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Is Africa a cemetery?

"When an African becomes rich, his bank accounts are in Switzerland. He travels to France for medical treatment. He invests in Germany. He buys from Dubai. He consumes Chinese. He prays in Rome or Mecca. His children study in Europe. He travels to Canada, USA, Europe for tourism. If he dies, he will be buried in his native country of Africa. Africa is just a cemetery for Africans. How can a cemetery be developed?”.
Joseph Adeiye
Point Blank


THIS quote is almost 4 years old and it has been shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter at different intervals. The same quote appeared on Facebook recently. However, AFP Fact Check used a social media monitoring tool called CrowdTangle to trace the earliest posts of this quote from October 2018. The quote appeared in French and English, but there is no evidence to support the claim that the words are President Putin’s.

A representative of Russia reacted to the quote some years ago and even if we absolve Putin of the statement, it is still deemed to be a relevant one. Africa is trying to rise above decades of political stagnation —or retrogression—, poverty, and inventive underachievement. Most of the woes of Africa is always easily linked to the ineptitude and avarice of its leaders. This is why the quote itself, manufactured or not, is something to chew on.

 

putinFirst off, what truths are contained in this quote? These rich Africans, do they really spend their money in the United States, Dubai, and the UK? How many Africans keep their kids in African countries when they can afford to raise them in Europe? How many wealthy Africans have Swiss bank accounts? And when a rich African dies in a London hospital, how often are they buried in a London cemetery? Funnily enough, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari can provide an answer on behalf of the Nigerian political elite. Aliko Dangote can also provide an answer for the African capitalists. Our president —and many African leaders before him— have frequented London for “routine medical” checkups while Dangote has revealed how he is going to open an American branch of his family business to secure most of his investment. Neither men would be buried outside Nigeria, or outside the African continent when the time comes for them to go back to the earth.

Frankly, it is a free world and we can look elsewhere for pleasure or habitation. But the problem with Africa has always been a problem of exploitation. Resources are mined from the continent and exported to enrich other continents. At a time in history, colonial masters were accused of enriching Europe at the expense of African nations, but today Africans have taken the place of those imperial powers (albeit indirectly). Natural resources are exported, then processed and imported at the cost of the African nations. Then public officials steal from public funds and invest the lucre in Europe. So we have made Africa a cow fattened not for its own benefit, and Africans are the butchers in this international abattoir.

In the end, we discover that we have only impoverished ourselves as we have failed to live by the philosophical essence of Africa —communal growth and development. The African must decide now that the African continent is not only good for its soil. Africans need to work for Africa. The greed in our midst must be uprooted. It is time for us to build an Africa, for Africans, by Africans. If not, who will meet you at home? This is home because all roads lead back here at
the end of the day, and what beauty is to be beheld in a fallow land housing marble mausoleums?