Opinions of Monday, 5 June 2017

Columnist: Kwaku A. Danso

I weep for Africa

Africa is a big market and Israel wants to expand their economy Africa is a big market and Israel wants to expand their economy

Any joint summit of nations' leaders is meant for a mutual benefit of their people. Prime Minister Netanyahu's Speech is brilliant and to the point!

Africa is a big market and Israel wants to expand their economy. Period!

Reading all this makes me somehow mad that our African leaders, for selfish reasons will rather take advice and seek consultation in SOLVING PROBLEMS of technology, IT services, Agro-Science, energy, health care and pharmaceuticals, water, communication or internet security, from white people but not from their own sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and uncles the nation invested in, to go study overseas in the last 50 or so years!

Some of us are just too old now, and can't even trust living in Ghana full time mostly due to our semi-abandoned and dilapidated hospitals! A young friend who left his family in Colorado doing business in Ghana died on April 14 of a minor problem. Our MPs and ‘honourables’ run to South Africa or overseas when they need serious health care! Shame on our leaders! But shame on us also for allowing such leadership!! It is time the youth challenged mediocrity and took their destinies in their hands to demand the same progress other nations have achieved, and do it with our own trained skills!

I know Ghanaian experts in all these areas Israel is engaged in and we should never forget the factories we closed down after Nkrumah was overthrown, due to the envy and hatred, are the same ones which would employ our medical, pharmaceutical, electronics, communications, agricultural and physical scientists! I know a friend, Dr. Kwaku Osafo who went to Israel on Ghana government or foreign scholarship to study Agric Engineering in the late 1960s. Many thousands went to the UK, US, Canada, Australia, as also to Germany, Sweden, Norway and the Soviet Union!

Why didn't we absorb them and use their skills to develop our country? Are we that stupid or self-destructive wicked people? Don't be offended! Even if you don't like Kwame Nkrumah and he is gone, how about the factory producing the medication and products we use?

So Israel – Netanyahu – please give us a break!

You can convince the wide-eyed charmed African leaders and I cannot blame you! Life is war! Every nation seeks their own interest and if these Africans will not invest in their own people, go for it! Sell them your technology and skilled talent!

I weep for Africa!

May the same God we all worship be with our fellow Africans.

God bless our motherland Ghana!