CULTURE REGENERATION – AFRICA, BEYOND FEEDING THE POOR; TO WHY THE POOR ARE INCREASING IN NUMBER

By Nnabugwu Chizoba

In a previous article, on Valentine Day celebration, love, death and time were represented as streams of consciousness depicting the random flow of thoughts, emotions, memories, reminiscences and associations through the veil of human experiences on earth. These were qualified as abstract terms, possessing no tangible quality or quantity.

Like “Reasoning”: that mental, cognitive, cerebral, rational and intellectual process, that helps MAN, to juggle events, circumstances and situations, through a thought process that gives rise to analysis, evaluation and decision making, is also a ridicule of human weakness, vice or folly. At best they are literary thoughts and expressions associated with personal and inter-personal grid of ideas that represent Mans emotions, moods, if you like behaviours.

Reasoning, occurs at the level of individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and governments, serving as enabler for the processing and evaluation of events. And very importantly to measure impact in terms of what is produced or gained in exchange for the price paid. 

This thought process is responsible for the questions many people are asking, on the causes of Africa’s underdevelopment. It is also partly if not totally responsible for the reasons people have adduced for Africa’s underdevelopment.

Some of the reasons people have noted as responsible for the underdevelopment of Africa, include the following - Narrow mindedness, tribalism, discrimination, ethnocentrism, theoretical niceties, arrogance and canonization of mediocrity and incompetence. 

The consequence of the above, are indicated in the transformation of the great continental landscapes of Africa into unproductive and wasted land. 

Unlike the Neolithic revolutionary epoch which capitalized on the immense emerald landscapes, huge sketches of pasture, myriad of natural resources and the temperate regions for the cultivation of grains and the raising of livestock, our era is witnessing a transition from a post-industrial revolution epoch dominated by food surplus to a future dominated by hunger, starvation, unprecedented food scarcity and unemployment of very high magnitude.  

 

Before Africa embarks on what is almost becoming a culture of excessive spending of what is evidently limited resources, this time in the name of working to achieve the noble objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), that has replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) it is imperative to underscore the fact that real development takes into cognizance collective well-being.

At the most generic level, sustainable economic development underscore the need to genuinely work on resolving the all-available and prevailing tensions between societal metabolism and human dynamics, the tension between government interventions in the economy and the delivery of needs of the society, the tension between resource generation/allocation and economic realities. 

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The continent of African stands on a threshold of basic changes in the dominant under-utilization of both human and natural resources to a policy-system that holds the basis for a future rational and stable society. 

It is about time that Africa moves beyond just feeding the poor; to wrestle with why the poor are increasing in number. It is time to find out what can be done to leverage the epidemic of poverty, diseases, malnutrition and hunger. It is also time to expand links with groups, government and individuals working on safe water and air issues, energy management, forest preservation, natural heritage, family protection and real right protection of individuals. 

The best gift African leaders can give Africans, pursuant to the SDGs programmes is love, integrity and honesty which are enshrined in African culture.

The world systems emphasize the substantive values of life, which are stored in our religious heritage, namely the obligations we have to each other and to the future of mankind, which are often misplaced, subjugated and misappropriated. 

The ways of the modern society have proven to be toxic, annihilative and self-serving. It is a culture of self-destroying tendencies, expediencies, and transiently wasteful catalogue of beliefs, and idiosyncratic nuisance. 

We live at a time of adversity, loss of credibility and purity. It is an epoch of inadequacies in family architecture, homogeneity and discipline. The period is characterized by decline in morals, good habits, knowledge, acceptable standards and domestic harmony. 

The urban landscape has become more complex, demanding new measures, approaches and practices. It is a madcap paradise of consumerism, exotic taste for a mosaic of self-destroying fashion and global supply chain of lewdness, nudity and countless, but wasteful number of protocols. It is a world system encapsulated with imbalances in resource distribution, inequality and detest for justice, equity and fair play.

The real challenge is the predictive dynamics; modern day hocus pocus, which is manifest in paradoxes and contentions in the game of politics, alignments, and the hyper-skewed sensitivity of human ego. 

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