[Type R]

When you talk about "development," it is important that you qualify what kind of development you are discussing.

I say this because Africa has not been underdeveloped in all areas. Take the area of social/family structures. Africa was actually quite developed in these areas. There was a strong sense of communal responsibility in the extended family. Your brother's children were your children. The much-maligned "wife inheritance" was actually an exercise in social responsibility: someone had took take care of a lonely widow, to feed her, to fend for her. Westernization is destroying this fabric. These days, brothers and sisters feel competitive with their children, showing off "I'm taking my kids to school in Lavington/Braeburn, are yours still in that place in Eastlands?" etc etc. In fact, it is sometimes better to befriend strangers than it is to socialize with your family. In this sense, it is inaccurate to describe Africa as a "problem." As Moi once said, many African languages do not even have a word for "homosexuality."

Nor is Africa culturally underdeveloped. Music, poetry, painting, we have no "problem." In fact, Africa's diversity is very stunning.

The kind of development you are discussing is the material development. This focuses us on three or four areas where Africa has never had a strong widespread tradition: -

(a) science
(b) technology
(c) industry (incl. commerce)
(d) economic management

A: The scientific tradition

What has compromised the scientific tradition in Africa? Why did it never gather momentum and reach critical mass? Are we stupid? Simply pointing out great black scientists (George Washington Carver) and philosophers here and there is not enough. We want to see great universities, great ideas being developed as the centuries go by, research, great findings, etc, etc, etc.

This same question could be asked the other way round: what spurred on the scientific tradition in Europe (specifically)? Then, How did Europe overtake the Middle East, which was once the "headquarters" of the intellectual tradition when Europe was thuggish? How did America overtake Europe?

Cultural phenomena are difficult to understand. Take for example, Bill Gates. What motivates someone to drop out of Harvard and start working in a garage? Early computer developers did not understand the explosion they were about to unleash. If they did, they would not have programmed their systems to accept only two digits for the year (Y2K problem).

The lack of a written tradition is definitely part of the problem in Africa. In early days, scientists would communicate with each other across cultures, and across centuries. Writing also enables an individual to communicate with himself over time and those around him, because written ideas can be clarified, because memory can fail. This was enabled by means of written documents.

Unfortunately, writing was introduced alongside alien languages (English, French). This means that the world of ideas is someone alien to the masses. Many people think that they are not clever enough to understand concepts, when their main problem is their lack of comfort in a foreign language.

Next... Technological backwardness.