The Challenge for Africa (37 page)

When Africans do come back, they shouldn't be apologetic that they left their countries in the first place, to seek an environment where their talents could flourish. What is important is that they do the best they can where they are: either supporting Africa from abroad or, when the time comes, returning to help their nations prosper.

African governments must also make it easier for returning Africans to start a business or put into practice what
they learned outside of their home country. It's all the more important, then, that these entrepreneurs—whether social or economic—should not feel frustrated by an incompetent, corrupt system that makes starting or running a business or organization extremely expensive or unnecessarily bureaucratic. After all, why should anyone return to their mother country with a skill that could help the nation and find it impossible to start a business or school or IT company because of red tape, or because they have to visit the minister of science and technology, for example, and provide him with a kickback?

As I know myself, traveling out of the continent is a
big
learning experience, providing you with perspective, opening you to new ideas, and stimulating you to look at your society with fresh eyes. The same can be said for traveling
within
the continent. It has not been easy to do this—not only for Africans of my generation, but even for those who live in Africa now.

The difficulty of traveling within Africa itself is not merely a result of the limited air and other transportation links. It is also a function of the often negative perceptions that Africans have of each other, which makes getting the travel documents one needs a laborious process—even for an African to visit another country in Africa. If Africans could travel more easily inside Africa and not be subject to the endless delays of acquiring the documents, it would help them understand each other, know the continent better, and recognize the issues it is facing.

Despite the numerous challenges confronting the African peoples as a whole, individuals, both in the diaspora and at home, are taking some piece of Africa's present and future into their own hands. The Beninese singer Angelique Kidjo has established the Batonga Foundation to provide girls with primary and secondary educational opportunities in several subSaharan African countries. Liberian soccer star and UNICEF
special ambassador George Weah is using sports to encourage children in Liberia to stay in school. Somali-born human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a strong advocate for women's rights and freedom of thought in the Horn of Africa and throughout the world.
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After decades when all that was heard from Africa were the echoes of its rhythms in American, Caribbean, and Latin music, the sounds of Africa themselves are now heard and expressed around the world: Youssou N'Dour of Senegal, Hugh Masekela and the late Miriam Makeba of South Africa, Salif Keita from Mali, Femi Kuti of Nigeria, Papa Wemba from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and many others have continued the tradition of expressing the aspirations of their peoples, their languages, and a common humanity. In literature, to name a very few, the words of African giants such as Léopold Senghor of Senegal; Chinua Achebe and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka of Nigeria; John Kani, Winston Ntshona, and Athol Fugard, and Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer from South Africa; and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o of Kenya—whose novel
Wizard of the Crow
captures in surreal, satirical detail the absurdities of African politics—continue to give voice to a continent fighting to realize its possibilities.

Quietly and out of the spotlight of international attention, the conferences, and the concerts, Africans are organizing them selves. Over the past two decades, following droughts in the 1970s and ’80s, women farmers in Niger have planted trees covering 3 million hectares (7.5 million acres), not only holding back the desert sands but re-greening parts of the Sahel. While keeping the trees alive, they also provide themselves with food, fuel, and income as they sell off branches for firewood.
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Women in Lesotho are not waiting for international agencies to provide food; they are creating extraordinarily productive “keyhole gardens” in their neighborhood, growing large
amounts of green vegetables, and protecting themselves from hunger.
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Committed individuals have adapted traditional processes to form sustainable businesses: solar drying cookers for fruit in Uganda, ethanol-fueled stoves in Ethiopia, and biomass ovens in Tanzania.
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The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding is attempting to promote peace and prevent future conflicts after years of civil war, warlordism, and the widespread use of child soldiers.
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Rangers in Virunga National Park in the DRC are fighting to protect the wild animals, including the endangered mountain gorillas, that live there—despite the fact that in the course of a decade more than 150 of their men have been killed and some abducted.
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In Zambia, Hammerskjoeld Simwinga, the head of the North Luanga Wildlife Conservation and Community Development Programme, has campaigned to protect biodiversity while helping villagers in the region through education, rural health and women's empowerment initiatives, and micro-lending programs. In Mozambique, musician Feliciano dos Santos is touring remote villages in Niassa Province to promote the importance of sanitation and water conservation using compostable toilets. In Liberia, Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor's documentation of human rights abuses in the logging sector, and the use of proceeds from logging to fund the country's civil war, led to a UN Security Council ban on the export of Liberian timber.
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In Kenya, Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a Muslim woman, has worked for peace in the troubled north of the country and has established the Oasis of Peace Centre in Mombasa to foster mediation.
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In 2006, Alfred Taban from Sudan, Zainab Hawa Bangura of Sierra Leone, Immaculée Birhaheka from the DRC, and Reginald Matchaba-Hove from Zimbabwe received awards from the United States' National Endowment for Democracy for “their contributions to the advancement of democracy,
human rights, gender equality, government transparency and free and fair elections in their homelands.”
¹³
Zackie Achmat's Treatment Action Campaign is working to make access to antiretroviral treatments along with HIV/AIDS care and prevention available all across South Africa.
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Kenyan marathoner Tegla Loroupe is using her worldwide fame to promote peaceful coexistence and development in eastern Africa.
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These actions, undertaken by individuals—some of whom are well known, others not, but all extraordinary—don't necessarily involve multimillion-dollar aid grants or governmental approval. Nonetheless they are changing perceptions and realities on the ground. As these people and countless others illustrate, it is ultimately Africans themselves who have to determine their future. Where there is poverty and environmental degradation, Africans must work with what they have and join together to solve their immediate needs while increasing their chances of future prosperity by regenerating forests, protecting watersheds, and practicing efficient agriculture. Where there are business opportunities and abundant natural resources, Africans must use them wisely and for the good of Africans, developing their own industries and circulating capital within their countries. Where there is a need for foreign investment and partnership, Africans must behave shrewdly, and encourage honesty and transparency, and not give away what they have so cheaply through ignorance or corruption.

And, of course, where there is poor leadership, Africans need to stand up for the leaders they want and not settle for the leaders they get. Too many African leaders have been the narrow heroes of their micro-nations rather than genuine statesmen for the whole macro-nation. They have played upon people's desire to follow someone who will lead them from their difficulties to immediate riches rather than joining with them to solve their own problems by exploiting their own talents.

In their unwillingness to share with other micro-nations,
micro-national leaders have precipitated many of the past, and current, conflicts that bedevil Africa. When everyone fights to have all of the pie, all that anyone is left with are crumbs. If African leadership cannot or will not prevent the leaders of their countries' micro-nations from fighting each other, how can they stop conflicts between their nation-states, let alone hope to realize the African Union's vision of a united continent?

What is necessary is for these leaders (and the people they claim to represent) to recognize that, even within the context of democracy, all the micro-nations have a right to play a role in the macro-nation. This is the case no matter how large or small in numbers a micro-nation may be, or how well or how poorly they are represented in parliament or national administration. Majority rule is not sufficient. Even the smallest micro-nation and its leaders need to participate in governance—and not fear that their grievances about being left out are evidence of “tribalism.”

The watchwords for Africa must be accountability, responsibility, equity, and service. With these in the hearts of every African, it will be more likely that their children will go to school rather than become soldiers or be forced to work in the fields; citizens will feel empowered to challenge leaders before they co-opt the army or the police to become tyrants; the integrity of women's bodies will be honored, and they will have a chance to bring about the kind of change that enhances the strength of the voices, rights, and, indeed, lives of men and women in African societies across the continent.

And finally, we will have a generation of Africans who embrace a set of values, like service for the common good, and commitment, persistence, and patience until a goal is realized. They will live their lives for something larger than themselves. Like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Julius Nyerere, and Kwame Nkrumah—who are known and admired for the tasks they undertook that were beyond their narrow self-interests,
who had a vision for their continent, and who were often scorned or ignored—they will not accept the status quo. But with honesty and integrity and resilience they will keep working. Like these heroes, they will understand that they can no longer wait for the forces that have held Africa in check to move out of the way.

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award me the Peace Prize in 2004, they were sending a number of messages. The prize wasn't only a call for the environment to be at the center of work for peace; it was also an acknowledgment for the African people in general, for the struggles they face every day. It was a demonstration of how important the environment and natural resources are in making sure we survive; and it was a message of hope for the continent.

It was also saying to African women, in particular, that women can make an impact, although their ideas and actions are often dismissed. In addition, it was a recognition of the many citizens around the world who had been working on a set of similar issues—the environment, human rights, democracy, women's rights, and peace-building—and had not perhaps seen the connections between them. I was honored to be the symbol for that collective.

Over the years, it has become clear to me that in advocating for the environment, and seeing the manifold ways that a degraded environment harms the life of the smallest community and the entire continent of Africa, the connection between who I am as an African and the abstractions of peace, democratic space, and development is deeper than words can say. In seeking restoration for my continent, I am quite literally restoring myself—as, I believe, is every African—because who we are is bound up in the rivers and streams, the trees and the
valleys. It is bound up in our languages, rich in aphorisms from the natural world and our fragile and almost forgotten past. We are fighting for the future of our children, and the children of the men and women who grew up with us, and the future generations of other species.

In looking at the vast riches of the Congo Basin forests, for instance, it is possible to see that, in the peoples' dependence on the natural resources around them, all of us can reach a deeper appreciation of the fact that it is what is
not
human that ensures that we continue to exist. Without human beings, the creatures and plants and trees would flourish; but without those species, human beings have no hope of survival. This is why in thinking about
human
rights, we need to reach another level of consciousness to appreciate that these other species, too, have a right to their existence and their piece of the Earth.

This struggle to preserve what they have and hold it close to them is one that all Africans—indeed, all peoples—should engage in. Because if the soil is denuded and the waters are polluted, the air is poisoned, wildlife is lost, and the mineral riches are mined and sold beyond the continent, nothing will be left that we can call our own. And when we have nothing to call our own, we have nothing to reflect back to us who we truly are. Without the mirror that the natural world presents to us, we will no longer see ourselves, and we will forget who we are.

This is why our work is reclamation—bringing back what is essential so we can move forward. Planting trees, speaking our languages, telling our stories, and not dismissing the lives of our ancestors are all part of the same act of conservation—all constituent elements of the broader ecosystem on which human life depends. We need to protect our local foods, remember how to grow and cook them, and serve and eat them. We must remember how to make our clothes and wear them with pride; we need to recall our mother tongues and, literally, mind our
language. Let us practice our spirituality and dance our dances, revivify our symbols and rediscover our communal character. Without these cultural acts of recreation, we are merely fashion victims, food faddists, going through empty rituals and employing pointless markers to get ahead in a world devoid of depth or meaning. We are vulnerable to anyone who wishes to exploit us.