Africa’s case today befits the biblical account of a certain lame man who was healed of physical disability. The man, lame from his mother’s womb was carried and laid daily at the gate of the temple, to beg alms of them that entered into the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. “Look on us,” said Peter and John, fastening their eyes upon him. The man obeyed to expecting to receive something. “Silver and gold have I none,” said Peter, “but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk!” Peter then took him by the right hand and lifted him up. People saw him walking and leaping and were filled with wonder and amazement.

Like the lame man, Africa has daily been sitting at the gate of opportunity; opportunity in terms of its vast resources, population, skilled manpower and scenic grandeur among others. Many nations have gone through this gate and developed but Africa is still retrogressing, unable to enter. The continent consequently has the highest infant mortality rates in the world, the lowest literacy levels, the fewest doctors per head and the fewest children in school. Ghana and Nigeria for example, were once on the same level of development as South Korea.  The Ghana of the 1950s had a much larger pool of educated people and more natural resources than Korea, but today, per capita income in South Korea is almost ten times that of Ghana.  The same holds true for Nigeria.

How is it that a continent which was known as the world’s major supplier of raw produce like cocoa, coffee, palm oil, groundnuts and bananas can no longer sustain its commodities production and spends $ 19 billion annually to import food? How is it that Africa with its vast arable land that produced food for its population over millennia, is suffering from a food crisis, unable to feed its population? Something does not quite figure. The index of grain and tuber production in many African countries does not support this

The older the lame man grew, the more the rest of the body weighed down on him. Two-thirds of African countries have either stagnated or shrunk in real per capita terms since independence. Most African nations today are much poorer than they were in 1980 - by very wide margins. Civil wars raging in Africa cost the continent at least $15 billion annually. Figures from the African Union indicate that corruption alone costs Africa $148 billion annually. African governments spend $12 billion annually on weapons which are used to suppress the African people.

Like the lame man who depended on people to carry him to vantage positions of begging, Africa has been begging. Africa is on its knee begging for salvation as can be seen in the thousands of peacekeeping forces and relief workers sent around the Continent instead of teachers, doctors, etc. James Shikwati in Prospects for Economic Freedom in Africa laments that Africa has become a continent sized beggar hopelessly dependent on the largesse of the outsiders. There is now a complex industry dedicated to poverty. At its head are the heads of African states who go about the world doing nothing else but marketing the plight of Africa, bowl in hand for international aid. On its body are the various non-government agencies that have made a real job of grant writing, seeking all kinds of funding for programs to alleviate Africa’s existential dilemma, from democracy to lunacy. At its tail is the unanswerable question: what is African poverty?

Ethiopia is in the news today because foreign aid robbed it of its ability to feed itself. Over 60 % of that country is fertile yet only 10 per cent has been cultivated. Reason? The abolition of land ownership in March 1975 and the introduction of a one-per-family limit on property ownership demonstrated the radical nature of Mengistu’s regime. Farmers had no incentive to grow food. The famine in 1982 was the result of a genuine drought, but the crisis was made considerably worse by the virtual cessation of trade, stemming partly from the rigid persecution of traders and insecurity. On 16 November 1984, when emotion was running at its highest, Mengistu announced his decision to transfer and resettle 2.5 million people. Tons of food aid never got to the famished people. Aid has sustained policies that would have been disciplined by market forces, reinforced states’ neo-patrimonial tendencies by giving rise to largely uncoordinated state controlled projects and externalizing decision making process.

To Peter, dollars and debt relief were not addressing the lame man’s crucial need. Unless Africa is sanitized the seeds of death and poverty will continue to be fertilized. Relief agencies will remain de facto governments. The United Nations will be confronted with a bottomless pit in raising funds to feed the ever multiplying numbers of hungry refugees and displaced. Africa must look inward before fanning outward. The continent’s crippling agents are the continent\'s leaders and systems harvesting the proceeds of the toiling entrepreneurial masses while burdening them with obstacles that defy economic rationality. The obstacles range from complex, unpredictable laws, absence of secure property rights, to unenforced rule of law.

Africa needs a strategic re-evaluation of its relationship with the rest of the world. However, seeking access to international markets, yet ignoring a vast, unserviced market at home comprising of 800 million people is absurd. Africa should open up access to her internal markets. It is ironic for instance that Africans can fly directly to European and American cities, while it is virtually impossible to fly to another African city from within Africa. Internal movement of goods and people in Africa goes through a gridlock. It is easier to call Stockholm, say from Lagos, than to get Accra on the phone. The European community must not only cut export subsidies but should also remove all agricultural and travel barriers that prevent African agricultural products and people from entering their countries.

It is time African countries took a serious look at their alms bowls and recognized the shame in carrying them about. Africans must come together and demand action in areas of greater cooperation, internal control of Africa’s economic production and political activity, and internal dispersal of African knowledge systems. What Africa needs is tactical reform; not the pity of the world. Africanization rather than globalization and the need to throw away the alms bowl. The wrong hand has contributed substantially to Africa’s woes. It has made the continent to remain a perpetual cripple, predicted not to achieve the millennium development goals by 2015 The right hand approach shall see Africa rising up to responsibility, walking and leaping to the amazement of all.