Africa is held back by lack of choices

Africa has had several descriptions over the years. At one time it was the Dark Continent, because nothing was known about it.

When I first flew across Africa at night from east or north, the term dark was real, more so after crossing the Mediterranean from Europe. The lighted homes are too few; no wonder we use lighting to estimate the economic status of a country or region.

Why was Africa a dark continent yet we knew so much about it, from slavery to transatlantic trade, the West and East African kingdoms, the trade with Arabia and India? Is Africa not linked to the Bible through the Queen of Sheba?

How did the Portuguese visit a dark continent 500 years ago? Were Romans and Arabs not in North Africa? Romans got here in 146 BC. Arabs brought Islam to North Africa (Maghreb or Magaribi in Swahili) as early as 639AD. 

Henry Stanley labelled the continent dark in 1878; not unexpected from a British explorer.

The next nickname was hopeless continent, coincidentally from Britons. The Economist labelled Africa the hopeless continent in 2000, when Sierra Leone and Liberia were ravaged by war. Riddled with coups, famines and drought, it was easy to label the continent hopeless.

Movies, documentaries and news from Africa reinforced the image of a hopeless continent. Add the brain drain, men and women leaving their home with talents the continent badly requires.

It does not help that we love talking ill of our continent both in private and public forums. 

Later the continent became the rising continent, labelled by The Economist again in 2013. 

How should I label Africa, a decade later, more so as one of its citizens? I will call it the choice-less continent. I am not joining the pessimism bandwagon, I am being realistic. 

Citizens of Africa have the fewest choices in life. Let’s start with where one can live. We have few choices, most stay in the hamlet or village where they were born. We often leave our villages to go to school, if boarding. 

Even our schools restrict choices of subjects one can take. How many schools offer fine art, music, foreign languages, technical subjects and a wide range of sports? Will CBC give our children more choices?

Rarely do we go for holidays, except visiting relatives. School trips have become fewer. One reason devolution was so popular is that it offered jobs to the locals without leaving their locality. With universities now located in rural areas, one can spend all his life in his locality, even marrying in the locality.

Staying in your locality denies you choices in jobs, spouses, and even alternate views on life. Does it worry you that we hear more of counties than East African Community or Africa Free Trade Area?

Once out of school, our choices remain narrow. Without economic growth, we get few job choices, we stick to one job all our lives—though GenZ is changing that. In developed countries, you can easily change jobs because they are available. In Africa, lots of people work on jobs they don’t like, the alternative is worse.

Money, honestly earned, gives you more choices. You can opt where to live, what to eat, what to drive, and even how to think. How many Kenyans can talk of more than one home? Ignore the fact that we all have rural homes.

Poverty makes Africa choice-less.  But it’s more than that, history has contributed to Africa’s lack of choices.

Struggle to fit

Take Britons; they seeded the world from Canada to Australia, US and South Africa. That means they have choices on where they can live and feel at home. Add her former colonies. Not that I am praising colonialism!

Spaniards can live comfortably in South and Central America. Language and culture makes their lives easier. Where can Africans move to and be at home? When we immigrate, we struggle to fit, looking for cities that have more of our own and make us feel at home. Check the ethnicity of major hubs for Kenyan immigrants in the US.

Were there more choices before colonialism? Possibly. We could slash and burn, we could leave the land fallow, we could shift pastures for pastoralists, and we could even choose the gods and spouses.

Now our choices are restrictive. You settle in one place, farm in one place, and get one spouse (ladies do not stone me). We have one God with one book (Bible) or Quran. Even choice of leadership is hard, with money playing a bigger role than ideas in voting.

How many countries welcome Africans visa free? Even within Africa you need a visa to visit other countries. Even within countries, free movement is restricted by laws, traditions, ethnicity and other barriers. Remember the quota system in school admission? Will it be used in transition to senior school?

Do our laws and regulations facilitate or restrict our choices? Without choices, we create perfect conditions for violence, both emotional and physical. Noted how hard it is to prosper in your village with all familiarity? Noted the rising security walls topped with razor wires? Without choices, hopelessness and despair stalk the land.

Will Africa ever become a ‘choiceful’ continent? If we become economically independent, with less debt, we can get choices. That applies to individuals too. 

Unless we create colonies in space and seed exoplanets, it is unlikely we shall enjoy choices like the European Union, US or Britain and her sister countries such as Canada and Australia. We shall continue competing for the finite planet Earth. Is Elon Musk ahead of us, thinking more of space than our small planet?

Let us give credit, some Kenyans are creating choice through urbanisation; we have more choices in the urban than rural areas. Some are sending relatives abroad and others running side hustles while fully employed.

What choices have you made in life? Do you feel constrained? Talk to us.