On the 26th of April 2024, the first dialogue session was held themed “Who Ideates Africa’s Future?”. This session was first and foremost a reactivation of the NGFP African network around a potentially viable subject that would allow them to participate in shaping their continental future by applying foresight to not just ideate that future for Africa in theory, but to produce a treatise of their own that would help the member states of the Africa Union (AU) first, and later the UN, understand the necessity of building this theory of change from local and regional standpoint to realise an ideal future for Africa.
Of more importance, this dialogue session centred a critical discussion on the factors shaping Africa's future and who are the stakeholders behind it. The session was led by Arthur Muliro, Deputy Director of the Society for International Development, who raised pertinent questions and concerns regarding various aspects of development, governance, technology, healthcare, and socio-cultural dynamics in the continent.
The question on who currently shaping Africa's future is a complex conversation. Issues touching on economic influence, development investments, and aid were mentioned as critical factors in the discussion. The participants emphasized the importance of understanding who lends money to Africa and who invests in its trade and development; in full circumspect of what interests drive their investments.
There was a fostered concern regarding who affronts or informs government policy directions in Africa, particularly in the context of development, democracy, civic education and engagement. Has Africa ever been independent in its governance and policy direction? Most often than not, it's evident that we have always been under the direct influence of foreign policy since USA’s Point Four program during the post-WWII era to influence scientific, economic and industrial policies in underdeveloped countries. This was done as technical aid and economic assistance from agencies like the Technical Cooperation Administration (1949) which later became the Foreign Operations Administration (late 1950s) and today, U.S Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID spends on average 30% of its endowment to supporting policy development in agriculture, security, health and governance. Other AID agencies like UK AID Direct followed suit, with the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, with its finance institution the British International Investment, formerly the Commonwealth (Colonial) Development Corporation.
This conversation touched on the question on who previously and currently runs tech-systems in Africa and how data collection, protection and safe storage & archiving are managed. The feedback and responses mainly focused on the need to embed national resource to decolonize the technology platforms, in light of who owns the technology. Is it Huawei? IBM or Intel?
For instance, in Kenya the Cabinet Secretary for ICT found no problem with a foreign company offering cryptocurrency for retinal scans to unsuspecting citizens. Economically, over 350,000 scans were done in Kenya equating to over KES 2 billion injected into the economy from cryptocurrency that was unlicensed and unregulated.
Who knows how many unique retinal scans were done in Sudan and Ghana? And how many understood the relation to Digital IDs and Universal Basic Income? We need to question the mandated governance’ competence and understanding of the risks and safeguards protecting public data.
The responsibility for African healthcare was a major concern, with a focus on identifying key stakeholders and influencers in this sector. Who is facilitating the research behind our health and diseases?
Africa is witnessing bilateral support and foreign direct investments in our health sector beyond its internal fiscal contributions. This provides for the sinister window of control by western nations on health & medical solutions taken or approved by the continent’s respective member states’ national health agencies.
Case in point, the recent Covid19 pandemic which saw Kenya receive millions of therapeutic vials as ‘donations’ from foreign countries2, like Denmark, without clear agreements or tests done locally to inform if such donations were fit for use/consumption to our populace. This concern on AstraZeneca vaccines causing clots and thrombocytopenia were taken seriously in many European countries that later donated their batches to Kenya as was cited with Denmark, but also France & Germany.
Africa is not a stranger to such unethical and moral dilemmas in foreign scientific studies carried out on African people and this was witnessed during the zidovudine trials in Africa in the mid-late 1990s.
Kenya’s President William Ruto during an official State visit the U.S in May 2024, made a number of commitments with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as to why the same institution that financed and carried out the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments on African-American communities in Macon County, Alabama, would now share a duty of care on Africans on their continent barely 52 years after the most outrageous biomedical research study in U.S history, should have raised concern.
President Ruto watched over the signing of an MOU between the Ministry of Health, Kenya Medical Research Institute and Dr. Kayla Laserson, Director Global Health Centre, CDC, that would eclipse a previous engagement with Wellcome Trust. It is also well worth noting that part of the MOU touched on the implementation of Global Health Security Agenda, which was a brainchild of the CDC in 2014 when they were instrumenting global health control carrying out gain-of-function research with the Zika virus.
Such concerns circle back to the question on who is responsible for and who is running our medical research activities if these outbreaks that follow foreign research are allowed to continue.
There was concern over the current and future socio-cultural issues facing the continent. Historically celebrated as the breadbasket of the Greco-Roman empire, Africa is now struggling to develop its means of production due to overarching AID assistance that is stifling its own ability to fend and produce for its people. It is this influence, coming from Western development AID agencies that have disrupted Africa’s homegrown industries, skills and the culture in agriculture. Organisations such as FAO who have been around for decades, yet eradicating hunger is unattainable. Twenty percent (20%) of Africa’s population are still languishing in poverty and malnutrition. By 2025, the Food & Agricultural Organization will clock 80 years of operation in Africa since it was founded; somehow, hunger has been on the increase since 2018 while Africa and other developing countries have seen decreasing outlook on food and nutritional aspects.
Such sociocultural disruptions give rise to poverty as a major impediment coupled with deteriorating health and wellness of a large chunk of African communities within arid and semiarid areas. Lack of proper and adequate diet/nutrition and economic independence leads to other concerns such as stunted childhood development and poor educational outcomes.
Africa went from a highly agrarian continent that traded and exported minerals, agricultural produce & labour to the West and North of the globe to becoming a highly dependent money-based economy.
The question on the population problem has also sparked numerous debates around the idea that the earth and its resources are overburdened by the growing number of humans. Reminiscent of the 1972 report ‘Limits to Growth’, a theory disseminated by the infamous Club of Rome, in which the premise that the earth wouldn’t be able to support population and economic growth beyond 2100 if humans didn’t impose limits to their exponential productivity. Although the research was moot as a scenario, it addressed and pushed for limited growth on population increase, resource depletion, agricultural & industrial production and pollution generation. We can also view this from a contrarian perspective, as witnessed in some countries such as the EU (1.4 births per female), humans, especially in the global North and Asia, are not growing their population and in most instances - not replacing themselves entirely. Africa is already projected to averagely grow by 30 million annually to 2.2 billion people by 2050 – nearly a third of the world population will be African. If China used its population bulge to industrialise and grow its economy, shouldn’t Africa work on utilising its growing youthful generation as a labour force to industrialise and build our economic outlook? Maybe we need to optimise food production & water provision to feed our population that will in turn help build our continental capacity.
According to Patrick Lumumba, Africa ignored the words of Kwame Nkrumah from his address at the UN General Assembly in September 1960. We failed to end Imperialism in Africa along with its handmaidens, colonialism and neocolonialism. Through these, Africa’s greatest risk was realised through our disunity. We were divided and conquered as anglophone and francophone nations. We forgot our tribes and communities at the expense of tokenism in aid and misappropriation of our culture and economic independence. We forgot our language and now raise our youth and future generations to learn foreign tongues, systems of education and foreign imposed legalities as laws.
There is an existential crisis facing some regions of the world regarding environmental degradation and pollution. Climate change, although a pressing issue for some countries, requires a metered approach towards action. Africa contributes to less than 3% of emissions worldwide yet we are expected to enforce actions proposed by western and European nations which utilised fossil fuels to develop, centuries before Africa. We’re currently witnessing debt swaps such as debt for nature where African governments are giving up their pristine land and forests in exchange for leniency in debt management. This has already seen eviction of indigenous communities such as the Ogiek in Kenya from their ancestral lands, the Mau Forests, over a carbon trade deal with Blue Carbon Company, a company from the UAE.
Land grabbing also contributes to the environmental crisis that leads to the negative cumulative effects on the climate. Deforestation usually follows in these locations as developments including urbanization of rural areas into real estate projects increases.
Other Issues Impacting Africa's Future:
We plan to continue engaging the network to help understand these and more challenges facing Africa today. In former years, Africa was exploited for its produce and people who were sold into servitude due to slavery. Pan Africanism became an ideology that tried to stamp out the grapple imperialism had consolidated in Africa since the turn of the Millenium. In our present time, while the first handmaiden of imperialism – colonialism was defeated, the second – neocolonialism continues to direct its agenda and interests on an unprecedented scale. The African Futures Dialogue will continue to iterate these conversations and offer recommendations, until we reach the precipice of elevating the mindset of our people towards building the continent for Africans, by Africans.
In the next dialogue session, we expect to drive conversation on where Africa’s is in the conversation, our involvement and participation that seeks to help derive recommendations that would highlight the need for a comprehensive approach towards capturing the continents voice and influence in global discussions. Subsequent discussions will focus on future generations, sustainable development, strategic cooperation and partnerships necessary to assist in addressing the identified challenges and opportunities with practical steps to empowering marginalized communities, reforming governance practices, and fostering sustainable development across Africa.
The 2nd edition of the dialogue featured discussion on locating Africa’s engagement and input in the Summit of the Future and Pact for the Future. The need to understand the convergence of thought and expectations from the Pact and the chapters therein, with the session paying particular attention to the fourth chapter on Youth & Futures Generations.
If the recent events that unfolded in Kenya starting in June 2024 are anything to go by, the questions on how to engage, participate and call for accountability will be the crux of the African post-modern revolution. The youth are demanding a different future from the current crisis in governance and contemporary capitalism has ravaged to their nation and this starts taking shape towards a state of civil unrest.
