Decolonize Aid!
The colonization of african countries is in itself one of the reasons for the current situation, where aid has been seen as a neccesity. In order to solve these issues, we have to work with the roots of the problem, which is why decolonization on a broader scale should be part of the work.
Read more about this under the section “The fundamental issue”.
Decolonization
The Aid model has been used for over 70 years, and there has not yet been established lasting solutions. On the contrary, aid has come with a lot of challenges. Many initiatives have created more problems, there are huge amounts of corruption within aid organizations, too much funds ends up in covering administration and beurocracy, and enormous proportions of funding goes to private companies in our allied countries.
Greater Africa Foundation does not comply with the aid model. We refuse to be part of a corrupt system where money goes to other entities and people rather than the local communities it is meant for. We beleive that living together with the community over years, getting to know the families, their situations and circumstanses, and building close relations and trust, is much better than having a regime of beurocricy. Face-to-face over working with documents in an office.
We rather buy materials, equipment and other resources needed from the small businesses within our local community, rather than transporting trailerloads from the larger companies. Our expenses should benefit the local society rather than large cooperations that has a lot of money from before.
«You can not solve a problem with the same mindset that created it», is a quote by Einstein. So why should problems created by colonialization be solved by former colonial powers? There are historical lines of the mindsets of the west, that has developed with interests that are problematic in the relation to african societies.
And so, Aid needs to be decolonized. By looking at our ‘capacity for truth’, as prof. Achile Mbembe puts it, when it comes to the damages the west causes the global society. And try to set our eurocentric views aside for a moment, letting african knowledge (link to what is african knowlege) get a chanse to show itself. They know much more than us about themselves and their situations, their challenges and needs. And they have better solutions.
The fundamental issue
Human worth
There is a lot of talk about how everyone is equal, have equal rights, dignity and so on. It is such a widespread mantra that people seem to forget the realities, it is almost as if we beleive we have mostly reached this goal. Like almost everyone have equal human worth and possibilities, that there are only a few exeptions for this. We do need a reality check.
We live in a world where people of african origins have the lowest human worth, and europeans have the highest. Most other groups are in the lower end of the scale. This is the truth in all parts of our societies, all academic fields and so on. Both in mentality and practically. Even within music and sports, where africans are seen as champions, it is only if europeans are on top controlling it and proffiting from it. European teams in sports, European labels in music. The african institutions are not recognized. The pople of african origins who succeeds, are those who leave their africaness behind and fully embraces the european mindset, customs and culture.
Historical background
So what is the reason for this unbalanced human worth?
It is all about how we have structured our society. Our form of democracy is built on a foundation of a type of capitalism that is imperialistic. It means that when markets are filled up nationally, one has to spread industry and business abroad. The search for raw materials and labour is global, and colonialization was a natural part of this development. In the meeting between the europeans and africans, motivated by economical gain, the rethorics of racism began to develop. It was seen neccesary to justify the exploitation of african people and their recources.
In the 1400s it was common knowlege in Europe that the african continent had huge civilized empires, we knew the origins of both intelectual concepts like philosophy and democracy and more specific inventions came from african societies. We also had highly respected africans in Europe, with high positions. Better than today. Towards the 1700s, european intelectuals who supported the narrative for economic growth, that will say also the colonial adventure, where favored and supported. An academic elite society formed. Philosophers like Kant and Hagel, and botanist Linné took over, and supressed the african narrative. Since this time the understanding of european superiority in relation to african populations with lesser human worth and capacity stabalized. And since then, it has been you, me and everyone who has provided selfmaintainance of the unequal human worth in all parts of society both mentally, and practically.
Greater Africa seeks to promote african knowlege, to contribute for more aknowlegement and respect for people of african origins.
What is African Knowledge?
African knowlege is a vastly large topic. It covers all parts of our existance. The continent has the worlds longest history, and so a longer development of knowlege than any other place on earth. The continent covers a quarter of the worlds landmass, and has more than 1.4 billion people. The diversity is immense. Both when it comes to people, cultures, languages, nature and more. Although you find a lot of wonderfull diversities, there are still a lot of common ground, like for example foundational philosophy.
Our world is based on african knowlege. Much of the world around us in our daily life in europe can be tributed to african origins. Like masonry for building our houses and glass windows as a couple of random examples. The first multi-story buildings where in west-africa. The list of inventions and technology is long. And even today, we have become dependent on products from african countries. Coffee, spices, chocolate, soap and creams. Our refrigirators, cars, laptops and smartphones are made with minerals from there. There would not be much left in our stores if Africa closed its borders. We are not aware of this because of the historical neglection of african knowlege, which is still immanent today.
Agriculture
The invention of agriculture has usually been credited to Turkey. Yet we know that african societies have been doing it since way earlier. In Buganda Kingdom for example, there are stories that the Bachwezi people of Kitara Empire were the earliest people we know who started cultivating the soil for farming, and holding animals. This was by the source of the River Nile, in the larger Uganda. This knowlege traveled down the Nile to Egypt, and spread from there to the middle east and asia. Some historians have also documented that the King of the Mandinka sent boats to latin-america, where they thought the Olmec nomads agriculture before they became sivilization we have heard of. These african historians have been discredited in academic circles, and articles and scientific papers removed from the internet.
Even so, there is no doubt that african societies successfully has provided for millions of people using traditional agricultural techniques, for tens of thousands of years. There are still societies who practice traditional agriculture today, who has knowlege that the world at large does not know about. How to work with nature on its own terms, and prosper without the use of synthetic prosesses. Locally this is technology, althoug it might not be seen and recognized as such by people of the western world.
In Europe, where we have sworn to monoculture, we have destroyed much of the soil and created a lot of erotion. We do so in other parts of the world as well. And we complain about the rising prices of food and agricultural products, for example have we talked of a meet crisis for many years now, due to lack of feeds and fields for cattle. Monoculture can be seen as an infantile practice of dealing with production. It is a sign of not having knowlege of how nature works, and how plants are dependent on each other, and exchangement with microbes, insects and animals. When we swear to an approach that is unatural, we need synthetic prosesses to force it to work. This is why we experiment with new soil types, synthetic ferelizers, chemical pesticides, gene modified seeds, become dependent on machines and so on. All of this becomes unneccesary if you attain the sufficient knowlege of how nature works. Then you can arrange for it in a way that it produces everything that we want, with even higher quality than we have today.