A lament for Africa, the world’s bread basket, whose children are famished

War, conflict, internecine strife and rumours of war are a ubiquitous feature of the African continent. Woe betide its children, condemned to a lifelong existence of hunger in the midst of plenty, it is damnation for the poor, from the cradle to the grave.

Spanning from the east, west, north to south- Africa is bleeding. Is the mother continent woefully fast sliding back to her dark days of war, civil strife, atrocities and large scale human rights abuses?

Ironically all of Africa’s atrocities – some self inflicted, others fanned by foreign imperialist powers – occur inside the period that the continental pan African body- African Union ( AU) – has declared the year of ‘ silencing the guns’!

But the flashpoints are just too many to reckon with especially for a multilateral organ that piggybacks on the supposed generosity and goodwill of its former oppressors!

The African Union’s Peace and Security Architecture is at its wit’s end to respond effectively and conclusively to the warmongering that has lately engulfed the continent.

In the Horn of Africa, the Ethiopian federal government troops are locked in a full- blown war in the northern Tigray region. The war has drawn into the fray on the side of Ethiopia, neighbouring Eritrea.

Meanwhile a humanitarian crisis threatens to burden Sudan as thousands flee into the country daily in search of refuge.

Popular opinion has it that the war is precipitated by ethno nationalism between Tigray, Oromia and Amhara over the control of Africa’s second most populous nation, yet another school of thought places the war at Ethiopia’s audacity to construct the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam ( GERD). The project has already evoked tensions between Ethiopia and the riparian states of Egypt and Sudan, drawing them to the brink of war.

However, Afro nationalists are convinced that apartheid Israel is behind the war using its proxy, Egypt, to fan the flames of ethnic tensions in an effort to obliterate the reforms initiated by Nobel laureate Abiy Ahmed and provide an avenue for plunder of that country’s resources by the West and China.

In the Sahel region, Western Sahara is locked in a war of decolonisation against the occupying forces of Morocco that has culminated into this week’s explosion of massive illegal migration from northern Morocco cities to the Spanish enclave, Ceuta.

In the Southern African Development Community ( SADC) - Mozambique is grappling with terrorist attacks from Ahl al- Sunnah wa al Jamma’ah ( ASWJ) in the northern town of Palma in the Cabo Degado Province which has left some 40, 000 people displaced thereby causing a large- scale humanitarian problem.

These are just some of the many flashpoints in Africa that have warranted the strident calls from all corners of the continent for the African Union, whose Chinese- built headquarters sits in the capital, Addis Ababa to intervene using its Peace and Security Architecture.

But, as these conflicts rage on, they only serve to prolong Africa’s second wave of liberation – the economic liberation promised by the African Continental Free Trade Area ( AcFTA), whose implementation was postponed last year to early 2021 ostensibly on account of COVID- 19.

If Africa is to enjoy real freedom, she must have full ownership and control of her God- given natural resources; she must resist and reject Eurocentric models of development, which are nothing else, but ploys to divide this rich continent through instigation and incitement that create opportunity for plunder and looting, oftentimes with our leaders’ acquiescence.

As we celebrate Africa Day on May 25 under the theme, ‘ Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for Building the Africa we Want’, we must first strive to create an environment of peace and security that is conducive for expressing our arts, culture and heritage.

Only then, can we build the Africa we want – an Africa that drives her own agenda, one that finances her development programmes, an Africa that produces what she consumes and sells her excess in a fair trading system.