Stark reality of the Dark Continent
OUR world’s branded, booming and browbeating social, print and electronic media need no introduction.
Head down, no heroic and humbly speaking, why news black out of Africa, the dark continent! Media the mighty why not care a little for Africans harrowing experiences and horrendous dreads of drought with over 100 million people facing catastrophic levels of life.
The socio-economic impact of Covid-19 has become wider and deeper with long-lasting affects across the African Continent, particularly for those living in poverty.
Africa, a continent with a high proportion of workers in the informal economy where the most vulnerable have been hit hard.
People face the challenges of either too little water or too much water — cyclic patterns of droughts to floods to droughts — impacting vulnerable groups either by floods or by famine silently due to the profound impact of climate change.
People are becoming more vulnerable due to civil unrest, displacements, population movement, social, political and economic factors.
Oh sorry, apologies here! Africa is news-highlighted as and when celebrities and leaders, needing no introduction, set and pose for photos or videos at fund-raising shows, galas, functions, lunches, dinners, concerts, conferences in pompous venues of the world.
However, Africa continues to be known as the Dark Continent due to its untold, unseen, unheard and unprecedented, remoteness and wilderness, illiteracy and ignorance, drought and death, subjugation and exploitation.
Late Bradford Morse, UN African Relief Coordinator revealed in April 1985 shocking news of many more drought and disease deaths in Africa than deaths in both world wars combined! Think and feel if one can, holocaust of Africa: Chad, Gabon, Mali, Ethiopia, Ghana and you name it.
Drought hitting Africa with human and animal skeletons just breathing in agony, not dying. Disease so rampant, death so imminent.
“Aid with strings” condition of the “haves” for the “have-nots. For food, medicines and medicare big powers demand rebel governments of their choice, free access to loot mineral wealth of Africa and for setting up military bases of strategic importance for them.
Meanwhile, on a positive note UN and its specialized agencies, can come alive with the survival and sustenance kit for Africa.
International development work for Africa need impetus pursued by Canada, Britain, Australia, Japan, China, The Netherlands, etc.
Regional development impetus, can be of instrumental values, specially and relevantly through the Organization of African Unity (OAU), well-represented and participated from North, South, East and West African countries of rising promise and potential.
Indeed so, the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), quietly carries the inherent vim, vigour and vitality to duly share the burden for their African friends and brethren in letter and spirit.
BUT for sure nobody and nothing can help as much as the spirit of self-help or self-reliance in order to well realize the African dream.
Here it is for the friends of Africa to help the Africans reverse their reputation as so very lipless and helpless, immobilizing as well as procrastinating good for nothing.
Can African friends, not masters, instil in the Africans the spirit of self-actualization and autarky so that Africans stand on their own feet for life and livelihood with grace, dignity and honour in the comity of nations?
—The writer is an educationist, based in Karachi.
