I am not a patriot!
At least, not in the ‘sing your anthem, be proud of your country, wave your flag’ sort of way. My country is one of the reasons I left where I was born. It seems to be the problem and not the solution. The structure, and endemic lack of the opportunity to live free and fair, and make a living off your own sweat, was never an option for me in the Republic. Come to think of it, I am an angry person. 'Cos that same dysfunctional Republic made me leave the things I love, the places that made me tick, my very own culture and society and way of being. That is what I am: A sum total of my beliefs, culture, community and my race. My country made me forsake this in order to pursue a good life, and for that I am not a patriot, because patriotism could have cost me and my family, our livelihood, and in return we would have endured, favoritism, nepotism, and all the corruption and decadence that comes with absolute power.
I love my country.
Its sights and sounds, its people and perspectives; its morals and virtues, its culture and combinations. I couldn’t fully live anywhere else if I had the option. The infectious music and the sometimes chaotic order in disorder which has a way of making me smile; the genuine smiles from its people and the palpable sense of community. The joie de vivre, and the quest for God and good. I miss the authenticity of the happiness, which is not born out of the presence of material amenities, but from the hearts of a people living and enjoying what blessings they can find. The realization that joy is not a function of the material but of the existential. A people with an infectious and persistent hopefulness, which in itself makes your heart melt. A cuisine so intricate and delicious, it takes some commitment to prepare. A community always willing to give a hand, always there to rejoice and cry with you. Our passion for football and sports, our uniqueness in fashion and design, and our unbelievable variety and quality in song and dance.
I want to go home.
I know home is where you make it. I know home has become to many of the diaspora, where they have made their bed and gained their bread, just like me. I know home has become the friends and people in your neighbourhood in whichever part of the world you live in. But I also know you know what I mean when I say I want to go home. To a non-negligible number of the diaspora, home is where the heart is – Africa. Home is where you feel like you have a right to be there, in spite of everything else. A feeling which is hard to replicate even with all the documentation and amassing of passports; a feeling where for once you don’t feel like you are second-class or need any excuses to be there! That feeling is palpable to most of us in the diaspora, even when we do not admit it to ourselves. Home is where you can lay claim to that heritage and that identity where God himself assigned you. Home is where your heart still aches to see change and to effect change – the change which you have seen and experienced and come to appreciate wherever you are or might have been.
But how can I go home? How can I effect change? What can I do to make home what I want it to be? If you are or have asked yourself any one of these questions, then you are one of many in an increasingly vocal and prominent band of Africans, which Wall Street calls the ‘repatriate generation’ of Africa. Many of whom have made their bread and lives out in the West but still have this longing of home, and even better, a longing for bringing what they possess and have learnt, to a continent and a country they love dearly. A set of people who excel at their trades and their areas of learning, and are looking for opportunities to make their rich heritage shine; an elite group of intelligent and sophisticated people who are just plain tired of the Western depictions of a desolate continent, and just impatient with the corrupt demagogues who have ruled and ruined the continent for us. A non-negligible majority who now know their worth, and can see the worth of their continent and their people. People bursting with ideas in business, art, fashion, science and technology. People who have acquired, and want to give back, to deliver and innovate, but are still faced with the apprehensions and frustrations of a continent with painfully slow progress in progressive policy and economics. Who still have the questions of; is it worth the hassle? How do I affect the change I really seek with the reality on the ground? Will I succeed? How do I leave all this comfort and livelihood for that? The thing about the answer to those questions is that they are personal, simple and complex at the same time. But I think you can answer each of them in the affirmative, if like me, you really have a burning desire to see things progress. The question real question is, ‘how to I do it? Where do I start?’.
Cooperate. Appreciate. Delegate.
Most of your brilliant business ideas and ways of making a difference in your country will invariably meet with one of two major snags : lack of sufficient capital and governmental bottlenecks (corruption being just one of them). These are the things that have held us back, and our failed relationship with the West - of aid and trade (more ‘aid and Take’ if you ask me) has only exacerbated our inherent dependency on ‘someone else’ to do it for us. But not this generation! We can see through the farce and demand more trade and less aid. But we need to start from somewhere. We need to start it before those whom we left behind can follow. One major advantage we have over our brothers and sisters who never left the continent, but decided to stay and make it work, is the benefit of a different perspective; a deeper appreciation for the commensurate fruits of hard work, and a doctrine of doing what it takes to survive or reach a goal (we all have done A LOT of this at some point in time out here). These are the intangibles, which, if combined with our love for the continent, can make a major difference in how we apply ourselves in giving back to our country and continent. So what to do ?
Cooperate. Band together. Find people in social media who have the same aspirations and ideas as you do. Join to create a fashion brand, a tech company, a business consultancy, a transport business, something! Encouragement, and sharing of ideas can turn thought into action. Cooperation can also help with the idea of capital. Many people with a fashion idea will be able to kick off an idea if they could contribute both ideas and capital to the cause. Raising capital by cooperation can bypass our lack of loan and funding institutions, even if it only means getting projects off the ground.
Appreciate. There is nothing better than having a fellow African appreciate something you try to do in the continent, either by just dropping a congratulatory note, or by actually consuming the services or goods you provide. And I am not saying support ideas for the sake of it being from an African - No. Support those ideas of quality and promise, which are worth supporting. Champion concepts and businesses of the quality we can all be proud of – music, fashion, technology, agriculture etc. We are our best ambassadors - period. So, we are given a once in a lifetime opportunity here to carve out the image of the continent which we think rightly represents us, by supporting those ventures whose authenticity and quality we approve and can be proud of. We can be our best publicists to the budding businesses and artistic creations of our peers by spreading the word for them, of them. We can help by becoming a consumer-promoter, even if you are not the part of the conceptualization. Be it trustworthy African money transfer agencies, or banks, fashion houses or artists, technology providers and the like. Look around you, there are already many of these ideas and businesses coming up. Do your part and see them grow into genuine businesses and economic forces in your country, on the continent and internationally.
Delegate. We are all not made of the same elk. We can all not take the big risk or jump into the unknown of going back or even of running a business. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We can work with, encourage, and delegate to those who can, or are already in the process. We know friends and classmates who are willing to go start a business for which we can provide the initial finances by remaining in our present jobs. Do it! We can buy shares in promising companies, or promote artists without having to presently leave what we presently do. We can put brothers and sisters back home to work, working with other people with sound business acumen on a business (I really am not a champion for family businesses – too many complications with accountability). The core idea here being that we have no excuse not to contribute one way or the other, as there are options available to us all, whatever your situation may be.
I have steered clear of politics as a medium for change in diaspora circles, not because it is not a worthy cause, but because of my intrinsic belief that to champion the politics of a people, one has to be willing to be WITH the people. I find it hard to belief you can feel how hot a boiling pot is, from the safe observatory point of the cool table top. I do not believe in political change by proxy. But economics, in such a global world, can be a force of change no matter your global location. To those engaged in the quest for political change, it is a worthy cause and I commend your efforts. I believe a change in political environment and will, is the single most important way of changing a people's circumstance and accelerating them towards a prosperous nation. I do however strongly contend that our route to an improved and changed Africa lies in economic emancipation, compared to politics. The former lends itself to industrious and entrepreneurial people who have the control of what it takes to effect such change inspite the political circumstances - like most of us. The latter has too many factors out of the control of those who really want to see change, and hence is less promising, less tangible, and sees too many capable people staying on the sidelines and hoping for change
I am convinced we of the repatriate generation can continue to build this momentum of change and emancipation as we not only return to where our hearts are, but we take part in its transformation. We will also bring back a little of who we have become to Africa, so that it becomes an even better place for us all, representing us in the appropriate way, and competing at the level and potential which we all know it can.
There is a lot to be changed, and a lot of change this generation can bring. But i contend that economic change is the place to start.
SoP- September 2011
@34000 ft.
