In virtually all technological spheres, Africa trails the other continents. This is despite its rich resource endowments, relatively highly educated populace and rapid integration into the global scene. The apologists like Walter Rodney in his landmark book on development: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, have tried to attribute Africa’s poverty and backwardness in technological advancement to colonization. European powers lead by Britain at the infamous 1884 Berlin conference went on an offensive appropriating different part of the continent. The plunder of the continent’s resources is allegedly the one behind the building of Europe. The ornate chapels, theatres and castles that today dot Europe stand as an imprimatur of Africa’s heavy price to underwrite the old continent’s luxuries. This would by all stilts make a convincing read for Afrocentrics, and just about everyone else but for some startling realities.

Most of Africa has been independent for the last 50 years, a time long enough to recover from the injuries of colonial domination. But instead, the continent is poorer, indebted, and performing dismally in almost all spheres: literacy, technology, health, governance, poverty, life expectancy and child mortality, among others. 

Apologists, historians and scholars have spent a lifetime explaining Africa's predicament. Some say that Europeans stole Africa’s technology and patented it. Some Kenyan academics still claim that solar energy was ‘a Kenyan technology stolen from Western Kenya.’ There are accounts of how ancient Egypt provided the world with basics of physics, mathematics, astronomy, engineering (remember the pyramids of Giza?) and just about everything else. Civilization along the Nile might have been the first hub of technology as recent discoveries prove. But that does not trash the most important question of the moment: What happened to Africa?

We never invented the wheel. We never invented the gun powder. We never invented the combustion engine, airplane, computer, nor manufactured goods to sell to the other continents like Britain did for over 200 years, USA for half a century and China is doing currently. Where did the rain start beating this cradle of mankind?

One folk theory has it that once the three races that inhabit this world went to see God, the creator each with a list of requests to make. The first one was a Caucasian. He prayed to God to give him only knowledge to ‘invent things’ forever. The second, an Indian, requested to be given the power to do business throughout his life. Finally; the African was the last to enter. Upon reaching God, he didn’t speak. This prompted God to ask: “what would you like me to do for you?” With shyness, the African said, “I had brought the two.” “Ok,” God said, “in that case, be following your brothers forever.” Even today, the African trails the other races. After an airplane is innovated, the African soon becomes an expert repairman. The computer invention testifies this. In Africa, the computer revolution spawned all sorts of half baked experts, technicians and teachers. In business, the African slaves in his kiosk while the Indian prospers in his supermarket. Were it not for the fact that the myth is tinged with racial prejudice against the African race, it would be taken as true but it nevertheless captures one of the many presumed reasons why Africa falters on the road to technological development, as the rest of the world rolls out new innovations every other minute.

There is another reason. Africans consider anything mechanical as dirty or beneath them. If one started to do experiments on their own, the society will say, they are mad or are wasting resources. It is a tragedy that only African engineers aspire to work in offices as managers and do not give a damn about what they trained in - to innovate. Physics is studied in all schools. Most learners can recite Bernoulli’s principle, but they can hardly invent anything or repair even a watch. Those training as engineers graduate to take administrative posts and not take their rightful place in the lab or in the field constructing and researching on innovation. Woe betides anyone who tries to apply their physics to invent something, and every arsenal is brought out from the armory to attack and dismiss the idea as unworkable.

A young schoolboy in Western Kenya for example, attempted to make an airplane, an aspect that indicated serious thinking on his part. On the day he was to try it out and hopefully make a maiden flight, the police stormed his home with a letter from some civil aviation authority reminding him that the licence to fly is issued by the aviation authority. The young inventor’s dream was crushed. Nothing has ever been heard about him since.

The other reason is that Africans do not support homegrown innovations. They would rather spend a few more dollars and import anything from Europe, USA, or China. One however cannot solely blame the consumer; the so called innovators are their own worst enemies. They like to sell their goods at very expensive prices. They hide any hint as to how they made their inventions. True to Ali Mazrui, in Africa, technology is secret but in the West, technology is open.

African governments hardly devote even 1% of their entire annual budgetary estimates to research activities. Worse still, most governments don’t have any research department. Hardly can such a people be innovative.

Lastly, Africa is doing injustice to her younger generation. Instead of emphasizing on technology as the most important thing, they are showing their youth that the most important things are football, politics and entertainment. Virtually every other youth in an African village or suburb wants to become a musician and not an innovator. Worse, still the fastest growing industry in terms of new registrations is the marriage industry and not the patenting of newer inventions. This is quite pathetic.

Technological and innovation culture will only be developed if these areas are projected in our tradition and culture as the most important aspects in life.

By Anthony Ngatia.