Thursday, January 9, 2020

African Spirituality and Cultures are not Religions




I am trying very hard to find a way to explain why I always say that Africa has never had a religion except those which were introduced to the continent by imperialists. And also, why I say that religion has nothing to do with spirituality and in that line, religion is a handmade of conquerors which is used as a tool for control and exploitation. Hopefully, this piece may contribute in helping us to gain some understanding.
In fact, religion is a technique or an institution designed and used by an oppressor to dominate and exploit his target group. It normally claims monopoly to an access to a superior God. Equally, it spreads the culture of those who control the religion by projecting such culture as the sanctioning way of life by the superior God. Finally, the goals of religion normally consists of attracting more and more people in order that it becomes a powerful worldwide movement (capitalism). It achieves this by spreading lies of fear particularly among children and infants in order to place a lifelong chain on their brain to prevent them from analyzing the validity of contents of that religion.
Religion is heavily structured with cultural superiority and inferiority concepts which are used to turn a group of people against their own culture and traditions, hence, tricking the oppressed to consider the culture of their oppressor as the superior way of life. For example, since European got hold of Christianity, European traditional marriage has become the acceptable Christian Marriage to the extent that in countries like Ghana, the original traditional marriage is now called Engagement. This has become so seriously to the extent that in some Instances, after performing or the traditional rights for marriage, couples are forbidden to have sex until they perform the Europeans traditional marriage. This case is no different from what is happening in many African Muslims communities.
On the other hand, spirituality is a practice at the individual level and it makes no effort to lure-in other people and turning that practice of spirituality into a mass-movement. However, in order to let you feel inferior in what you have, your colonizers have to put your true spirituality and their religious lies into one basket as if they are the same. 

In a true practice of spirituality, no one will go to another person to convince him or her to leave their deity and come and join in the worshiping of another deity because of its superiority!
For example, a person who has spiritual connectivity to Ogun deity in Nigeria will not travel to Ghana to tell observers of Nogokpo deity to leave their spirituality to come and follow Ogun because it is superior!
Today, you may not be aware that ‘God Almighty’ is a cultural superiority concept created by your oppressor to tricking you into seeing spirituality in the image of a man who does not look like you, hence, making you become a slave to that man forever.
What you have to know is that:
When someone changes your name; that is not spirituality but a cultural superiority!
When someone changes your believes and traditions; that is not spirituality but a total dominance!
When someone strategically targets your children and feed them with alien information of lies and fear; that is not spirituality but a deceit and mental damage!
When European and Arabic missionaries sailed to Africa with the God Almighty Concept, they were not on a spirituality mission, but on a mission of Economic, Political, and Cultural enslavement and dominance.
After all, those missionaries did not come to Africa on the back of God’s budgets but at the expense of state-funded missions with specific goals outlined for them to accomplish in the African Society so as to prepare the grounds for continuous enslavement and dominance over Africa.
To this point, I will like to say that, you should not be surprised whenever you see Africa leaders linings up in Europe and in the Arabic world to beg for loans to support their budgets. This is so because, as long as you accept an image that does not look like you as your savior, you will always go to those who look like your savior for salvation.
When we remove the chain of religion from our neck, we shall soon stand in our strength to develop our continent through our efforts and our intuitions.
My name is Kwadwo Agyei Yeboa, I was born into a religion, I practiced religion, I believed in religion until I decided to go a bit further beyond just ‘believing’ into ‘knowing’
-You can always connect with me on Facebook to talk about Africa!

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Africa will not be Developed by Foreign Investors


If Africans can’t find solutions to Africa’s Problems then Africa’s Problems have no Solutions at all.
Before Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his famous book ~The Prince in 1513, the norm in Continental Europe was that “Wars must be fought by mercenaries”. This means the European nations relied on foreigners who are skilled in fighting wars to defend and protect them.
In the Prince, Machiavelli asked: “what makes you think that foreigners will genuinely defend you?” In furtherance, he argued that mercenaries or foreigners fight for no other reason/incentive than the monies they are paid. By this, Machiavelli explained that if the only motivation for mercenaries to fight is the financial incentive, then a mercenary will only fight to defend a country only when he knows that he will have his life in the end to enjoy his money.
This means no mercenary will continue to fight to defend a country when that defense is at the cost of his life. For this reason, Machiavelli recommended to the European nations to establish standing armies filled with citizens and these citizens must be made to go to war to defend their countries whenever the need arises.
Why should citizens, rather than foreigners be made to go to war to defend the nations? Machiavelli posited that, whereas mercenaries have money as their main incentive to fight, citizens have lives as their insensitive to fight and defend their nations. As a matter of fact, when a citizen knows that he is fighting to defend and protect his defenseless wife, children, and parents at home, he will use his last blood to defend his nation as a means to protect these dear lives of his. It will, therefore, be hard for a reasonable man to preserve his life at war by allowing the enemy to run over him to destroy the dear lives he has left at home.
By taking this recommendation seriously, European nations have steadily grown very strongly since. In one of his military discussions, the French Napoleon Bonaparte noted that Machiavelli's assertion is the single most important military strategy over offered in history.
Though, the focus of Africa's development today may not be about organising army members and going to wars, yet, this advice from Machiavelli is still so important to us in our search for sustainable development path. The simple statement of truism here is that -we cannot rely on other men (foreigners) to develop our continent. Africa’s true development must be the duty of the African and not the responsibility of others.
We may not recognize but the fact is, yesterday's mercenaries are today’s foreign investors. They have one intention and motivation. If mercenaries couldn’t defend continental Europe, then foreign investors cannot develop Africa. Unfortunately, Africans and our leaders have come to develop the illusion of keeping all our hopes for development in these new mercenaries. We then go around chasing foreign investors to come and develop our countries and continent rather than building and developing local capacities and innovation to champion our own development.
Like mercenary who will continue to defend a nation only when his life is not in danger, a foreign investor will only act like he is developing our continent when he has enough profits to take away from our countries. It is unlikely that an investor will have the interests of our future generations at heart or will compromise today's profits for the benefit of the next generation. For example, a foreign road constructor will not choose to construct a road that will lasts for 70 years over a road that will lasts for 5 years if that will mean to compromise his profit up to 20% (because his main motivation is profit) but a conscious citizen will choose to construct a road that will last for 70 years over a road that will last for 5 years even if that will mean to compromise her profit by 50% (because her main motivation is the welfare of the next generation and not profit).
How can there be development when our countries are receiving as little as 10% on resources exploration by foreign investors on our continent?
My visit to Ethiopia gave me the greatest opportunity to learn so much about how development can be designed, supported, and executed internally on our African continent. I was surprised at how Ethiopia has been able to exclusively developed strong local financial system, telecommunications system, and construction and real estate system to push the country's recent rapid economic growth. Surprisingly, Ethiopia now has many well functional Construction companies who are winning contracts and working in many East African countries including Kenya and Tanzania.
We must know that we cannot chase the development path of others and ever become developed. If we do so we shall forever remain a developing continent trying to determine our lives based on what have already done. After all, we will always wait on others' innovations for our implementation.
To develop, we must look within, examine the problems in our society, and design internal solutions to address these problems by taking a close look at our own capacities. When we do so, we can walk into advancement by developing our own capabilities over time.
If Africans cannot find solutions to Africa's own problems, then Africa's problems can be said to have no solutions at all. After all, no free men have ever developed a foreign country except when they were slaves.
My name is Kwadwo Agyei Yeboah and I love Africa. You can always connect with me on Facebook to talk about Africa.