THE AFRICAN STATE OF AFFAIRS

I had taken a three week break from writing to refresh and set my new bearings and I ended looking into the lives, legacies and auto biographies of martin Luther king, Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere and that made me think about where Africa is in the world barely 59 years since Ghana became the first country in Africa to gain independence from Britain.
We are living in very interesting times in Africa , for the first time in the over 500 years in which Africa was subjected to oppression, slavery, colonialism and neo colonialism we now feel that we are about to take off, with the fastest growing economies coming from Africa and Asia. For most African states the rise of the African sun now shines on the hope of the black race; not just in Africa but in the Caribbean countries, Europe and the Americas.
Africa is now breaking some of the mental shackles that held us; education is at an all-time high. It has been a struggle that has been fought not only in Africa but by every black man in the world, but we are not yet there. The truth will set you free but it will piss you off, and the truth is the world has everything to do with the position black people have found themselves under. Africa is however not looking for foreign aid, mercy or the promise of green cards and visas to the west; we simply want an equal share of what the world has to offer.
We have fought hard and every black man in the world feels it, we are almost completely free from the grip that the world had on Africa. Systems that were created by our founding fathers are now taking root. The seeds of pan Africanism; of collective self-reliance of African countries and for African alliances to empower Africa are now taking root.
Great strides have been made in education, infrastructure culture, political and technology, from the first solar bus in Uganda to Arthur zang; a Cameroonian who has invented a cardio pad which allows medical examination in the rural areas.
There is need for black people in the world to unite for unity is vital to the economic, social and political progress if the people who are of African origin are to be truly free economically and politically. It is a great cause but God is on our side on this, for it was written long before slavery, colonization or the trans Saharan trade that “blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen are his heritage” but as we forge our way forward to greatness, obstacles will be higher because of the blessings at stake, Africa might get beat but the resilience of the custodians of the soul of this world will not be broken.
When the world first came to Africa, they saw Africa to be primitive; our animal skins and hides, earth houses that kept us cool in equatorial climate, they thought that we were uncivilized and they took it upon themselves to re culture us and brain washed the world into believing that Africa was a savage continent that was uncultured. They even had the guts to claim that they taught us how to read and write while history documented Ethiopian literature and poems while the Egyptians had already invented writing in hieroglyphics.
This so called Dark Continent is the home of greatness, with a richness of life that no continent can rival. From the riches of our mineral resources that boast of any mineral known by man to the 2000 different languages spoken in Africa, to the diversity of wildlife in what Africa chose to live in harmony with the ecosystem while the rest of the world destroyed and continues to plunder the little that is left through poaching. This Dark Continent also discovered the 365 days calendar which was made possible by the great strides that ancient Egyptians had made in astronomy.
The world is keen on writing our own history and trampling over the fact that we are the home of the nations that built the pyramids at a time when the world knew nothing on architecture, we had the genius to carry out the logistical nightmare of transporting hard wood for the building of the Solomon’s Temple in 10th century BCE from Ethiopia while under queen Bathsheba, five centuries ahead of prince Henry of Portugal who sailed out into the Atlantic in 1419. The world history forgets that by the 16th century Mali already had the University of Timbuktu and that we had very good knowledge in the field of medicine shown in the skill in Egyptian mummification and the Kisii of Kenya who practiced brain surgery

The pyramids of giza

Kumasi architecture

Great leaps in mathematics had already been made in Egypt, Nubia, in Meroe, the horn of Africa, central Africa, southern Africa and even Madagascar. It is acknowledged that Aristotle, Picasso and Pythagoras benefited from African innovations. It is said that scholars thought that they had reached the epitome of mathematics before they were introduced to fractal geometry in Africa.
Unlike the rest of the world, we do not have the interest or agenda of curving out certain sections of the world as our own. We do not desire to conquer anyone, we want to live in each other’s happiness and not by our sorrows; to protect the family unit and the fabric of society; Africans are wired that way. Meanwhile the world has shut itself in on its “civilization”. We desire that the world was fair if we are to be known as civilized nations. We do not have the desire of imprisoning foreign economies and to hold its people in mental shackles held deep in their brains which come out in the hypocrisy of Hollywood as they try to define what is beautiful.
We believe that this world is large and has room for us all but certain nations have gained greed and some have taken the role of God , bestowing rules on other nations held in the cloak of treaties that Africa took no part in signing. As the world is busy judging Africa as a genocidal continent, the world is busy creating better weapons to kills men in a faster and more brutal manner; yet they call that civilization. We do not claim to be better that the world, we should all thrive in diversity, we celebrate Kenyan athletes as much as they mostly come from a single community, every win that they make is not representative of the community but

for Kenya and Africa.
In this century of what we call the age of democracy, certain nations invade other nations in the search of weapons of mass destruction while they themselves maintain extremely high stockpiles of weapons that could wipe out mankind. This is all done in the mask of spreading democracy all over the world while oil and other vital resources are drained through its borders.
While the world boasts of the advancements in technology; of new phones and tablets, African raw materials whose value does not translate to development of Africa are increasingly drained out. It is likely that majority of the diamonds in the world market are marked by the blood of a child soldier lying in an unmarked grave. It is no secret that the west has been the greatest beneficiary of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Darfur genocides and they watched as these countries tore each other to pieces. At the heart of most conflicts In Africa are hidden agendas; sick games of maintaining influence. 

In the history of the world, great dynasties have come and gone, from the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, tang, Ming, ottoman and even the British Empire, for a nation that lives off another nation dies sooner or later.
Pan Africanism was a seed that is already thriving in growth in Africa; black people have decided to write their own history and to take back their culture. It is a seed deeply rooted and the cause as to why most African countries flags draw from the red, black and green band flag of pan Africa.

Africa has woken up to the realities of this world and as much as we are the most forgiving race, we would like to get a fair deal of this world we call home. We follow up on the achievements of every black man in the world and we see the need to speak out when the rights of one of our own are violated in the world and thus the need to speak out on police brutality on black people and minorities in the west.
There is also the need to acknowledge the role that hip hop music has played in restoring the dignity of the black man, it has enabled us to showcase our culture to the world and break our cultural chains. It is said that slavery was long abolished in the world; but it exists in the minds of our brothers and sisters that are ashamed of where they come from and hide the beautiful African hair under weaves and tarnish the beautiful glow of the African skin by bleaching.
Africa is convinced that the lives and prospects of black people do not matter in any way to those who cultivate the roots of dying dynasties or those who are held in shackles of the mind and cannot recognize that certain powers are at work pouring water over our feathers that we may not fly into the sky. It is the duty of every black man to ensure that Africa is truly liberated, it is not a surge of great human compassion, but a basic necessity and duty for Africa holds the other half of the sky.
~ANTONY MWANGI