By Nneka Okumazie
In plotting why most of Africa remains stubbornly underdeveloped, it is possible to look back and ask why the transatlantic slave trade was so successful.
Africa wasn’t the only place conquered at the time, or where they could’ve found people.
Also, there were other places with serfdoms that’d have been possible to transplant with some agreement.
It should have also been possible to have better deals, per returning people – for visit, or permanently, to report how they were treated before the next batch went, or deals with the transfer of industrialization, or whatever, but nothing seemed to happen except the worst.
The subjugation of Africa was not enough reason to have resulted in the kind of horror and beat down that many blacks faced – in slavery. So how come?
There’s something in the phrase – survival of the fittest. Outside biology, people apply it to individuals, or in some cases to groups. But survival of the fittest is the ideology some peoples have.
China’s current rise is for that reason, same with the rise of the people of Europe and Japan.
One individual can survival, but it is not often enough. One family can survive, but that’s also shorthanded, but a people – surviving extraordinarily is the real victory.
The wars and conflicts through history were among other things a battle for survival of peoples. Many went to war – knowing it was risky, and may never return to family or friends again, but did, in the name preserving their civilization, or nation.
This survival also led many to pursue superiority of their people, in ways that some major empires and civilizations ensured they did not just survive with minimum provision, or just OK, but pursued domination and prepared against enemies, famine, disease, and other forces.
This attitude of survival of our people, for our people, in the name of our ethnicity – believing in it, is a character that brought many to greatness and some continue to retain their place.
A people without superiority-for-survival ideology may have long years of staying down.
Africa is still not developed, in spite of its many educated citizens, lots of financial reach, technology, partnerships and more, what could be wrong?
Why’s there high desire to go away and stay away, for a people that should be home to build?
There’s a good chance that what’s missing is the survival of the people mission.
It seemed that the people who couldn’t contrive strategies to aim at fairness – selling their people, didn’t care if the people survived or not.
It also seemed that the food of the day, or the basic ideas of survival of self, or family, or comfort in personal position, was priority than what happens down the line, or how the decision of one leader could affect those to come.
Presently, many sectors in many countries in Africa are doing OK, they can power the future of their countries without harming their earnings, but with the mostly low-level doings they keep up, it shows that those in position hardly care that some migrants are drowning at sea, or that starvation holds sway for many, or that lots of young people are almost without hope – meaning the future could rot.
The people of Africa probably lack the strong will for the survival of the people of Africa.
There’ve been times some countries or people focused on projects or progress bringing everything to bear to make it happen.
What would it mean for Africans to have major progress projects to fight Africa’s poverty, or hunger, or other problems with real work, not dirt – packaged as promise often in the news?
Superiority, anticipation, true independence, sincere passion for actual development, fairness, and integrity should be what Africa should be pursuing, but it does not seem so.
Genuine merit is out of the door, so it is to fix the people that know people – though their competence lacks the capacity for true progress. They may have the profile and the words but lack what it takes to make the continent work. Looking for best in a closed view can return false positives.
The lack of care about their survival puts millions of individuals at the mercy of foreigners, so that when they make money, or status, the individual stays with self, or loved ones – complains too and moves on.
How can this business or project or investment or budget make your people superior and survive – to advance as a whole?
Not some worthless statistics, cheap talking points, the fiftieth type of something already existing hyped as innovative, fake announcements, deceitful summits and conferences, fake awards and recognitions, shameful bluster, reputation laundering, motivation talk blaming people for their failures when societal nurture for many starts at distant negative, and so much fake – across.
Yes, there’re some people doing their possible best, but the number is really too low, also not everyone may play a role in direct development, but the strong percentage doing the best can carry the rest.
When Jesus rose, ascended and Christianity came, letters went to the churches in the Epistles and in Revelations, they were also messages of being strong – in being upright, in purpose for this life and the world to come, be strong for yourself, for your family (biological and Christian), and be strong for your people or nation, and tell others.
Nepotism, greed, lust priority, corruption, scam, fraud, may seem like a win in the present but could ruin the future for an individual and a people, on earth or beyond.
[Romans 13:13, Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.]