THE CONTINENT URGENTLY NEEDS TO CHANGE ITS MINDSET

Thought leadership is important for a renewed Africa because it can enable the continent to realise a new socioeconomic development paradigm.

In his writings, Steve Biko reiterated the need for Africans to tackle the challenge of ‘mental slavery’. A colonised mindset has produced a colonised approach to development.  But thought leadership alone is not enough for a renewed continental outlook.
To create a positive and sustainable development outlook, which addresses the economic and social conundrums, is at the core of this process. Everyone needs to be involved in unlearning, relearning, unthinking and rethinking the oppressive and dominant thought philosophies and patterns of their interactions with colonial forces over the past five centuries.
In the pursuit of thought leadership for Africa’s renewal, the continent has an opportunity and responsibility to tap into the unmined wealth of Africa’s former leadership experiences; the Mfecane, the Great Trek, the youth, new trends such as African feminism and digitisation.

We need leaders who will evaluate legacies such as dependency on foreign aid and foreign interventions. Post-colonial African leaders have lacked the capacity and vision to procure and trust the role of thought leadership for a renewed Africa. Our leaders have forfeited their powers to the Global North and betrayed the hopes and aspirations of the very people who elected them into power.
Pan-Africanist solutions centred on the African development problem need to be crafted, implemented, monitored and re-evaluated. Pan-Africanism has the opportunity to decolonise the colonised African mind.
But it is important to embrace the emerging trends to see an Africa vested in the interests of its people, yet also remain globally relevant. For further analysis, the roles of culture, language and gender need to be looked at as part of a new Africa.

Africa has no homogeneity in terms of its developmental approaches. Development on the continent is arguably Westerncentric. The trends of most development in Africa are inconsistent. Africa needs uniquely African solutions.
Thought leadership, thought liberation and critical consciousness should be the main ingredients and anchor for economic and social development. Various developmental approaches (from the Global North and West) have been implemented for Africa’s case. But Africa needs more than just solutions from elsewhere. Evident to this day, from a developmental perspective, colonialism has misled African history, marginalised African creativity and done away with native critical thinking approaches.

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