We are largely in dependence, if not deeper dependence.
How we astonishingly choose to define our national realities in our various
Constitutions doesn’t matter to me, as long as we remain that continent that
every other continent sees as one to be helped, saved, or fixed, we are not
independent.
As long as every Afro-foreign relationship
remains at the mercy of ultimatums, imposition of policies and structural
adjustments, expressions of threats of coercive measures intended to ensure
compliance, or acceptance of things that we would otherwise reject if we were
independent, we are not independent.
As long as we keep presenting our continent as one
absent of rationality, so much that any knowledge or advice from a non-skin-folk
makes more sense to us than all our learned kinfolks combined, especially when
it comes to economic thinking, we are not independent.
As long as those diamond diggers in Sierra
Leone and Angola still earn less than a dollar a day, with their children being
a part of the workforce, or some Ivorian or Ghanaian cocoa farming community
can hardly afford chocolate bars for their kids, owing to the price pegged by
the high-end producer, we are not independent.
If you ask me, the only independence we have is
the independence to hold our own summits, and all we do in there is to confess
admiration for Western lifestyle, respect for China, particularly for not
following the dictates of the West on its way to economic success, and how Dubai
and Singapore can be exemplary models of economic development for us, but
that's it, until the high-level meeting after that.
