AGAIN! AFRICAN LEADERS ‘BEG’ FOR $100BN ECONOMIC RECOVERY FUND IN COTE D’IVOIRE; YOUNG GAMBIAN TAKES A SWIPE ‘THE ONLY WAY GAMBIA KNOWS HOW TO SOLVE PROBLEMS IS BEGGING’
By Abayomi Oyelami, Trek Africa Newspaper
A young Gambian project manager, Khadijah Fofana has taken a swipe at African leaders emphasizing that begging for aids and seeking loans are not sustainable ways for Africa to attain socioeconomic development. She made this assertion during a live virtual chat, Reminisense the TweetChat series, which held Tuesday 13th July on popular microblogging platform, Twitter.
Expressing distress about her country, the Gambia, and by implication, the African continent, she asserted: ‘It’s sad to say this but Africa is not sustainable as it is. I look around and all the projects I see that improve the livelihood of my people are either donor-funded or charities especially ones with huge impact. It’s the truth and it’s the same for most African countries!’
Khadijah Fofana
On the sordid beginnings of loan and grant dependence in Africa, Khadijah pointed out: ‘Africa was not always like this and pre-colonial history tells how very self-sufficient we were. But the West still continues to colonize us with so-called grants and loans. My theory is that they need us to need them so they can remain powerful. And we fell for it.’
‘After most of us got our so-called independence in the 50s and 60s we should have been a united front to help each other grow and become the rising continent. We were all too busy with coups and wars to notice the looting that was taking place. We became weak, greedy and selfish and our people suffered. Obviously when charities began to flood into the continent, our people welcomed them with open arms.
Governments were broke and needed the heavy loans. Unfortunately, that cycle never broke, we took more loans, our people became poorer’, she expressed.
The young Fofana considers mismanagement in Africa another source of concern. ‘Mismanagement of funds is the reason Africa is still lagging behind in terms of development – be it our own revenue or donor funds. We have seen so many “white elephant” projects that were highly publicized and either never materialized or have no significance to beneficiaries. If resources were invested in areas that they were actually supposed to go into, we would have been far ahead of where we are now.’
‘I am not against getting donor funds but they are mismanaged, they can’t be our only means of solving problems, and if we weren’t mismanaging our own resources, we wouldn’t be always running to the West to solve our problems.’
On what needs to be done to empower African youths, the civil engineer stated: ‘Youths everywhere want jobs. We need access to marketable skills. They can start even from the school curriculum. We are still being taught the old fashion way. Not everyone is destined for Maths and Science.’
Khadijah Fofana urged youths, ‘The truth is the older generation made politics unattractive for youths. But we have to get into the discussion. We have the opportunity to challenge politicians, steer conversations in the right direction, and that would open the way for youth to build interest in politics’
