Business Post Contributor
By Nneka Okumazie
What era is Africa in? What are the obvious commonalities across Africa that signify what Africa currently faces? What are problems unique to the countries, the people and continent? How remote is Africa, from where it should be?
Though statistics say the percentage of extreme poor around the world has dropped, yet, quality and standard of living for many in Africa looks like unvarnished poverty, even if income seem above what it used to be decades ago.
There is so much corruption, unfairness, rigidity, repetition of what has failed, blaming of the government while ignoring the change that the financial power of the private sector can deliver, as well as the intellectual power of the academe.
The pace of change in Africa with the list of problems puts Africa decades away from actual development.
There are so many projects ongoing, some seem promising, some so-so, but they come in an era of something else for most of Africa, so the potential for change seems slight.
What can be done to transform this era of Africa to a different new course?
Over a few score decades, some underdeveloped nations accelerated towards advancement and kept at it.
Experimentation – for diverse sets of approaches to problems were done, and people did much more selflessly for the good of all and the good of the future of the nation.
There are questions – for Africa, on many existing works and projects, can this solve the problem in this severely challenging era?
Who can work on a project to ensure fairness across the board in Africa, just fairness?
Who can work on a project to ensure immanent selflessness [for all and for future] across Africa?
Yes, some nations or communities seem more serious than others, but many of the moves that should ascendingly modify Africa get stuck and stranded.
This does not seem to be a good era for Africa to keep working on simple ideas or keep building businesses or doing projects for incremental action, or basic survival.
There are nations that [maybe] can afford to rest, sleep and do the most little, but Africa can’t.
In Christianity, there’s a lesson for times, which can be interpreted for eras – to rend old and sew new.
[Ecclesiastes 3:7, A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;]
