First Sudan. Then Tunisia. Then Egypt. After that it was Algeria, followed by Yemen and lately Libya. The calls for change in government have waved across the northern African map like the flags of rebellion carried by the protesters in these countries. Much of it was driven by social media. But the real engine was young people doing what they do best: finding whatever means they have at their disposal to communicate, gather, organize and act.
It is new, but not new at all.
The global focus is on nations that are rejecting authoritarian rule reaching as far back as the late 1960s, but is there a lesson to be learned for the rest of Africa?
As we have long known, civil unrest in Africa is as common as hot weather there. People in sub-Saharan Africa are no strangers to violent rebellion. Since the independence of Ghana in 1957, almost every nation on the continent has undergone some type of violent regime change. But the result in many cases has largely been to replace a despot with a dictator, and a dictator with an autocrat, or an entire group of them.
Because the military has been given power in Egypt and power is being demanded from the military in Libya, nobody knows what the outcome will be. Nobody knows if democracy -- in the sense that societies in that region are comfortable administering it -- will seize the political atmosphere, or if one regime will be replaced with one that is worse. So the question must be asked: is North Africa becoming like the rest of Africa or is the rest of Africa becoming like North Africa?
To be sure, the decades of civilian bloodshed at the hands of soldiers has left much of the continent decimated. The corruption of authoritarian regimes is the biggest reason behind the poverty that has gripped the continent.
Humanitarian aid and funding in large part has only served to make nations poorer because dictators take what is given and refuse to develop areas where poor people live so they can find employment or create their own industry. Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is probably the best example of that as he staged a pseudo-pro-Black revolution which has not only left the country in poverty, but caused inflation of 100,000 percent!
This is certainly not that much unlike Mubarak's effect on Egypt, where half of the population live on less than $2 a day, according to the United Nations. But affluence among some enables them to overlook the multitudes who live their lives in squalor. Despite that, the nation has a 71 percent literacy rate. So this equals a large number of smart, angry, poor people. That is never a good formula for a dictator who needs absolute control to hold on to power.
It's admissible that Zimbabwe and Egypt are two different worlds, but the point is that the regions of Africa are not dissimilar and everybody on the continent living under a dictatorship wants a better standard of living that they feel is being denied them by their governments.
So what is the takeaway for African leaders in power south of the Arabic-speaking world? Probably to understand that if their citizens are much smarter than they think.
Not everyone in Africa can afford an education. But lots of people find ways to get hold of media disseminated through electronic means. In places like Benin, Angola, Burkina Faso and others, this is done primarily through cellphones. That means not only are people talking to each other, they are communicating information. The spread of accurate information is the foundation of any demand for liberation.
If people could see how easy it is to move news about what is happening across broad areas, and between various ethnic groups, violent uprisings based on military suppression could turn into unrest based on civil disobedience.
If people agreed that their "Big Men" are not the gods they purport themselves to be, then they could collectively withdraw their support and demand they step down. It worked in Egypt. It worked in South Africa. Why can't it work in Congo, Togo, or Ivory Coast?
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Source: http://www.bvblackspin.com/2011/02/17/egypt-whats-the-takeaway-for-the-rest-of-africa/
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