Why Africa Must Consolidate Its Critical Mass To Prosper

Geographically, Africa is by far the largest continent on earth. European and American Atlas misrepresentations of size have made everywhere else bigger than they really are. Africa is thrice the USA's land mass and can carry the whole of Europe with space for Asia and Russia.

Every known precious mineral occurs naturally in Africa and is individually or jointly the reason why the rest of the world seemingly is better off albeit, unfairly on Africa's account. The divide-and-rule strategy employed by colonial Europe remains largely intact.

Francophone Africa sends most of its revenues to the French central bank as colonies to date.

The Democratic Republic of Congo remains the epicentre of plunder by the heartless West that adds mineral wealth to its GDPs without paying Africa for it. The West is two-faced. They are modern-day hunter-gatherers to Africans and in the same breath, they are noble information age societies to their 'well-mannered' offspring.

Africa's contribution to world trade is officially 2% or thereabouts but in a real sense, it is upwards of an undocumented 10%. If we are to move our real contribution to the world out of the shadows, Africa must unite around what it has to get what it desires.

The African's capacity for language is epic. If anything, all Africans are polyglots. They speak two or more languages and in most cases, these are; a mother tongue, a national language and a European language such as what I am writing in.

The average European speaks one language and is deprived of the privilege of thinking in more than one language.

Fact. So strong are the impacts of  African languages on us that we think in them but express ourselves in European languages. For instance, in Ghana and Kenya, one would tell you in English to "move small", directly translated from an African language. The equivalent in Kenya is "songa kidogo".

"Nimerudi tena", explains why many Kenyans say "I am back again" when this repetition using, "again" is unnecessary. But this is the result of thinking in one language and expressing oneself in another.

This past week, Kiswahili was celebrated at the United Nations as one of the 10 widely spoken languages of the world. For Africa, that is the starting point. Kiswahili is one medium that Africa can use to unite and trade more with itself than is the case now where we trade with Europe more than we do with ourselves.

Language is a big and unnecessary barrier to entry. A large part of North Africa is Arabic. West Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa are largely Bantu speaking. Kiswahili finds favour in most parts of the continent because it is the product of Arabic and Bantu languages.

With Kiswahili aggressively positioned and included in school curriculums around the continent, the potency of complementary trade arrangements such as the Africa Continental Free Trade Area—AfCFTA, begin to be felt at both Macro and Micro levels. The day Africa gets its, collective middle class, to 300 million against a population of 1.3 billion people, it will need less of the rest of the world if it can cater for the needs of these sizeable consumers. It would even be greater if they all trade in an African language.

At the moment, our skin colour is not enough to give us a critical unity of purpose incentive for we are either black English, black French, or, Black Portuguese and so forth.

If we trade more within Africa, the need for a strong all-Africa standby force will emerge. No one from out there will stop the plunder of Africa if Africans themselves don't unite to eliminate the practice. This will be the true independence day for the continent.

Memories of black slave babies being used as alligator bait and the numerous atrocities meted out on blacks that went unpunished or unacknowledged are key motivators for the powers that be to maintain the world order as it is. Yet by embracing Kiswahili, the African shall give himself a realistic chance at overcoming the bondage of racism and bullying at the world stage.

United we stand, divided we fall.