The Challenge For Africa Essay

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray. ' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” - Desmond Tutu (South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop)

This is a simple quote that helps to accurately capture the plight Africa has faced in its dealings with the European nations for the past centuries. The people of the continent may have reclaimed their land but is it truly theirs? Are we as continent truly free to develop ourselves and take leaps forward? Or are we in a closet where the door has been slightly opened just to give us a little taste of the light of this beautiful world. Black and whites have always been different

I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.” – Nelson Mandela (South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and the 1st President of South Africa)

Africa has battled the slave trade and the loss of so many of her valuable children. Africa has battled colonization of her land and the exploitation of her vast resources. The continent has come out of these battles beaten down and shaken up but still standing. With the help of Wangari Maathai’s “The Challenge For Africa” I hope to point out how Africa and its nation states can raise themselves to new levels of greatness, fight off the ills of neo-colonialism and achieve this beautiful dream of Nelson

Maathai says “Africans must decide to manage their natural resources responsibly and accountably… Otherwise, they will continue to allow outside forces to seduce or bully their governments into arrangements that allow these resources to be removed from the continent for a pittance.” (Maathai; The Challenge for Africa, page 23) The people of the nations of the great continent must be determined work hard and strengthen their own abilities so as to uproot the culture of dependence that is already very common among African states. Truthfully, only the people of Africa can really help their continent and that is why we need to embrace our cultural diversity and fight for responsible