Two Cents for Africa

.

TWO CENTS

FOR

AFRICA

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Beatrice Fri Bime

MIRACLAIRE PUBLISHING

Kansas City, MO 64138, USA

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Email: info@miraclairepublishing.com

Website: www.miraclairepublishing.com

ISBN-13: 978-0615727370

ISBN-10: 0615727379

Copyright © 2012 Miraclaire Publishing

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright holders.

Miraclaire Publishing makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (Content) in its publications. However, Miraclaire and its agents and licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content and disclaim all such representations and warranties, whether express or implied to the maximum extent permitted by law. Any views expressed in this publication are the views of the author and are not necessarily the views of Miraclaire.

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PREFACE

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 AFRICA THE BOTTOM BILLION

CHAPTER 2 PRODS TO GROWTH

CHAPTER 3 PRODUCTION NOT CONSUMPTION

CHAPTER 4 TALENTS, ETHICS, AND BAD GOVERNANCE IN SSA COUNTRIES

CHAPTER 5 RESEARCH, DATA AND STATISTICS

CHAPTER 6 WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 7 AFRICA IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD: WHAT HAS CHANGED?

CHAPTER 8 THE HISTORICAL IMPACT OF COLONIZATION AND MIGRATION ON AFRICA

CHAPTER 9 COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION, LESSONS LEARNED AND SHARED

References

Bibliography

About Two Cents

DEDICATION

For my children:

Kerman Kifon Bime, Chiawa Litika Bime, Kindzeka Akere Bime, Chelsea Anje Mbaku, Sandrine Tantoh, and Mary Sevidzem for understanding my lapses in maternal care as I worked on this. I love you always.

Jenabo Abu, Yvonne Njoka, Sebastian Mbaku, Anye, Carlet, Marie, Njang and my other children, for believing in me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The genesis of this book dates back to the 2004 workshop in Ghana where all the national coordinators and partners for the ILO-IPEC-WACAP project met to work on a manual for STCP farmer field school to fight against child labour in the cocoa commercial agriculture sector.

The book is not meant to be a specialized book on any subject, religion, history or any other. Thus, any errors on those subjects are specifically mine. Many people inspired and encouraged me in the writing of the book.

Special thanks go to the following people:

Mr. Georges Ntumba, CTA WACAP at the time for the genesis of the idea.

Dr. Kingsley Moghalu for sharing his world views with me

Father Tantoh for allowing me to use his sermon

Prof. John Ngundam for allowing me to tease him on technical education

My Editors: Dr. David Toh Kusi whose expertise and critical suggestions pushed me to complete the work, Patrick Tata and team (PATAMAE research and editing consultancy – PREC) for their incredible diligence

Elizabeth M. Mofor for providing the chair I sat on to work

My publishers, family members and friends, thank you.

PREFACE

Two Cents for Africa takes the position that the development of Sub Saharan Africa is the responsibility of Africa as no one can come from outside and develop Africa because there are no free lunches.

Africa, fifty years after independence, has certainly moved forward in many areas relevant to development: Education, Agriculture, infrastructure etc. However, the pace of development for people who just need to copy and paste is slow and at the rate we are going we will not catch up nor close the gap. Without political will and a commitment to develop, Sub-Saharan Africa can’t and won’t develop.

To achieve even half of its potential, Africa needs a mental revolution, a revolution of people who do not only follow but think. Africa needs to go back to the drawing board, revisit some historical facts and use them to design its path to development. Africans have to understand that Africa is too fragmented to develop. Therefore, we need to come together and strengthen our ties with one another by looking at what we have in common, keeping aside our differences. Together we have to decolonize our mentalities and break the yoke which still ties us to our colonial past. We must become truly independent in a globalized world.

If Africa does not understand that there are no friends in a globalized world since there are no free lunches; if Africa opens its arms and doors foolishly to these new friends coming to help propel it towards development then one day we’ll wake up and someone would have the title deed to our continent, which may just have cost him two cents.

The Author proposes a stronger African Union (AU) which is the supreme Landlord of Africa and which can be financed through resource extraction fees, providing it the independence to carry out activities to help propel Africa in development. An African Union which will supervise elections and be able to mete out sanctions to countries which deserve to be sanctioned; an African Union which is truly what the founding fathers fought for and intended to put in place; an African Union that will cause Africa Day to be celebrated throughout Africa; a celebration of  who we are and who we want the world to recognize us to be, strong and united, with regional bodies; an Africa strong and standing up to be counted as well as respected by its peers.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

Beatrice Fri Bime

FOREWORD

The propositions made by Two Cents for Africa are solid and unquestionable in their applicability. What Beatrice Fri Bime ultimately adheres to is Africa’s development and that the solution to Africa’s predicament may be based on education, agriculture, roads and programmed infrastructure or on democratic leadership with a sense of fairness that prioritizes health over military.

Yet the onus according to Fri Bime is on the African in general who must decide to be a producer and not just a consumer so as to generate wealth, meanwhile the taxation systems should be made simple and equitable, and public income and spending made meaningful and accountable to the tax payer.

The reader will particularly enjoy the author’s sense of verisimilitude on issues that continue to cause Africa’s fragmentation. Therefore, waiting for salvation from without in the guise of aid or favours is detrimental to personal growth. Rather, equitable trade using understood and accepted parameters should be the way forward. However, one big help in the development of the continent has to be unity, and also the expansion of the intra-continental business. One step up of this is a redrawing of the fragmented continental map. The propositions are not for some vague future but now in the hope that the continent of Africa may catch up to the developed and fast growing economies.

Perhaps most significantly, Fri Bime is not defeatist in her arguments in Two Cents for Africa. To her, the only way for the Diaspora and the brain drain syndrome to bail Africa out is a return home and a collective rebuilding.

Fri Bime’s Two Cents for Africa is a sustained tenor of passionate discourse on the way out for Africa from divergent perspectives. Therefore, individual readers of this work should take the plight of Africa in hand and work for its emergence. Governments too should set up commissions to study and implement the various components of the package if Africa hopes to move forward. This according to the Author can only be done through a strong African Union. 

This Book is a must read for anyone genuinely interested in Africa’s development.

Christopher Che

CEO Che International Group, LLC

Member President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

CHAPTER 1: AFRICA THE BOTTOM BILLION

The Whiteman and the Blackman started the journey on the same day, but the Whiteman has been to the moon and back while the Blackman is still trekking to the village Dr Ali Mazrui.

Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are at the very bottom of the Bottom Billion[1] according to Paul Collier. The countries are diseased burdened, conflict ravaged, underdeveloped, under-represented, hunger-stricken and plagued by numerous catastrophes and other disasters you can imagine. However, 50 years after independence many African countries have achieved a lot although much more still needs to be done just to catch up with the world of the twentieth century before that of the twenty first century. We cannot do a thing about the past, but we can decide where we are at now, where we want to be in the future, how we go forward and what we need to get there. At over 50, Africa needs to make up its mind to stand up and be counted or continue to sleep and be overlooked.

If we step back half a century in the 60s right after independence, Africa was sending aid to Korea, fifty years after, Africa is receiving cars and other electronics from Korea and is still waiting to make its first electronics. Does Africa want to develop? It is time to sit down and rethink our priorities. Where are we right now? Where do we want to be in the next 10, 20, 25, 30 and 50 years? How do we want to get there? We know all the analysis, we understand all the answers, we just need to implement and decide that enough is enough and we can accelerate Africa’s development.

Africa needs a revolution beginning with a change of mentalities. Revolution of any type has been at the centre of development in Europe and America and all the developed countries. None would be developed today if they had not had a revolution of one type or another. France had its famous historical revolution; Great Britain had the industrial revolution while America had its war of independence through the Boston Tea Party; Korea, Japan and China have their revolutionary tales to tell. Africa absolutely needs one. Africa needs to wake up, to drink deep and be drunk with a sense of purpose, a vision and mission.

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Africa Defies the Rules

What Africa needs is not war or famine but a revolution of the mind: a group of an intellectual mindset that Thinks, a revolution of the mind starting with a change of mentalities and attitudes; Africans truly proud to be Africans; Africans who have a world view and think of the common good above personal interest. It hurts to see the Whiteman treating Africans as if the colour of their brain is the same as the colour of their skin. But could there be some grain of truth to that?

Sometimes it looks as if Africans (or most of us) stop using their brains when a charismatic or autocratic leader shows up. His word becomes law and everyone else does things to please, praise or cheer him/her.  The clouds blowing over Africa seems to have some sleeping drugs in them and one wants to shout wake up, Africa! Why should the richest natural resource continent in the whole world be the poorest? Nothing explains why fifty years after independence most failing states are in Africa. Nothing justifies the fact that Africans are disease ridden and disease burdened. Nothing explains why after diagnosing what the African problems are and how to solve them Africa is  doing nothing to solve them but is expecting the feeble attempts of others from outside to do the fixes, like some drug addict.

Nothing explains why Africa is happy to just get by, despite the fact that God created it to excel. Nothing justifies why the African past only half matters while its colonial past is still very much present. Africa needs a revolution. Most continents would gladly change places with Africa if they were given the opportunity to do so.  Africa has been endowed by God with the best of everything, the weather, its rich soil, forest, natural resources and its place on the world stage. One would think that because of all these advantages, Africa should have been the most developed continent in the world; instead it is the poorest of the poor. Explanations as to why Africa is where it is have defied the most brilliant of minds. Africa even defies the natural law of economics which according to Fred E. Foldvary include:

The law of demand: When the price of a good falls, the quantity demanded does not fall. Usually, the quantity demanded rises with a fall in price. Strictly, the law of demand applies to the substitution of cheaper goods for more expensive goods due to a relative change in price. The law of demand also applies to the whole economy: when the whole price level falls, with the amount of money remaining constant, a greater amount of goods will be purchased. (Africa has natural resources which other continents want but hardly ever does any price determination. Rather it allows the market to do that, sometimes to its detriment. A good example is the fluctuation of cocoa prices in the world market).

The law of supply:When the price of a good rises, the quantity produced does not fall. Usually, a higher price for a produced good result in a greater quantity produced. (Most African countries sell oil in the futures market at low prices, so when the price increases there is no effect of that increase on the economy and its people. There is also no incentive for increase in supply in other cash crops like cocoa and coffee because there is no foreseeable gain in increasing production).

Law of supply and demand:In a free market, the equilibrium price of a good is that at which the quantity supplied equals the quantity demanded. (If that were so Africa would not sign ninety-nine-year oil leases nor condone price fixing and the future market).

The law of unintended consequences:Human actions, and especially governmental acts, have consequences which were not intended and not anticipated by the actors. (Many examples abound of consequences of measures which some government officials took without realizing the long-term effects of their actions on the country and its people).

The law of iterated expectations:One cannot use the limited information at some previous time to forecast error one would make if one had better information later (For example, most of the treaties and agreements African countries entered into with their colonial masters benefit only the colonial masters. This is especially true of Africa’s mining industry and forest exploitation. The African partners themselves do not know the expected value and prices for the natural resources).

Wagner's law:As an economy grows, government spending increases by a greater proportion. (In most countries, government is one of the biggest consumers of goods and services, but the citizens can only benefit from such growth and spending if the government pays its bills or has a mechanism for