Africa must not remain the hungry cow that produces enough milk to feed the world

Africa is the hungry cow that produces enough milk to feed the rest of the world. Is it not ironic?

This hungry cow is not hungry because she has no food within her yard; neither is she hungry because she is incapable of generating enough food on her table.

The simple truth is that, this cow is hungry because an iron-lock has been placed on her head to cover her mouth.

At the same time, her children are threatened against their lives to accept what they obviously know to be unacceptable. Hence, the hungry cow we see today.

Sadly, those who milk Africa every day are not just greedy people who seek selfish benefit from her riches; they are also wicked monsters who join efforts to starve her so that they can derive happiness and pleasure from the sighting of her suffering and pain.

Let us start by giving deep considerations to the following:

For more than 60 years of independence, no African country is allowed to trade their naturally endowed resources in their own sovereign currencies to ensure that true values of those resources are translated into economic development and empowerment on the African continent.

Any attempt by any African leader who tries to break this global economic system, that was deliberately designed and instituted to keep Africa under unending poverty, is either assassinated or removed from power.

The real threat did not start with Patrice Lumumba of DR Congo or Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso; neither did it end with the sad removal and assassination of our dear Brother Gaddafi, all of us are victims and whoever sort to challenge this system need to be aware of the true consequence.

Today, the masses of Africa are made to believe that they are suffering because of the corrupt nature of their leaders, however, our under development is designed by something far greater than corruption.

After all, corruption is even more abundant in the global system than it is on the African continent, I need not to start pointing direct fingers but I know very well what I am talking about.

Here is the real reason why Africa, with all her huge natural and human resources, continue to remain poor and may have to remain as such for a very long time:

When we (Africa) need a car or anything from the colonizers, we work hard to get their monies to pay for our wants; (this means that, whatever we demand from them, we exchange that with our labour which is of equal in value to what we are taking from them.

This, in turn, creates value in their economies); when we fail to work in their economy to obtain their currencies.

We only have the option of going to the global financial market to put more of our monies on the supply side to demand for their currencies to pay for such wants (when this happens, we create demand for their currencies as a commodity, and once demand for these currencies increases, the value of their currencies also increases), they then gain value on their currencies and we lose value in return.

On the other hand, when they (the world) need our valuable resources, we are told that, we need foreign exchange and as a result, we allow them to print their valueless papers (in a form of money) to exchange for our valuable resources (this means, they take away all our resources without creating any value in our economies).

Imagine, if Africa told the world that “when you need our Gold, Diamond, Oil and so forth, you must pay for them in our African currencies”.

Other than that, they have to go to the global financial market to demand for our currencies and this will mean that the value of our currencies will increase rather than the depreciation of exchange rates as we experience each day in every part of Africa.

At this stage, let me point out to you that, it costs less than 50 cents to print 100 Dollar or 100 Euros note, but it costs more than 100 dollars to mine 2g of gold from the ground.

So how can we genuinely exchange 2 grammes of gold for 50 cents if not for exploitation?

If we allow China, America the UK or whoever, to demand for our resources with their own paper money, we are basically saying that we have no control of those resources since these people can freely print any amount of those monies to take away those resources of ours.

Our economy can generate true value from the huge resources we are endowed with only when our currencies are backed by these resources, and those resources are exchanged in our own sovereign currencies.

Truth must be told, if the worlds are allowed to print their monies to buy our resources then Africa must also be able to print our monies and use them to buy whatever we need from them.

If not, then they must also come and work to get our money before using that to buy our resources like we also work for their monies to buy their resources.

Okwere is a Pan Africanist and a senior member of the East African Community Youth Ambassadors Platform.