Time to Redefine "Big Men" in Africa

Published on 28th February 2012

Africans can do better to retrieve lessons from their history where heroes and heroines were those who brought benefits to their community. Anyone who looted from own society, maimed and killed his own people was banished from society. The African "big man" of today is antithesis of the one of the past. How can one explain reports to the effect that countries that endowed with vast and valuable resources in Africa record the highest poverty levels?

Angola has been challenged to reduce the large gap between the country's wealthy and poor.Although the country is Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, UN sources observe that about two-thirds of its population of 18 million people is living on less than $2 per day. The surge of interest in Africa by developed and emerging economies should awake the continent to the fact that it holds the solution to its current predicament - only if it redefines who its heroes and heroines are.

Africans must therefore wake up, hold the reins of their economies in their own hands, and lead the future generation into a destiny of prosperity. As Bob Marley admonishes: "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds."


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