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Inscrit le: 02 Mar 2004
Messages: 218
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 Posté le: Mar 13 Déc 2005 23:28 Sujet du message: What could we have done in Africa for Africa? |
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Salut à tous,
Je vous propose un petit article qui me semble interessant et qui traite à sa façon de ce qu'on appelle le "brain drain" ou la fuite des cerveaux. Le mensuel dans lequel l'article parait s'appelle New African et est l'équivalent (historiquement) anglophone de J.A L'intelligent mais la comparaison s'arrête là. Les contenus diffèrent totalement, les sujets abordés aussi etc. Pour ceux qui lisent l'Anglais, c'est une revue que vous pouvez vous fournir dans tous les relays. Demandez au vendeur.
What could we have done in Africa for Africa?
| Citation: | Black flight. Time to go back. What are we doing here? Get the hell out. Stayed too long. What a waste of time and talent. Waited too long. Paid too many dues. Watched too long as others pay none. Get back in our prime and get working for us. What am I talking about? Let me start somewhere else and tell you a little story.
I met a man in October called Eddie. I asked him for a date. And very nice it was too. Eddie is an old man, now. He was young, very well educated, highly skilled, and good looking when he left West Africa for London. These days, Eddie is still well educated (even more so), highly skilled (even more so), and good looking (wow!). But Eddie is old, now: it’s 30 years on. He’s spent his active youth and prime middle years in England, planning, building, and engineering England’s future through his designs, blueprints, bricks and mortar. Eddie was, is, a civil engineer.
Over our dates, Eddie told me that, looking back, he had creeping regrets. What, he wondered, could he have done in his own country with his skills over all those years? What could he have done in Africa for Africa?
What is it you feel when you feel nothing but stark reality?
Eddie had tried to “do something”. In the 1970s, he had gone back home. But it was too much. Too politically troubled, too unsettled. Eddie came back to England to continue working for the English. Eddie has done a lot in England. But who cares now that Eddie is old and is no longer of active use. What is Eddie going to do with the rest of his life? And his children are grown and they don’t need him (you know what I mean). What should he do now?
But talent and knowledge and skills do not disappear because we get older. We are not Europeans with their youth fetish. Look at where that gets them. As Africans, we believe that age equals the acquisition of knowledge and the maturity of wisdom. We believe that you are more likely to be young and stupid than old and stupid. Although, of course, we do not rule out the latter.
Eddie thinks that he will go back home and teach. What an excellent idea! I thought of the hospitals and schools that Eddie had put on the map in England. Now, how fantastic it would be for African students to learn from Eddie!
“Oh, you must teach,” I urged him. “You simply must.” “Yes,” said Eddie.
“Good,” I added. “Go back home and pass on what you know.” Brilliant.
Black flight. What are Africans doing in Europe? Can someone tell me, please? I was brought here as a four-year-old child. If you are reading this and you are an African in Europe, I ask you this: Why are you here? Why did you come? Why did you stay? What are you doing?
I know everything I need to know about Europe: everything that 40 years of hard-won knowledge can bestow about European cultures, English people, British attitudes. And I know this: Europeans do not deserve Africans. We’re too good for them. But hear this, get this: Without us they would be unable, incapable, of running their own countries! How’s that for you. We work, they play. But they treat us like we are nothing, nobodies, dirt. And now they want to destroy our minds so that we can continue to “work” for them like 21st century plantation slaves. Were we ever supposed to live among them?
Africans in Africa must take cognisance of how Europe is treating Africans. Why? Here’s why. Let me start with this “brain drain” thing. I have said before and I will continue saying: We should turn the “brain drain” into a “brain gain”. Those Africans who are working for the West in the West must be “encouraged” to do work that directly benefits Africa. If they do not, then they are traitors. Traitors to Africa.
The stakes are high. Our young people are being seduced and poisoned by European modes of living and thinking. Having seen this, having lived through this, I feel strongly that we cannot hold on to our young people in their youth. We cannot stop the youth from wanting to see the sights of Europe, from undertaking educational inducements, from experiencing this, that, or the other, from working with other cultures and races. We cannot stop the youth from leaving and we shouldn’t try.
But what African governments, leaders, and intellectuals must do is root out the strategies and mechanisms that will aid and direct the “youth” back home to Africa when they are older. Once these formerly young face the inevitable realisation of what long-term life in an European country entails for an African’s standard of living, self-esteem, respect, and dignity.
I believe that more and more Africans in the West will come to realise that to be regarded as inferior by another human being, because that other human being is under the illusion that his or her lighter colour conveys superiority, is an obscenity. It is no longer a laughing matter for our African good nature.
These lighter-coloured people are not God. They have no right to be in our lives, manipulating, socially engineering, trying to make our lives fit in with their needs. What disrespect. In searching for God, they try to take on His powers in other people’s lives. Why do other races keep trying to play God with the lives of Africans? Our lives are no longer their experimental playgrounds.
It is often in “middle age” – late 30s, 40s, 50s – that these stark realisations sink in. I believe that more and more Africans in this “middle age” group will look at their lives, will look around them at their present lives, will look ahead to their future lives. And they will think, think, think. What am I doing here?
If African governments do not stay abreast of how badly Europe and the West treat Africans whose talents, skills, and experience the West is also making use of, then African governments will not be aware that they have the ability and the potential to reverse the “brain drain”.
African countries may not be able to hold on to all their talented and skilled “youth” in their “youth”, but after the “youth” have experienced Western attitudes in the West (and having a good job and salary will make Africans even more of a target for racist attitudes), then African governments stand an excellent chance of getting their young people back when those young people enter the prime of their middle years. These Prime-Agers, as I shall call them, are experienced people, even more skilled, even more talented, fluent in how to communicate internationally, mature, able to pass on their learning. And, very importantly, they are physically capable of putting what they know into active practice. They are not old in body.
It is the prime-aged whom African governments need to focus on and get to return home. What if Eddie, as an individual in his 40s or early 50s, had been targeted to return to Africa? What if Eddie had used
his knowledge to, say, set up an engineering institute in his home capital or regional city? How many students could have qualified and started working on projects of their own, and thereby taught and passed on skills to other Africans. And then these Africans in their turn… etc.
It is the individual who empowers a society. It is individuals who think. It is individuals who create businesses. It is individuals who lead political parties. It is individuals who establish universities. It is individuals who build institutions. It is individuals who change societies. You cannot look after a society without looking after the individual. The two go hand in hand.
If future Eddies who are at present residing in the West are targeted by African governments as individuals, the benefits to African societies will be immense. African governments need to find out who these individuals are, what they are doing, and how they can be encouraged back home.
Black flight. African children, women, and men were the oil, the slaves whose physical bodies provided the fuel, the gas, the energy that developed and industrialised Europe and America for hundreds of years. Why should we be living in the West, working for the West, now in the 21st century? Africa’s traduced nationalities, Africa’s “dirty people”, Africa’s disrespected “nobodies” need to go back where we came from. Season’s Greetings |
By Stella Orakwue
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Vert, Jaune, Rouge... |
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