Cliquez pour telecharger la version francaise (PDF)!Undoubtedly, Africa is going through a troubled and uncertain era. One would perhaps say, if we did not want to be extremely pessimistic, that Africa is at the crossroads. The problem here is that this has been said a long time ago; unless Africa has chosen to stand still. Without willing to play Cassandra -each epoch has always had its own, the immediate future of Africa does not appear very promising. If one really wants to scrutinize both the underneath of statistics and the
underside of deals, there are real reasons for concern: Africa is the only continent to have globally regressed over the last fifty years. Its physical infrastructures are decrepit, ramshackle or totally inadequate. Its economies, for the most part dysfunctional, are totally or largely outward. Its populations are either anemic or bloodless as a result of long hollow conflicts or perpetual regimes of which the long survival is distinctly correlative of their own increasing
marginalization and destitution. Its intellectual elites, uprooted and in essence self interested for the most part, seem to have completely given up on their ontological requirement or sociological justification of being social lanterns. Its weight in the concert of nations is totally insignificant. Its responsibility to itself or to the rest of humanity appears null, all the more so as it seems to delight in trailing totally behind others. The language (I am not talking about tongues) that it uses even to define itself or formulate its most profound existential problems is a borrowed
language. Its youth, its most precious social element, is neglected and abandoned to its own device. It has no hope in the future. Its political infrastructures are either unconcerned, unconscious or unable to deal seriously with the greatest challenges of the time or of the future: climate change and global warming; the issue of energy; demographic explosion, water, reduction in arable land, and alimentation; global political imbalance; the continuously growing gap between the haves and have-nots; political violence; the possibility of major epidemics; and the
problems of the environment.
Honestly, this is the only statement I can objectively, comparing it to other continents, make on Africa here and now. I am not being pessimistic. I want to be realistic. I hope I am mistaken; and I would really like to be. But this is a fact that only future will tell. However, I am not saying all this to discourage you. On the contrary! I am saying it so as to allow you to be aware of the challenges that ought to be taken up, and to mobilize yourselves accordingly. It is certainly up to you to face up these challenges for yourselves and for future generations. I am always of
the opinion that man is the ultimate artificer of his destiny, and that the destiny of a people, however enormous the challenges and however arbitrary may be the vicissitudes of history, is ultimately a reflection of the determination or lack thereof by its sons and daughters. It is therefore important that you understand that your destiny, the destiny of Africa, a continent that has suffered so much during the last five centuries, will ultimately be the destiny that you, the African youth of today, will have forged.
To help you understand and meet the challenge that is yours, even though it is the challenge of all African men and women, let me offer you a few things which, in my opinion, are very simple, and which, nevertheless, are not beyond human possibilities:
1. Inform and form yourselves. Take your formation in your hand, and try always to fill or supplement what school gives you. Today the Internet makes this even more possible. So do not use the Internet just to exchange electronic messages or to chat electronically. This is agreeable and is worth its weight in gold! But, use the Internet especially for what it is, the biggest library in the world that humanity has ever assembled. Attach a particular importance to the history of the continent. Remember that he who ignores history, his own history in particular, does so at his own expense. He condemns himself to repeat the mistakes of the past.
2. Create debating clubs. This is extremely important; and I am of the opinion that thinking is scarce in Africa. The level of debate is insufficient. There is a lot of chatting. People just talk, and Africans like very much to do so. It certainly has social advantage. But, we do not put our heads together to solve problems that are ours or to face the challenges that oppress us. In 1996, supported by the history of humanity known to me, I wrote the following: “Poverty and misery are a curse only where the genius of the human mind is not put to work!” More than eleven years have now passed. And, whenever I revisit this thought and, now supported by the
experience I have made of a number of African countries over this period of time, I find myself further strengthened in this deep conviction. Africa's problems are soluble, and all that is needed is that Africans commit themselves to use their heads. Go on, you African youth, put your genius, the genius of Africa, to work!
3. Be solidary! In the history of the world, no people have ever dared, without solidarity, to prevail over the challenges of the kind Africa is facing nowadays. Moreover, in the universal human jungle that prevails throughout the world, without solidarity, a people or a group does just offer itself or offer its own as lambs on the altar of henceforth boundless covetousness and greed of some and others. Make no mistake about it! Do not be fooled about it! We live in a world that is less and less human, that is more ruthless, more mercantile, more and more materialistic, and indeed even ethnocentric. It is therefore very much painful to me to see that Africa has become so much an “asolidary” world, a world “without solidarity”. And yet, without solidarity, there is no society; and many are now corners of Africa where society exists only in name, for we are dealing more with scattered masses of people who are fighting each for his or her own survival, than with real social structures in which individuals are entities that are integrated with aim to both individual and collective fulfillment. Therefore it would not be inordinate for me to urge you to get to be one another solidary!
4. Finally, get organized! Learn the meaning and the essence of organization; and learn how to get organized! Organization is the key word; and if you, the youth of Africa, learn to get organized, within a generation, the history of Africa will appear in a completely different light.
You will have certainly given hope to future generations. I will not tell you that you will overnight resolve all the current problems of the Continent, for men do achieve only in time. But you will surely have necessarily paved the way to a world of progress and to a prosperous Africa. In fact, if I were to summarize the fundamental problem of Africa in one word, I would tell you that, however unfortunate has been the history of Africa over the last five hundred years and however unfair has been the deal or the part that others have given to Africa in its last contacts with the rest of the world, the African deficit is ultimately a deficit in organization. Therefore, as long as the problem of organization or of lack of organization will not have been resolved, there will be no hope for the Continent. This is somehow a challenge that I am throwing to you, you, African Youth: Lay your bet on organizing, and let history judge you on it! Remember that, each time you attend to a social issue, your concern is complete and is likely to be productive only if it includes intimately the outline of an appropriate organizational structure.
That is in a few words the essence of my message. I am fundamentally convinced that those are very simple things. In any case, they are not things beyond your genius or the genius of Africans. Come on, African youth, dare do them, and dare the change! I am an attentive student of history, and I do not believe there is, in the fifty thousand years of the history of modern man that are behind us, something likely to belie me completely. The greatest barrier you will face is a psychological barrier. There is also fear. But once you will have conquered both, you will surely realize how much easy the way to change, responsibility and freedom is.
Long live the African youth, free, responsible, dynamic and prosperous! Long live Africa!
Contact: alafuele_m_kalala@yahoo.com
