Africa the Way Forward

By Canice Chucks Osuji

This book was born of the desire to share my feelings and concerns and that of others
who are so much concerned about how the continent of Africa has remain dormant for
centuries in terms of development and progress. Being an African and having seen the
forward movement, progess and development of the other continent around the world, you
begin to wonder why it has not been replicated in the Afriican continent.
The continent of Africa has great resources more than many other continent in the world,
both human and natural resources. However, these resources has not benefited the common
people of the continent. The West, Arabs and recently Asia has enjoyed these resources more
than Africans themselves. From the slave trade where the carted away our able men and
women, to resources control through colonization and recently through brain drain. Our
specialists and well qualified has migrated to other continents such as Europe, America and
Asia leaving the continent dry in terms of qualified personnel who can man and managed
the resources of the continent. These has contributed to poverty lack of quality leadership
in many areas that would have moved the continent forward.
After world war, America implemented Marshal plan that was used to transform and
develop the Western nations. However, this kind of joint policy has not come to the mind
of the West to implement in Africa where they have benefited much. Rather the continent
of Africa is seen and address as the dark continent.
I therefore, feel that bringing to mind of many both Africans and the West, the things we
need to address to move Africa forward. I believe that if some of the points looked at in this
book and other brilliant ideas by others are implemented, then the continent of Africa can
emerge out of its aclaimed darkness and move forward like other continent.
Let the world and African leaders learn from the history of the past and invent new ways of
doing things so that they can move Africa forward in a progressive path. Strongly I believe
if this is done, the Story of the continent of Africa can change like that of China. The West
should desist from ripping Africa off, abstain from aiding and abetting corruption and bad
leadership in the continent. The people of Africa should fight and resist wicked and corrupt
political leaders, and bring to death tribal - nepotic and support of politics of clientism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543489781

Canice Chucks Osuji

Canice is from Mabise , Imos state Nigeria. A practicing christian , who loves good attitude and thinks that can take us to a greater height in christianity. He has built his christian values through good attitude towards others. Canice has also two other published works, which he would like you also to read. His works revolves around social -political and religious . For these three areas affects and shapes our daily attitude and practice.

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Copyright © 2018 by Canice Chucks Osuji.

ISBN:               Softcover                 978-1-5434-8979-8

                         eBook                       978-1-5434-8978-1

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Rev. date: 07/31/2018

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1   Education

Chapter 2   Shedding Away the Colonial Influence

Chapter 3   Establishing and Maintaining Effective Institutions

Chapter 4   Independence and Its Effects on the Continent

Chapter 5   Conflict and Resolution

Chapter 6   Ending or Reducing Corruption in the Continent

Chapter 7   New Direction, Building Infrastructures, and Changing Politics

Conclusion

References

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to the citizens of the great continent of Africa who have been victims of bad governance throughout the centuries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I appreciate the efforts and support of my entire family who have been behind me all these years.

I am also grateful for the support and hard work of Hendrick Arbella and his team at Xlibris Publishing UK.

Great thanks go to Almighty Jehovah, who has helped me through all the difficult times and kept me alive despite all odds, especially the tough times I faced in the West.

My appreciation also goes to all friends and well-wishers.

INTRODUCTION

The lack of progress, development, invention, and innovation, coupled with political and religious instability, of the great continent of Africa has limited her from moving forward compared with other continents of the world.

However, these negatives have in a way dominated the story of Africa in the recent centuries. Many around the world know nothing about Africa except hunger, war, and the animals while the great people of Africa are forgotten.

Africa’s immense history and culture have influenced the world. A lot of historians have accredited Africa as the place where civilisation started, citing Egypt as an example with its long ages of civilised background or history. In the present day, the continent of Africa is populated with about 960,000,000 inhabitants despite the effects of the lost generation of about 400,000,000 of her children to slavery.

The continent of Africa can’t be jettisoned in its position in history regardless of her dark history and the underdevelopment facing her. There is still hope that the continent of Africa can move forward if her people and leaders look back at her history. This will make her discover who they were and then will help them recover.

G. Elliot Smith in the second edition of The Ancient Egyptians and the Origin of Civilization said, ‘The Egyptians did a great deal more than merely invent agriculture and devise the earliest statecraft and religion. Not only did they devise the methods of working wood and stone and the art of architecture, they seem also to have been the inventors of linen and of the craft of weaving, of the use of gold and copper and the making of metal tools and implements.’

They were the first people to measure the year and to devise a calendar and, later on, to substitute for the rough calculation based upon the date of the annual Nile flood the actual measurement based on observation of the sun’s movements. They also invented shipbuilding and constructed the first seagoing ships. In fact, Smith was kind and honest to mention these attributes of the early African achievements because they are hardly remembered today since the African continent is seen as nothing but darkness by the informed and uninformed people of other continents. (See pages 48–49 of The Growth of Civilization.)

The idea of the West seeing Africans as people of no inventive acumen isn’t something new since credits are given to those who added the last link to discovery, which has been made by groups of men. However, people like Imhotep of Egypt, if he were still alive, would have been more than Albert Einstein; and of course, he would have received the Nobel Prize since he merited it by today’s Western standards of honour.

Africans should not give up but should go back to the drawing board in unity despite religious and language differences as well as a Western-induced mentality, which has divided Africa in terms of colonial impacts—a characteristic that has hindered us from aspiring and reinventing ourselves as great sons of the sun.

The first university in Western Europe, University of Salamanca in Spain, took its roots from Africa—Timbuktu in present-day Mali. So let’s get serious with high-quality education in the continent that will help move our continent forward so that we can re-usher ourselves in the world stage. W. J. Perry acknowledged that the Egyptians excelled in all more than other ancient people with their mastery over materials of the most diverse sorts.

These genius attributes of the early Africans can be revisited if we begin to develop quality-oriented education in our various nation states. Let’s look forward to better days for the continent of Africa, where the West will begin to count on the Moors like it was in centuries past, when men were men in Africa and we dealt with the West on an equal footing, with them consulting Africans as partners and not as their stooges or puppets.

The need for political changes in the right direction for the benefit of the civil society of Africa cannot be delayed anymore. Also, the issues of serious infrastructure development, conflict resolution, and early intervention in war-torn areas can no longer depend on the West to initiate. Rather, Africans themselves should take the initiative to intervene. This will make us stand on our feet like other regions of world. The ideas of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana in forming the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) should be reinvigorated in all conscious African minds.

CHAPTER 1

Education

We can say that ‘education’ in its narrow technical sense means a formative process by which society deliberately teaches its accumulated knowledge, customs, values, and skills from one generation to another, such as with instructions in schools. Some jurisdictions have been created and have recognised the right to education since 1952. Article 2 of the first protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatories to guarantee the rights to education. In all global levels, the United Nations’ international convention on economic, social, and culture rights of 1966 guarantees this right under Article 13.

It can also be said that education means a way through which the aims and habits of a group of people live on from one generation to the next. It also means ‘train’, as is indicated in the Latin word educatio. It means to train someone to change his thinking, feelings, etc.

Can you imagine being unable to read the words on this page? What if you couldn’t speak your country’s official language? Suppose you were unable to point to your homeland on a map of the world. Countless children in the world will grow up in this circumstance.

The continent of Africa will remain in this very situation if we don’t do anything fast to move forward. What about your child? Should your child go to school to acquire education?

In many countries around the world, primary and secondary education is compulsory and free for every child till the age of 18 years. However, in Africa, the reverse is the case. The Convention on the Rights of the Child considers formal education to be a fundamental right, and so does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In some countries, though, education might not be free and might be a financial burden to parents. Let us look at this matter through the eyes or perspective of many parents who want their children to be literate either through formal or religious education. Just like George W. Bush, the one-time president of the United States of America, said, ‘Leave no child behind.’ This was an act he pursued during his term as president, seeing the importance of education in American society. Regardless of the high literacy rate in the United States, the president believed that children have that fundamental right to education.

In many nations of the African continent, this has not been the case, even in the twenty-first century’s high-tech world. So many children have not only been left behind, but they have also been completely denied the right or opportunity to an education. This is not only by their own parents and guardians, but also due to poverty or financial constraints and state policies.

Education is paramount in the life of a person, particularly children. If a child is not able to read and write, it will deprive him or her of much vital information to function in a given environment. For example, individuals with an education become informed and better at understanding others and have broader and more open minds to accommodate and tolerate people with different opinions. The need to educate the children of Africa is pertinent to its sociopolitical, industrial, and technological advancement. This is what the continent needs to move forward. The No Child Left Behind Act of President George W. Bush shows how this issue is important. Not minding the literacy rate in the United States, the government still finds it important to educate more children as well as adults who happened to miss the chance as children to acquire it.

The educational systems around the world vary in nature—preschools; primary, secondary, or tertiary schools; vocational schools; universities; or alternative education. The continent of Africa needs to invest in those systems for upward movement and development so that its people can compete in the global world of today and the future.

There have been in existence many systems of education. We need only to pick the ones that suit our nations and implement them fully to empower our people.

Systems of Education/Schooling

Schooling/educational systems involve institutionalised teaching and learning in relation to a curriculum, which itself is established according to a predetermined purpose of the schools in the system. You may ask, ‘What is the purpose of education or schooling?’ Education or schooling helps us to develop reasoning about persistent questions, master the methods of scientific enquiry, cultivate intellect, and create positive change agents. The purposes and goals of schools are to teach people how to think.

The word ‘curriculum’ means a set or list of academic disciplines. In formal education, a curriculum includes the lists of courses and their content offered at a school or university. As an idea, ‘curriculum’ stems from the Latin word for ‘racecourse’, referring to the course of ideals and experience through which children grow to become adults. It is prescriptive and based on a more general syllabus that merely specifies what topics must be understood and what level to achieve a particular grade or standard.

What does ‘discipline’ mean in terms of education or school? It is a branch of knowledge that is formally taught at the university or through some other method. Each discipline usually has several subdisciplines and distinguishing lines. Examples of disciplines include natural science, computer science, mathematics, humanities, and social sciences.

Education and schooling vary from formal to alternative education as well as indigenous education. However, all education is important in transforming the society in which we live since through it we train and nurture one generation to the next. So how did education come into existence?

Brief History of Education

According to Professor Dieter of the Freie University of Berlin in 1994, ‘Education began either millions of years ago or at the end of 1770. As a science, education cannot be separated from the educational traditions that existed before. Adults trained the young of their society in the knowledge and skills they would need to master, and eventually, it passed on. The evolution of culture and human beings as a species depends on this practice of transmitting knowledge.’

In oral-literate societies, education was achieved through the spoken word. Storytelling continued from one generation to the next, as was the case in the early African continent. Oral language developed into written symbols and letters. Later cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond the basic skills of communicating, trading, gathering food, and practising religion, for example. Formal education and schooling eventually followed. Schooling in this sense was already in place in Africa (Egypt) between 3000 and 500 BC.

The continent had been part of an early educated society. So it is sad that Africa is lacking in all forms of education in the twenty-first century. This brings the idea of making some certain level of education compulsory in the continent of Africa as well as in many nations around the world.

According to UNESCO, due to population growth and the proliferation of compulsory education, in the next thirty years, more people will receive formal education than in all of human history. In this case, the questions are as follows: What is the position of the nations in the continent of Africa in this projection? Are our respective nation states in the continent doing something to see that they will be counted amongst those who have reached this goal, or will they still lag behind as they have over fifty years of independence?

The Education We Need

The continent of Africa and its states need all approved and known systems of education for us to move forward in achieving advancements in development, technology, agriculture, economics, and sociopolitical greatness. There have been established systems of education that we have