One beautiful and fascinating thing about the African is his ability to cope with danger and threatening social situations, use of freedom of speech and the strength to bear excruciating hardship in the midst of plenty with one visible attribute among a hundred - complain and argue.

Historians reveal that Africans constitute the stoics of age with a natural ability and courage to fight back. Africans constitute the bravest, the most skilled, the wealthiest, the most talented, the most advanced with a 'wow-wow' rating at the slightest disclosure of any archives of past events and records that has shaped world histories.

The Discovery Channel flick and CNN front-page about some naked hungry scavenging weaklings horded into tents and mud houses, sleeping under bridges, and gun-happy people wielding AK-47 with ease at the slightest grouse is a media game. Propaganda is the best psychological warfare to keep the people in a prison of illusion. It isn't worth a story if it's not strong enough to create a divide, make some people feel uncomfortable and create a scene. The more negative and nastier, the more fulfilling the story. It's worth the news once it tends towards negative, hunger, poverty, war, AIDS, famine and now religion - a possibly worse threat. The media is in for a hundred-fold harvest!

In the book AK-47 in a Wild Why World - The best war strategy (Amazon) - the author argues on how Africans been drubbed to a helpless wet-chicken. The most educated, bravest, wealthiest; most talented and skilled have been reduced to mere pawns and chickens. Young people are running towards hopeless zones of fascinating illusion: the Americas, UK, Europe and Asia. African leaders have turned saboteurs of a blind war, looting and aiding forces to ruin their own regions. It's such a corporate robbery in the name of contracts and child-play policies. Corporate robbery is an organized crime of the elites, the creams and men with inferior sense of morals.

The question is; how did they drop this low so that the former high ratings remain shrouded only in mysterious past? What happened? Why didn't they resist the invasion? At least the Africans possess a natural instinct to rebel. Why is everyone still running away centuries after the demise of slavery?

Suddenly, places of cold comfort have all turned homes. Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Haiti, and more; young Africans are rushing in into these near hell holes and many tiny unfriendly European countries for want of comfort and wealth.

The West African Mali was once the richest empire in the world. According to history, Malian King Mansa Musa once crippled the economy of Arabia while on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 AD. He had brought so much money into the region to an extent that the prices of gold in the ancient Egypt and Arabia collapsed and it took twelve years for the economies of the region to normalise. The National Geographic recently described Timbuktu as the Paris of the mediaeval world, on account of its intellectual culture. From archival findings, many old West African families have thousands of private library collections that go back hundreds of years. A Nigerian city, named Kano once produced an estimated 10 million pairs of sandals and 5 million hides for export each year in 1851.

The same media christened 'Starving Ethiopia' was once ranked as one of the world's greatest empires and the third most important state in the world after Persia and Rome.

A city named Kilwa in ancient Tanzania was quoted as one of the most beautiful and well-constructed cities in the world. Ruins of a 300 BC astronomical observatory found at Namoratunga in Kenya have revealed that Africans were mapping the movements of stars such as Triangulum, Aldebaran, Bellatrix, Central Orion, as well as the moon, in order to create a lunar calendar of 354 days. The West African Gold-Coast known as Ghana today was so wealthy that dogs wear collars of gold and silver, people had gold plaited into their hair as a form of decoration. In Pre-colonial Uganda, surgeons routinely and effectively carried out autopsies and caesarean operations. A writer commenting on a Ugandan caesarean operation that appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884 wrote: "The whole conduct of the operation suggests a skilled long-practiced surgical team at work."

It took about a hundred years and over to break the Africans from these taunting feats to such a victim and fearful individuals with so much hatred of self and disdain. The question is; how did that happen? How did mere explorers break Africans beyond recognition to such lowly positions as most impoverished, most diseased, most corrupt, and most backward adjectives that the media uses to further disorientate them?

The fact is; if you're able to question your sense of belonging in world socio-economic and political relevance, you might find the answer.

It's almost over fifty years of Africa's independence from colonial powers that introduced grand looting and the divide and rule style. From the West to the East, South and Central Africa, the scars of slavery and colonialism are still visible. So much distrust, self-hatred and ignorance still manifest.

The Late self acclaimed born racist, Pietha Botha said, "Let's work day and night to set the Black man against his fellow man." Another black critic wrote; their so-called "help" organizations seem to only want to promote their name without making any real change in their community. They are content to sit in conferences and conventions in hotels, and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the best speakers and not the best doers."

That said; many essays have been written on economic development in Africa. African scholars have worked up different strategies and policies on how to build a new and better Africa, pull the falling continent from the shackles of underdevelopment and neglect, reduce crime and poverty, build functional infrastructures and equip their own with the basic amenities that will enhance collective efforts of nation building and patriotism. Now, why don't we execute all these policies and strategies? This is the 'WHY' question.A quote from the book mentioned above says:

"build your own schools, build your own medical facilities, set up your own business and let it benefit your environment, lighten up your own darkness, build your own electricity, build your own roads and houses and let your people live in there and not ghosts; start from your communities, your villages, build your own farmlands and plot your own field so that there'll be food, enough food to eat and not all this hunger and poverty that gives Mr. Discovery Channel something to shoot."

That is what it takes to be independent - at least, some qualities of an Independent Africa. As I shuttle across the world’s major cities, I see people building bridges, building houses to keep people away from the slums; I see people constructing roads to create access for networks of people, goods and services from the rural to the urban; they do hold meetings, come up with strategic plans to implement their decisions and get very angry when they see Africans who hold a lot of meetings, speak too much English and design more than a thousand policies that they do little or virtually nothing about running into their country.

Government is business and not a Charity organization. Why should somebody should take up a contract, fail to execute it and walk free in the streets of Africa? Business is about stocks and profits. We do hold periodic meetings to ascertain how well our businesses have fared. Are we making profits or losing? Are we progressing or snailing behind? If we are making profit, what are the signs of the profits? If we are not making profit, what's responsible for our failures?

A young man from my neighbourhood once had an election slot bought for him by godfathers as council chairman for Aba North Local Government, He virtually cleaned up the treasury, held up worker's salary for close to 9 months and finally rounded off his tenure with enough stolen monies he deprived his own people from. Not even a street was paved for all the 4 years term of office despite the huge financial allocations.

Now, how do we stop people like this from taking advantage of their own? This is the 'HOW' question. There are over a thousand of his likes walking tall across the streets of Africa as VIP's. How do we stop them from continually bringing Africa down before their network reproduces another generation of victims?

There is no difficult question under the face of the earth without a solution. People despise Africans because they don't see them contributing positively and creatively to a fast advancing world of the 21st century. Long Live Africa !

Abridged version. Full version can be found at http://www.artseffx.com/features110608whynhow.html