The Challenge for Africa 2

As we continue to read Wangari Maathai’s “Challenge for Africa,” we learn more about the challenges Africa faces and how we can help the African nations succeed against the odds and win. We continue to see marked history of colonialism and how that changes Africa to its current state and how detrimental the colonization process for. We also learn how problems facing Africa cannot simply be solved by throwing money at these countries but rather we need to first create an awareness of the problems.

One thing that was quite interesting to learn was how Africa has a history of a wonderful civilization and how today we don’t associate Africa with that rather we associate with barbarism, lack of education and culture and more tribal “caveman” things. This however is highly untrue and Wangari Maathai discusses how this image comes from colonialism.

Africa once thrived with development however as Western powers started moving into these countries, they came during the era of industrialization where things were changing and the Europeans had better technology. This impressed the natives and they welcomed the Europeans so they could learn about this technology; however Europeans were more interested in colonization and power. The most important invention they shared with Africa was the gun. The gun led to the conquest of Africa where the sticks and arrows could not resist this power.

The second thing that hurt the culture of Africa was the idea of religion. As various religions sent their missionaries to Africa, they started establishing the idea that African practices were old and did not exist in the modern world, that the African gods were not as great as the gods of the Europeans. This created an idea of inferiority amongst the Africans who thought that since gods have sent these humans scriptures, they must be the superior ones. This led to the fall of African culture creating a society that had no basis but to copy the European powers. However, European powers were only there to exploit so all they learned was to exploit their own people once Europeans left.

Another thing that we learned is that the problem of Africa cannot simply be solved by throwing money or donations at the nations. Wangari Maathai speaks about malaria and how bed nets are highly important in reducing the disease amongst children. However, there is not enough knowledge among the poor that these are more important for the children, and hence the adults end up using these bed nets leaving the children unprotected and hence leading to high mortality rates among children due to malaria. Even though we have provided these bed nets for free, the problem of malaria still exists at a significantly high level because of the lack of awareness and knowledge. It is the same scenario with other donations, whether it is tractors or water collection resources and so on. Hence what we truly need is to create awareness and knowledge.

Wangari Maathai touches upon a lot of good points in her book on how we need to change the image of Africa we hold in our minds. The image of an uncivilized Africa comes from the mindset of colonialism and if we continue to have that image we cannot help Africa. We also must create awareness and knowledge among the people of Africa, so they can help themselves and value their resources rather than throwing donations at them that are completely useless and have failed us for so long.