Africa Must Think

Africa Must Think delivers 30 hard-core messages to challenge and inspire anyone who seeks to understand Africa's problem and desires to be part of its future. Although the title calls upon "Africa" to think, discerning readers will immediately recognize that this work is actually speaking to all continents! Africa Must Think transcends Africa and Africans. It is actually a collective call to humanity, as the author said: "Although I write as a Ghanaian, African or Black person, the world is my audience. For I write as a citizen of the world to come."

In a forthright and uncompromising manner, Olúfémi Táíwò explores Africa’s hostility toward modernity and how that hostility has impeded economic development and social and political transformation. What has to change for Africa to be able to respond to the challenges of modernity and globalization? Táíwò insists that Africa can renew itself only by fully engaging with democracy and capitalism and by mining its untapped intellectual resources. While many may not agree with Táíwò’s positions, they will be unable to ignore what he says. This is a bold exhortation for Africa to come into the 21st century.

To Close the "Shitholes" Africa Must Change By: Osei Badu-Nkansah When the “SHITHOLE” incidence showed up, many of us with African roots listened carefully to the anger expressed by the media, African leaders, the Africa Union (AU), politicians in the United States from both parties, and the world at large. What’s Up Africa received record transactions. Some of us stayed calm and began thinking about the whole incident. Then, after careful analysis, the gates opened for true self-checking—devoid of any emotions to be able to stay fair to both sides. Believe us, it was not easy to hear the negative characterization of the continent, but the Good Lord had His hands in control to calm things down and open our eyes as to allow us to turn a bad situation into a good one. The narratives in this book come out of true soul-searching, painful admissions of facts, and realistic analyses of prevailing conditions, concluding with challenging directions, so that we can turn the “SHITHOLES” into “GOLD HOLES.” Let us embrace our current situation and call a spade a spade. This is the only way we can move beyond the anger. Please, take deep breath and truthfully read on, so that you can also come to the same realization. Together we can contribute to the calling that we have so expressed in this book to save Africa from supervised impoverishment. We cannot and should not continue doing the same things over and over again. We need to open up our eyes to be able to see the truth, regardless of how painful, to get Mother Africa on the right path, so that the next generation will flourish. There will be sacrifices, some pains, and some hardships as we carefully navigate the dense cloud of issues facing Africa. But we believe that we can overcome—and we will overcome.

This book brings revolution to the African continent. It makes it clear that for Africans to advance in life they require a different approach to life. The book uses proverbs and wise sayings from Africa to enhance the notion that Africa as a continent appreciates issues about change and other players from outside the continent get a buy-in into change management. It is now generally accepted that from Cape to Cairo one sees a continent pregnant with resources but it is classified as the poorest by bank balance. The book uses African wisdom to help readers around the world to appreciate the African transformation. Change is always hardest at the beginning but it gets easier and better as days transform into years. Nothing in life changes without change. The book suggests ways of how Africa can swing the pendulum and rise to be a global shining star by owning and using its natural resources wisely and embracing transformational leadership. This would rewrite the economic order and turn the richest poor continent into a super rich continent.

While Africa accepted to receive democracy, African leaders closed their eyes against the weaknesses of the system. The weakness of the African democracy was the strength of the leaders and those who were prepared to exploit the continent. These prepared the big population to toil for the benefit of a few. African democracy has eaten away the African culture, morals, lifestyle, and languages. African democracy ate the African form of governance, justice, unity, peace, medicine man, music and dance and labeled them primitive. Among the continents on earth, only the African ancestry and languages have been lost and disposed. In African democracies, the promise of prosperity is pegged on foreign languages. It is only in African democracies where every African child must put more than twenty-five years to learn a foreign language to have a future. Only in Africa where 75 percent of the population is insecure in all areas of life and live below the poverty line. It is only in African democracies where among a billion people, none can make a spoon or a simple toothpick. Only African democracies depend on imports, foreign investors, or naturalized citizens (from Asia, Europe, or America) and not the African citizens in industrial development. The world should stand up and save Africa to educate her own children in her languages. Africa has the right to choose from reality, away from mockery. Africa is the only continent that thrives to do away with her languages in pursuit for foreign languages. Africa has the only culture that is demonstrated as archaic and antihuman. Everything that is African is below par compared to that of the rest of the world. Why? Africa is unique; the Africans are a distinct people, and the continent, which is the most wealthy with minerals, is surprisingly with the poorest people on earth. There is a technology gap in Africa. The African democracy is the worst form of governance ever founded by humanity.

What is the role of the media in Africa? How do they work? How do they interact with global media? How do they reflect and express local culture? Incorporating both African and international perspectives, Media and Identity in Africa demonstrates how media outlets are used to perpetuate, question, or modify the unequal power relations between Africa and the rest of the world. Discussions about the construction of old and new social entities which are defined by class, gender, ethnicity, political and economic differences, wealth, poverty, cultural behavior, language, and religion dominate these new assessments of communications media in Africa. This volume addresses the tensions between the global and the local that have inspired creative control and use of traditional and modern forms of media.

This handbook fills a large gap in the current knowledge about the critical role of Africa in the changing global order. By connecting the past, present, and future in a continuum that shows the paradox of existence for over one billion people, the book underlines the centrality of the African continent to global knowledge production, the global economy, global security, and global creativity. Bringing together perspectives from top Africa scholars, it actively dispels myths of the continent as just a passive recipient of external influences, presenting instead an image of an active global agent that astutely projects soft power. Unlike previous handbooks, this book offers an eclectic mix of historical, contemporary, and interdisciplinary approaches that allow for a more holistic view of the many aspects of Africa’s relations with the world.

Each essay looks at an African concept, attitude or person, or a combination of these, and hopes to stimulate further reading and reflection on the reader's part."--BOOK JACKET.