It is a sad fact and I understand when some people disect a fly's brain trying to find justification that Africa is not technologically behind.Many reasonable people obviously know that Africa is a vast continent and generalising it on many issues is plain wrong.However technologically Africa is behind the Americas and Europe as well as Asia.
Africa is Technologically behind the rest of the world in total.Cairo or Cape town , Gaborone , Harare , Accra and many others may not but on the whole Africa is. The reasons for such a sad state of affairs are squarely political and economical.The evils that have dogged Africa for all the years are poltics and economic polcies that are wrong.This stretches from the colonial days in Africa but to avoid feeding on the past I will concerntrate on post-colonial Africa.
First the colonial hang over has left people like Robert Matibili Mugabe thriving in certain quarters if only because he reminds his admirers how it was then .The people who have nothing in the midst of plent potential then believe him.They choose to view that what they donot have was taken by the monster that only their all-knowing leader is fighting on their behalf.In the meantime they are so down troddden that they cannot progress.
The second point on politics of Africa is the error most African nations have made .They have created gods out of their leaders.These leaders in trying to live to the expectations of their worshipers ammass unbelieveable wealth.It gets to some point one cannot easily distinguish between what belongs to a state president and what belongs to the state itself.For example who owns the oil fields of Angola dos Santos' or Angola? Guinea or the man- eating catholic who is its president? Such cases where wealth is directed to individuals till the politicians have more wealth than the nation just does not promote technology.By then non is left for such things as technology.
Staying with polticians,the third reason for Africa to lag behind is because African leaders view technology as a threat to their grip on power.To make sure technology is closed out of the countries completely, the dictators impose heavy exise duties and other import penalties.There are countries which actually impose heavy taxes on teller machine withdrawals.That obviously is an example of how to tax away technology.
So far the article has addressed ready made technological imports.One could say as much for developing technology.
There is no African produced gadget.There has been quite some awe inspiring flirtation with technology in some places but on the whole Africa has not done much to catch up with the world.Mineral metals are dug up and sold without creating any product.There is no deliberate intention to promote research and development of appropriate technology.Even computer programmes in African languages are still a limited edition product.Climate change observatory or monitoring where available is provided for by some western donor.All this because of the shopping -buscket mentality that our politicians promote.
African companies would rather import machinery to process african produce than make their own machinery or promote local inventors to .
Does Africa have the brains , one may want to ask.I could go on and on about the educated and intelligent Africans who have made it big.They have created wealth and even inventions and all.They are both black and white Africans who are all over the fields of technology yet they have remained in the countries they have run away to.Attending some meeting made me almost shade tears when I discovered how many highly qualified Africans there were represented who are out there benefiting other economies than their.Some African super academics have been hounded away by dictators threatening to skin them alive.Some have abandoned their countries purely because despite their education and skills the system would rather pay politicians than them.Africa is where you would find a government that pays an unemployed youth activist more than the local science medical professor.Can anyone add that for me please? It just dont add up.