five stages every society that is desirous for economic growth must traverse. Countries are rated as FIRST WORLD (NATO and OECD), SECOND WORLD (vietnam, Cuba, Poland, Kazakhstan) and THIRD WORLD (Africa and some countries that are not ideologically n-sync with the West).
NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization and refers to the EU, while OECD means Organization for Cooperation and Development. OECD is a larger organization that comprises the EU, US, and several other nations all of which are called the Western World. The strong economies in them make them developed nations, and you must note that most of them were COLONIES years ago. Africa must stop hiding under colonialism. The First World nations are also called Highly Industrialized Countries (HIC) due to the preponderance of indigenous industries in them. On the modernisation scale, these countries occupy the transitory stage between takeoff and maturity. There are those that have attained the maturity stage. Some countries have been able to move up the scale, albeit not completely e.g. China. China, for some of us, is a first world country, but we know that the ideology of the Western World will continue to check them. It is noteworthy that the requisite indices adduced by Rostow are the determinants of impartial assessments. The first world countries are referred to as the CORE countries.
Third World countries are also called THE PERIPHERY, or UNDERDEVELOPED [/b]countries, and are characterised by the following:
[b]
1) Low GDP and GNP
2) High cost of living that leads to Low Standard of Living
3) High Death Rate
4) Uemployment
5) Crude production method (lack of industries)
6) Widespread poverty etc.
Some countries that are treated as Third World are only so seen due to their ideological independence from the West. Africa sits comfortably as a third world, with no vision to stem the ugly tide. The African problem is not reduceable to colour, since black men who have done global exploits abound. What then is the African challenge? The dependency theory blames it on colonialism, but the chink on the wall of that assertion has been exhumed. We have seen that colonial experience is not peculiar to Africa. Some people say the DURATION OF THE COLONIAL MASTER is responsible for our problem, but fail to see that Ethiopia was colonized for just five (5) years: 1936-1941, but is the LEAST DEVELOPED country in Africa.
It is, thus, indubitable that neither colonialism/imperialism nor duration of same is the problem. What then is the cause of the African peculiarity? Colour is not the issue, for the aboriginal Egyptians prior to the conquest of Alexander the Great of Babylon, were black people. (Read the “Larceny in Egypt” chapter 2 in AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY by Nwigwe and Emedolu) Some of us know the true story about the transformation of Egypt, the first developed country in the world. Stories abound that great historians like Herodotus, great thinkers like Thales, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Plato etc all passed through the tutelage of black Egyptians whose works disappeared after the conquest. The Egyptian mysticism and the pyramids were second to none in the world. The glory of Egypt has thinned out in antiquity due to lack of documentation. This is a serious problem in Africa – oral tradition that makes things disappear when the sages die.
The black man, it has been proved, is not devoid of natural abilities, for the original black Egyptians civilised the world. The white man is not superior to us because of his colour. He gets things done. Yes, therein lies the difference. The white man is not Homo Intellectus because of his colour. The white racist calls the black man Homo Erectus, which means we are just humans because we can walk upright. As offensive as that racial declassification is, is Africa not confirming it? When will the black man begin to get things done? Those who blame the West for our peculiar problem should tell us how Africans fared before the arrival of the white man. Maybe we should answer to the following posers:
1)Who were we before imperialism/colonialism? Identity issue. Hunters and gatherers?
2) Were we the only ones colonized?
3) Have other colonies not moved up the economy growth scale?
4) Are we still being colonized?
5) Did we not fare better under the colonial masters?
6) Would we have known the values of our natural resources but for the colonial masters?
Posers (5) and (6) prove that Africa gained a lot from colonialism, but have failed to make jusicious use of the lessons learned. Africa’s problem is BAD LEADERSHIP. Africa is home to very selfish and corrupt men and women whose penchant for corrupt acts is better imagined. The GNP of nations in Africa is the worst in the world. This is disturbing, knowing that we are home to NATURAL RESOURCES in aplenty. We are the richest in natural resources, yet the poorest in the world. Is that not a shameful irony? Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire) , Sani Abacha (Nigeria), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Isaias Afwerki (Eritrea), Meles Zenawi (Ethiopia), Omar Bongo (Gabon) and Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) are some African leaders that have looted their national coffers dry and sent their monies outside. Is it not shocking that Abacha of Nigeria stashed billions of dollars that exceeded our national debt in foreign accounts for himself? The cannibal, Mobutu Sese Seko embezzled over 10 billion dollars outside the shores of Nigeria.
According to R. Baker in a news magazine, our own Sani Abacha as Head of State in the 1990s, ordered the CBN (our central bank) to transfer the sum of fifteen million dollars ($15000,000) every day to his swiss account. Do you know what that means? It means $465m left Nigeria every month. Go ahead to compute how much money left our coffers every year. Over 100 banks worldwide were in charge of Abacha’s loots! Crazy! Damn crazy! May God forgive these looters.
Today, it has been uncovered that African politicians hold somewhere between US$700 and $800 billion in offshore accounts and
