Opinion: Operation Africa-2021 – After the theory, the time of practice
By Jean-Paul Pougala Translated by Michel Kamsu – On January 12, 2011, I started a 10 years adventure called Africa 2021, by publishing today, the first of a series of articles taking position on the main events which occurs in 2011 related our continent Africa. On January 12, 2011 was the publication of my 4 pages editorial on the Ivorian crisis follow by 7 others on the war in Libya. Each of them targeted two main goals:
– Dismantling in the African mind the most devastating unjustified complex of inferiority supported by lies, false storyline consolidated by centuries of European domination which has helped sustaining it till now.
– Restoring African pride by letting Africans appropriate themselves the African dream.
I had targeted young people in this job. Why young people? Because people of my generation grew up, rocked by chorus from parents whipped by their European bosses, swearing allegiance and subordination to the European, no matter what happens. So expecting from these groups of people a radical new mindset looked utopian alike for me. And then there was the revolution called “internet” without which my writing would have stayed as many others since 25 years, in drawer, awaiting the next censorship from another publisher to accept to publish them.
The outcome was, using the relatively free Highway of the Virtual world to share my points of views, let them acknowledge the challenges at hand.
After 12 months, the first step was obviously successful and more and more Africans are awakened by my writing and acknowledge that the El Dorado is in Africa and not elsewhere. Of all the letters I receive daily, I was really touch by those young people who tell me that me since they read my articles, they have abandoned the idea of leaving Africa, they realized it was stupid to risk of dying in the Mediterranean Sea, trying to cross to Italy piled up to 100 on a boat made for 10 people. I was particularly touched to receive hundreds of testimonials young people telling me after the article on the “Oil Palm” they started investing in their plantation, with 2 hectares, with 3. I had tears in his eyes when, after the article entitled “Here is how Africa will control Europe”, I received many testimonies from European youth born from African parents telling me they had just decided to return to Africa, to find the land of their parents, to be part of those who will conquer Europe, this time, neither through canoe, but as protagonists business actors.
Yes, I wanted to create this kind of reaction, I wanted to raise this kind of enthusiasm among our youth. And in other to avoid seeing this enthusiasm turn to discouragement, right from the beginning, I planned a second phase, the concrete, one where we move from words to actions, where we strategize and start implement to make Africa the third world power.
STEP 2
When in one of my articles, I said that Africa would become the third world power in 10 years, some believed that was a wish. No, it was not a wish, it is a challenge. And this second phase is to take the hand of our young people to make them innovative people, creators of wealth and real economic actors on the national scene first and International after. This may make some people smile, but it is very serious. Africa is becoming rich from every corner. What I am trying to do is to direct growth to a real human progress toward greater redistribution of hard earned wealth from the bottom of the tree. So that we avoid mistakes made before us in the West society where the wealth of prosperity, was confiscated by a handful of individuals who exploit till the bone a mass that has nothing but an illusion materialize by their voting card send in the ballot box every 5 years or a few strikes.
I’m looking for adults, professionals, persons with experience in any field, to mentor these young people who follow me every day, to serve as a big sister or big brother. I am looking for all those who are convinced of my approach and are ready to offer free one or two hours of their time per week to support young people in their village, their city or their neighbour region of residence.
I am convinced that the state is each of us; African leaders are all of us. And it is often too easy to blame a presume band of “African leaders” as if they came from the planet Mercury. Leaders are what we are. If we are virtuous and we actively educate our neighbourhood, of course, even the leaders will be like us, because this these same persons sooner or later will have a responsibility and they will apply what we have succeeded in our neighbourhood worldview, our dream of what how we want Africa to be. So, it is in our little gestures most seemingly trivial that we build or destroy Africa. The leader will not do anything special other than what we do every day. If we are grasping, we will accept they are too. If we are corruptible, we will tolerate corrupt leaders. If we are betrayers to the cause of Africa, we will be indulgent disloyal and treacherous leaders. If we eager for averageness, we will find excuses to forgive not outstanding leaders. It is the highest of this virtue that you carry in you that I please you all to join me optimized and transferred it to our youth, to write our history ourselves today for our children.
YOUR MEMBERSHIP IS NECESSARY
To verify the effectiveness or not of such an initiative, I need to bring together all the actions that will be led. Therefore I ask you to provide me with your membership details:
Full Name: … … … … … … … … … … …
Occupation: … … … … … … … … … … …
Address:. … … … … … … … … … ..
City: … … … … … …
Country: … … … ..
As fixed as mobile: … … … … ..
Email: … … … … ….
Expertise: … … … … ..
Availability: … … … … … …. Time (s) / week
Thank you for sending the contents of your membership: africa2021@gmail.com
MY ROLE
In this second stage, my role will be mainly to coordinate memberships of Big Brothers Big Sisters and establish contact members whose profile best matches the field of competence. For example, an agricultural engineer will receive more contacts of youth practicing agriculture in his area of residence. My job will be more visible in the third step, which is to escort these young people to conquer the world.
STEP 3: THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD WITH AFRICAN PRODUCTS
Young people who will have managed to produce wealth at local and national levels will be projected to the world. Africa has a great need the currency, many currencies. We must reverse the trend of import of any bad habits in Africa. We must have the instinct to export rather than import. To achieve this, we will play on the levers available. For example, the agreements with China to allow many African countries to export manufactured goods from Africa to the Chinese market duty-free. Unfortunately, till now this opportunity is not used because most African countries are convinced that relations with China is a copy of those with the European Union which allows access to its market for raw materials used in the industry and where Mr. African citizen cannot do anything. We will assist these young people by guiding them through the process, helping them to take advantage of the opportunities at hand. The other lever is the project AGOA allowing to exportation of manufactured goods to certain eligible countries of the sub-Saharan Africa to the United States Customs duty-free. Again, this opportunity is underused because always less advertised. For the EU, the market is still frozen for products such as BIO, but it will soon be open, because as said in my article “Here is how Africa will control Europe”, European producers cannot meet the ever increasing demands for organic products, while that Africans eat naturally BIO because the continent has the most fertile land in the world and therefore do not needed to produce chemical fertilizers. In all three cases, databases of potential customers will be implemented, especially with the help of the so-called “African diaspora”, living in these three areas to provide our youth of tomorrow potential targets of their business ventures abroad. Quite often it is the most difficult phase, finding a customer at the other end of the world. And we are able to do everything work in a spirit of volunteerism and therefore completely free from when the ideal of a prosperous Africa is well established.
USEFULNESS OF AFRICANS ABROAD
In Europe, Africans are mostly victims of racial discrimination that relegates them to the status of the poorest population in each country. Their children excel in beating records of bad socialization with obvious consequences on school failure, juvenile delinquency: the rate of Africans in European prisons is disproportionately high in view of their overrepresentation relative to our numbers in the total population. They were told to study. They did and now they are clad types of diplomas, GCE A-level +2, +3, +5, +7, +10, and they all have one thing in common: they are mostly unemployed. The most courageous have turned into security for men and household for women. There are many African lawyers who work as a night watchman in France, Great Britain, Germany and the United States. They are not in the right place, much less to clean the streets of Paris or New York. We need to develop and guide the African progress that is able to involve all its son and daughters in fact, excluded by racism of economic processes, political and administration of the West where they live, most often from for decades already. They can be simply put in the service of that Africa must control Europe and Africa must to conquer the world. And serve as an outpost of the long arms of this new temerarious Africa of take its place head on the shoulders at the world scene.
How?
We will create a synergy among young Africans who are able to export and their brothers and sisters who will also be their agents, their representatives and their branches in an atmosphere of solidarity and honesty of the village, in accordance to our ancestors worship. Every street, every city in Europe must the subject of a systematic collection of information and meticulous Youth Service in Africa, about the needs of the most probable varied as they are able to meet from the mainland Africa. Every African should be able to reinvent her-/himself and create its own role, his own mission in this new perspective of the global economy. To the extent possible, all will be monitored and directed to correct the mistakes along the way and enable a successful conclusion of this adventure of a kind.
Nothing will be easy, we will laugh at us at the first crack, but at least, even if we fail, this time it will remain the satisfaction that we will not have been guided, because we’re doing what we have chosen to do and not what the other we will have impose like coffee, cocoa
and bananas where our role has always been limited in the plantation. This time, we want to choose what to do in planting and decide how to turn off the plantation and choose to whom to sell in Africa and outside Africa and at what price. We want and must begin to exist on the world scene, as true economic actors. It’s possible. And because our Youth will be able to win this challenge and count on the scene world that Africans are truly respected and taken seriously. In poverty, respect for others is only facade, a mere exercise of testimony of good education.
NB: All those who agree to participate in this initiative are assumed to have read most of my articles to understand the spirit African pride and solidarity in which the initiative will be conducted, where money is not king. Selfishness and individualism have shown their limits, at least for what concerns Africa. We want to try something else, placing before the spirit of African brotherhood, that of our Ancestors before 1884 (year of turning on Africa by the mercenaries of the Conference of Berlin). That is to say, when YOU did not exist, but only YOU to everyone, when the sage was not one who flaunted his tips paper called “degrees”, but shining through the sharing of its knowledge so that the whole village benefits.
27/01/2012
Jean-Paul Pougala
Michel Kamsu comments: It may appear to you like socialism, but bear in mind that if we succeed in getting establishing a strong network, the retribution in less than 15 years will be just more than CHINA!!! The actual paradox is that, the world is hungry and Africa can feed the world. Till latest 2020 the majority of the second world’s generation leadership will be out of service and those between the ages of 20 to 30 will be dominating the world leadership family. For those who will recognize this wisdom: “one hand cannot tie a bag.”
