 If you had the chance to change one thing in Africa, will you change? I will change bad governance because you see Africa is a place where when you get into position, you forget about the people who voted for you. Thank you so much for welcoming me and I believe that I don't know who I am. I got one of your books because I love Africa with all my heart but reading is a bit difficult for me yet but I'm trying my best. You did the definition of the mother of Africa, the mother of the virgin lady and I really want you to tell my people about how you did that definition before I even start talking about anything. Thank you very much my son. It's a pleasure having you in my house. My son has told me a lot about you and what you are doing for the African continent. This book was published in the year 2010 and what you are referring to we call it the allegory of the murdered virgin. Where we used the African continent to represent the virgin who was killed by fortune seekers and her body was cut into several parts and the body was preserved using different methods. The people who killed her decided that they would preserve the body so that in the event of the crime being detected they would hand over the body to the parents of the lady. So after a long time the crime was detected, the body parts were retrieved and stitched together. So that lady is the African continent that we have. So the cutting of the lady into parts is the division of the African continent among the colonial powers during the colonial struggle in Berlin 1884. You know in Berlin the conference was called by Otto von Bismarck. He was then the chancellor of Germany and there were seven European countries Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, France, Britain. US was there as an observer but no African country was invited. What was the reason? They wanted to calm the tension that resulted as a result of the scramble for Africa. They divided Africa among themselves and they came and claimed their colonies. At the conference two principles came out. The principle of effective occupation of the colonies and then the principle of the recognition of King Leopold of Belgium as the owner of the Congo Basin. Can you imagine that Africa was being shared among Europeans and no African was there. So the sharing is the matter of the virgin and then the struggle for independence was the retrieval of the body parts. The stitching of the bodies, those are the colonial boundaries as we have it now. You see and then the methods of preservation of the body are the different colonial policies. Britain used what you call the crown colony system and the indirect rule. France used the assimilation policy where the people were divided into citizens and then subjects. So the methods of preservation were different. That is why it is very difficult for Africans to act together as one people. The colonial, even after independence, the colonial powers continue to control us because despite independence there is what you call new colonialism. Are you a great part of common culture? Yes, I am. I support and stand by the ideas of Ungruma. After independence Ungruma wanted Africans to be united. So that they can control their resources and use it for the development of Africa. But what happened? The people thought he wanted to become the first president of the United States of Africa. They were against him. All the things he recommended. He said he wanted a common parliament for Africa. He wanted the Supreme Court of Africa. He wanted common currency. He wanted a single president and all those things. Fifty-eight years ago, that's what the European Union, they have implemented those things. And we Africans, we are still struggling with the ideas that come in Ungruma. Why? Because we are divided. It's crazy how I'm in Kinshasha but I can see Brazzaville right there and they both have the name Congo. But there is no bridge that is connecting the two countries. Apparently if you are Congolese and you want to go to Kinshasha, you want to go to Brazzaville. You need a visa to go there. Sometimes I feel like we should stop blaming colonialism. Sometimes it's our fault. I just don't get it. That's crazy. They speak the same language. But because they were colonised by the French and this one was colonised by the Belgian, they decided not to come together. They decided to do in their separate ways. But sometimes when they think about these things, I'll be like, I mean, colonisation is over, right? Do you think that Africa will ever unite? Yes, Africa can unite. How can we unite? If these barriers I'm talking about now are removed. And as I was telling another gathering, you know these borders and I also mentioned to my brother, these borders that you create silos for yourselves amongst, you must always remember are not your creation. These were creations of people outside of this continent who made these borders not to develop you but to extract from you. Now that you want to develop yourself, we must start looking at these borders and we must start removing the barriers that we have put that have defined and defined us in the past and now hinder us from being the giant that we should be. Do you think meant us to slavery still exist in Africa? Yes, it does. I'll give you just one example. For example, here in Africa we have presidents, we have parliament, we have ministers of state. But who controls them? Does it mean that Africa is not economically independent? If you say you are independent, it means you eat your own food. Nobody claims he is independent and he is fed by another person. He is our independence. We were politically independent when we had our flags, our national anthems and no losses. But economically we were still dependent on how we talk about budget deficit. We prepare our budgets, we go outside for money. When our president wants to have conferences outside Africa, the TNT and PDM, it is another country that pays. Can you say you are independent? We are going right now to help solve the problem of Africa because we have been talking about the problems of Africa for so long. The youth are yearning for solutions. What is the way forward? I mean, what role are you playing in terms of solving the problem that we have as a continent? Thank you very much for that question. It is a very complex question. It is not something that one person can do anything about. We have to go back to what the Krumas that they are saying, that until Africa is united, we are not going to take control of our resources and to be able to manage them to solve our problems. And he did this by setting up what you call institutes of African studies where the youth in Africa will know about their history, about their economy, about things that happened before they were born. They will have confidence in themselves so that they can be proud of their Africans and work here in Africa. But what have we seen? Leadership of the continent has disappointed all of us. All over the world, when people get money, they easy to develop their economies. If you take people like Mobutu, people like Abacha, they take money from Africa, they save it outside the country and that money is used to give us loan to Africans. When they die, the money remains there. When Gaddafi took over, he said no Krumas dream of independent Africa is a good one. He wanted to do it. He wanted to destroy the man-hard weapons of mass destruction. So they killed it. They didn't see any weapon in this thing. They actually destroyed Libya. They destroyed Libya. If you go to Libya now, it's a miserable place. They said there is no democracy. People have food to eat. They have buildings to stay in. Their education system was good. Health was good. They said democracy was upset. Do we eat democracy? I think Africa deserves democracy. That's very good. You see, Prof. Lumumba once said that one of the challenges we have is that our leaders in Africa don't have ideas. And those who have ideas do not have power. You see, those who have ideas do not have power. So was democracy, was it like a book that was brought by the white man and presented to us and we are not understanding. What is your understanding of democracy? Before the whites came with this idea of democracy, we were also ruling ourselves in Africa. Chiefs were elected. If a chief would be elected, the council of elders and the king-makers met. They looked at the character of all the people who would best represent the interests of the town, the community or the state. Then they made him chief. Whatever he would implement, the elders are the people who would tell him. If he misbehaved, he went after somebody. He was distilled and a different person came. That was what our traditional system was. It was a collective thing that you would be the person in charge of. But the decision was taken by the whole community. And then you implement. Today, if you have money, you wake up one day, you are in parliament. You don't have any ideas. So do you think we should have accountability of what our president or our leaders do in the country? We already have that in the constitution. Our constitution is a very excellent document. But are we able to go by it? Are we able to go by our constitution? If you take a look at the auditor general's report, about 12 billion cities have been wasted. And those people are supposed to be arrested and the money retrieved from them. Have we collected the money from them? Today, we are people who are very knowledgeable and very fearful, but they don't have the right attitude. What do I mean? There are a lot of youth in Africa who have unconsciously rejected themselves. They have not accepted themselves as Africans. They don't have confidence in themselves as Africans. So you are working about them. They even have American flag around their neck. They have UK flag around their neck. They have Israeli flag or Chinese flag. It means they are rejecting their identity as what? As Africans. Which is very sad. What does it mean? What is it saying? His name is Chicago. This is not America. Why are you called Chicago? I come from Chicago. You come from Chicago? I live for a long time. Oh, wow. Your business? How is Chicago? America is sad. And why did you leave Chicago, bro? Don't worry, man. Would you say that because we don't accept ourselves as Africans, that's why we experience racism when we go abroad? Because we... No, no. No. If we had accepted ourselves, it would have been easier for us to handle racism. The inability to accept is not the course of racism. As for the racism, it was something that was imposed on us here so that we can feel inferior. For example, there was one professor in the UK who called him Professor Trevor Roper. At the time of colonialism, where they were making Africans look inferior. They regarded Africans as he was of wood and drawers of water. They felt that our brains were so small and we behaved like children. He saw an African, he's like a child. When you give him a knife, he can use it to cut himself or wound another person. At the point he even said undergraduates seduced by changes in journalistic function demand to be taught the history of black Africa. Perhaps in future, there may be some African history to teach. At the moment, there is none. There is only the history of the black man in Africa. The rest is darkness and darkness is not the subject of history. For people like Professor Roper, they think that since Africans were not writing, they don't have history. But fortunately, today as we speak, they know that history does not begin with only writing because we have oral history. That was why when they came to Africa, they visited places. It was tall guys from Africa who led them to our mountains, our rivers, our lakes. For example, Mongopak, he was led by tall guys to go and see River Niger. When he got there, he said, I have discovered River Niger. If I go to London now and I say, tell European that I have discovered River Thames. Who do they think that I am a man? Being a black American, being a Jamaican, being from the Caribbean, some of them don't want to associate themselves with the word Africa. Does that link with the self-esteem that you are talking about because you definitely don't know yourself, you don't know your roots, you don't know where you are coming from. Yes. You know why? It is not your fault. These are descendants of ex-lives. Those of us here in Africa where we know the people who sold our brothers and sisters to the white man, where we know now the people we sold are better off than us. They are better off than us. Just like the brothers of Joseph who sold him into slavery. He became a prime minister and he had to save his brothers. So Africans in the diaspora, they don't want to be associated with Africa. They may have their own reasons. One, it was our grandparents who sold them out. Two, the kind of things they hear about us that we are primitive, fighting each other. We are hungry. There is disease. There is death. We are killing each other. That's why they don't want to be associated. You are here in Africa now. When you come, it's a very peaceful place. You can sleep on the ground here on a mattress till tomorrow. Nothing will happen to you. It's a very peaceful place in most cases. But the civil wars that are happening is what is the cause. Is he not the Europeans because they want control over our resources. They deliberately cause conflict so that they can sell their arms for us Africans to kill each other. Slave trade that they brought. It brought distortion. They were giving us guns, gunpowder. Whole villages were banned. We brought women being the boy. Now when industrial revolution broke out and they no longer needed women beings, machines were replacing women beings, they said for humanitarian reasons less end as slave trade was not good. After practicing it for 300 years before you realize it's not good. The truth is that it was for economic reasons. When industrial revolution broke out they needed raw materials to feed their industries. They needed markets to sell their goods. They needed military installations to defend their interests. Then you come telling us that you want to bring civilization, you want to bring Christianity, you want to bring education. All the people in Europe were educated that they are interested so much in Africa. The type of education they brought was to prepare to work for them to help them exploit our resources. So why is it that they did not bring trains to my hometown, Qatar? Because there is nothing there. It went to Qumansi, it went to Obasi, it went to Gold mining centers. That is where they are interested. That's where the railway lines and the roads went to. Why didn't they go to Tamali? Why didn't they construct railway to Tamali? Bolga and what? They don't, the people don't have anything. Then you say you are bringing development to us when the development goes to only the mining centers. No, the truth is they were interested in our resources. Is there any way we can get our gold back? Why? After we have sold it to them and they have paid us something small for it. But they have to pay for reparation now. Now that argument has been there and I have touched on it that there must be reparation for the slave trade. It's not a strong argument. If I sold my brother to you and you have paid me and my brothers have gone to suffer then I say you were the one who bought my brothers that's why we are suffering so you should pay me. That makes sense. The only reparation we can ask the soldiers who died in the first world war second world war fighting to protect their land for them if you take France for example during the second world war about 500,000 people were recruited to go and fight for them and about 2,000 people were what you call workers in various sectors some of them died, some of them were mean some of them became mad after the war they left them, they came back nothing was given to them if you want reparation it's fine but we can talk about debt cancellation because most of these things that we took didn't benefit us in any way. Where can we get this book? It's available on Amazon.com so anybody who wants it you can get copies of it on Amazon.com it's a political economy of colonial and post-colonial Africa it deals with a struggle for independence against colonial rule nationalism and struggle for independence the post-colonial Africa military interventions dependency problem and then poor governance in Africa it will give you a total understanding of the challenges that we are facing and the rule that the youth should play in helping Africa to achieve a united states of Africa so that we have control over our resources we have a common parliament a common currency an African high command no barriers the single taxation system internal trade Africans will trade with each other then we will have control over our system we will no longer be subject of control by foreign powers that will continue to take our resources away and we will be suffering here every day every day every day till our children become indebted forever if you had a chance to change one thing in Africa or only change I will change bad governance Africa is a place where when you get into position you forget about the people who voted for you we need to change bad leadership and for me bad governance is when you are the president but you are controlled by forces outside your country and you do things that are not in the best interest of your people that is one thing I would work to change it you share something so that the youth of Africa can get to have a piece of this knowledge I am forcing this in terms of transfer of knowledge to the youth of Africa and I believe you will be the best person to teach us the African history for us to know where we are coming from and who we are as Africans how proud are you to be to call yourself an African well I have always been a very proud African because I feel that it was not a mistake that God made me sent me to Africa I have to discover my purpose in life and know why God has sent me to Africa so that I can work to fulfill that destiny and I have all my life I have been working to build the self confidence of the youth so all most of the students that passed through my heart said that you have made us who we are now because you can have the knowledge you can have the skills but if you don't have the right attitude towards life and towards yourself you always have an emptiness in you which nothing can fill that is you must know who you are as an African before you move on to find our message for Africans watching us we need to unite and take control of our resources as Nkrumat told us years ago the advice he gave us is what the Europeans have used to have a European Union so what about with the originators we have to act now and this is the time act now the time is now but I think the African Union we have right now the Pan-African spirit that existed from day one the people that came together to establish the African Union it's currently dead and we want that spirit to result once again my name is Mr Ghana Baby and thank you so much for watching I really appreciate each and every one of you like this video share so that every African can have a piece of proof the name is Simon Amegajifiglo of Ghana thank you so much and I'll see you all in the next one peace out