The Challenge for Africa

ALSO BY WANGARI MAATHAI

Unbowed: A Memoir

The Green Belt Movement:
Sharing the Approach and the Experience

TO ALL THE PEOPLES OF AFRICA

FOR THIRTY YEARS
, I have worked in the trenches with others to find ways to break the wall that separates the peoples of Africa from justice, wealth, peace, and respect. We have searched for a route out of poverty, ignorance, ill health and early death, violations of basic rights, corruption, environmental degradation, and many other problems associated with Africa. I have done this work through the Green Belt Movement, helping communities plant trees, and so improve their livelihoods, protect their environment, and, in the process, increase their commitment and persistence. It is these experiences at the grassroots level, coupled with my service in the Kenyan government and participation in numerous international efforts to assist Africa and protect the environment, that have shaped my worldview and inform the approaches, examples, analyses, and solutions that I offer in this book.

In the three decades since the Green Belt Movement began its work, some Africans have left the trenches to pursue their own interests and ambitions; others have become disappointed and tired. Some are languishing in their homes or jails; others are homeless or in refugee camps. Some are hoping for leadership to deliver them; others are waiting until it is clear to them that they must save themselves by, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, being the change they wish to see in the world.

Yet as I seek to show, the challenges before Africa not only stem from national and international policies (although these play an important part in determining Africa's future, as they
have its past), but are also moral, spiritual, cultural, and even psychological in nature. As I also illustrate, the condition of Africa is bound to that of the world. We all share one planet and are one humanity; there is no escaping this reality.

I have written
The Challenge for Africa
for all those with an interest in the fate of the African continent, from the general reader to advocates, researchers, development specialists, and government officials, including heads of state. In its pages I hope to explain, elucidate, engage, and, perhaps most important, encourage all concerned to grapple with the challenges facing Africa today.

The Challenge for Africa
is divided into five sections: the contemporary face and cultural and historical background of the challenges (chapters 1-2); the economic, political, and international context and dimension of these challenges (chapters 3-5); the challenge of leadership and good governance at the top of society and at the grassroots (chapters 6-7); the complex and problematic relationship of ethnic identity to the nation-state in modern Africa (chapters 8-10); and the centrality of the environment to Africa's development challenges and solutions to them (chapters 11-13), followed by a final chapter on the challenges before individual Africans, at home and abroad.

In chapter 1, I reflect on a woman I saw in Yaoundé, Cameroon, whose subsistence farming techniques were causing soil erosion and water loss. Subsistence farming is how a large majority of Africans make a living, and I consider how the challenges facing that one farmer are, in many ways, a microcosm of the myriad challenges facing the African farmer in particular, and Africa in general.

In chapter 2, I uncover some of the challenging legacies facing Africa, including colonialism. My aim is to show that
while colonialism was devastating for Africa, it has become a convenient scapegoat for conflicts, warlordism, corruption, poverty, dependency, and mismanagement in the region. Africa cannot continue to blame her failed institutions, collapsed infrastructure, unemployment, drug abuse, and refugee crises on colonialism; but neither can these issues be understood fully without acknowledging the fact of Africa's past.

In chapter 3, I offer what I believe is a useful metaphor to describe a functioning society and contrast it with the history of Africa after the Cold War.

In chapters 4 and 5 I look at how aid, trade, and debt foster an imbalance in the relationship between Africa and the industrialized world, while in chapter 6 I discuss the deficit of leadership that exists in Africa and what can be done to change it. My concern in chapters 4 and 5 is not simply to criticize the international community for unfair trade practices and the heavy debt burden under which Africans still labor; it is to challenge all Africans to escape the culture of dependency that leads to passivity, fatalism, and failure. Likewise, my aim in chapter 6 is not to shame or blame, but to challenge all of African society, especially its leadership, to break free of the corruption and selfishness that exists, from high offices to the grassroots. Every African, from the head of state to the subsistence farmer, needs to embrace cultures of honesty, hard work, fairness, and justice, as well as the riches—cultural, spiritual, and material—of their continent.

In chapters 7 and 8, I describe in more detail the loss of culture I touch on in chapter 2: the lack of respect for some of the cultures in Africa, and the consequent devastating loss of self-confidence in many ethnic groups—what I call “micro-nations”—throughout the continent. As I investigate in more detail in chapter 8, my personal recognition of the importance of culture led me to create the Civic and Environmental Education seminars as part of the Green Belt Movement's work.
Through the seminars, I developed a concept that I call “The Wrong Bus Syndrome.” Like travelers who have boarded the wrong bus, many people and communities are heading in the wrong direction or traveling on the wrong path, while allowing others (often their leaders) to lead them further from their desired destination. It is my analysis that much of Africa today is on the wrong bus.

Chapters 9 and 10 delve more deeply into the challenges of the African nation-state, or what I term the “macro-nation.” For decades, Africans have belittled or ignored the fundamental cultural and psychological importance of micro-national identity, instead using ethnicity for political gain. I call for Africans to rediscover and embrace their linguistic, cultural, and ethnic diversity, not only so their nation-states can move forward politically and economically, but so that they may heal a psyche wounded by denial of who they really are.

Just as cultural diversity is essential for healthy human societies, so, too, is biological diversity. In chapters 11, 12, and 13 I argue for the centrality of the environment in all discussions of, and approaches to, addressing the challenges Africa faces. I look at the issues of land, agriculture, and conservation, particularly of forests. I then explore the enormous task, and necessity, of preserving central Africa's Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem.

Finally, in chapter 14, I reflect on the challenges facing the African family—both in the continent and in the diaspora. I urge Africans to support each other in their efforts to forge their own ways forward, and to believe that they can.

As I write, the world is in a financial crisis, caused in part by lack of oversight and deregulation in the industrialized world. The poor have long experienced the fallout of such greed and selfishness. For decades, Africa has been urged to emulate this
financial system and practices acquired from the industrialized world. While this structure has enriched the West, practicing it without caution has only impoverished Africa. The current crisis offers Africa a useful lesson and its greatest challenge: nobody knows the solution to every problem; rather than blindly following the prescriptions of others, Africans need to think and act for themselves, and learn from their mistakes.