History Historically, the hegemony of the African
feudal lords has never been catalysts for progress,
safe only for promoting debilitating internecine
wars, pillaging communities and slave raiding.
Sadly, we see the reminiscence of this hapless past
in contemporary Africa. Once again Africans are
living precariously and are susceptible to slavery.
Everyday across the Mediterranean, Africans are
being shipped across the sea in the most inhuman
conditions to places where they are treated with
hostility and indignation, slaving away only to
remit money home to impoverished relatives. A
clear indication that the African economy cannot
be able to absorb its able bodied, employable
youths.
Arguably, if as has been the case after the end
of colonization all over Africa that economic
production is much below that capacity to absorb
the ever-growing army of youths that form the
bulk of the African population, it would appear
logical to devise doable social development
initiatives to garner the underused capacity of
the continent’s economy to address society’s
challenges. Mass job-creating initiatives such
as building Community Parks, constructing
bridges and access roads; river channelization
are all doable community development projects.
Plantations on partnership or cooperative, or
contract bases can transform subsistent peasant
farming into modern extensive farming that
will, in turn, lead to efficiency in food storage
and distribution. Initiatives to build new towns,
infrastructures, and a raft of others, executed
exclusively with the local labor forces would all
have the additional advantage of triggering the
private sector investment and job creation that
would help overcome lack of economic capacity.
These never happened when Africans were
being massively shipped to slave on plantations
in the Americas in the 18th century, it never
happened when Africans labored on plantations
under colonization at home. And although food
production today throughout Africa, at best,
continues to be at the subsistence level, yet
all the legacies of colonial systematized mass
agricultural production, functioning urban
infrastructures have all become derelict followed
by barbaric plundering of the assets. In Nigeria,
none of the attempts to restore the systems has
yielded significant results. A wanton prodigality
of the huge resource-endowment in Africa.