Global financial crisis
The is an opportunity for all resource-rich countries, like Kenya and much of Africa, to completely change the global system. We have been told to export, grow for export, export and more export. We have ignored our own people. There are a few things that we need to import but not many, and with innovation and work we can make substitutes, use our own resources, make our own goods. It seems impossible - that is what the North wants us to think - but it is not. When Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia was under real sanctions (1965-1980), every effort went into manufacturing substitutes. Of course there was some 'sanctions busting'... oil and medicines were two things we had to import.
But now, we can produce many medicines locally, and with new solar technology, bio-fuels and geothermal energy even this can be overcome. By 1980, what Nyerere recognised as the 'jewel of Africa' was the result of developing local resources, local production and the local market. We have been fooled by the rich west - from colonialism it smoothly changed to neo-liberal globalisation, no difference - that we had to export our resources to 'grow'. In reality Africa has the resources that much of the west needs... not the other way round. Europe doesn't have the land to grow food for its people... it has to import! We must develop solar energy and geothermal energy, develop agriculture and manufacture our minerals and timber from our glorious land for the use of our own peoples. It is time for all the 'developing' countries to stop accepting that label. We are equal and different. Let us look after the common good - the lives of our own populations and our environment. Let us turn the system around. This financial crisis in the west is a huge moment of opportunity if only our corrupted governments will wake up to it and stop 'exporting' our money to their personal Swiss and Malaysian and Hong Kong bank accounts. It should be invested in local manufacturing and production instead. Africa needs a fresh look at its economic patterns. Venezuela and other South American countries are showing the way - independence from the North. A new struggle for a new form of sustainable independence.