What are the 6 steps that will lead Africa from Independence to Autonomy?

This year marks the 60 years anniversary of Senegal's independence, and more or less, the one of a lot of africans countries from the colonisers.

Which other countries got their independence or just entered a new era around the 1960s?

To list a few of them: Singapore (1965), South Korea (1961), Japan (1945), Germany (1945).

Now in 2020, most of the non African countries in the list above are thriving with their economy. In less than 60 years, some of them have become part of the top 5 leaders in our modern world.

Amid the Covid-19 outbreak, and based on the idea of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, a lot of African countries are negotiating their debt cancellation or restructuring or postponement.

This makes me wonder why Africa is proud to be independant and yet lacks autonomy, always relying on foreign aid to go through their day.

During the colonisation, most of African territories were like trains and the colonials were the ones laying the tracks, in charge of the time table and obviously driving the train from station to station.

We were happy, as Africans, sitting on the last wagon and enjoying the ride. At least, we were on a train and we were provided everything we thought we needed.

In the end of the 1950s, with the growing demand for freedom from a lot of African leaders, the West decided to cut them loose. 

Finally we were independant now. 

However the West did not leave without barring some gifts.

They divided the continent without taking into account the reality of the people. 

They made us rely on rice and corn for our food, which we are still importing in 2020. They made sure that the people taking over would apply the same things that they did before. After all, they trained them and provided them with all the resources they needed. All they were doing was to make sure that we will apply their ways of thinking and then depend on them forever.

Now we are in a bus, imported form the West, the bus driver got a quick training on the parking lot of independence, before the colonists left.

We drove that bus, wandering around until the early 2000s. We were driving the bus, for sure, with a blueprint left by former colonists. 

The happy few of us were on the bus going on asphalted roads. The majority of us have our eyes crying everyday from the dust of clay roads in summer, which are flooded and full of potholes every rain season.

Since the early 2010, Africa is now part of the global consumerism society. Now we have our own cars. Imported, yes. Yet now we are behind the wheel and we can go as we wish thanks to a world where travelling is more accessible to masses.

We believe that we are independant. Yes indeed, we are in our individual cars. However we should ask ourselves the type of car we are driving and what it reveals about us.

The car: imported. The roads: imported. The money: mostly imported. The fuel: imported. The spare parts of the car: imported. The driving system: imported. The traffic regulations: imported. 

In light of all of this, we are still le-iving in the old world. We are an obsolete car park, independant, yet not autonomous.

Yes we should be Tesla cars and not the old American or European outdated cars. 

What is an autonomous car? An autonomous entity that relies only on its brain to assess the environment and takes its own decision. An autonomous entity does not need a driver or a pilot.

It works with synchronicity and learns from other autonomous entities and from its own mistakes. It improves while capitalizing data and sharing it so that the whole system works as one.

I am a firm believer that criticizing is easy and the cheapest commodity in this world. I am the kind of person who does not like to be surrounded by the “Yes but” people. I am looking to be around the “Yes and” people who always give constructive feedback.

Now that I have painted quite a dark vision of how I see the continent, I would like to bring my own brick to help Africa write its own narrative.

If I were to share 6 steps to Africa to help us write our own narrative, those would be as follows:

1. We have to visualize it in our mind: African Renaissance Monument, Senegal
2. We have to burn all bridges: Malawi Lake, Malawi
3. We are on our own: pIton de la Fournaise, Réunion
4. We will dig through clay: Luxor Pyramid, Egypt
5. We owe it to ourselves: Abbe Lake, Djibouti and Ethiopia
6. We are at the top of our mountain: Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

If we follow those 6 steps, we will move from independence, known as neo-colonialism to autonomy, known as freedom in all shapes and forms.

Let me give you some more details on each step.

1. We have to visualize it in our mind: African Renaissance Monument, Senegal

When I was young in Dakar, Senegal, I never imagined that I would be working in Airbus, because this is not some vision that I had in my mind. It was not part of the realm of my possibilities. It came later in 2000, when I arrived in France for my engineering studies.

As long as we, Africans, are not able to envision a world where we can sit on the big table, we will fail individually as a country and collectively as a continent.

Why? 

Because if, those in power and with money, only think about themselves, we are doomed as a nation. We are playing the finite game and not the infinite game.

Our power and wealth will die with us and we will not have built any vision to be taken over after our death.

We have to see a world in the future where Africans will sit in the United Nations security council as other countries and not just as one continent.

If we are not given a seat, well, we must build a new UN that makes the current one obsolete.

2. We have to burn all bridges: Malawi Lake, Malawi

Today our dependency on foreign money, aid, products, is enslaving the future generations to come if you do not make the change. We have to see that the shift is necessary. 

It is not about whether or not we have to wake up. It is more if we want to wake up in the cage built around our parents and grandparents or if we want to build our own home with our own material and supply. 

Now is the time because now we know that we are on our own.

We are the biggest island in the world and no more foreign boats are docking on our ports. 

We have survived for so long. 

Now it is the time to wake and rise.

Now is the time to thrive in our own life.

3. We are on our own: pIton de la Fournaise, Réunion

Help is good when it is on the spot. When you are living under permanent help, you are under perfusion.

No patient has got out of the hospital under perfusion and went to build a hospital of their own. 

We cannot only rely on bread and corn from importation to feed ourselves and claim that we are free.

We are a vast and diverse continent with so many landscapes that we could grow anything to feed ourselves from our own land.

E are the youngest population in the whole world and we so much depend solely on things manufactured by older people, foreign older people.

We have to come to the realisation that to win, we have to be on our own.

4. We will dig through clay: Luxor Pyramid, Egypt

Everybody loves taking an Uber or a Lyft because you just sit and relax until you arrive at your destination.

Everybody loves Amazon prime's where you just click your package to your doorstep the morning after.

Everybody loves the magic of Artificial Intelligence and all it promesses of doing the boring and repetitive jobs for us.

Well what do we have in Africa?

We don’t have asphalt roads and we don’t build cars. So we better start building vehicules out of mud. And we have to make them with our own hands and be proud of them thanks to their uniqueness.

We don’t have big warehouses filled with unnecessary items that will clutter our tiny apartments. What we have are beautiful landscapes that we must preserve. We must use a tiny part of them to build and harvest our own food, rain hail or shine.

5. We owe it to ourselves: Abbe Lake, Djibouti and Ethiopia

One day, I will wake up. That day will be the last one where I will put a step on Earth. Looking back at my life flashing before my eyes, without being able to move, I want my life to be worth remembering because I lived it in such a way.

Today, looking back at the life of Africa, the life of Senegal so far, it is not a life that will be remembered for the generations to come. 

Few things today in Senegal or in Africa are the direct results of our own doings. It’s either nature, luck or the colonists or neo-colonialism.

I want a wakandian Africa, an Africa where we can look back to our lives and our accomplishments and say: we did it by our own.

I believe in Africa as being the next continent to rule the world, for the world’s own sake. 

6. We are at the top of our own mountain: Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

History books will write one day: Africa did it, Africa brought its music to the world and everybody shut up and listened. 

I want that day to be yesterday. I don’t want that day to be something that my grand grand childrens will experience. I am being selfish here. I want to see it done in my lifetime.

Why? 

Because I am only 40 years old. And if Germany, Singapore, Japan and South Korea did it in less than 60 years, African countries can do it in less than 30 years, or even 20.

In 20 years, I will be 60 years old, and I still will be climbing my own mountain. I want to turn my head and be surrounded by other African people climbing their own mountains and leading their way to the top.

I want to see the smile on their face, the pride in their shoulders, the scars in their hands while climbing. 

This is my call to every African in you to wake up and start writing our own story.

And what do you need to write? 

A pen which translates in Wolof (Senegal) as Kalima.

And we already found one in all the places we visited in Africa through this journey. 

Let’s take the list and start from the end to the beginning and connect the dots:

1. African Renaissance Monument, Senegal
2. Malawi Lake, Malawi
3. pIton de la Fournaise, Réunion
4. Luxor Pyramid, Egypt
5. Abbe Lake, Djibouti and Ethiopia
6. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

Kilimanjaro, Abbe Lake, Luxor Pyramid, pIton de la Fournaise, Malawi Lake, African Renaissance Monument, aka KALIMA. And voilà!

By following those 6 steps African countries will go from an illusion of independence to the reality of real autonomy.

I encourage each of us, Africans, to take our Kalima and to make sure that the story we will write before our last drop of ink will be worth a story worth reading. 

Let’s make that story about Africa rising from the story of Kilmonger to the glory of Kilimanjaro.

Have you found your Kalima yet?

Are you contributing to making the source code of Africa autonomous?

How do you see the future of Africa, by Africa?

Leave a comment below.

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You can read my previous article on What is the story behind the genesis of MABACO?

Photo by Ali Hegazy on Unsplash