Why #PoweringAfrica Matters
Joshua J. Omojuwa
Founder and Chief Strategist, Alpha Reach, and Board Member, Halifax International Security Forum
China, speaking via DeepSeek, just showed that they are ready to go bar for bar and code for code with anyone. They made an unprecedented dent on global markets yesterday and the effects will reverberate for months, if not years, to come.
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Any president who doesn’t understand that the world is no longer a place where one country can push and shove everyone in one direction will dance to the music of their own delusion. We need not love one another - better if we do - but our destinies are tied now.
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And as for African countries, the most effective negotiating tool in this world is wealth and power. Anything less puts you in a disadvantaged position, irrespective of what they promise you. A rich person may tell a poor one, “this is a relationship of equals”, but the poor one must not be foolish enough to believe it. If they are richer and more powerful than you, if you can’t feed your people and they can, if you can’t protect your people and they can, if you can’t educate your people and they can, please, don’t be deluded. That can never be a relationship of equals.
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And it’s not their work to do, it’s yours. In this world, power will answer to power, wealth will answer to wealth. Short of either or both, you can only live at the mercy of the wealthy and powerful. You’d hope that they are kind to you, but why hope when you can simply just make your own advancements? Every country is looking out for itself. If they weren’t, there’s enough money to address global poverty. But no one will fix what is yours to fix as a country. Especially when your disadvantages are their profit. How else will they attract the best of yours if they aren’t offering visibly better opportunities?
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That’s exactly why African Development Bank Group 's #PoweringAfrica and #Mission300 are essential. Short of these practical objectives, we’d continue to get left behind. We need our own answers to these global challenges, we can’t afford to always wait for others to answer the big questions before we know what to do. And powering the continent is a prerequisite for everything else we need to build.
Photos by the extraordinary Tolani Alli
领英推荐
Management Consulting || Development Economics & Finance || Impacting Humanity
1 个月Even in a smaller unit of Family, no one will. If you think you and your generation have a place in this world then you must be ready to do the work. Thanks J.J. for this well documented thought.
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1 个月How much I love the focus of your writing on stirring us up to stand for ourselves as Africans and not wait for someone to come to our aid when obviously, no one will come. Our amiable JJ! Thank you once again, sir.