Identity Crisis

Some Africans have lost their roots and their lives do not have a sense of identity or purpose. This lack of focus removes the drive to make and achieve personal goals.

Inferiority Complex

Some Africans have come to accept propaganda started by the slave trade and foreign missionaries and continued by negative journalists that their skin colour determines who they are. They fail to believe that they can be intelligent and successful. They deny their own knowledge, abilities and potential.

Dependency

Some Africans come to believe that only foreigners can save Africa, and they become dependents, expecting outsiders to solve their problems. People and countries must learn to become self-reliant and help themselves.

Imitation

Some Africans feel they have to be like Americans or Europeans in order to be successful and happy. They replace their names, clothes, art, music, weddings, literatures, languages, religions, lifestyles and values with Western ones. They waste their money on Western luxuries and indulge in Western excesses. They try to adopt Western methods of politics, economics, industry, business, medicine and education to a very different African environment and culture.

Greed

Some Africans who have struggled so long for survival and rights are overwhelmed by their survival instincts and are not satisfied when they achieve middle class. They lust for more money and power, and they control and exploit others, forgetting the people who struggled alongside them and who are still struggling. Their profits are derived from the misery of their less fortunate neighbours.

Education

The rural poor receive an education based on Western curricula that do not suit their needs or meet their expectations. Teaching methods are inappropriate, focusing on rote learning and exam scores rather than competencies in authentic situations. Their knowledge is useless for jobs in rural areas, but when they migrate to the cities, they find a high level of competition and usually remain unemployed. The education is needlessly expensive, yet government budgets for education are shrinking, so to pay the increasing school fees, girls often resort to prostitution. Instead of improving the school system, political and corporate leaders send their children to Western schools in Europe or the US.

Brain Drain

Most of the highly qualified African scientists, engineers, teachers, doctors and other workers go abroad to study and work, taking with them their knowledge, skills and money. Little scientific research, development, and teaching is done by Africans to apply African technologies to African problems in industry, manufacturing or agriculture. Some of the best writers and intellectuals are exiled or imprisoned by their governments for expressing their views.

Participation

Some Africans do not know their rights and duties to participate in building their community and their country. They have despaired of the power of vote because of election fraud, and they do not see the value in voting for rich leaders in faraway cities. Their governments do not permit their participation, much less encourage it. People must assert their right to have a say in their government.

Autocracy

Some well-meaning but misguided dictators believe that they can solve the country's problems by imposing their idealistic solutions without letting the people have a voice. They are ignorant of the needs of the rural poor because they fail to consult them or respect their opinions.

Westernisation

Many leaders are part of a Westernised elite with a Western education.  They use Western methods to try and build a centralised Western economy. They imitate colonial leaders and colonise their own countries.

Urbanisation

The leaders parasitically squeeze the wealth from the rural areas to build Western cities, manufacturing, housing, hospitals and schools that favour the rich urban elite. Government fines and taxes add to the burden of the rural poor, who must destroy the environment to meet the increased demands for agricultural products. They impose Western property laws which drive poor people off the land into cities, creating migrant labour, landlessness and rural indebtedness. Because the development resources are biased toward cities, people go where the money is, and the cities become overcrowded.

Planning

Many leaders are too busy managing crises to plan for the long term. They take out large, risky loans to try and get the economy started, but end up with a long-term debt, sacrificing the future for the present. They spend more on hospitals and cures than preventative health like clean water, sanitation, nutrition and family planning.

Disunity

Some Africans with similar values and economic status fight for ethnic reasons, encouraged by foreigners and leaders who use divide and rule tactics to profit from the destabilised situation.