Fifty plus years of independent African states yet her citizens continue to grapple in abject poverty, high levels of ignorance, unaffordable and at times mediocre health care and educational services. While a glimpse of hope appears at a distance, corruption, negative ethnicity, nepotism, human rights violations, amidst other vices emerge.
Who shall rescue Africa?
It is true that Africa admires her pristine days. As history tells us, all was serene during Africa’s garden of Eden days. This is when the African chief/monarch was part of the people, and worked for the people. Then, African socialism was the norm, property belonged to the people and because of the intact communities, individuals did not lack. Work was communal.
Then came the vice of slavery when African human power was taken away to other lands. I imagine that one cannot have any more lucrative resource than the human one. To have human beings work for a chosen few at no cost, cannot but convert the poorest into being the wealthiest. Indeed the consequences to the beneficiaries are evident in their histories. On the contrary, the negative effects to the victims cannot be forgotten.
Soon after its abolition, in came the colonial phase. Again, resources were shipped, to the very earlier beneficiaries of the slave trade vice. Scholars among them Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Chinua Achebe, have narrated sad ordeals of how things fell apart. How sad for the African if she were to forget her history! Equally sad is when Africa remains in the bottom-pit of self-pity due to her history? Worse still is when fifty plus years of independent African states, evils continue to marry her children. What then have the African leaders been up to, that no mending is yet to be adequately felt? What has been the role of African governments and African peoples?
If Jesus had been a conformist and a pious congregant of the then status quo, he would easily have lived to cherish a humanly old age. If only he had concentrated on going to heaven and ignored the injustices at his times, his death would have awaited a natural process. If Britain’s subjects had remained loyal to the monarch, and not questioned the one-human being rule, the parliament would never have been born through the Magna Carta. If Germans had never questioned the Bourgeoisie-proletariat imbalance of wealth creation and sharing, the gap between the rich and the poor would have grown to be wider than that of Africa.
If Africa awaits her leaders to hand over wealth to them on a silver platter, her poverty shall continue to increase, essential health and education services shall continue to be unachievable.
Social change is a darling to African leaders. It facilitates the pacifism and docility that supports the status quo where it is important for loyal Africans to continue following their traditional ethnic chiefs unquestioningly. This slow and natural process of change is a sure contributor to continued poverty and human rights violations among other vices.
Social transformation on the other hand, incorporates conscientization (refer to Paulo Freire), that played a significant role in emancipating Latin America. There is no choice but to learn from the Asian Tigers, among them South Korea, Japan, China and even India, who have questioned their cultural undertakings and defied all odds to join the top world. It appeals for a critical look at the current religious practices and theological trends, where docility and blind faith is advocated, and embrace libertine theology.
Constant engagement on advocacy and lobbying for human rights cannot be avoided. 
When the masses fail to demand proper education, affordable universal health for all, respect for human rights irrespective of their economic status, accountability and transparency in the use of the resources that come from the taxes they give, they are surely, the victims. It is they that continue to support the injustices that befall them.
Let us all adopt a social transformative framework, and carry on with the conversation.
