1 / 9

Black Man’s Dilemma

Black Man’s Dilemma. Symposium at the College Hospital University, 4 th April 2014. Olusegun Baiyewu. In the beginning. Evidence from Archaeology and Genetic Mapping indicates that the origin of Man is Africa.

mliss
Download Presentation

Black Man’s Dilemma

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Black Man’s Dilemma Symposium at the College Hospital University, 4th April 2014. OlusegunBaiyewu

  2. In the beginning • Evidence from Archaeology and Genetic Mapping indicates that the origin of Man is Africa. • However early technological development seems to have left Africa behind ( except Egypt)- Inventions like printing, tools and machine. • There is an exception though –Arts, sculpture – A book on sculpture of Ancient Nigeria describes 2000 years of Nigerian Arts Nok, Ife, Benin, Owo, and Igbokwe art cultures. • These were technologically sound for their era comparable with Rhine Valley sculptures

  3. Middle part • How did our fore fathers develop those beautiful sculptures? • Next is the slave trade and its ugliness. In the 1960’s and 1970’s our brothers in Caribbean, UK and USA accused us that our fore fathers sold theirs to slavery. • After slave trade, industrial revolution and colonial rule

  4. Middle part • Berlin Conference and partitioning of Africa. • There was one major interest of our colonial masters, exploitation through trade. • That featured through slave trade, colonial and post colonial area. • Africa contributes less than 2% of world trade, has about 20% of world population. • Worse still African countries do not trade with each other.

  5. The present • As of today most African countries have been independent for over 50 years. • South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe are now ruled by people of our colour. • Has there been a major shift in attempts to solve our problems? • We are now at the beginning of another revolution –the digital revolution.

  6. The present • By 1980s many African countries were ruled by soldiers. These were “armies of occupation” led by miscreants like Mobutu and Abacha. • It is estimated that each of them stole $7 billion which were kept safely in banks in Europe and America. • Initially we were told that Swiss Bank laws permit secrecy and they could not be questioned. • That view changed after 9/11 and other terror attacks in the Northern Hemisphere

  7. The future • I believe it is not all bleak– The same mother Africa that produced Mobutu and Abacha, also produced Nelson Mandela. • Now the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Malaysians, etc are here to trade along with our former colonial masters. • We should now distinguish between trade and exploitation.

  8. The future • In this digital revolution, shall we have partitioning of Africa again? Accept mirrors in exchange for our brothers as was done during slave trade? • Remember institutions like IMF Paris and London clubs are still there. • However I wish to plead with us not to look at the past in anger or the future in fear, but the present in awareness.

  9. Suggestions • I suggest we should adopt the methods of great men like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. • Africans should remember that the greatest resources God gave us are not gold , petroleum and diamond under our soil , but the power of the brain. We need to develop human and infrastructural capacities. • General De Gaul said “the French people should not expect other to do for them what they will not do for themselves” Same is true of Africa.

More Related