Trumps Suspension Of USAID -An Eye Opener For Africa

For the next four years, the relationship between the United States and Africa will not be favourable. We must brace for tougher and rougher times than ever before upon the ascension to power of a hardline white supremacist and a bunch of hardcore MAGA fundamentalists he has appointed to the cabinet. His first time was not so pleasant as he spat out insolence and vitriol on African leaders and reduced us to levels of sub-humanity in the statements he crafted on Tweeter and other social media platforms. His veins have German blood from the father Fred Trump Snr and his iron-fisted and I-know-it-all disposition casts him into the same mold of political hegemony like Adolf Hitler, who without doubt, is his childhood idol and dead role model.

Time is now opportune for Africa to be weaned from the breast of imperialist powers and stand as a solid united continent to counter the economic colonisation of Africa which will now assume a new momentum. Donald Trump is an over-ambitious leader obsessed with himself and he will do everything in power to exercise his excess powers which would be ultra vires and to ensure that black people do not get anywhere closer to economic freedom. His chief prophet and self-imposed co-president who massively funded the Trump campaigns against Kamala Harris, one Elon Musk, an ardent, rabid racist business mogul, has set out to trample upon all perceived and declared enemies of Trump and pummel them to sheepish subservience and eventual political numbness as their rights will be mutilated and thrown into the cesspool. The next four years will be very tough for Africa and from the time he got into active politics he has presented himself as the most meritorious and cleanest tycoon on earth and an exceedingly exceptional President of the United States only comparable to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, notwithstanding him being a felon and twice-impeached President. His speed to suppress opponents and grab other people’s land for personal glory such as Gaza Strip, Greenland and Canada will be faster than lightening or a jet in the airspace.

There are times when nations get psychotics with semblance of saints and God-fearing fellows, airlifted to Presidency by over-excited voters and over-weaning and overbearing political party loyalists with pocket agendas tailored to gain favours of the President and the limelight laced with sycophancy and hero-worship of failed political giants driven by fate to rise to the apex of power.

The USAID stands out as the key saver of lives of millions of people infected with HIV and AIDS. The sudden halt of funding of the purchase and deliveries of ARVs to the underdeveloped countries by the new President-cum-King of America will result in mass deaths reminiscent of the days when we watched hundreds of Ugandans dying in large numbers and hundreds of coffins lined up like baskets on the road from Entebbe International Airport to main city of Kampala. It may even be worse than that as it has come sudden like lightening killing all members of a soccer team in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the yesteryear. I cannot imagine seeing thousands of precious souls in Africa dying like locusts dry leaves falling off trees in Africa. It will be a horrendous toll. Africa must prove to the world that it has leaders more advanced in planning than those in America, Europe and Asia though it may sound or look ridiculous to many of our brothers and sisters who sheepishly and subsviently fall prey to the manipulation of the hegemonic forces in the rich West.

Over the years our stride in the sphere of manufacturing medicines have been very minimal and below the pace of snails. So many youngsters and mature, old students have been graduating at universities but the manila paper we call degrees have not driven Africa further than the distance dreamt of by our founding fathers and mothers. Leaders meet in Addis Ababa yearly and in regional economic groupings but their resolutions or plans of action have remained redundant pieces of paper in the office headquarters of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern African (COMESA), the East Africa Community (EAC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). If all these regional groupings were to put their minds, souls, spirits and bodies together to transform Africa by reducing narrow interests driven by selfish motives, Africans would manage to transform the continent from a poverty-riddled one into an economic giant which can influence the trends in sustainable development. ARVs have been circulating around Africa from the year of discovery but I wonder how many of our leaders treading the corridors of power have taken the decision to have Africa begin exploring the frontiers of medical excellence which would guarantee the discovery of the cure of HIV and AIDS through serious investments in research. Research is the only definite pass-key to a permanent nostrum to HIV and AIDS. The African Union (AU) leaders must hold emergency summits with African medical intellectuals and herbal medicine practitioners in the mold of Ludwig Sondashi and seriously discuss the urgency of making our continent less dependent on the United States and China as the foremost economic giants.

The dependency syndrome has not been good for Africa. It is a festering and septic wound which requires urgent healing. We, as Africa, are like a very ill patient with legs hit by septic sores and failing to walk but hoping that the healing will come on its own. Amputation of Mother Africa’s two legs will make us permanently handicapped and be pushed on the wheel chair by the United States and China, both with motives to kill our economies, incite people to rise against legally-constituted regimes and install puppets to run governments at the behest of the imperialists clad in garments of benevolence and masks of sainthood.

The African Union must map out strategies and priorities that would enable Africa to stand on its own by facilitating economic freedom. This cannot be an easy exercise as simple as drinking a cup of milk at a donor-funded workshop. It would call for tremendous sacrifice not short of denial of self interests and sacrificing pocket agendas in order to build a united Africa. We have so many leaders in Africa serving their countries like business moguls with their personal interests taking paramount precedence over the citizenry. Servant leadership presented to us by the like of Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Simon Kapwepwe, Mainza Chona, Thomas Joseph Mboya, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Joshua Nkomo, Josiah Tongogara, Simon Mzenda, Thomas Sankara, Jerry John Rawlings, John Pombe Joseph Magufuri, Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Thabo Mbeki, Samuel Shinashula Nujoma, Herman Toivo wa Toivo, Govan Archibald Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, Samora Machel, Augustino Neto, Amilcar Cabral and Mahatma Gandhi in India is what Africa needs now, more than ever before. Nothing will stop Africa from standing on its own if we all put selfish interests underfoot and put development of Africa top of the agenda.

May God help us to save the lives of people on our continent being ravaged by dreaded diseases like HIV and AIDS, Ebola, Cholera, Typhoid, Tuberculosis, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Diabetes, and Malaria among many others commonplace in Africa. We must all put in more than our best to transform Africa and reach a stage where we would not miss the apparent dissolution and extinction of the United States Agency for International Development.

Author is Shaddon Chanda, Luanshya based Historian and Academician