I once wrote a missive and cited many sources to substantiate my propositions, theories and my supervisor who is now a professor emeritus at L.S.E. asked me what I had got to contribute. Africans and others from developing countries tend to capitalize on what aliens have brought to their door steps as their contributions. They are even prepared to die to hold aloof their bulwarks. They have dumped almost all of their possessions that were once cherished by foreigners in the belief that what are foreign are ideal. They welcome all that are presented to them without even thinking if they would fit into their square holes. Often, it sounds as if they had nothing to call theirs: philosophical beliefs, call them religions or even technologies. They have and have had.
It is all wrong to believe that they have nothing or little to offer, as once upon a time Westerners had to come to Africa to be schooled in institutions of higher learning. Socrates and other Greek philosophers admitted this and many others we need not enumerate or dwell upon here. What are the benefits when we ignore what we have out of myopia? We end up starting from scratch or wallowing in others ways of life or philosophies. Having said this, no man is an island. Therefore we could adopt and adapt what others have that could catapult us to that echelon of power instead of stating that we have to return to the status quo, how we were before foreign ways of life were implanted in our midst. In the case of Africa and others, it were the days of darkness when Africa was called a 'dark continent' and when some of its regions were no-go areas as they were supposed to be peopled by savages.
That is defeatist, decadence. Africa and other third world states have to move with time. Even if they fail to do so they will be forced by the West and others to toe the line. This is not an alarm being sounded. It had been so since the West met Africa and other continents. It was a matter of, 'You better copy me before we do business.' The Westerners are aware of the fact that if Africa and other developing countries do not advance technologically, they would sooner or later export their backwardness to their spheres of influence or drag them too into their abyss of poverty. Let us face facts when there are outbreak of diseases, wars and other calamities that could have even been avoided if they had copied Westerners, it is still the very Westerners some of them shun that come to their rescue.
Let us not go far. The deluge of children lurking at the gates, frontiers of the USA is a modicum of what it could look like if a strongly worded message is not sent to the developing nations deterring them from the belief that the export of children to developed economies is a solution to their lacking behind in the global economic development and sundry. If the USA and EEC do not urgently address this matter by globalization, investing in those economies, Asians and Africans would be streaming in droves and there would be nothing that they could do to halt them.
Some naive folks in North America, particularly in the USA got excited that the juvenile immigrants would solve their under population and shortage of labor problems in due course of time. Would they? They have not computed the cost of training, housing, parenting and others for the toddlers before their could stand on their feet and be assimilated? What of nostalgia and other psychological factors the young emigrants would suffer? Also, when settled, they would not offer their services for nothing. It must be underscored that there is no return to slavery of the old days where some persons had to work for others gratis. Once in the USA or Canada they would have to be treated equally as their citizens and had to be entitled to all the national benefits. Those are costly and budgets ought to be allocated for these. It is no doubt that there had been tremendous progress in developing countries made possible without the Marshall Plan and by those who have never been abroad. Global migration targeting the West is a clear indication that developing countries are not satisfied and need big economic push of directions from the West.
Some naive folks in North America, particularly in the USA got excited that the juvenile immigrants would solve their under population and shortage of labor problems in due course of time. Would they? They have not computed the cost of training, housing, parenting and others for the toddlers before their could stand on their feet and be assimilated? What of nostalgia and other psychological factors the young emigrants would suffer? Also, when settled, they would not offer their services for nothing. It must be underscored that there is no return to slavery of the old days where some persons had to work for others gratis. Once in the USA or Canada they would have to be treated equally as their citizens and had to be entitled to all the national benefits. Those are costly and budgets ought to be allocated for these. It is no doubt that there had been tremendous progress in developing countries made possible without the Marshall Plan and by those who have never been abroad. Global migration targeting the West is a clear indication that developing countries are not satisfied and need big economic push of directions from the West.
Ugly faces surfacing as Boko Haram in Nigeria, ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other wars in the Middle East are essentially triggered by poor economic planing and bad shortsighted doctrine of those who are supposed to lead. If we yield to the the doctrine of Boko Haram and others as ISIS of blocking Western Education and substituting it with nothing or archaic Arabian philosophies, Africans, we mean sympathizers of Boko Haramism would just be endorsing their innate laziness, their inability to adopt and adapt for the future generations. If allowed, that would be human catastrophe in the making.
Owing to the fact that Africans and others would not be trained in the western ways at home, they would have to make up for this by emigrating in droves to Europe, Asia and Americas to ameliorate their poor standards of living as what is happening daily. It is not capital that they lack but the managerial skills which could be got through Western Education. How could they advance when vice means are used to deter them? Leaving Western Education is wrong and no reasoning person on earth should tolerate this nonsense. The freedom to learn is the inalienable right of all. Many Africans have been atoning for this lack of education by believing that if the emigrate to Europe they could be better off.
Often the cost of emigration in cash and human lives is heavy. The Mediterranean Sea is become burial ground for many through accidents. The Atlantic Ocean would not insulate North America from would-be stoic emigrants from other parts of the world coing in. The US authorities would not reject a ship-loads of Asian and African immigrants who have arrived at their ports of entry. All would declare themselves as seeking political asylum and by international law they would not be sent back to their homes of origin. We know that they are economic emigrants and there is nothing that could be done. The solution is cutting the buds at the sources through Western Education, transfer of technologies and managerial skills. The world has passed that stage where developed nations hoarded certain industrial developments, basic industrial secrets so as to have monopoly over productivity and make super profits.
We all know that migration is no panacea to the impoverished state of developing countries under certain conditions. Having made this point, we are not stating that all channels of legitimate migration and emigration are blocked because of the recent works of Latin American opportunists, human traffickers who are exploiting parents and mentors of Latin American children to get money. The fact remains that many in North America are non natives, First Nation Peoples as known in Canadian jargon. They or their parents or great grand parents came from other countries to make North America their homes and to build it what it is today. How can we balance the equation?
Owing to the fact that Africans and others would not be trained in the western ways at home, they would have to make up for this by emigrating in droves to Europe, Asia and Americas to ameliorate their poor standards of living as what is happening daily. It is not capital that they lack but the managerial skills which could be got through Western Education. How could they advance when vice means are used to deter them? Leaving Western Education is wrong and no reasoning person on earth should tolerate this nonsense. The freedom to learn is the inalienable right of all. Many Africans have been atoning for this lack of education by believing that if the emigrate to Europe they could be better off.
Often the cost of emigration in cash and human lives is heavy. The Mediterranean Sea is become burial ground for many through accidents. The Atlantic Ocean would not insulate North America from would-be stoic emigrants from other parts of the world coing in. The US authorities would not reject a ship-loads of Asian and African immigrants who have arrived at their ports of entry. All would declare themselves as seeking political asylum and by international law they would not be sent back to their homes of origin. We know that they are economic emigrants and there is nothing that could be done. The solution is cutting the buds at the sources through Western Education, transfer of technologies and managerial skills. The world has passed that stage where developed nations hoarded certain industrial developments, basic industrial secrets so as to have monopoly over productivity and make super profits.
We all know that migration is no panacea to the impoverished state of developing countries under certain conditions. Having made this point, we are not stating that all channels of legitimate migration and emigration are blocked because of the recent works of Latin American opportunists, human traffickers who are exploiting parents and mentors of Latin American children to get money. The fact remains that many in North America are non natives, First Nation Peoples as known in Canadian jargon. They or their parents or great grand parents came from other countries to make North America their homes and to build it what it is today. How can we balance the equation?
Through emigration the Westerners contributed to economic and industrial developments in other parts of the world. In want of better climes and economy they made themselves the envy of many through the transformation of inhospitable regions hospitable. Truly they colonized, exploited. They traded far and wide and migrated causing mayhem in most of the cases on the natives but the world has since changed for good. Therefore by supporting controlled emigration we are not endorsing slavery, colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, blatant exploitation of man by man as in the past and other isms by Africans, Asians and South Americans who are seeing the USA as that heaven on Earth and the key to progress in life.
The rest could be like North America. How? With good governance, transparency, solid Western Education, availability of modern communication facilities,information technologies developing countries could advance and rob shoulders with the Westerners. It is no longer prognostication. There are South American, Asian and African millionaires though not as one would find in North America and Europe. We must admit that there is some economic progress and refrain from total lampooning of third world as ne'er do-wells living in pseudo or bongo republics.
Who created all those pseudo republics? The Westerners. The economy of scale was not taken into consideration else French colonial government would not have given their overseas provinces political independence when they were comfortable as a vast territory in the past. Ask them if they could have given Corsica and other provinces that were economically better off than all of their overseas possessions put together political independence. They would consider this an imponderable crazy proposition and we are crying over spilled milk on the sand.
We got to remember that there is nothing that these states are passing through that the Westerners never passed through. Whereas it took Westerners some 2000 years to reach where they are today in the economic ladder, Africans and others have taken 50 years in some unique cases and that is phenomenal leap forward. The World Bank and other ombudsmen need to be encouraged to lead and guide them relentlessly if failed states are not to emerge as Somalia that train sea pirates and contribute to the highest number of emigrants leaving Africa for Europe and Middle East.
Who created all those pseudo republics? The Westerners. The economy of scale was not taken into consideration else French colonial government would not have given their overseas provinces political independence when they were comfortable as a vast territory in the past. Ask them if they could have given Corsica and other provinces that were economically better off than all of their overseas possessions put together political independence. They would consider this an imponderable crazy proposition and we are crying over spilled milk on the sand.
We got to remember that there is nothing that these states are passing through that the Westerners never passed through. Whereas it took Westerners some 2000 years to reach where they are today in the economic ladder, Africans and others have taken 50 years in some unique cases and that is phenomenal leap forward. The World Bank and other ombudsmen need to be encouraged to lead and guide them relentlessly if failed states are not to emerge as Somalia that train sea pirates and contribute to the highest number of emigrants leaving Africa for Europe and Middle East.
Sometimes those in the West forget that the economic baseline of Africans and Latin Americans is different from theirs. So it must be admitted that the way most third world citizens look at industrial progress is not the same from the Westerners' perspective. Some Westerner with a five bedroom home furnished with all amenities to make life livable, with two cars and a job still feels that he or she is not well-off. Whereas an African or Asian with a communal tap of water near his home, shared by five hundred families, having no electricity but ensured of three meals a day, feels that he is self-sufficient and comfortable. To a North American or Australian, that is abject poverty. He does not feel that way psychologically as he does not aspire to have a home or a car in his lifetime. He is proud that he can even share his meals daily with strange visitors and can survive on $4.00 or less a day. That makes him very happy and contented. He may die without never entering a modern car many taken for granted in the West. He walks or takes a rickshaw. Where lucky he rides a bicycle on potholed tarred or dirt roads shared by a multitude of pedestrians, animals and birds. He has no one hundred debt crises to ponder upon each blessed day as the Westerner in North America or Europe: mortgage, bills to foot every month for gas, gasoline, and electricity consumption, insurance, amenities as television, telephone, internet, security, and so on as a North American. So, being wealthy like a North American is relative. Often we have to wear their spectacles to see clearly if we are right to say that they could be better off if that they emulate our standard of living. May be it becomes different when we look at their health conditions and life expectancy.
What some Westerners see is strife to advance too fast, often ignoring the progress so far made and experimenting on illusion as the disillusioned Boko Haram in the belief that what has made them to be where they are is failure owing to Westernization. The Boko Haram proponents are telling their followers that darkness is better than light. With the Western arsenal of weaponry, communication gadgets, clothing, housing, infrastructure, and so on at disposal of Boko Haram, on what grounds are they really standing to castigate or reject Western Education?
They do not know where they came from and where they are heading to. Do they know that Western Education had its roots in Africa? How shallow and low can a people be? The Hausa and Fulani communities from which they recruit their members expand through the breadth and length of Western Africa. It is necessary for all Governments in this region to contain them before they do more harm of retarding the progress so far made in Western type of Education. The adopting and killing is spine-chilling and are already a deterrent of education in the areas where they occupy in North Eastern Nigeria and cross border insurgence in the Cameroon where they are abducting civil servants, foreign workers and sooner would abduct school children .
They do not know where they came from and where they are heading to. Do they know that Western Education had its roots in Africa? How shallow and low can a people be? The Hausa and Fulani communities from which they recruit their members expand through the breadth and length of Western Africa. It is necessary for all Governments in this region to contain them before they do more harm of retarding the progress so far made in Western type of Education. The adopting and killing is spine-chilling and are already a deterrent of education in the areas where they occupy in North Eastern Nigeria and cross border insurgence in the Cameroon where they are abducting civil servants, foreign workers and sooner would abduct school children .
There is hope willy-nilly. It is to our advantage wherever we are in the world to promote peaceful development and deter unnecessary emigration and any doctrine that restricts Western Education. When we look at a budding country like Ghana, we see a gleam of hope in the African economic horizon. It passed through restricting economic huddles and is getting its head above dark waters. Others could emulate Ghana and even Malaysia that was on the same footing like most African states at the dawn of their political independence some fifty years ago, in spite of the later's aviation transport calamities. That is a hiccup, a characteristic of a hardworking nation with troughs and crests in economic development that must be passed through. A continental nation like India could be developed but they have so many to feed and would do so if democratic government and transparency is pursued. They are not different from China that has improved the standard of living of most of its citizens. These states may still be lacking by some Western standards but relatively they are way ahead. It is a matter of time before some are developed if not hampered by rattled-headed men of Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Isis, Al Shabaab and Taliban caliber. We could make Africa and other developing countries charming and people could come in as the Chinese and Indians are presently doing in Africa to stay for good instead of leaving with the belief that the heaven on earth is solely in Europe and North America. Most new comers to Africa for example come with their trades that are beneficial to the host countries.
Viban Ngo, PhD.
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