Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
ONE OF Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory references in the study of Africa and African peoples worldwide of the past 500 years
(Max Roach & Anthony Braxton, “Birth” [personnel: Roach, drums; Braxton, reeds; recorded: Ricordi Studios, Milan, Italy, 7 September 1978])
IGBO SURVIVAL from the catastrophe of the genocide by the Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadist-controlled Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain is one of the preeminentlycelebratory outcomes of recent history. The Igbo are primed to deploy their phenomenal resilience from this history as they embark on the expansive reconstructionary endeavour to transform their Biafra homeland into a haven of creativity, humanism and progress, in the wake of the genocide.
Despite the genocide and occupation, Biafra controls one ofAfrica’s best-developed multidisciplinary humanpower conglomeration of assets which will be invaluable in the mission ahead. Additionally, Biafra will be tapping into an epoch of immense possibilities in Africa – an Africa that, since 1981, contrary to the sophistry of the indolent, propagandist media and certain sectors of academia, has been a net-exporter of capital to the West World and elsewhere, gargantuan resources that should never leave Africa but retained therein solely for the peoples who have created this wealth, and an Africa whose millions ofémigirés in the West World and elsewhere are nownet-exporters of capital back to Africa through the latter’s remittances year in, year out (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Rethinking the state in Africa ... Whose state is it?”,
BIAFRANS have an opportunity to begin to build a new civilisation where human life, African life, fundamentally, is sacrosanct. This salient feature cannot be overstressed. Nigeria has been, for the Igbo, a haematophagousquagmirethroughout its history beginning in 1945 with the Igbo pogrom in Jos (northcentral region) by the same Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists, duly overseen by the British occupation. A “next time” Igbo pogrom was executed in Kano (north region), in 1953, by the same jihadists and again overseen by the British occupation – “dress rehearsals” for the Igbo genocide which the dual-genocidists would embark upon on 29 May 1966, slaughtering 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in the subsequent 44 months of sheer savagery.
Those writing the scores of the Biafra freedom symphony are aware of this quest to celebrate the sanctity of African life.The Biafran freedom mission is therefore not to begin to construct a state that is merely post-genocide or post post-conquest/post post-“colonial” state of Africa; in other words, cancelling out here and there, in some mechanical venture, that which was Nigeria, “Berlin-state” Africa’s most notorious. Instead, Biafra is a realisation, a profound reclamation of that which makes us all human and part of humanity. Biafra is a beacon of the tenacity of the spirit of human overcoming of the most desperate, unimaginable brutish forces.
Biafran reconstruction at once signals to the rest of the constituent peoples and nations enveloped in the European-created “Berlin-states” of death, immiseration, desolation and hopelessness that freedom and transformation, right there in Africa, are achievable goals – that African peoples can build, reconstruct, embark on all possibilities of working for themselves and appropriating the fruits of their labour from their land and on their own terms...
THE WORLD must now know that Biafra flowers innumerable Biafras of rebirth not seen in Africa for 500 years – since the Europe World launched what irrepressible historian Walter Rodney has categorised, aptly, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972).
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Song of praise” [personnel:Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano;Jimmy Garrison, bass;Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 May 1965])
One of Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory references in the study of Africa and African peoples worldwide of the past 500 years
(Lee Morgan Quartet, “Gary’s notebook” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Joe Henderson,
tenor saxophone; Barry Harris,
piano; Bob Cranshaw,
bass; Billy Higgins,
drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 December
1963])
One of Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory references in the study of Africa and African peoples worldwide of the past 500 years
Many would probably adjudge as “too modest” the following 12 tasks* that states in contemporary Africa are called upon to accomplish for their peoples in the next five years starting tomorrow, Friday 28 August 2015. Despite such reservation, the tasks are available here for the challenge. Can any of these states achieve the set goals? Which? Which cannot? Why not? Each of the current 54 so-called sovereign African states has the capacity to accomplish these tasks during the the set timeframe including, particularly, those disarticulated entities where regime cadres of genocidist and putschist sergeants and “generals” and privates and corporals are ritually recycled as immanent crucibles of statecraft. Freedom vs Not-fit-for-purpose If any of the states can’t, then such a state should be deemed dissolved – not fit for purpose. This is now the opportunity for constituent nations or peoples to seize the historic initiative of freedom, since February 1885, and march along focused with a sense of mission to embark on this reconstruction/redevelopment themselves, underscoring that lucid insight since proffered by Walter Rodney – “development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth” . In other words, the engine of societal development is located internally, in the peoples, themselves, not the prevailing and pervasive fraudulent developmentalism beamed to Africa whose mission has the etched signature of some external agency and the latter’s central interests.
Goals for states/new states 1. Cut by 50 per cent prevalence of communicable ailment in the population
2. One hundred quality primary health care centres with excellent facilities, equipment and medicine
3. One hundred quality primary and secondary schools with excellent world-standard curriculum content, equipment, staff and study environment
4. One university of worldwide standard, attracting staff and students from across the region and world
5. One thousand apprenticeship opportunities to study at excellent technical schools, producing skilled workforce of electricians, builders, welders, plumbers, mechanics
6. Fifty per cent of young people, 18-25, have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures
7. Fifty per centof women have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures
8. Pave 1000 kilometres of well-constructed road linking towns and cities and country
9. Engage 1000 new farmers in agricultural work, providing technical and financial support
10. Fifty per centof population have access to clean pipe-borne water supply
11.Fifty per cent of population have access to power 24 hours a day, seven days a week
12. Fifty per cent of homes connected to the internet
(John Coltrane &
Don Cherry, “Focus on sanity” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry,
cornet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New
York, 28 June/8 July 1960])
*I wish to thank Dr Okwuonicha Nzegwu for her contribution to this commentary
One of Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory references in the study of Africa and African peoples worldwide of the past 500 years
One of
Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast,
1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory
references in the study of Africa of the past 500 years Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
Thirty-three
years ago today, 13 June 2013, Walter Rodney was assassinated in Georgetown, Guyana.
Rodney is one of Africa’s leading historians –
in the same league as Cheikh Anta Diop, Onwuka Dike, Bethwell Alan Ogot, Albert
Adu Boahen, Joseph Ki-Zerbo and Adiele Afigbo. Rodney was professor of history
at the University of Dar es Salaam during six momentous years (1968-1974)
and two of his publications, How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa (1972) and A
History of the UpperGuineaCoast,
1545-1800 (1970), are compulsory references to the study of Africa of the past 500 years.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
