WILL TO DEVELOP: THE MISSING INGREDIENT IN AFRICA’S QUEST FOR DEVELOPMENT
By
Evans Woherem, Ph.D.
March 16, 2021
Why are we underdeveloped economically and technologically in Africa? Is it due to lack of knowledge of what it takes to develop a country or lack of resources, human or material?
If you query the above, you realize the problem is not knowledge based nor resources based. What is definitely lacking is the will power for our leaders to maintain an undiluted, development-focused mindset. The will power to envision a new Africa that is equally developed as other parts of the world, in which leaders lead with a forthright mind, aiming to urgently meet set development targets, is what is missing.
When I think of the seeming difficulty we are having in Nigeria and Africa, with regards to development, in the face of things that are so commonsensical, I cannot but think that our problems have some other amusing dimensions. What needs to be done to develop Africa is matter-of-fact, even 11 year old children can point to them. This therefore reinforces my opinion that our problems have to do with the will power to do the right things, which are often lacking, due to pecuniary and particularist motives, especially on the part of the political leaders of the respective countries in Africa.
This brings to mind an occurrence in the past: Dr. B. F. Skinner, the father of the Behaviorist School of Psychology, the school of Psychology that looks at issues like Operand Conditioning, and Positive and Negative Reinforcements, towards an envisioned outcome. Dr. Skinner attended a conference on Psychology, and as he was leaving the conference, he was approached by one of the attendees of the conference who asked the question, “When are we going to have the Behavioral Science that will enable us to bring about a change in the behavior of all humans, in order to have a more perfect society?” He responded by saying that the question is the same as asking an Agricultural Scientist, “When will we have the Agricultural Science to bring about a revolution in agriculture?”
He argued that the Agricultural Scientist will consider the question irrelevant because the agricultural science needed for a revolution in agriculture is already available. The knowledge about new miracle seeds, as well as new scientific and technological methods for agriculture, are available. The science about irrigation, the science about how to better manage soils and soil circles, are also available. Thus, all the knowledge needed are available today, including the knowledge of employing the use of drone technology in agriculture. This means that any country that really wants a revolution in its agriculture, the knowledge is available. What usually is lacking is the will power to carry it out. The will power of especially those that are in the decision making apparatus to do the right things, insist on the right things, and make sure that the right things are done, in a manner that the outcome will be realized, that is all that is lacking.
B. F. Skinner further said that, it is not as a result of deficiency of knowledge. In other words, the reason why we don’t have a revolution in how to manage the behavior of humans in the world is not because the science is not there. He opined that the science is available, it is just the will to use it to do so that is missing. Similarly, in matters to do with the development of Nigeria, and Africa at large, our problem is not lack of knowledge, or shortage of expertise, or even dearth of the necessary number of resources, but the will power to lead aright.
Every day there are all kinds of seminars and all kinds of workshops, on various development focused topics. Topics bordering on what we need to do in order to develop and get things right, are being rolled out, with many people often in attendance. All these are well and good, but they have also all been done many times over in the past without any action being carried out to actualize the desired outcomes. This means that our problem is not to do with lack of knowledge; it is not to do with expertise; the expertise these days are freely available. They are everywhere, they are on the internet, they are in international circles, and they are all over the place even here in Africa. All the expertise needed on what to do are readily available. What really is lacking is the will power of our leaders, to develop the right kind of attitude, and to execute appropriately, in a forthright manner, without being slowed down by particularist principles like nepotism, corruption, regionalism, religious animosities, ethnic jingoism, etc. To me, this is where the problem lies.
Therefore, we need to make sure we have the right attitude to undertake the right problem solving, because if things are done in a certain manner all the time and it produces the same outcome, if you continue to do it the same way, you will continue to get the same result. The question now is, what do we need to do differently in order to get a different result? The way things are in Nigeria, and Africa at large, we will continue to get the same outcome doing things the way we are currently going about them.
Our problem lies with leadership. If we get a leader that wants to truly develop Nigeria, or each of the other African countries, it is going to happen almost overnight. The reason why it is not happening is because we do not have the right leadership, as all the other ingredients are available; information is accessible, the knowledge is there, the expertise is there, the number of skilled people with the ability to perform are there or can readily be garnered, especially here in Nigeria. The leadership that will take advantage of these resources to foster development is definitely what is in shortfall. Our leaders, if you ask me, all know what to do; the reason they are not doing so is because they are burdened by other motives – political motives, religious motives, ethnic motives, and what have you. Thus, where our thinking should be focused is on what we need to do to engender a change in mentality so as to achieve our desired end.
Another manner I am analyzing our development myopia and non-progress is captured below. The first one is that, Africa is currently living in a Matrix Simulation. In other words, we are passing through an Alternate Reality within our Multiverse. There are billions of possible realities at any one point in time that applies to an individual, to a society, to a country and even to the whole world. I believe that it is an alternate reality that we are experiencing here in Africa. This is not the reality we started out with. I believe somewhere along the line of our evolutionary trajectory and paradigm, something flipped, leading to an inflexion point that took us to an alternate reality, even when some other parts of the world continued with their original reality. It just doesn’t make sense, and I am forced to think that this is a skewed reality for Africa, Nigeria in particular!
A lot of happenings in Africa are unfathomable. We continue to behave like a sleepy giant who believes that it is useless and cannot do anything that is world-commendable. I once heard about this analogy with regards to Nigeria. I think it was Dick Kramer, former Country Manager of Arthur Andersen in Nigeria, who once said that Nigeria behaves like a giant who has a very poor self-image of itself, and who believes that it cannot perform, and that it does not have the strength nor power to do so, despite the fact that it is actually a giant, and despite the fact that it can really do a lot more than it even imagines. So, because it has a negative image of itself, it stays prostrate, believing it cannot stand up, talk more of running. There comes a time when, by happenstance, it finds itself standing up, walking about and even running, and so it says to itself, with incredulity, “look at me, I am running”. Hence, it takes out a gun and shoots itself on the foot and then becomes prostrate again. What a shame!
It is all to do with self-image. If you believe you can do it, you can. If you believe otherwise, you are doomed. It all doesn’t make sense that someone that can eat from a clean plate is eating from a refuse dump. For that to happen, it means something is really wrong. Which is why I believe that this is not our reality; this is just a simulated world that has taken us to an alternate reality, having deviated from our main reality, which now is out there somewhere. I believe that even in this present reality, we should muster enough will power to begin to do the right things, so that we can go back to our mis-aligned reality.
Some major countries or continents of the world have continually done everything within their powers, for millennia, to subdue Africa. They have thus designed and managed the world in such a manner that Africa would find it difficult to rise up again. They have developed an image of the world in which we have different races, whereas in factual terms, there is only one race, the human race. Our bodies have over 3 billion genetic building blocks, or base pairs, that make us who we are. And only a tiny amount of these 3 billion base pairs are unique to any human being, making us all about 99.9% genetically similar to the next human. The difference in skin tone, hair color and others, are as a result of where people find themselves, as well as the climate, weather systems and other geographical conditions that are prevailing.
To buttress my point, in the past, Egyptian civilization was so advanced that even up to date, there is a course called Egyptology that is being studied in tertiary institutions, to deconstruct what really happened, how Egypt got so far ahead and what brought about its decline.
Ancient Egypt is regarded as one of the oldest and culturally rich civilizations to date. Since prehistoric times, the Egyptian civilization has flourished continuously. Egypt still exists as a modern-day country, even in the face of changes in its civilization, writing, natural climate, religion and borders.
African kingdoms, for example, the Aksumite Empire (covering places like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Egypt, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan), Kingdom of Ghana, Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, the Kingdom of Mutapa, the Ethiopian Empire, the kingdom of Kongo, the Benin Empire, the Yoruba Kingdoms, etc., were at the fore front of civilization in the past and their influence spread across the world as a result of the vast resources they commanded and the wealth in their regions. One of such example is the wealth and dominance of the Mali Empire.
The most famous ruler of the Mali Empire is Mansa Kankan Musa I. He ascended to power some several decades after the demise of his legendary predecessor, Sundiata Keita. Musa’s hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) of 1324–25 drew the attention of both the Islamic world and that of the Europeans, who were unprepared for the opulent wealth and generosity that the Malian king displayed during his stopover in Egypt. In company of a mammoth entourage, Musa apparently dispensed so much gold in Cairo that the precious metal’s value plunged to an all-time low and did not recover for several years thereafter.
For an empire previously little known beyond the western Sudan, the Mali Empire, became legendary in the Islamic world and Europe. The image of Mansa Musa bearing chunks of gold was subsequently commemorated in maps of the African continent. The Mali Empire consisted of numerous vassal kingdoms and provinces and extended over an area larger than Western Europe. Following Mansa Musa’s death, Mali went into a long decline, shrinking to the size of its original territory by 1645.
History has shown that most of the world’s civilizations sprung out of Africa and it is sad that Africa has been relegated to the back in the league of countries. Our leaders have to see it as a challenge to get Africa back to its historical standing, embrace the right mentality to move Africa forward, and shun any negativity that have hampered Africa’s growth. This way we can begin to attain the height we once achieved in the past.
