Marking Africa Day yesterday was the perfect cue for us as South Africans to seriously reflect on our conduct. Doing this on an ongoing basis is necessary, specifically if we are to give shape to the glorious future of a united and prosperous Africa that we all dream of.Dr Martin Luther King, Jr is quoted as saying: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
As was evident in the xenophobic attacks on fellow Africans, these two shortcomings – ignorance and stupidity – can cause irreparable damage to humanity and its aspirations.
Recently, I listened to my new superhero, innovator and Harvard University energy-engineering graduate Siyabulela Xuza, addressing entrepreneurs at an incubation session hosted by the Seda Nelson Mandela Bay ICT incubator.
He showed us a map of the globe that depicted Africa as a continent still in the dark.
However, contrary to the popular view of Africa as a hopeless case given the famine, big-man politics, civil unrest, war, corruption etc, he expressed great hope for Africa, suggesting a new meaning for the darkness: that it presented an abundance of opportunities just waiting to be uncovered.
Erik Hersman who tweets as @whiteafrican in his blog asks: “Africa is still dark infrastructurally, technologically and on top of that, the world just doesn’t care. What does that mean for Africa and Africans?”
Citing Xuza’s example best provides an answer to this question.
Being South Africa’s youngest innovator and the freshest member of the African Union, Xuza contends that for him the African challenge is a wide open opportunity to drive his passion for harnessing the power of the sun for clean affordable energy.
He has conducted research geared towards making cheaper solar cells and assesses the commercial viability of solar technologies.
In recent times, Xuza is cited as having been to Mombassa, Kenya, to assist in finding sustainable solutions to some of the most pressing economic and social issues facing Africans today.
Closer to home there is Lovemore Nalube, a Zimbabwean national and a University of Fort Hare information technology graduate, who has just won the prestigious Gold Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for his employer, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).
Throughout his career, which he began at his alma mater, Nalube has received accolades for his innovative work.
His recent award was for the work Nalube does with his team, live streaming video footage of CPUT graduation ceremonies and thereby giving people an opportunity to see their classmates and loved ones graduate. The last live-streaming session attracted over 15000 viewers.
Winning the IABC award not only brings Nalube further prominence, but CPUT also shares in his limelight through the media mileage – something that all academic institutions need.
These two examples are just two that point to the abundance of opportunities on offer for Africans who are willing to go after them.
Further of the value that will accrue to us as nations if we embrace each other.
While over time each country can organically grow its own skills, global competitiveness and the predatory nature of globalisation/capitalism limits the amount of time that nations have to incubate expertise. By and large, it has to be imported.
In this regard, the utilisation of African skills has to be a priority.
In the book Treading the waters of history: Perspective on the ANC edited by Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo et al, the former President, Thabo Mbeki, is cited for using the African renaissance vision as a means to convince fellow South Africans – who had for years been indoctrinated by racist white rulers to view Africa as a place of darkness and disease which they existed apart from – to embrace, not just a new South African identity, but a new African identity as well.
“We need to see African opportunities,” Mbeki encouraged South Africans in June 1999. “No longer capable of being falsely defined as a European outpost in Africa, we are an African nation in the complex process simultaneously of formation and renewal ... We will work to discover and claim the African heritage, for the benefit of our young generation.”
In pursuit of a developmental agenda that seeks to empower the very young, the Eastern Cape Information Technology Initiative (ECITI), as a sector stimulator for broad information communication technology (ICT) entrepreneurship and industrialisation will from the next month pursue an inclusive programme of setting up ICT forums in three regions across the province.
The forums will be multiple stakeholder ecosystems that allow for inquisitive engagement on broad socio-economic challenges that could be solved through ICT platforms.
While the initiative is meant to stimulate localised high-tech innovation, entrepreneurship and industrialisation, we are fully aware that these cannot be achieved in isolation.
There are African states that have long passed the technological milestones that we are still to reach. We would do well in interacting with them and strengthening trade relations in that process.
Xenophobia inside South Africa and anywhere else on our beloved continent should not be tolerated.
While Africa works to “create peaceful communities who respect, protect and promote the human rights of all people”, as described by Lesley Ann Foster of the Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre, cross-border cooperation and trade should be promoted.
In my view, this year’s Africa Day would be valuable if it entrenched in the minds, not just of South Africans, but of the populations of the continent, the notion that “African opportunities are for Africans”.
The African Union needs to mobilise for the development of common policies that promote a cross-pollination of ideas, entrepreneurship and trade through constitutive agreements among African states.
Unless all Africans start to see the value of harmonious relations across national borders, we may not have seen the end of the shameful xenophobic attacks that deny our youth so many opportunities to attain greatness.
Mncedi Mgwigwi is the executive manager, Eastern Cape Information Technology Initiative (ECITI)
Rich promise lies beneath dark shroud over Africa
As was evident in the xenophobic attacks on fellow Africans, these two shortcomings – ignorance and stupidity – can cause irreparable damage to humanity and its aspirations.
Recently, I listened to my new superhero, innovator and Harvard University energy-engineering graduate Siyabulela Xuza, addressing entrepreneurs at an incubation session hosted by the Seda Nelson Mandela Bay ICT incubator.
He showed us a map of the globe that depicted Africa as a continent still in the dark.
However, contrary to the popular view of Africa as a hopeless case given the famine, big-man politics, civil unrest, war, corruption etc, he expressed great hope for Africa, suggesting a new meaning for the darkness: that it presented an abundance of opportunities just waiting to be uncovered.
Erik Hersman who tweets as @whiteafrican in his blog asks: “Africa is still dark infrastructurally, technologically and on top of that, the world just doesn’t care. What does that mean for Africa and Africans?”
Citing Xuza’s example best provides an answer to this question.
Being South Africa’s youngest innovator and the freshest member of the African Union, Xuza contends that for him the African challenge is a wide open opportunity to drive his passion for harnessing the power of the sun for clean affordable energy.
He has conducted research geared towards making cheaper solar cells and assesses the commercial viability of solar technologies.
In recent times, Xuza is cited as having been to Mombassa, Kenya, to assist in finding sustainable solutions to some of the most pressing economic and social issues facing Africans today.
Closer to home there is Lovemore Nalube, a Zimbabwean national and a University of Fort Hare information technology graduate, who has just won the prestigious Gold Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for his employer, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT).
Throughout his career, which he began at his alma mater, Nalube has received accolades for his innovative work.
His recent award was for the work Nalube does with his team, live streaming video footage of CPUT graduation ceremonies and thereby giving people an opportunity to see their classmates and loved ones graduate. The last live-streaming session attracted over 15000 viewers.
Winning the IABC award not only brings Nalube further prominence, but CPUT also shares in his limelight through the media mileage – something that all academic institutions need.
These two examples are just two that point to the abundance of opportunities on offer for Africans who are willing to go after them.
Further of the value that will accrue to us as nations if we embrace each other.
While over time each country can organically grow its own skills, global competitiveness and the predatory nature of globalisation/capitalism limits the amount of time that nations have to incubate expertise. By and large, it has to be imported.
In this regard, the utilisation of African skills has to be a priority.
In the book Treading the waters of history: Perspective on the ANC edited by Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo et al, the former President, Thabo Mbeki, is cited for using the African renaissance vision as a means to convince fellow South Africans – who had for years been indoctrinated by racist white rulers to view Africa as a place of darkness and disease which they existed apart from – to embrace, not just a new South African identity, but a new African identity as well.
“We need to see African opportunities,” Mbeki encouraged South Africans in June 1999. “No longer capable of being falsely defined as a European outpost in Africa, we are an African nation in the complex process simultaneously of formation and renewal ... We will work to discover and claim the African heritage, for the benefit of our young generation.”
In pursuit of a developmental agenda that seeks to empower the very young, the Eastern Cape Information Technology Initiative (ECITI), as a sector stimulator for broad information communication technology (ICT) entrepreneurship and industrialisation will from the next month pursue an inclusive programme of setting up ICT forums in three regions across the province.
The forums will be multiple stakeholder ecosystems that allow for inquisitive engagement on broad socio-economic challenges that could be solved through ICT platforms.
While the initiative is meant to stimulate localised high-tech innovation, entrepreneurship and industrialisation, we are fully aware that these cannot be achieved in isolation.
There are African states that have long passed the technological milestones that we are still to reach. We would do well in interacting with them and strengthening trade relations in that process.
Xenophobia inside South Africa and anywhere else on our beloved continent should not be tolerated.
While Africa works to “create peaceful communities who respect, protect and promote the human rights of all people”, as described by Lesley Ann Foster of the Masimanyane Women’s Support Centre, cross-border cooperation and trade should be promoted.
In my view, this year’s Africa Day would be valuable if it entrenched in the minds, not just of South Africans, but of the populations of the continent, the notion that “African opportunities are for Africans”.
The African Union needs to mobilise for the development of common policies that promote a cross-pollination of ideas, entrepreneurship and trade through constitutive agreements among African states.
Unless all Africans start to see the value of harmonious relations across national borders, we may not have seen the end of the shameful xenophobic attacks that deny our youth so many opportunities to attain greatness.
Mncedi Mgwigwi is the executive manager, Eastern Cape Information Technology Initiative (ECITI)
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