Madagascar alone, the Korean Daewoo company bought 1.3 million hectares of land in 2009 in a deal shrouded by so much political undercurrents related to the ousting of the then President Marc Ravalomanana. Around the same time, Kenyan activists were having the fight of their lives trying to stop the sale of land to Qatar. In that deal, 40,000 hectares of land would have been given to Qatar, in exchange for a US$2.5 billion loan to build a deep-water port in Kenya. This is the same Kenya whose land is so agriculturally unendowed that only about 15% of the total land area is actually good for any agricultural enterprise.

At first, Africans enslaved their compatriots to the colonialists in exchange for token goods; now they give their land away to foreigners for money. Is this a new form of colonization? You be the judge. Nigeria did give some choice agricultural land for free or at ridiculous rental fees to the Zimbabwean farmers ousted by Robert Mugabe. Still, better to rent than to sell or lease (typically for 99 years). One hopes that Nigeria does not tread the path of land sale to foreigners. In spite of history and what could be learned from it, many of these land sales are shabbily documented and nowhere near being transparent, as suggested by reports from FAO, the World Bank, and the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The question though is what the revenues accruing from these sales have been used for. Could they have already ended up in the private pockets of African leaders? Sadly, in many cases, the traditional landowners were not consulted on the transactions, and no money was paid them for the sale of their land. What would they do in 2050 when hunger grinds their stomach so unforgivingly? Would they go berserk and attack the foreigners who now own their lands? If they do, what would be the response of the foreign land owners? Would force be met with force? The land buyers paid for the land, and one must honor contractual obligations.

Speaking of population growth, even in these dire times, many African men still marry more than one wife, with each wife producing up to five kids, if not more. Agreed, many other eligible bachelors and spinsters are staying unmarried for much longer due to economic reasons. But in certain religions and cultures, wealth and social status have nothing to do with the number of wives an African man could marry: even the poor can take on 2-3 wives; try certain parts of Nigeria for examples of this. Still, some men with just one wife produce six children. Pray, tell, why should any African, rich or poor, highly placed or lowly, have more than four children in these difficult times? Given a typical average of eight children by African parents of the 70s and 80s, and those before them, four children for a present-day African family would be a significant reduction, although two or three would be better.

At the end of the day, pummeled mostly by self-inflicted events and lack of foresight, a good swathe of the African landscape is littered with ill-fed, sickly, malnourished, stunted, ignorant, uneducated, uneducable and mentally and psychologically challenged population. Due to lack of adequate use of fertilizers in crop production, and thus, consumption of nutrient-depleted food produce, coupled with lack of money to purchase nutrient supplements, zinc, iron and other essential nutrients are lacking in most African diets, wreaking havoc on African people’s health and wellbeing. Some of the children raised in these conditions, when they do survive the low life expectancy prevalent in virtually all African countries, and being unskilled and uneducated, become easy recruits into crime and terrorism. This we see today in Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and other countries where religious terrorism and other social upheavals are rife. How much more poverty-induced recruitments into nefarious acts would we see going forward to 2050? In Africa, you hardly ever hear of tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires, brutal cold, etc. Of course, you hear of flood and drought in parts, but no more so than you hear of those two natural hazards in other continents. The question then is, if Africans cannot develop their societies in the absence of major natural hazards, how capable would they be to do so with, say, earthquakes becoming a regular feature?

So what measures could Africans take to ameliorate the impact of the foretelling situation of 2050 and beyond?
1. Africans must stop breeding like rabbits. They should incentivize, or where necessary, enforce their populations to reduce child bearing. They should take China’s ‘‘one family one child’’ policy as a case in point. They should take the present day increasing voluntary desire of Westerners (Americans and Europeans) not to have kids as another motivation.
2. They should reduce, and then finally, stop the dependence on foreign aids. Humans by nature do not value what they have not really earned. African countries have received huge amounts in aids over the past 50 years; what difference has it made to their average lives? Africans should, as a matter of urgency, look towards developing themselves inwardly; for no one will develop you for you.
3. They should invest in agriculture to increase food production, quantitatively and qualitatively. They have almost 40 years to do this before the ‘‘doomsyear’’ of 2050. That is a life time of opportunity.
4. They should stop selling their land to foreigners. They could rent land (maximum 10 years, subject to renewal after a use review process) and make sure food from the land is produced first for local consumption before export. They should ensure that at least all lowly workers engaged in the sold lands are nationals. The importation of farm workforce by these foreigners must be strongly discouraged, except at the highest professional/managerial levels. The land Africans are selling off today will come in useful tomorrow, should they fail to intensify agriculture now, and would need to extensify it even more in the future.
5. They should diversify their economies. For those who have it, soon crude oil will become unattractive. For example, the United States now has either reduced its importation of, or no longer imports, crude oil from Nigeria.
6. They should educate their population in different skills, for although it is projected that by 2050, one of three of the global work force would be African, to actualize this requires massive education and skills acquisition. At such critical times, and we are already seeing this now, no foreign country would need a poor and uneducated African who has nothing to contribute to their economy and society. They will close their doors on your face. The visa issuance process would be like going to hell and back.

The measures listed above are by no means exhaustive; there are a myriad other challenges, including corruption and lack of democracy, besetting the continent. The bottom line is if the 54 or so African countries fail to rise up to the challenge on their own terms, they might only have to depend on brutal alternative terms set by natural or man-made upheavals to help them resolve the problem of their ballooning, but significantly unproductive populations. Heaven forbid it, but such brutal options could include the population being drastically cut down by events of war, acts of terrorism, or other significant natural factors such as terrible communicable diseases of epidemiological proportions such as Ebola. The choice of the term is for Africans to make.

Speaking of diseases, the devastating aftermath of the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa directly puts Africa on the radar with regards to its preparedness to manage deadly communicable diseases. Clearly, despite Nigeria’s surprising success in containing its spread, the overall outcome of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa – one of the most important regions of Sub Saharan Africa - has exposed the rotten underbelly of Africa. It has shown the extent to which its people are capable of developing the know-how to solve practical problems. Ebola has been in Africa for decades now; yet Africans have lacked the will and interest to research the disease, in search of potential cure. There have been survivors of this disease in the different countries it occurred in the past, namely Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Surviving Ebola implies there is ‘‘something’’ genetic in the survivors that protected them against the disease. Why have Africans not harnessed the ‘‘Ebola survival marker’’ for medical breakthrough? Why have African governments and business moguls not deemed it fit to fund research in this area? Isn’t distressing to have to wonder why Africans seem unable to help themselves, and nearly always have to depend on the ‘‘white man’’ to do most serious things for them?

When the current Ebola episode is over, one only hopes that Africans would have learned something from it on how to be proactive in science, research and engineering for the benefit of Africa. I am an avid African who wants the best for the continent. But if African leaders do not discontinue from the current path of lack of vision and innovation, one can only wonder what becomes of the motherland in 2050.