May be Africa is a developed nation!

“a nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the souls of its people.” -Mahatma Gandhi

Although abundant and rich in many natural resources, Africa continues to struggle under the label of ‘underdeveloped regions’. It’s because unfortunately we live in a new world with old definitions developed by rich old white men, leaving out the perspectives of many. All the meanings that our societies hold are embedded in these definitions and languages. Humans define at their own convenience and start believing in them as the gospel truth. Now one might say what’s the problem with that. Let me show you!

As a kid all of us were told that ‘it’s a cat’, and so we believed. Every time we see a cat, we declare it a cat again, reinforcing the meaning of that word, without actually focusing on the features of the cat itself. Now try applying this analogy to the concept of ‘growth’. On the basis of this concept our nations define their development. As you may know, the most common indicator for growth in nations is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Blinded by this understanding of growth, nations have just set on a never ending race of growth in terms of assets. But what about the things that are not quantifiable? They eventually lose importance. Now think about development! As per our modern conceptualisation of ‘development’ our focus is on developing infrastructure, markets, businesses and conditions of our societies. But no one accounts for the cultures.

This materialistic and mechanical definitions of national growth favours the developed nations. So, what if we change the metrics today? And start ranking nations by the richness and goodness of the cultures that reside within their citizens (I understand it’s unrealistic because one can’t simply measure that, but humour me!). I assure you African nations will find high ranks in such a chart.

Africa is a gigantic continent with diverse cultures and 54 distinct countries that can be broadly categorised as the Middle East and the Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has a dense political past and a broad religious history. Even though many African countries were colonised by many European nations and the British, a lot of their culture remains well preserved. Although the practices differ among different sects, they all emerge from an unifying principle of Ubuntu. The meaning of Ubuntu is as beautiful as the word itself. Ubuntu signifies the importance of community and solidarity. It’s the idea that growth is not individualistic and it is true growth only when it’s growth for all. It dismisses personal gain (generally disguised as growth) as growth, instead emphasises on collective gain. This makes African communities closely knit and gentler than those cannibalising to inflate their GDPs.

It’s this Ubuntu in their veins that motivates people like Kwami Williams (an African American), an engineer from MIT to leave everything in a (so-called) developed nation and return to his homeland Ghana because he couldn’t see his community in distress.

This makes me wonder that maybe in a battle of meaningless growth, societies might be losing what actually matters. So, maybe instead of forcing the mechanical societies of the west on Africa for its apparent ‘development’, the developed world should learn from them to build communities and not nations.

P.S. Think about the definitions of ‘community’ and ‘ nation’.