Is Africa a continent of beggars and whiners?

Yesterday’s preacher in Church mentioned in his sermon that Africa is a continent of beggars and whiners. We like complaining a lot and depend on foreign aid too much yet we have many resources that can be exploited to improve our lives.

Most African countries borrow from foreign countries to meet their development needs, Non Governmental Organization also depend on foreign donors to run the projects especially in the rural areas where poverty levels are higher.

All we do is complain about poor governance, poverty levels, inequality and other numerous problems we face instead of working hard to change our standards of living.

I agree partly with this preacher that Africa has many resources that can be exploited to improve lives. However I do not agreed that people are to blame for most of the problems we face in African.

To me the main reasons why African’s resources are not exploited properly or why most Africans have been reduced to beggars and whiners, is because of wars/conflicts, poor governance, dictatorship and discrimination.

When an African country is led by a dictator like Robert Mugabe, how will the people’s lives improve even with all the resources they have, instead they have been reduced to whiners and beggars in their own country and cannot do much to change to situation.

How will Kenyan’s stop whining and begging when we still have many problems more than 40 years after independence. When public funds are looted like cases of Goldenberg, Anglo leasing and the latest we heard about the leaked Kroll report, Land grabbing, we have squatters in their own country, when we are tribalists and have tribal clashes. When majority are jobless, our MPs decide on their pay packages and hefty pay offs after 5 years term.

Governments have the machinery and the resources to tackle the major problems that majority Africans face. Some African leaders are yet to embrace democracy, most of them are greedy, dictators who like clinging to power even when age does not allow them, they are also discriminative against women. They cause conflicts and ran away leaving their country on fire, with mainly children and women suffering.

Where there is smoke there is fire, African’s cannot be whining over nothing. The preacher should have highlighted the root cause of Africa begging and whining and how to solve it.

At the end of the sermon he should have advised people to pray that God helps us to elect the right leaders that will help improve our nations and not greedy leaders who only think of enriching themselves and their people.

May God help Africans who are suffering under dictatorship and help Kenyan’s in this coming elections to elect the right leader who will bring complete change to this country so that we will only right and talk about our achievements and stop begging and whining.