EDITOR –AS an African, if you believe in the concept of ‘development’ and you want to develop Africa, you’ll first have to overcome your inferiority complex and self – hate.

Why is it so?

As development is understood as Westernisation of Africa, you’ll constantly feel inferior and in admiration of the civilisation you wish to emulate. Your only dream would be to replace anything indigenous by something European-like. And in your scale of values, anything local will be inferior to anything European.

You’ll unconsciously abandon your culture, your identity, everything that make you African, and throw yourself in an elusive quest to identify yourself with alien culture and identity.

In the name of development, which is the secular religion of colonialism, you’ll abandon your African name, you’ll abandon your mother language, African spirituality, you will hate your skin colour, you will hate your hair, your food, your entire self. Your secret dream would be ‘to become developed’, and you won’t even know what it means ‘to be developed’.

You’ll become a confused person.

In contrast to the development concept promoted by the World Bank, we, children of Africa, are talking about African renaissance, which means going back to our culture, our past to leverage the knowledge of our ancestors to recover our lost dignity, recover from our humiliation and build an Africa resilient to its predatory neighbours.

We don’t want Africa development. We want African renaissance.

African renaissance is different from African development. The first will make you proud to be African. The second will make you a house negro. – Nana Widzo