Why I am NOT Celebrating Africa Day Today

Today, 25 May 2018, marks the 55th annivaesary of the foundation of the Organization of African Union (OAU), now known as the African Union (AU). This year, like the 54 years before, we are being asked to celebrate the Africa Day also alternatively known as African Freedom Day and African Liberation Day. But what is there to celebrate for? The biggest and richest country in the continent is mired in endless conflict, bloodletting and endemic poverty, coupled with the most egregious assault on human dignity imaginable. Yes. You guessed it. It is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This country is blessed with all types of resources and assets that make nations wealthy: human capital, fertile land, forests, water, mineral wealth. Yet the majority of its population depend on external handouts to survive and on the UN for protection.

How many countries in Africa achieved the the 6 Education for All (EFA) goals? None. In fact, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has one-seventh of the population worldwide. Yet it accounts for nearly half of all youth illiterates and more than a quarter of adult illiterate population world worldwide, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2015). Ethiopia and Nigeria are home to the largest number of youth and adults in SSA who lack  basic literacy skills, estimated at 29 million and 42 million respectively. How about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? There is not much to celebrate either, although some countries recorded small baby steps forward here and there. According to the World Bank, rapid population growth cancelled out the modest progress made in poverty reduction between 1990 and 2012, with the net result being the number of Africans blighted by extreme poverty increasing 'by more than 100 million' during the same period here. The target date for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is 12 years away. However, barring miracles or extraordinary divine intervention, no one seriously and honestly believes that Africa could realistically eradicate poverty and hunger, deliver the promise of good health, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable energy, decent work, and most importantly, peace, justice and strong institutions. 

The African Union has its own Agenda 2063: The Africa We want. It declared 2018, its 55th anniversary, Year of Combatting Corruption: A Sustainable Path to Africans Transformation. These are beautiful words and lofty ideals. However, no one takes the AU seriously, including its own members. It could not even sustain its own existence. Its new Head Quarters was donated by the AU's latest and biggest patron, China. The benevolent patron then reportedly bugged the entire complex it built for the AU. The AU relies on external assistance for its annual operations. When its new Chairperson, President Paul Kagame, tried to urge his counterparts to raise the AU's core funds from their own resources, his proposal was snubbed, with some of the continent's heavyweights spearheading the chorus of disapproval. 

The great African thinker and Nobel laureate, Wole Soyink, has captured the plight of Africa and the African condition in his book Of Africa (2012).

Africa remains the monumental fiction of European creativity. Every so-called nation on that continent is a mere fiction perpetrated in the cause of external interests by imperial powers, a fiction that both colonial rule and post-independence exertions have struggled and failed - in the main - to turn into an enduring, coherent reality. It is a gross fiction whose exposure continues to exact penalties in hundreds of thousands of lives...Africa has paid, and continues to pay, a heavy price for the upkeep of a European fiction 

The Africa Union is the principal peddler and perpetuator of this lethal fiction. For 55 years it has promoted the power and legitimacy of African states, but criminally neglected or wantonly violated the fundamental rights, freedoms, and human dignity of African peoples. The AU defended or at best turned a blind eye when dictators and tyrants in its midst butchered their people and looted state coffers. It has pursued big projects and celebrated double digit economic growth, but spectacularly failed to address or even explain the terrible and never-ending saga of corrosive corruption, crumbling infrastructure, endemic poverty and hunger, rampant disease, dysfunctional education systems, and protracted social strife and violent conflicts.

I am African. And for the reasons stated above, I am not in a position to celebrate the Africa Day today. 

© 2018 Hassan A. Keynan