Even George Bush is sending Condi Rice here to - in the words of the NTV anchor last night - continue the ‘carrot and stick approach’ of the international community. He even knows exactly what we need, a ‘power sharing arrangement’.
So why Kenya? Why all this international attention? What makes us merit the kind of attention from Western countries that we are receiving? What makes us worthy of Kofi Anan’s undivided and fully paid for attention for ‘as long as it takes?’
Is it our GDP? 12B USD a year is negligible (in comparison, 5 US banks wrote of 100B USD recently during the sub-prime mortgage crisis).
Is it our population? 30 million is not even 5% of Africa’s population. Is it our wildlife? TZ has more. Is it our natural resources? We haven’t discovered oil like Sudan and Uganda. We don’t have reserves of natural gas like Tanzania. We don’t have the rich mineral reserves of DRC.
Is it because we are such warm people? Is it because they just like us so much?
How quickly we forget the lessons of Africa’s history? That the West has few interests except itself?
When will we stop fighting each other long enough to ask ourselves why?
No comments:
Post a Comment