In a
recent interview,
Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, CEO of the NEPAD, made this comment about images of Africa:
The problem is that many Africans spend too much of their time repeating what the Western media says about the continent and about us. It will take some time to ward off this colonial way of thinking. Obviously, when you watch the way Africa is treated on a major news channel like CNN, the feeling is that Africa is plagued by misery and ruled by inept and corrupt leaders who hardly give any thought to the greater public interest.
Many among us Africans tend to repeat what CNN and others have to say without taking a step back and reflecting about what we just heard. We seem to wallow in a kind of self-disparagement. Nowhere else is such an attitude so widespread than on our continent.
Unfortunately, this self-disparaging attitude does have a negative impact. We cannot afford to keep on offering our children a negative image of Africa. We need to put things into perspective. A country like Rwanda has made significant progress while reducing its reliance on foreign aid.
By mobilizing its own resources, Cape Verde has succeeded in becoming a middle-income country. Judging from the design and implementation of its new constitution, Kenya is now making significant progress in terms of governance. Botswana refuses to appeal for foreign aid, with many other countries following its example.
Mr. Mayaki's concerns are well founded given the historical badmouthing of the continent. We must be careful not to repeat derogatory and dated descriptions born of the historical marginalization of the continent. True, some African countries have made some movement toward ameliorating the lives of their peoples. However. we must also remember that even this movement is yet to make African countries, or even the continent as a whole, to have significant sway in the global political economy. By and large, many African countries are still disproportionately dependent on foreign aid - ask Malawi and Uganda. Famines still disproportionately affect Africans. There is still widespread bad governance in the continent so that one can count on one hand, out of the over fifty countries in the continent, the leaders who are seeking the well-being of their peoples. Cameroon, Chad, Central Africa Republic, DRC, Burkina Faso, Burundi, etc., are places where life is a daily struggle for most.
Now, when we point out these things it is not because we are imitating CNN or any other Western media. These are things that one finds on the ground in these countries. These are not constructions or lies even though they may sometimes be exaggerated. Thus, Africa's friends are not those who say that things are going great when they are actually not. Those who paint rosy pictures of Africa are, in fact, not Africa's friends. They are those who tend to see small progress in Africa as a giant step, limiting people's perspectives to the minimum rather than calling for extravagant imagination. It is true that things are getting better but life is still quite abysmal from most people. African and African American elites should stop making themselves feel better by painting pictures of small improvements as if they were giant steps. Doing so is, in fact, derogatory because it associates African progress with the marginal.
Mr. Mayaki even mentioned that the Peer Review Mechanism outlined in NEPAD is the envy of the West. It would have been such if it worked. That mechanism exists only in name and has made no contribution to African life. The African Union itself, under which NEPAD exists, is not helpful to Africa. It is a shield under which African dictators are protected. African ruling elite are so mired in the very subjugation of their peoples that they have no credibility railing against colonialism for they themselves manifest the same attitude toward their people as the colonialists did. Rather than portraying those who critique the snail and sometimes inconsequential steps that African leaders are making as enemies of the continent, Africa's real enemies are the ruling elites who peddle pictures of giant strides even as their people continue to wallow in all forms of hardship.
After stealing the recent presidential elections in Cameroon, bishops and other ministers in the country gather to bless the "victory" of Paul Biya, Cameroon's dictator for 29 years. They prayed God to bless his dictatorship, a service God has already been providing for the past 29 years! Thus it is that the church has formed a team with rapacious political elite to squeeze life out of their people. One would have hoped that church leaders would be pastors in the true sense of the word. In Cameroon, however, Roman Catholic bishops and protestant preachers have followed the lead of their Popes to bless the rapacity of dictatorship. 
The United States has filed charges against Obiang Nguema's son, in hope of recuperating over 70 million dollars which he stole and bought all kinds of lavish property. Among the property are Michael Jackson memorabilia, like the glove pictured here. Read more here.
This so-called declaration by Cameroon's corrupt supreme court that Biya has won this sham election must be rejected by all Cameroonians. Biya is an illegal and illegitimate leader who has usurped the prerogative of leadership through all kinds of manipulation. He must therefore not be recognized by Cameroonians and the international community. Cameroon's soldiers should not kill their own people in the name of this corrupt and power-hungry individual. Without the support of Cameroon's army, this illegal and illegitimate regime will not stand. We therefore call on the Cameroonian army not to support Biya, unless they want to be against their own people. The army is supposed to defend their people from dictators like Biya rather than being on his side. We also call on the international community not to recognize the Biya dictatorship.
Obiang Nguema, the rapacious dictator of the tiny oil-rich country of Equatorial Guinea, has now decided to send his equally rapacious son, Teodorin, the erstwhile minister of agriculture of the impoverished country, as envoy to UNESCO. So father and son have decided to sit on the heads of their impoverished people, sqandering the wealth of their country, all with the complicity of international organizations like UNESCO. 
Before today's presidential election, Archbishop Kleda of the Douala archdiocese sent out a pastoral letter praying for peace before, during, and after the election. It was right for the letter to call for peace in the country, given that the country is on the verge of sliding into the kind of anarchy that has characterized many African countries. In the letter, the archbishop correctly diagnosed the situation in the country as one characterized by hopelessness, especially for many young people who have been forced by the Biya regime to eke out a living on the margins of society. The archbishop was, however, completely wrong in his hope that this elect might produce a leadership that is different from the one that has dumped the country in the gutter for 29 years now. In fact, his description of this election as democratic marks a profound misunderstanding of what is going on in Cameroon. The archbishop should have known that this election cannot be described as democratic by any stretch of the imagination - considering the various forms of manipulation which Biya has instigated up to this point. The archbishop is himself an astute politician. The fact that he decided to describe this election as democratic, even though he goes on to describe the hopeless situation of the Cameroonian youth, seems to suggest that he wants to be on the side of both the government in power and the impoverished people at the same time. As a pastor who has been listening to his people, the archbishop should have known that his people do not believe that this election is democratic. The election does not give any room for dialogue because the "dialogue" that took place was already skewed in favor of Biya. People of God are expected to tell the truth, especially when it comes to weighty matters of national life, like the one Cameroon has been experiencing. The fact that the archbishop appeared to give the impression that a better leadership may come from this election is quite misleading. A better reaction to this sham of an election in the country is denunciation. To correctly describe the dire situation of the country and then go ahead to endorse this sham election is to elect to be on the side of power. And too often the church in Cameroon has been on the side of power. The church has contributed in keeping Biya in power for 29 years. 
For us there is just one reason why Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia, should be voted out - she promised to be a one-term president. It is true that she has done some good in repairing the brokenness of Liberia but the fact that she promised to rule for only one term disqualifies her to run again. We do not care about any reason she gives why she should continue. It may well be that the person who would come after her may do worse than she did. That is not a reason why she should run again. In a democracy people have all kinds of leaders, some good and some bad. Since Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf promised that she would be president of Liberia for only one term she should have done the right thing and quit after her term was over. But like many African presidents, she developed the messiah complex, thinking that Liberia can only prosper if she is the president. That is a violation of her promise and she must be voted out. She, like everyone else, is no messiah. She has made her contribution to the country and she must step aside for others to lead. It is good that oppostion parties are coming together to remove her. If she continues as president, there is no reason why she would not run again and again and again. And before we know it, we will have one more dictator in our hands. She must be voted out!
