By Maria Dombaxi

Young African minds, are you watching history being made? Do you have any idea of what is happening with your continent? Who decides the laws you must abide by? Are you watching or helping with the making of undeniable potential. Who is leading Africa? Who is leading you?

Question: have you ever heard of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, The African Union, or the Regional Economic Communities? The big people, with the fancy words and the fancy resumes, part of these institutions of greatness and clouds of ambiguity. If ever there were an African country that would teach its continent’s history to its people. Let us educate ourselves young men and women. Someone up there, or rather I should say some people up there, are investing in our governments to draft constitutions in order for us to be better. Are we better? If someone is helping draft the rules of our lives, wouldn’t we want to have a say in it?

Ignorance is bliss, that is why we are poor and yet so content. That has been one of our strongest suits. It suits us better than the pioneers of the word itself. We own it. We love it; we go about our lives with it, knowing nothing but survival. It could be because of fear. I must admit our rulers don’t make it easy on us; however, this is not about them. We all have our problems. We need to be more ambitious and think bigger. We have thought-provoking men and women in power but you already know that they’re just the fog before the sunrise. We are surely capable of coming up with solutions to our own problems. We are not so handicapped that we constantly need our hands held. Question the right people, the people who know the acceptable truth.

Let me contextualize the ideas. It’s not a brain-twister, it’s simple logic. These aspiring institutions help draft the laws that our countries apply, or believe they have applied. They, with the help of debts and imbalanced exchanges, as well as charities, write policies to make our lives easier. They are the backbone of our societies. They make sure that we have a safe and abundant future, while balancing our independence from outside control, which represents the African dream and, contradictorily, the world’s largest economies’ nightmares. They provide the support needed to develop tools and policies, deliver data and draft laws for the development of our economy and the betterment of our people. They’re not just extravagant bourgeois with high heels and expensive colognes; they’re the “minds” behind our existence. Whether they’re failing or succeeding is relative, but their work has an affect on the life of every African. And together they cautiously monitor the implementation of these strategic plans by our countries. So are we paying attention to how they are making us act? In other words,  we are the lab rats and they’re experimenting rules of conduct approved by Africans and non-Africans alike; rules to help us become socially acceptable.

You know our history, we’ve always been a little crippled when it came to politics; however, this has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with self-preservation and how we choose to go about it. This has to do with knowing ourselves and the type of environment we want to raise our children in. Knowing where all the rules of our surroundings are coming from is necessary, it is survival. That is our identity as Africans, we’re survivors. We persevere against all odds; we are the roaches of the world, literally. We are the people who they try to suffocate, eliminate and we just won’t go away. As poor as we are, we still find ways to multiply; we love and laugh because that’s our coping mechanism. But we have hibernated for so long that we have no control over our reality, hunting season has come and gone. So Young African minds, be curious and demand what is yours. Help better your country and self, know who is controlling you and have a say on how controlled you want to be.