On Saturday last week at the ongoing 6th High Level Forum on security in Africa at Blue Nile Hotel, Bahir Dar in Ethiopia, President Yoweri Museveni openly disagreed with some of the presenters who said education is the solution to deciphering problems of Africa and transferred the blame on the policies prepared by both technocrats and political leaders led to various challenges faced by the content.
“That if you educate your people, everything will be okay? This was part of mistakes in 1960. This fragmented thinking, fragmented vision is incorrect. If you educate people but you don’t have infrastructure including electricity, where will they work? How will they work?
“We in Uganda have identified 10 strategic bottlenecks and our view is that they all must be handled together. These include ideology, state formation, infrastructure development, market integration… If I produce but do not have enough buyers, how will I benefit?” remarked President Museveni.
Museveni further argued that Africa is at a structural disadvantage in that great ideas do not apply to the whole of Africa, the Tana Forum can still spread the ideas throu ‘osmosis’. He said it takes good ideas to spread on the continent to consolidate its gains and urged all Africans to come together and achieve this.
“Africa has a structural disadvantage. We are not like China. In China when there is one good thinker…the whole china follows them. Here, you may have good ideas in Ethiopia but they are localized and do not apply to the whole of Africa. This forum can help ideas spread by osmosis,” he said.
Museveni then implored African leaders to starting working out pragmatic ways of thoroughly discussing and filtering positions which can help their people get informed, reformed, transformed and developed with the continent’s natural resources blessed with.
Museveni also alluded to the new US President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies which is gradually pushing Africans (in particular) into the reality of their situation.
“I love Trump. I love that man Trump because that man has told you that he is not your uncle. And I think it is good. For those Africans who feel orphaned, am sorry for them. Let’s come back to our continent and mind our own affairs,” Museveni said.
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