Some Africans have lost their roots and their lives do not have a sense of identity or
purpose. This lack of focus removes the drive to make and achieve personal goals.
Inferiority Complex
Some Africans have come to accept propaganda started by the slave trade and foreign
missionaries and continued by negative journalists that their skin colour determines who
they are. They fail to believe that they can be intelligent and successful. They deny
their own knowledge, abilities and potential.
Dependency
Some Africans come to believe that only foreigners can save Africa, and they become
dependents, expecting outsiders to solve their problems. People and countries must learn
to become self-reliant and help themselves.
Imitation
Some Africans feel they have to be like Americans or Europeans in order to be successful
and happy. They replace their names, clothes, art, music, weddings, literatures,
languages, religions, lifestyles and values with Western ones. They waste their money on
Western luxuries and indulge in Western excesses. They try to adopt Western methods of
politics, economics, industry, business, medicine and education to a very different
African environment and culture.
Greed
Some Africans who have struggled so long for survival and rights are overwhelmed by
their survival instincts and are not satisfied when they achieve middle class. They lust
for more money and power, and they control and exploit others, forgetting the people who
struggled alongside them and who are still struggling. Their profits are derived from the
misery of their less fortunate neighbours.
Education
The rural poor receive an education based on Western curricula that do not suit their
needs or meet their expectations. Teaching methods are inappropriate, focusing on rote
learning and exam scores rather than competencies in authentic situations. Their knowledge
is useless for jobs in rural areas, but when they migrate to the cities, they find a high
level of competition and usually remain unemployed. The education is needlessly expensive,
yet government budgets for education are shrinking, so to pay the increasing school fees,
girls often resort to prostitution. Instead of improving the school system, political and
corporate leaders send their children to Western schools in Europe or the US.
Brain Drain
Most of the highly qualified African scientists, engineers, teachers, doctors and other
workers go abroad to study and work, taking with them their knowledge, skills and money.
Little scientific research, development, and teaching is done by Africans to apply African
technologies to African problems in industry, manufacturing or agriculture. Some of the
best writers and intellectuals are exiled or imprisoned by their governments for
expressing their views.
Participation
Some Africans do not know their rights and duties to participate in building their
community and their country. They have despaired of the power of vote because of election
fraud, and they do not see the value in voting for rich leaders in faraway cities. Their
governments do not permit their participation, much less encourage it. People must assert
their right to have a say in their government.
Autocracy
Some well-meaning but misguided dictators believe that they can solve the country's
problems by imposing their idealistic solutions without letting the people have a voice.
They are ignorant of the needs of the rural poor because they fail to consult them or
respect their opinions.
Westernisation
Many leaders are part of a Westernised elite with a Western education. They use
Western methods to try and build a centralised Western economy. They imitate colonial
leaders and colonise their own countries.
Urbanisation
The leaders parasitically squeeze the wealth from the rural areas to build Western
cities, manufacturing, housing, hospitals and schools that favour the rich urban elite.
Government fines and taxes add to the burden of the rural poor, who must destroy the
environment to meet the increased demands for agricultural products. They impose Western
property laws which drive poor people off the land into cities, creating migrant labour,
landlessness and rural indebtedness. Because the development resources are biased toward
cities, people go where the money is, and the cities become overcrowded.
Planning
Many leaders are too busy managing crises to plan for the long term. They take out
large, risky loans to try and get the economy started, but end up with a long-term debt,
sacrificing the future for the present. They spend more on hospitals and cures than
preventative health like clean water, sanitation, nutrition and family planning.
Disunity
Some Africans with similar values and economic status fight for ethnic reasons,
encouraged by foreigners and leaders who use divide and rule tactics to profit from the
destabilised situation.
