So What Your Country Has The Largest GDP Per Capita In Africa?

There is nothing remotely stupid as Africans boasting about their country having the largest GDP per annum on the continent. Even if we look at it at a per capita basis. It skews the harsh reality that this wealth is not equally distributed across the continent or individual countries. It masks the reality that the wealth is in the hands of a tiny minority. It is not our money. The average African does not enjoy the wealth of their own motherland.

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Texas, Georgia and Louisiana have a combined annual GDP of US$2.6 trillion. Africa with 1.3 billion people, and 54 countries have a GDP of US $2.7 trillion. It is absurd that three states in America have the same GDP as 54 countries in Africa. In others words, a whole continent. Think about it.

Consequently, this nonsense of our country is better than yours in nonsense. Trillions of dollars are haemorrhaged in Africa by the Chinese, Europeans, and others. None of them have the interests of Africans at heart. Not even African leaders. According to Transparency.org, “African countries are losing at least US$50 billion annually to illicit financial flows.” This is all wealth that can be used to improve the basic living standards, infrastructure, medical heathcare facilities, social welfare, education, research and development, and the likes.

In fact, those African misleaders are in league with the people robbing Africans of their wealth. They meet with them. They drink and eat with them. They are true in deed to them. They are in deep with them and are accomplices to the trillions stolen from Africa through selling our resources at prices way below the market rate.

They turn a blind eye to the money lost through complex accounting systems and tax evasion schemes. They are the enemies of the people. They are at the service of the imperialists, and give access to their organs like the IMF and World Bank to institute their programs to lend us monies that we never see, and are used to build infrastructure that benefits them, but we the deaf, dead, and blind Africans are left to pick up the tabs of food we did not eat. 

And when it comes to it, all our monies for health, social services, infrastructural development and whatever are earmarked to the IMF and World Bank to service their “Third World Debts”. Hence, we are further impoverished paying off never-ending debts. If you are interested in learning more, watch The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. If you read the book, it is even better. It will lead you to a PDF version of the book that you can read for free.

It is stupid to be debating about who has money, and who is broke on social media when we are all hyping over peanuts. Monkey see monkey do does not make us any better than each other. Our rallying cry should be African resources for every African at home and abroad.

Every day we see nations in Europe becoming more militant, Facist and nationalist. They demand that governments preserve their ways. They are ready to die fighting to defend their interests. They are pissed off with others taking what is theirs: their jobs, their homes, their money.

However, no one, including Africans, are taking care of their own interests. No one but ourselves can stand up and demand what is rightfully ours. It is our birthright. We can be murdered standing alone demanding that our rights and interests are put first.

However, collectively, they cannot kill us all. Even if they tried, we would die for an idea that would live and become politicising and agitating factors that would awaken the fight that has been asleep in Africans who have forgotten that we were once warriors. Warriors never die; they become legends and the stuff of myths, and inspirations for generations to come.

My African brothers and sisters, we have nothing to lose but our spiritual and mental shackles. We have a continent to regain. 

What does it mean to be an African yet you cannot even dine at the local African diner, and enjoy the splendour of milk and honey, gold, diamonds, cobalt and oil at the table of rendezvous?  

We are not even fit to serve those seated around the table, but we want to think of ourselves as diners at this grand feast. Wake up and live. We too must eat or die. One day when there is no food to eat, we will eat the rich who have robbed us.

In the words of our late and great brother, and visionary leader, Thomas Sankara,

Long live international cooperation, long live the solidarity of the peoples of the non-aligned countries, long live peace, security and the independence and progress of all peoples.

Homeland or death, we will win!

The poetry writing African President: Agostinho Neto

What does writing poetry and African presidency have in common? None. Unless you are Agostinho Neto. He was an acclaimed poet and the first African President of Angola.

I knew a bit about Neto and his role in the decolonisation of Africa. He was quite an exceptional leader in many ways. Not only did he become the first president of Angola in 1975, but he was also a medical doctor who specialised in gynaecology.

I only discovered it a few years ago that he was an acclaimed and published poet after stumbling on one of his few translated poems in the anthology The Heritage of African Poetry: An Anthology of Oral and Written Poetry edited by Isidore Okpewho.

It is no ordinary anthology because it features some household names and the greatest African poets to grace the African continent. This includes heavyweights like Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awoonor, Christopher Okgibo, Leopold Sedar Senghor to mention a few.

To be published among such names speaks volumes about the nature of one’s work and the quality of it. You don’t get published among legends like that unless you are made of the same stuff.

It is probably little known that Neto was a poet because his work was not so easily accessible to those of us who cannot read or write Portuguese. But it is also not so well known that Neto, to this day, is one of Angola’s most acclaimed poet and writer. That is no easy feat.

Agostinho Neto was born in 1922 at Icola e Bengo in Angola. He studied medicine in Lisbon and Coimbra in Portugal and returned to practice in Angola.

He joined a movement for the discovery of indigenous Angolan culture. In 1960, was elected president of the MPLA [Movimento Popular da Libertação de Angola – People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola] which was a militant anti-colonial organisation. That year he was arrested and taken to jail in Portugal but escaped two years later.

After a protracted guerrilla struggle, he helped to establish the independence of Angola. He became it’s first president but died in 1980.

He published poetry in several Portuguese and Angolan publications and a volume entitled A Sagrada Esperanca (Sacred Hope).

There was little in Neto’s earlier life that indicated the direction of his later life. He was born in a Methodist family. His father was a Methodist pastor. We can interpret through the trajectories of what is known about him that his conception of serving his people was strongly influenced by his father and his exposure to the teachings of Christianity.

It was only when he was in Lisbon [Portugal] that his political activism became marked. He became friends with other future political and iconic figures such as Amilcar Cabral who I have written about and would leave a lasting legacy in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. This also included Marcelino dos Santos from Mozambique.

Dos Santos and Neto seemed to have more than politics in common. Dos Santos was also a poet and a revolutionary. After Neto was arrested and his friend Eduardo Mondlane also from Mozambique and a fellow comrade from FRELIMO moved to the United States, dos Santos moved to Paris where lived with other artists and writers and became associated with the literary magazine Présence Africaine.

Their friendship seemed to be destiny because they had so much in common and as leading intellectuals of their time, it was inevitable. What we don’t know is what role they had in each other’s poetry and if they read and critiqued each other’s work.

Somehow, Neto managed to juggle both his academic life and covert political activities. However, he was soon to learn that mixing politics and medicine had its consequences.

That came in 1960 when he was arrested for campaigning against the colonial administration of Portugal in Angola. When his family, friends, patients, supporters and empathisers and others marched to protest his arrest, the police fired at them. Consequently, thirty people were killed and about two hundred others were injured.

He was later exiled to Cape Verde where he wrote his second poetry publication. It is not clear if he was able to link up with the likes of Cabral in Cape Verde. It is always a possibility and it is also possible that he learned firsthand about their struggle and used it to forward his own political development.

Like Lumumba and Cabral, he sought assistance from the Americans but as usual, the Americans let him down and he enlisted the help of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Unfortunately, Neto’s rule was not marked by peace. It was riddled by a civil war that was sponsored by foreign agents that were sponsoring sectarian violence and trying to destabilise the country.

His country was flanked by hostile territories. On one side was the FNLA supported by the dictator, Belgian and American puppet Mobutu Sese Seko who got into power through assassinating Patrice Lumumba and given free reign to terrorise his own people.

On the other side was Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement which was supported by the racist Apartheid government of South Africa that had no wish in seeing a thriving majority ruled African country because this would make the Africans at home want the same.

One of Neto’s lasting legacies to Angola was his invitation to westerners to invest in the oil industry. To this day, it happens to be one of Angola’s largest export and brings in the largest revenues. However, as in most African countries, the proceeds or these great repositories of wealth rarely filter to the people. They are monopolised by the leadership who enjoy the wealth and treat it as their own.

I guess you can do more research and fill the holes in the life of this remarkable leader. I set out to share this little bit of knowledge about him and his accomplishments.

I will leave you with a poem he wrote in 1954 and entitled Bamako. You can interpret it for yourself, not that it needs it.

Bamako

Bamako!                                                                                                                                           Where the truth dropping on the leaf’s sheen                                                                         unites with the freshness of men                                                                                               like strong roots under the warm surface of the soil                                                             and where grow love and future                                                                                               fertilised in the generosity of the Niger                                                                                     shaded by the immensity of the Congo                                                                                       to the shim of the African breeze of hearts

Bamako!                                                                                                                                           there life is born                                                                                                                             and grows                                                                                                                                       and develops in us important fires of goodness

Bamako!                                                                                                                                           there are our arms                                                                                                                         there sound our voices                                                                                                                   there the shining hope in our eyes                                                                                             transformed into an irreproachable force                                                                               of friendship                                                                                                                                     dry the tears shed over the centuries                                                                                         in the slave Africa of other days                                                                                                 vivified the nourishing juice of fruit                                                                                           the aroma of the earth                                                                                                                   of which the sun discovers gigantic kilimanjaros                                                                   under the blue sky of peace.

Bamako!                                                                                                                                           living fruit of the Africa                                                                                                                 of the future germinating in the living arteries of Africa                                                       There hope has become tree                                                                                                         and river and beast and land                                                                                                       there hope wins friendship                                                                                                           in the elegance of the palm and the black skin of men

Bamalko! there we vanquish death                                                                                     and the future grows – grows in us                                                                                           in the irresistible force of nature and life                                                                           with us alive in Bamako.

 

 

 

 

Be a postage stamp…

I came across the words from Napoleon Hill below and they inspired me to piece this article together.

“The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.” – Napoleon Hill

Think about it. If we are all persistent to our goals and jobs in life like the postage stamp is, we can achieve every single goal or task we start.

Sometimes we fail because we are not persistent enough. We give up long before the end is in sight because we get bored.

We get tired. We lose interest or we simply don’t have the willpower to see what we are doing to the end.

We get demotivated because the end is sometimes harder than the start and we just don’t have the mettle to keep going.

How many times have you started a project with great enthusiasm and dropped it the minute it got that bit harder? We can all start projects with gusto.

However, it takes a pretty determined and persistent person to see it through to its logical end.

In many cases, that is the difference between success and failure: who can finish what they start and who can’t.

But we can all learn from the humble postage stamp and be as persistent as it is, having one focus, getting the job done.

Sometimes we have to be blind to be successful. That means we have to close our eyes to all the distractions that catch our eyes and beckon us to abandon what we are doing or pursuing.

Whenever you are pursuing your dreams, your goals, your career, etc. and you find the going tough, just think of the postage stamp.

Be a postage stamp my friend. Stick to your job, be persistent at it, and run the full course of whatever it is you are pursuing.