African Problems Quotes

Cultural difference cannot be an excuse for the blatant levels of corruption that bedevil many parts of Africa. Corruption is one of Africa’s key problems. African societies are riddled with it – from kleptocratic leaders at the top, salting money away in Western bank accounts, to soldiers at roadblocks demanding bribes to let you through, to clerks in government bureaucracies charging to hand out official forms. But we in the rich world do not have clean hands here. Corruption is fed by big Western companies that routinely offer bribes to African leaders.

Across Africa there is what I call a colonialist mentality or orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that a lot of things have gone wrong in Africa in the post-colonial period. And time and time again, any time something went wrong, the leadership claims that it was never their fault.

A beggar always remains a beggar. Africa, stop begging - you have what it takes to solve your problem.

Too often we learn everything about how an African dies, but nothing about how he lives. But they learn and live and love and dream just like we do. That's not to say there are not a hell of a lot of problems in Africa. But there is also another side to that story.

The commentators of 1963 speak, in discussing Africa, of the Monrovia States, the Brazzaville Group, the Casablanca Powers, of these and many more. Let us put an end to these terms. What we require is a single African organisation through which Africa's single voice may be heard, within which Africa's problems may be studied and resolved.

If African countries can unite and pull resources together, then that will be the best thing we could ever do for the problems in Africa including AIDS.

How does the saying go? When two locusts fight, it is always the crow that feasts.' Is that a Luo expression?' I asked. Sayid's face broke into a bashful smile. We have a similar expression in Luo,' he said, 'but actually I must admit that I read this particular expression in a book by Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian writer. I like his books very much. He speaks the truth about Africa's predicament. the Nigerian, the Kenya - it is the same. We share more than divides us.

The 'Cheetah Generation' refers to the new and angry generation of young African graduates and professionals, who look at African issues and problems from a totally different and unique perspective.

In my view, Africa's real problems are cultural.

I am one of the affluent rich living the good life. But I like to think that I am doing my bit to resolve the problems of Africa and am certainly committed to Africa in the long run.

One of the reasons why I've written The Challenge for Africa is to save it. Surely there are so many problems we can solve in Africa, but first and foremost, we need a government that feels responsible to protect their own people from the exploitations, from the misuse, from the mistreatment that they can easily get.

The problem is not unique; the challenge is not unique to South Africa. Other African countries have faced it. But in our case, we have got to solve the problem. You have got an institutional traditional leadership, which functions in a particular way, in for instance, your communal areas.

I believe in supporting African solutions to African problems.