The dirty Africa, we hate speaking about

I belong to a new generation of Africans who believe in taking responsibility. For that to happen we must have a candid assessment of our continent, its good sides, the bad and the ugly. The sad truth is that the majority in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to live in dirty, sub-human, outright shameful conditions with little dignity and hygiene. The tragedy is that the gap between our living standards and those of the developed world keeps widening. Anytime an outsider points out this very unfortunate state of affairs, we the keyboard warriors beat them into a pulp, we rush and take a few high resolution pictures of our 'Beverly Hills' with our high-end Western and Asian manufactured phones and tablets to protect the ‘Africa is on the rise' narrative. Yet in our hearts, our conscience is quietly gnawing at us, well aware that less than 5% of our population live in such estates. Perhaps, for us to begin the hard work of building our continent, we need to first acknowledge the correct awkward position we find ourselves in, with no flattering words. We must then start tackling our issues, the simpler ones first, moving to the more complex ones, we must stop this foolishness of competing to send satellites to the moon, while the majority of our citizens still have no running water, when our toddlers still don’t even have basic furniture in schools, while many in our populations still relieve themselves in bushes. We must ask ourselves the hard questions on how we got to where we are. And don't even mention colonialism, unfair trade, brain drain, conspiracy by the west et al, why haven't we thought of colonizing the West ourselves? The point is not that we should, but rather that in this highly competitive world, every nation on the face of the earth should rightfully& aggressively but within legal means fight for the best life possible for its citizens, why are we busy blaming those nations doing it excellently, while we are doing nothing for our people…