THE AFRICAN PROBLEMS (PART 3)

#3 Lack of Originality

Merriam Webster Dictionary defines Originality as the power of independent thought and constructive imagination. Well, I decide to define Lack of Originality as the power to produce nothing but purchase everything. It's an African problem not because we can't produce but because we are so obsessed with foreign products to the point where we stop improving on our own and then treat what we make with disdain. The end result is that we spend all our fortunes helping foreign countries improve and create new things (by purchasing them at very high expenses). Meanwhile we grow more dependent on the rest of the world. We can no longer live without the things they create, and since we have to spend all our earnings on their products, we are broke enough to be unable to make our own.

You may want to read THE COMPREHENSIVE NOTE on The African Problems series.

I decide to define Lack of Originality as the power to produce nothing but purchase everything.

A younger friend of mine namely Ayad once discussed with me how he observed that before the colonial era our fathers had some crude innovations. Hoe and cutlass for the farmer, boat and net for the fisherman, bellows for the blacksmith, local gun for the hunter, palm oil lamp for night visions, weaving machine for Aso Ofi, herb for the doctor, not to forget the craftsmen, sculptors and many other professions with their different tools. The equipment were crude but they were working. Africans could create stuffs that helped them solved their own problems and made them look beautiful. In other words, we've been innovative right from time. Then my friend asked me; so what if the Westerners didn't come? Don't you think Africans would still have improved on themselves by now? Well, the white men came anyway with their beautiful lanterns and pendulum clocks. That was how we got into this trouble. What trouble? We stopped creating and started buying everything; products, religions, cultures and ideas. When there was no more money to buy, we started enslaving and selling ourselves off. You think it's over? No. I think it just got worse. Come to think of it. Homosexuality becomes the popular thing in America and all of a sudden, the African man also realizes that he's born with the natural instincts of a woman. So he demands for the right to be married to a man and live the life of a woman. Really?! What about that African woman who because Feminism is the order of the day wants his man to be her woman and she becomes his man? Atheism too; since many Americans are already losing their faith in God, why can't we? After all, it was through ignorance, illiteracy and lack of civilization that our fathers believed in their gods. Most of us do complain and grumble about how much of our values are gone and how Africa seems to be losing identity in the face of a civilized world. The responsibility we must take is that nobody took our values away from us. We are the ones who let it go. 

Fairness is present only when both are free

Indeed I must admit that the so called civilization that came to us has fostered us. For that we're grateful (with the gratefulness of a slave). Yes. No continent should be an island. Black or White, we all need each other. However, this mutual dependence is fair only if both parties can openly admit that none is superior or inferior to the other. However, our relationship with the West is not like that. We may think that mutual dependence makes it fair. "They need us and we need them. Isn't that fair enough?" You see my friend, the slave needs the master and the master needs the slave. That doesn't make them equal. Fairness is present only when both are free...and that's another realm of independence entirely - Originality; even though both cannot be free. Look around us. How many of what we see and use every day are homemade? Increase the percentage and we become original again.