I think the most fundamental challenge is not white supremacy it's black inferiority and the abiding appetite amongst the Black Elite to function on the basis of white Embrace number one if we ourselves even our thieves are not patriotic when they steal from Africa they invest in Europe they don't believe the minister said fix our own government get a governance system the people in charge of governance systems steal and invest elsewhere as an indictment or an affirmation of their own incompetence and incapacity but the second bit is that I think both is Excellency musafaki professor lumumba and the minister indicated when you grow a disconnect between the people who give you legitimacy who are the ultimate resource for the transformation of Any Nation when you grow a disconnect between your culture America Cabral said every Revolution is first a cultural revolution a people must believe in themselves that way they are able to produce both citizens and leaders who are not only patriotic and competent but that are future focused and that are regenerative unfortunately for us we have constantly killed three forms of assets first asset we kill our babies and our young people by never exposing them and Rwanda is an exception to this to what it means to govern and what it means to negotiate what it means to compete number two you know in all our countries anybody the age group of the people sitting at this table when you are out of government you are finished the state has absolutely no use of the experience the expertise and the resources we are constantly going elsewhere to look for experts that we either have in the diaspora or we have in our countries the inability to build retain use our own local expertise and experience the Third is that we have created everything to be solely the Centric that most of our citizens either wait for God or wait for the leader or wait for foreigners and the day must come in Africa where pan-africanism is pan-africanism of the people no matter how brilliant institutions are Continental original as long as they are not nourished by the ideas of African intellectuals African artists and activists but there is hope many of you may not see it as hope the dominance of afrobeats and afropods in the world today sending a message if that can be used as a vehicle of cultural regeneration if what the young people have been able to do with tech can be used as a way of reimagining then what we are talking about as a phenomenon will end the third is that we can't keep sending all our people I know that is to be brain game for some people we can't keep sending all our young people to Europe to America and elsewhere without creating Pathways back why France Fanon said they realized that the empire oh the center came and took the best from a monsters and took them to their best institutions and they emptied them of their own culture and their own sense of being and they filled them with ideas of how to be good Europeans and Americans and when they returned their kitten King realized that their children had not come back what had come back were Echoes of the Empire you and I having had the opportunities to serve outside our continent when we return we are not trying to establish little Europe's little France a little America there must be an authentic way that's why rwanda's Revolution is not only leadership it is Homegrown Solutions not for Rwanda only but for the whole world not just for Africa we cannot assert ourselves culturally intellectually spiritually as long as we are leprous and dependent we denote and we have not controlled our mining sector we do not and we have not controlled our data and statistics we do not and have not controlled our education we do not and have not controlled our security whether it's digital security or its generic Continental security whether the threats are exogenous or indigenous we do not and have not controlled our communication channels this is something that's been realized since the Inception of the African Union and if you think about this as we talk about unconstitutional changes of governments and other things there are several things that are important as we reflect on foreign interference State and nation building how we transition between Independence and the Cold War and how it played out the use of mercenaries military coups and capture and retention of power and Etc in statistical terms chairperson there were 200 cools in Africa between 1965 and 2012. in the 1960s there was at least one coup every 60 days in the 1970s barely 18 years after Ghana's Independence at least 85 percent of African States had some cool experience or the other and West Africa accounted for almost 44. 44 percent of those uh having the cruise between 1958 and 2008.
there was a temporary reprieve in the period post 1990. some academics have suggested this because Africa had become more democratic I want to disabuse you of that notion because it's lazy intellectualism what had changed was that Western interest in a unipolar world in changing regimes had dissipated the West no longer needed to use Force there was no competitor either ideological or otherwise what had essentially happened there was dominance of one set of interests so as we reflect on unconstitutional change of government it's not just mere tinkering at the local level but it also what explains the outstart from kruma the assassination of lumumba the assassination of Sankara the assassination of America Cabral the assassination of Samora Machel the house of secretory what is the fact that in a unipolar world the appetite to change had dissipated as we see greater polarization between the West the East and the middle we're going to see once again an intensification of interference less than 15 percent of that interference chair will be justified as follows protecting and promoting human rights or preventing genocide protecting lives and property of citizens fighting terrorism violent extremism or stop in some form of unproductive ideology however what we know normal intervention happens except it is in the interest and the propagation of the political economic social cultural Russia and other strategic interests of those who have power but there are direct consequences and they've been for Africa which are chaos and instability development International internationalization of conflicts Regional instability destruction of cultural and other heritages we saw in Timber through destruction of State institutions and public services World autism and violent extremism as we've seen in the horn and in the Sahel collapse of the formal economy and debt poverty and inequality sexual and gender-based violence and the pillage of our economies now if we imagine in this framing that these are what we're dealing with what are those channels of transmission I want to suggest to you chair that the first transmission of interference is an incompetent corrupt and ideologically unclear leadership the second is a structure in the bureaucracy of government and administration that is beholden to the white case or to external gaze within the public administration you harvest intelligence and you harvest division the third is religion as you rightly say it religion and it's not just Christianity we have seen the competition for different sets of Islam in the horn in the Mediterranean and it's not just religion it's ngos International and National not just those but churches as well and I'm talking about these as institutions But ultimately Steve Biko describes the vector of interference he says the most potent weapon in the my in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed if you do not control what you educate if you do not control what you communicate if you do not control your narrative you develop what we've seen a disconnect between in the leadership and the citizenry a disconnect between the old and the young a disconnect between the analog generation that has power and the virtual generation that is unemployed a disconnect that is easy to employ then the future of this intervention chair data and the digital platforms will Define the most potent weapon in interference you do not need to do it physically it will be done remotely and lastly chair I want to suggest to you the most second most important is economic fragility a people that cannot feed themselves that depend on foreigners to feed them will become slaves either willingly or by force until this continent assures its stomach infrastructure by its ability to feed itself until this continent assured assures its mental infrastructure by the ability to think for itself and ideate then this continent will be thoughtful by others fed by others there is no liberty liberty without these liberated intellectual zones and the ability to feed yourself so interference happens because of our own inferiority and because of the supremacist views of others my father told me a story of a man who was given a job as a janitor at the school his job was to lock the gate every day at 6 pm and then some people in the neighborhood came and informally redistributed the fence some of you would say stall the fence of the school this man Faithfully locked the gate but the fence had been stolen and the purpose of locking the gate was to ensure safety if the fence is stolen put back the fence so let me explain what this a young Zimbabwean businessman called busisa moyo characterized the problem of Africa he said we are not broke we are broken right and there is a difference it's a very wealthy continent in terms of its human resource when Africa when the United States decided to appoint ahead for pepper they took away from my senior here the chairperson of the African Union he's head of Africa CDC they are African strategically or black person strategically adding very strategic institutions in the global North why am I saying this my Elder Ashraf asked me about narrative there are five modes of narrative first mode is action that's what I think the chairperson of the African Union is saying that people will not believe what we say until they see us act according to our beliefs pan-africanism is not a theory it's the lived solidarity that made the Ethiopians give Nelson Mandela a passport that made Senegal in civil servants contribute one dollar each every month for the liberation of South Africa that made Zambia take care of us as zimbabweans and South Africans as we fought for our Liberation that made Uganda take care of the comrades that now run this country if pan-africanism has no active solidarity action nor active affirmative action the words are meaningless because even the devil can cut scripture the second is dialogic we have for too long used authority to govern our people and not dialogue and in this respect I must commend my colleagues and comrades here in Rwanda because they are able to hold leadership meeting where citizens talk to leaders I am hoping the African Union chairperson and the African Union commission chairperson can actually convince with ecosuch a conference each year of the citizens not just NGO a conference of the citizens drawn from the the continent and talk because often we only get to talk to our leaders in conferences in the United States and in Europe and thought there is no pan-africanism without doing what Michelle Mugo said create liberated zones of pan-african is thought when we think it's our European theories who are thinking when we speak it's our American teachers worship it is okay to have gone to America to learn it is okay to have gone to Asia to learn but what is the influence of African intellectuals and thoughts on what the African Union does on what our governments do on what our civil society does number three we need to describe oppression I I am sorry I hear this a lot when I come to run you have to hear me I'm running so you cannot do anything about me I have immunity here um you people like to say let's forget let's not blame anyone now please stop that nonsense when the Holocaust happened against the Jews it was 1940s 45 not a single African country other than Ethiopian those who had not been colonized was free the first African country got independent 1957. there is not a single Jewish person who will allow you to forget the Holocaust and it's in fact their crimes not just in Israel across the world against denial of the Holocaust U.
S foreign policy Israeli foreign policy is very key it's a central issue Africans for some reason must forget something that happened 50 years ago if you are Zimbabwe eight years ago listen we must always remind our friends from Europe and elsewhere that slavery was a crime against humanity as is colonialism and neo-colonialism that killing Sankara in 1984 because you are opposed to Communism and plunging his country into chaos that you are now trying to solve as a problem of poor governance is a shared responsibility so we will take responsibility for our nakedness but for goodness sake for goodness sake a naked Emperor cannot lecture us about how to be clothed and I'll tell you the contradictions when Europeans first came here if you come to the south of continent ladies did not wear long skirts and they did not cover their top then they said no no that's indecent so we covered everything including the head and then the Europeans have decided to go nude now now the dress code in Europe is pre-colonial Africa and then when our kids try and dress up that way we say it's an African we are confused around ownership so lastly Jeff person the taboos you see chairperson we need to talk about global anti-black racism the treatment of African migrant labors in the Middle East in the Arab worlds and in the Asian worlds and in Europe is a matter for the African Union to constantly pronounce itself on and I'm glad chairperson you issued a statement on George Floyd but I'm waiting for the African Union resolution from last January on reparations there was a formal policy of the United States government in 2015 for reparations by companies behind the Holocaust there needs to be the conversational reparations is not to be settled by African political Elites right today Zimbabwe is paying back white commercial Farmers reparations but when you talk about any reparations it's like the black body is not worth repair what we must do is endure be resilient go forward Don't Look Back trudge on but today with the scramble of Africa that PLO was talking about they will interfere here whether we put in place the right policies or we put in place the good governance why they need the lithium and if your right policy is not consistent with their green energy transition that they control they will take you out and they will cause instability we cannot do it as single countries we are not uniting because it's the good thing to do we are not uniting because it's the principle thing to do if we don't unite we will perish if each one of our small countries as economically and viable as we are Rush In order to prove distinctiveness I'll tell you what will happen we will be so fragmented intellectually politically our institutions will have no meaning let me end with something more positive I think pan-africanism flavor is alive today you adults you only listen when you have had a few glasses of wine through afrobeat and of course you don't like this thing they are always singing about body parts and such and so on and so forth I want to suggest to you one of the most revolutionary things that the African Union under the leadership of the the chairperson here has done is to talk about Arts culture and Heritage not as entertainment not as add-on but this part of Imagining the future economy is to talk about the digital not as part of little things you do but as part of building the economy all that's left now is how do we defend African art culture and Heritage not only in Africa but globally how do we make sure it is the mainstream of AFC FTA along with all the other big things we do and how do we in the digital economy make sure we are not consumers of products that are produced elsewhere and not part of the production chain if we do that our pan-africanism is economic our pan-africanism is cultural or pan-africanism is intellectual our pan-africanism is also spiritual just remember what Chino Achebe said we are not the children of Africa we are the parents of Africa because the Africa that we want is yet to be born and we are the ones that history has charged with the responsibility to give back to give birth to the Africa we want so whatever we are frustrated with with respect to the African Union our responsibilities how do we make the normative Frameworks and the institutions work but how do we build the repository of expertise so that the African Union at any given time has access to the best brains the best technical expertise in any field on the continent the intervention in Iraq was couched in very benign terms the intervention in Libya was couched in benign terms I could give you 100 interventions where the justification objectively speaking was on the basis that there was evidence either of genocide or evidence I'm sitting in Rwanda the International Community stood by as the genocide against the Tutsi happened yet in the same year they were intervening in West Africa in the construct of benign and malign is controlled and related to the question of narrative and strategic self-interest we've often not paid enough attention and thank you chairperson of the African Union for educating us on how the international Forum of decision making the security Council and other fora including at some stage how we transact within the international criminal court and other platform that evidence and that was my point we don't Control Data we don't control digital platforms we therefore are not controlling narrative in both analog and digital forms what can practically be done we do need to speak to Europeans not as victims because the Erasure of the contribution in European consciousness of Africans to modernity and civility has constructed a white supremacist views that sees the evolution of modernity as a singularly European contribution and it is only now that our young researchers are beginning to excavate the contributions of black people of Africans towards inventions because until now the province of economy was not the province of black people in my country in Zimbabwe when land was taken a British Court gave a judgment that said the question before them and who owned the land I said one thing is certain it cannot be the native because the native has no sense of ownership it was on that basis that land was taken number two on the question of Economics even we pejoratively only talk about our people as informal law in formal economy info yet the informal economy is formal that's how India developed through its cottage industry that's why we have a psychotic addiction to Colonial definitions of what and that's why Professor Ashraf is correct it's not just a narrative about our contribution historically it's a narrative about our contribution now our young people who developed m-pesa which is not being used globally who developed usaidi which has been used by over 300 000 organizations including the Japanese the U.
