By Sam Kargbo
It is trite that Africa is rich in natural and human resources, but still underdeveloped. The common excuse for the continent’s retardation has been its colonial history and the lopsided economic world order.
Although the continent’s colonial past cannot be entirely ignored, especially in terms of its socio-cultural and religious influences, the truth about the continent’s underdevelopment lies somewhere else.
Indeed, the rash effect of the architecture of the world economy that ensures that the pricing of African natural resources and agricultural products is made by western cartels, whilst the prices of finished products from those extracted natural resources and agricultural products are dictated by the forces of “demand and supply” cannot be downplayed, the primary causes of Africa’s continued underdevelopment lie in part in the continent’s governance system that keeps producing inept and extremely corrupt leaders.
Other regions with a similar history and with less natural resources have since shaken off the vestiges of colonialism, and are fast catching up with the western world in terms of economic development and democratic culture.
The economic progress that the East Asian countries are experiencing is not accidental. It is a product of a developmental state system founded on sound family and social values as well as a purposeful education system.
Despite its ethnocultural diversity, India is reversing its fortunes with tremendous economic progress by harnessing its human and natural resources under the auspices of a democratic culture, and a developmental governance system. It is, therefore, not justified to solely blame its past and others for Africa’s inability to turn around its fortunes with its abundant natural resources and large youth population. In the words of a friend, history is not destiny.
Africa cannot continue to blame the gods for its misfortunes which are, in the main, self-inflicted. Africa must resuscitate the good old family value system and make education the foundation of its development. The continent must tame its rapacious and predatory leadership.
Progressive development does not happen by accident. It is a result of a conscious and sustained developmental action plan. Be it infrastructural, human, economic, social, cultural or political, development is related to national values, national goals and national scientific culture. It is no accident that Developed and fast developing countries are those with people who are free from the grip of superstition and are striving to conquer and dominate nature.
Progressive development is not for nations who worship nature in other to get a better deal in the hereafter life. Without complementary moral philosophies, Africans invest much of their energies and resources on religion and its promise for a better life after death. From the home to public instructions, the devotion is to the world after death. The world we live in is considered transient.
Creative energies and time are spent on worshipping God and yet ignore His invaluable gift -the world He enjoined us to dominate. Funnily, the godless developing countries are more rooted in moral and social values that promote creativity in their citizens and nationals. The attempt here is to illustrate some of the institutional impediments to development on the continent.
The family’s role in national development cannot be overemphasized. This is because the family is directly related to the economic, industrial, political social, cultural and administrative life of a country. The family is the primary socializer of the child and is largely responsible for the content of the child’s sixth senses and moral mind. Poor parenting or upbringing, which includes poor parental training, poor parental education, poor parental moral and ethical values and lack of parental care, monitoring and guidance have dire consequences on the life of a nation.
Unfortunately, the average African family shows signs of dysfunctionality. The adversities of poverty and ignorance impact negatively on family cohesion. Children are forced to wean themselves from their families and pursue survival endeavours without family support.
They grow up as lone rangers with street values. In mounting numbers, husbands are seeking the assistance of DNA tests to verify the paternity of their children and, in equally increasing numbers, the results are turning out to be infernally negative. Many tributes and encomiums naturally trailed the sudden death of Jerry John Rawlings on 12 November 2020.
He was a great man who changed the political trajectory of Ghana. He arrested that country’s drift to the abyss. An interesting anecdote to the eventful life of that revolutionary Ghanaian military officer and politician was the emergence of pictures of an alleged side family with the full complement of children whose faces and physical features do not need a DNA test to validate the fact that he fathered them. Even if the story is a made-up one, side families and outside children are not strange phenomena to the African family. In truth, the average African is coming to terms with the fact that a family is no longer a group of one or more parents and their children living together as a unit.
Renewable energy initiative possible, requires appropriate policies – Ex PENGASSAN president
The family is becoming a contraption. It is losing the necessary values and ideals for the shaping of children and adolescents into well-rounded, responsible, creative, productive and just adults.
Hegel’s prototype family is diminishing in Africa. The family no longer guarantees the necessary love for which children can renounce their independence and to which they can surrender their individuality. Unity is no longer the law in the family. Dysfunctionalities in the homes are forcing children to secede from the family into self-subsistence and independence.
Children are fast becoming mechanical individuals whose life compass is self-completeness and self-consciousness. If family members are not united by family or filial obligations, how do we expect them to be responsive to the interests of friends, neighbours and fellow citizens in general? The danger is that the continent’s leadership and workforce are drawn from these self-motivated and profiteering or predatory minds. Many of the foot soldiers of terrorist groups fueling insecurity and disrupting development are from dysfunctional families.
If the family is failing us, are our educational institutions to the rescue? Is our education system capable of laying the foundations for the continent’s development and progress? And how relevant are the curricula and testing system of our schools to our present world? Why are our educational institutions not a source of remedies and solutions to our problems? Of what benefit is education to the character of the individual? What sort of reasoning does our theoretical education foster? I do not have the answers, but I have thoughts on some aspects of our education system.
It is an undisputed fact that education is a fundamental factor of development, as no country can achieve sustainable economic development without substantial investment in education and human capital development. Among other things, education can raise people’s productivity and creativity, and it is known to be an effective promoter of entrepreneurship and scientific and technological advances.
Education in this sense is not only one that fosters in the individual a sense of rational reasoning, but one that also provides the individual with a toolkit for the production of knowledge and fixing of problems. As Einstein would say, education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think. To achieve that, the curricula and teaching methods should engender not only self-development and betterment but primarily the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills for the production of further knowledge that is beneficial to society.
I agree with the call for curricula to be vehicles for furthering national development. The education system should be harmonized in such a way as to provide effective linkages to the virtually inexhaustible areas of courses and disciplines out there to pool them for national development and progress.
The curricula should spare no effort in pruning quixotic content and miseducation and pay attention to national need and deficiencies, while not compromising on the need to produce students that are free from stereotyped ways of thinking. Graduates from tertiary institutions should be able to face the labour market with well-harnessed creative minds and skills that reduce dependence on white-collar jobs. Technical education should be prioritized, as it is capable of producing the needed workforce for manufacturing and industrialization. Poor education and miseducation are contributing to the high level of unemployed and unemployable youths on the continent.
If the curricula are important to the education system, the quality of its teaching personnel is no less important. Teachers should be able to think beyond their certificates and engender rigorous and productive thinking in their pupils and students. Our tertiary institutions are full of teachers with impressive certificates. The university system in Nigeria goes to the extremity of requiring a minimum of a PhD to qualify for a teaching position in any of its public universities, even for practice-based disciplines like law, medicine, engineering and accounting. Faculties and departments in tertiary institutions are full of Professors.
Although it may be unreasonable or disrespectful to ask about what they contribute beyond the teaching and instruction of students, it may be fair to wonder why they have not been a reliable source of solutions to societal and national problems. Why are we still dependent on imported solutions to such problems as Ebola and COVID-19, for instance? Why is it not common for them to provide scientific and technological solutions to our peculiar socio-economic and environmental problems?
Inversely, why would the same set of less achieving personnel leave Africa and excel in the West to the extent of being in the vanguard of scientific and technological breakthrough in the West? It is not difficult to notice the negative effects of poor investment in education on the continent. National development is known to be proportional to a country’s investment in education.
Students will benefit, in their development and approach to the use of knowledge, from an environment of teachers with a global competitive drive and spirit. Students will want to be inventors and world-beaters if they are taught by inventors and world-beaters. The teaching staff should illuminate today’s world instead of getting stuck in a world that no longer exists.
You cannot be relevant in today’s highly competitive cutting-edge world with a certificate generated by examinations on phenomena that are no longer relevant to today’s world. The teaching staff should also push students to discover themselves. Students should be made to know that being teachable can give one a high grade but will not guarantee success in life. Success in life requires more. There is a genius in everyone, but it takes efforts to discover that genius.
That is why most inventors and persons who have pushed boundaries and have gifted us the civilization we are enjoying are people who fashioned their curricula, teach, examine and grade themselves. They are people who are not comfortable with ordinary or regular things. Students are naturally affected by an indolent academic environment where the teaching staff see degrees and certificates as ends. Reliance and undue emphasis on certificates kill initiatives and creativity, which may explain why some teachers live entirely on their salaries and do not strive to produce sellable knowledge and services. Until our school system starts producing risk and opportunity takers, we shall continue to rely on the West for the solutions to our problems and our colonization will persist.
From dysfunctional families and schools, our next port of call is the continent’s abysmal leadership. Developing a well-educated and morally sound skilful youthful population will help, but would not guarantee accelerated development for the continent under the present crop of rapacious leaders and governance system. Africa has the most incompetent and corrupt political leaders in the world. Many of them are nothing but bandits whose usefulness does not go beyond feeding the egos of their tribal people.
In the face of mounting development concerns, many of them are pursuing anti-democratic and ruinous tribal agendas. Not many of them are putting out themselves to harmonize the energies and efforts of business actors and intellectual elites towards a concerted development plan. Unlike the first set of postcolonial political leaders, the continent’s crop of leaders lacks vision and the necessary sense of urgency for the development of their respective countries.
Except for a few countries, the continent cannot boast of leaders with exceptional character and sterling leadership qualities to pilot national development. Leaders with ideas, visions and developmental action plans are in the minority. Development is dependent on leadership with qualities and skills to unify a country along the lines of sound and sustainable developmental ideas and action plans. Unfortunately, what we have are divisive leaders who by traits and character endanger suspicion and distrust among the people.
