The increased heavy-handed approach against Africans goes against the spirit of mutual cooperation that the world is embracing. As revealed by the global economic meltdown and climate change, we can no longer ignore our neighbours.

It is alarming that Africans, though contributing immensely to the development of Italy, have largely been discriminated against hence spurring the ongoing violent protests. It is ironic that in Africa itself, especially in Egypt and Sudan, Arabs are spitefully treating blacks. Stories abound of employers in Saudi Arabia denying their African workers food, their rightly earned pay and even wounding or maiming them. President Obama’s family has not escaped this racist onslaught.

Are blacks increasingly becoming an endangered species? What is the African Union doing to curtail this move? Is it treating matters that border on the sanctity of human life and basic freedoms as mere statistics?

Africans must vehemently resist any advances to dehumanize them as they are by no means lesser human beings. As a matter of fact, Africans played a big role in Rome’s socio-political and economic landscape and became emperors, popes, military generals, philosophers and scribes among others.

Africans must not be lured by media that portrays other races as Africa’s saviors and educational curricular that frames the continent as poor. It is true that the West, for example, have been reluctant to transfer their success 'secret' to Africa through paternalistic policies. Africa should however draw lessons from China which developed its own development paradigm that is challenging the Western world’s success model, and create a development standard of its own.