Well, here we are again, entering “Black History Month,” and our “educated” class led by blacks who have earned doctorate degrees in education (Ed. D.) will foist upon us all that they, and their white cohorts contend is “African American history.” While being nothing more than an enslavement narrative with a virtual disconnect from thousands of years of ancient African history, what passes for our history actually is “his-story,” meaning this is the story white nationalists want blacks and whites to teach everywhere.
No one unschooled in the chronological history of Africa’s past up to and including the Trans-Atlantic African Slave Trade is qualified to teach African American history. The years of our sojourn in the Americas and a long sought reconnect to Mother Africa’s riches has to round out all such teaching.
Without knowledge of self, no persuasion can transform the ever-growing and almost all-consuming negativity that engulfs the Black Diaspora, including in Africa, as a result of centuries of colonialism. If we don’t think and feel Africa, how can we but miss out on what that bountiful continent has to offer now and in the future?
These riches also belong to us whom no one came to rescue from enslavement. Today, all things made in Africa are in demand worldwide and rapid growth is predicted by year 2020 as infrastructure and macroeconomic management improve. By 2020, the world population will have dramatically increased and become more urban and people will need more of everything. A tremendous African resource base will foster agribusiness development and low-end manufacturing.
In addition, Africa’s mineral deposits of every kind are needed in the world and the continent’s energy resources, including sun and water power, make it what investors and observers call “a sweet spot in global demand.” What black people, mainly in the West, are not paying attention to are neo-colonial land grabs being pushed due to Africa’s agricultural capacity.
With predictable worldwide population increases and rising living standards, economists and investors know that meat consumption will soar and, therefore, more livestock will need more grain to feed. A vastly expanded African agricultural capacity is the answer. Where are the Diaspora’s black agronomists, investors and lawyers, marketing and sales professionals?
Did you know that 75 percent of CEOs throughout the world tout Africa as their next area of expansion? All the Europeans are in Africa, with China, India and Brazil jockeying for market share. The smartphone industry is already burgeoning throughout Africa.
Why didn’t Western blacks corner smartphones in Africa?
No analysis of this disastrous trend is complete without dealing with enslavement history and distrust issues engendered therein, particularly since 1712, and the Willie Lynch syndrome of dividing enslaved blacks from tribes, families, language groups and geographical areas of Africa in order to maximize control of our forebears as property.
Just think: If W.E.B. Du Bois had been correct about his “Talented Tenth,” especially since he and some other Negro intellectuals of the early 20th century became “Greeks,” then today’s black Greek-letter organizations and members would be Africa’s key black investors, businesspersons and other professionals sharing in the continent’s enormous wealth.
The African Development Bank says that by 2020 Africa’s domestic demand will be huge because 313 million people had joined the middle class by 2010. According to the January 2013 issue of Africa Report magazine, McKinsey & Company consultants “claim that by 2030 Africa’s largest 18 cities will have a spending power of $1.3trn.”
Political unrest, though, could undermine economic progress. “Young Africans are more literate than their parents, but more unemployed,” says the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Index of African Governance, as quoted in the magazine.
“Current African educational levels are lower than China’s and India’s. Between 2010 and 2020, Africa will add 163 million people to its potential labour force. Africa has the lowest share of engineering graduates in the world. Almost half of the world’s out-of-school children are in Africa.”
Shame on the Diaspora that this problem is allowed to fester wherever there are people of African descent.
Al Calloway is a longtime journalist who began his career with the Atlanta Inquirer during the early 1960s civil rights struggle. He may be reached at: Al_Calloway@verizon.net
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