The future Africa summit in Eritrea

U.S.-Africa Summit has been criticized as being nothing more than a PR stun for the Obama administration 

The future Africa summit in Eritrea

By Hillal,

It is customary to see African summits being held in different parts of the world. All of these summits are designed to safeguard the economic and national security interests of the sponsors and not of Africa and Africans.

They are often described as a gathering place of tyrants, dictators and genociders. A Kodak Moment of Shame saturated by photo ops, condescending lectures and wining and dining till the wee hours of the morning thanks to their hosts' deep pockets.

Most of the African nations got their independence in the sixties. With a lot of hoopla and fanfare, constitutions were drafted and government structures were designed overnight. They were the exact replicas of their colonizers and no effort was done to include the African subjective and objective realities of the newly created nations.

Puppets and stooges of the colonizers were hand picked to fill all the government posts and institutions formed to run the new nations. They were selected to make certain that the interests' of their masters were protected and not their nations' and peoples' interests. Those brave souls, who uphold the public trust and worked for the common good and their peoples' and nations' interests were summarily liquidated.

What followed next was an African nightmare. A continent rich in mosaic of cultures and peoples, natural vegetation and animals, rivers and lakes, minerals and resources, virgin lands and breath taking landscapes was turned into a continent which is the weakest link in the modern global economy were famine, drought, wars and conflict, ignorance, disease and abject poverty became its defining characteristics.

Similarly, we are watching today, the US lackeys and puppets, tyrants, dictators and genociders wine and dine in Washington and those that are answering their peoples calls, working day and night for the betterment of their peoples and nations, demonized, discredited, defamed and vilified . An evil act that seems never to change indeed.

Africans had to endure: The ugliness of the divide and rule policies, barbarity and humiliation of the colonizers. The inhumanity and cruelty of slavery and the Apartheid system of White Supremacy and Capitalism. The wars and destruction of the Cold War rivalry. The military adventurism of the Unipolar World and its Islamophobia campaign and terror networks. The rise of Political Islam and its divisive tendencies...etc...etc.

Today, Africa is at a crossroads. There is seismic shift in global power from the West to the East. With the decline of the US supremacy and dominance and the BRICS rise in political and economic power, the fight to control the world resources isn't limited to the control of Eurasia only. Africa is part of the equation and a significant player in the power chess board.

Africans have to say enough is enough. They have to come together and gather the best of African minds and draft an African agenda -an agenda that safeguards the interests of Africa and its peoples. African intellectuals which are in the habit of serving as mouthpieces of the foreign powers and have sharp pencils when bad mouthing and demonizing Africa and Africans should abandon their shameful practices and join the African crusade for African honor, pride and dignity.

Africans are the only people that can save Africa from its present day malaise. If we Africans can't fix our homes from the inside, no one is going to do it for us from the outside. The time has come for the new generation of Africans to visit the Eritrean experience and study it in an African context. The Eritrean experience is the first step in the long march to the African Renaissance.

It is quite common these days to find African intellectuals and progressive movement leaders and philosophers in the streets of Asmara and its delightful cafes. Leaders of almost all African youth movements make their annual pilgrimages to Asmara at the invitation of the Eritrean youth, students and women associations. The attraction is not limited to Africans only but worldwide.

The micro-management of African policies from the western capitals, WB, IMF, EU and UN should stop. In its place, we need a new African way of doing business and thinking based on African realities made by Africans, for Africans and owned by Africans.

“Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. Thy claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.” Kwame Nkrumah

We Africans should demand and fight for our political, economic, social, cultural and security freedoms. Without these freedoms firmly in our control, the African dream can't be realized. Besides, nations that don't have the courage to implement economic structural adjustments to fix their economies and taste their own medicine are not fit or entitled to prescribe debilitating and crippling structural adjustments on other developing nations.

Thus, the Asmara summit would be the perfect venue for the birth of the new Africa and a crucible for the new African thinking. It would lay the foundations for the creation of a new, united, democratic, progressive, assertive, dynamic and self-reliant Africa and history written in pride and glory. Above all, an Africa at peace with itself and its people live in peace and harmony and is the epicenter of peace, reason and sanity.

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