AFRICAN ETHNICITY NECESSARY FOR MODERN AFRICA!

AFRICAN ETHNICITY AND ANCESTRAL IDENTITIES A TOOL FOR BUILDING MODERN AFRICA?

 Is returning to our ancestral identities and resources as a base for building modern Africa possible? Africa no longer holds the dignity of building their nations on their institutions, values, and heritage. 

Has modern Africa a product of Europe been stripped of the possibility to grow while giving recognition and maximum utility to the component elements of heritage, ethnicities, and culture as a source of aspiration?

Ethnicity is the embodiment of institutions, values, culture, and patterns of behavior that represent people's historical experiences, aspirations, and world view. Deprive people of their ethnicity, and culture  you deprive them of their sense of direction or purpose. 

African societies were run through an elaborate system based on family, lineage, clan, tribe, and ultimately a confederation of groups with ethnic, cultural, and linguistic characteristics in common.

These were units of social, political, and economic organizations and inter-communal relations which were later divided or brought together with no regard to their common or distinctive attributes.

This new system undermined our indigenous system which provided the means to pursue modest sustainable life objectives and replaced it with centrally controlled resources that were in short supply and subject to severely competitive demands.

Development became a means of receiving basic services from the state rather than a process of growth and collective accumulation of wealth. The localized self-sustaining subsistence activities gave way to high-risk competition for state power and scarce resources, a conflict of identities based on tribalism or ethnicity. Independence removed he common enemy ,the colonial oppressors' but  sharpened the conflict over centralized power and control over natural resources.

How do we harness our heritage and ethnicity to achieve sustainability and development ?

Music and culture are good examples of global impact African culture tend to have. Diversity of cultures ,religions ,languages and traditions should not be addressed as a barrier to development ,rather we should take advantage and build on this diversity to trigger development and economic transformation in order to realize "THE AFRICA WE WANT."

Most importantly how do we harness cultural resources to open an avenue for unleashing innovative resources to enable people ,particularly youth and women to lead full, productive and  meaningful lives by raising their income and improving living standards in terms of income ,health, education and security.