Why we lag behind

Opinion REFLECTIONS May 8, 2007

Appeared on The Daily Monitor.

For any nation to attain its development goals, its people must be empowered. Leaders must mobilise the masses to utilise available resources to empower themselves.

What do we see at the moment? We are still dragging ourselves in the early stages of development. Many years after independence, we are still enslaved by indigence, ignorance and diseases. We are a beautiful people. Our land is a haven of unexplored riches. What makes us lag behind?

We are still engrossed in parochial self-serving politics. If people are not empowered to produce something for themselves, such a people are prey to a bleak future.

They fall victim to the antics of the more developed societies and will do anything to earn a living. One prominent African scholar decried, "One of Africa’s biggest exports will be human resources in fifty years time." There will be massive ‘slave trade of the educated’ to the developed nation.

No resource is more powerful than good governance and the empowerment of the masses. But, four decades after independence, we still take the lead in bad government. Most of our leaders are old tyrants, who have no vision for the empowerment of the masses. It is a sad story.

We are under the threat of a new form of colonialism: recolonisation. Can we avert this new threat?

The donors give where there is a lot is taking. Their little giving is simply aimed to necessitate a smooth sailing-back to Africa journey, to exploit our resources. The prospects of oil in Uganda, is an incentive to them. Shall we have the capacity to refine the crude oil? No, and this is why it will be sold back to us expensively after we have exported it.

We should wake up. Our leaders should lead by example. We need a clear cut vision into a clear future of prosperity.

Joshua Masinde