Personal Change is the Missing Ingredient for the African Growth.

Last week I stayed in a Jam for over four hours cumulatively in one day. This is the moment you sit in the car, get tired, walk out and freshen up before you resume sitting because vehicles are not moving. Meanwhile, I turned to two other occupants, my friends, in the car and lamented about how being African comes with all manner of things. I mean, being African is not wrong at all, but what we often observe on the continent leaves us to wonder about our identity.
Why could we be held up in a jam for all that wrong? It is because everybody else was scrambling to be in the front. It is fine for us to scramble and be dead than be orderly and move slowly. It is said that if there is any continent whose people are always in a hurry sometimes for no reason, then that continent is Africa. The truth of that statement is subject to discussion though.
So after taking my time to think about this situation among the many other things clobbering the continent in all spheres of our economies, I concluded that it is all rooted in change. Mark my words, yes it is about change although our perspective regarding change is wrong. We tend to sit back and observe the change in others before we can embrace it.
For instance, we may sit all well and wait to see our neighbour take the first initiative of responsive driving before we can go ahead and take it too. This has two implications which are the stem issues of our problems.
First, some will want to see the outcome of the change before they can deliberate on the action to take. If it is a positive one, then they go ahead and adopt it. This is best explained in an experimental analogy. Like, let us take a small sample and test with them before the rest of the population can take part. And we hope it is not poison for the sake of the greater good of the majority.
The second one is the lot that is never perturbed by the change. Whether things changed and everybody else praised the overhaul as good for all, they are always glued to the stereotype that things have always been done the same since the ages of our great grandfathers.
This class is the directors of the, “don’t question the status quo crew.” Things have always been done so, so leave them or else the spirits of the dead will haunt you for the disruptions.

In philosophy, this instance is described well by the allegory of the cave put forward by Plato. This theory states that if you enclose a man in a very dark cave for a long time, they get used to the darkness and that sets the standard on how they perceive reality.
After some time, and you decide to bring these guys to the light, they will perceive darkness as the reality and supreme of the two. It is what they are used to vs the new change and changing their initial perception might take ages. It is even possible not to achieve the change at all.
Now if we would love to see any great change in the African continent, we might need to change our perspective and the guys to bring that change are none other than the majority of African youth. Why do I say so and why should it be the youth? I will explore this part before I gather my thoughts on this subject.
I was reading the book Lee Kuan Yew; The Man and His Ideas about the rapid transformation that marked the development of Singapore in the last century and I could see a lot of insights for the so-wanting-to-be change makers of African countries.
Though Kenya and Singapore were at the same level in the 60s, they can’t be put side to side today and compared. What did Singapore do that we didn’t? It was a rapid change. The book describes the travels by Lee Kuan Yew to other countries observing what they were doing well and went and implemented them right away.
That is how the idea of the green garden city came to be. If Yew travelled to Japan and observed that continuous innovation was the thing revolutionising the economy at that moment, he would return and implement that right away.
So, by observing how others are doing it, we can learn some things and change the trajectory of development as individual countries and the African continent at large. The new ideas borrowed have to be sustained and improved, otherwise, they will mean nothing. We have lost it here with what we learned in past centuries.
This is what I mean. Currently, South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya and Nigeria are among the leading nations championing the Silicon Savannah initiative aimed at transforming Africa into a tech-innovative hub of the world. But what measures have they taken to ensure this is achievable? First, they have tried to make broadband costs and access cheaper and easier respectively.
Rwanda for instance observed a thing or two from earlier implementers such as Kenya and went and did the same. The story is different today compared to the rest of the African countries that are dragging behind in the ICT revolution.
Ethiopia has copied a lot from the manufacturing spheres in Asia and they are the country I am following up keenly lately. If everything goes well, of course, their story will be a different one for the coming decades in terms of industrialization.
Here is how the youth fit in this effective change scenario. The fourth industrial revolution is sure about ICT and the guys who are at its centre are the youth. The millennial, Z and alpha generations have a unique set of DNA that gets sparked in the face of these technologies and hence makes them the best people to implement some of these revolutions that we bring home from other countries and continents.
In the case of my jam issue, maybe driverless cars could be the solution because technology is the golden egg of this century. The guys to innovate and operate these technologies are none other than the African youth.
The general population should not be left out because they will have to catch up. Hence as I began, change is inevitable here, especially for the earlier generations that looked at ICT and the internet as passing clouds which have failed to pass.
In today’s world, you either adapt or get out of the way. You can’t go out and sit on the train rails and hope that nothing will happen to you. Sooner or later the train will come and run over you and that will be the end of your story; a result of your failure to respond to the need.
As I collect my thoughts on this topic, I want to speak to our able youth and the populace. The only thing that does not change is change itself. And so? Forget about the group change, it may take forever for the change we need to happen (if we want to change it as a group).
Begin the change at a personal level and as an individual. Be the game changer that the rest of the people will always refer to as the one who took the first step for the great service to humanity. Change begins as a personal initiative before it goes on to become a social or continental thing.
Let us hold hands together as individuals who are the change we want and the story of Africa will never be the same again. Never underestimate a small group of like-minded individuals who set out to change the world because they will eventually do so.
Let us be the change we want to see in the continent. It has to begin at personal levels and then as the majority of youth, we are the people to effect this.
End
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