To help you you understand, let’s revisit President Paul Kagame’s observation about the problem with us Africans: “We need to mobilise the right mindsets, rather than more funding. After all, in Africa, we have everything we need, in real terms. Whatever is lacking, we have the means to acquire. And yet we remain mentally married to the idea that nothing can get moving, without external help (finances). We are even begging for things we already have. That is absolutely a failure of mindset.”
Yes, it’s absolutely a failure of mindset brainwashed by a colonial education system which we have continued to use 60 years after independence but we miraculously expect to impart free minds with the much needed critical thinking abilities. The colonial education system had an in-built slant that meant it suppressed critical thinking and helped create a mindset of blind loyalty. The system was essentially designed to serve the economic interests of the colonisers, which was the primary motivation for colonialism in the first place.
The political usefulness of this education system was not that it imparted skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic but that it promoted values such as loyalty to the existing order and disciplined self-sacrifice in the interest of the colonial order.
King Leopold of Belgium once instructed Missionaries to teach us loyalty, not Critical Thinking! It was not education, but training; not liberation but enslavement. Its purpose was not to educate a person to understand the objective limits to the advancement of individual and collective welfare, but to train a person to accept and even administer development limitations in an ‘efficient’ manner.
They made us lose our identity by making us believe that we are an inferior race. To illustrate my point, how many, today, learn about Yotam Muleya, a Zambian hero, who was only 19 years old when he died, yet he has a government school and a road named after him? Who must include his piece of history in the curriculum?
We hate to be told the truth but Church in Africa generally symbolises wishful thinking. What we urgently need is to invest heavily in Education Reforms. When we fall ill, the most sanity decision one must make is to go to the hospital. But for hospitals to be useful, they must have medicines, medical equipment and qualified personnel. All these require education and selfless calculated investment.
In Africa, we pray for patients with auto-immune diseases because we don’t understand these complex disorders. But science has explained that auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis occur when the body’s immune cells attack healthy tissues. In the case of multiple sclerosis, the cells target the protective layer surrounding the nerves.
Education has just helped Dr. Su Metcalfe, a senior research associate at Cambridge University, to find a switch within an immune cell that could be “reset” to return it to its normal activity to stop multiple sclerosis. Though the reason for this happening remains unclear, this medical breakthrough has opened the door to reversing any autoimmunity and even repairing the old damages.
Science offers sustainable solutions not like prayer which is like a guardian who promises to help but does nothing in the end. A people that prioritizes prayer over education and scientific research is a foolish nation. Belief in miracles is motivated by ignorance which is at the centre of wishful thinking. With all the knowledge we have about the healing properties of our plants and food stuffs, understanding how to extract the compounds we just need would help us improve significantly the quality of life of an ordinary African.
Up to date, most African leaders believe Marijuana is dangerous and yet the West has legalised its medicinal use, the main reason behind its ban instigated by large pharmaceutical companies. Ignorance will soon prove fatal on the continent as the white supremacists will be at liberty to poison our populations to achieve their goals since we depend on their medicines for survival.