Africa should be a country

 

A friend once asked me what I would change if I had the power to change the world. At the time there were too many little things I thought of and could not decide on a single answer. However, today, I am able to look at the bigger picture and find one big answer that could solve a million smaller problems. And that answer is to unite Africa into a single country. Since I couldn’t give this answer to my friend a year ago, let me share it with you today. If I had the power to change the course of history, I would eliminate the artificial borders drawn up by our previous colonizers and establish a single African currency. There would be a parliament with representatives from every one of our more than 3000 distinct ethnic groups. I would eliminate exploitative foreign relation policies and dismantle colonial debt. I would ensure that the majority of our natural resources are only traded between different regions in Africa, instead of being exported for the benefit of foreign companies. Most importantly, I would enact policies that strengthen relationships within the country in order to create independence from the economic, political and cultural neocolonialism that is currently rampant throughout the continent.

One big issue that continuously creates turmoil in Africa is identity. People constantly struggle to decide on whether to define themselves by their ethnic identity or national title. But at the core of it, nationality is just a political descriptor. For the majority of Africans, these political titles are the result of the Berlin conference and the later byproducts of it. Hence, they should not be so deeply enshrined in our self-image. On the contrary, the only thing that should be used to define us is our ethnic diversity, as it is one aspect that is inextricably linked to our identities and passed down from our ancestors. The only boundary that we should have is the natural border created by the oceans that surround us. I believe this can significantly reduce conflict between different communities, as there would be no singular national identity being enforced by a politically predominant ethnic group or religion.

Another aspect that tremendously hinders the peace and development of this continent is that our governing, policing, education as well as economic systems were made to resemble the systems of western countries. This is a problem because a system that works for relatively homogeneous and culturally undivided countries, cannot possibly work for a continent with over 3000 ethnicities. Government systems that expect heterogeneous African nations to peacefully coexist and operate similarly to western societies, have not succeeded. There has been systematic discrimination, violence, and even in extreme cases, genocides happening within many African countries. This is a very sad and revealing consequence of these failing systems and the history that begat them.

Nevertheless, our governments still enforce such systems which lead to political, economic, and social unrest and further facilitate our dependence on western countries. This paves the way for enormously exploitative relationships, in which Africa sustains the world through its resources without being able to sufficiently meet the needs of its own people. However, by uniting into one country, we could redesign these systems in a way that truly supports the multicultural and multilingual societies of the African continent. And through creating platforms for the interaction of social researchers, international development specialists, policymakers and African leaders, I hope we can one day make this dream, of The United Nations of Africa, become a reality.