Why Africa can leverage indigenous talents for sustainable development

Development experts and sociologists convened on a virtual space to chart conversation on how Africa can leverage indigenous and home-grown talents for sustainable development across the continent.

Organised by the Think Tank for Sustainable Development, the conversation was centered on ‘Reinventing Tribalism to Work for Africa’s Development’

“Post-independence African leaders did not suppress identities to build state,” Chichi Aniagolu-Okoye, regional director, West Africa, Ford Foundation, said in keynote address, at the Think Tank webinar on sustainable development, adding that they leveraged ethnic diversity to build stronger society.

According to her, self-reliant, culturally confident communities build a far more stable nation than forced unity could ever build. She added that success must mean collective security, and not individual profit.

Accordingly, she posited that Africa and Africans must replace global capitalism with local self-sufficiency and community wealth. “Loving your own culture does not require denigrating another.”

Aniagolu-Okoye said African development has always been communal long before the advent of colonialism and urged new generations of Africans to retrace their steps back to pre-colonial Africa, where communities pull resources together for developmental purposes.

“Look at the Igbo people who use town unions and apprentice networks to pioneer a rapid, historic economic recovery after the devastation of the Nigerian civil war,” Aniagolu-Okoye said, adding that “These traditions endear today as vital social safety nets. They prove a fundamental truth. People will willingly invest their capital and their labour when development is framed as communal honour.”

According to her, the modern challenge for Africa is to transform tribalism, and ethnicity away from a survival mechanism; by turning it from an outward weapon of hostility into an inward engine of civic excellence. “We must remember, the core tribal instinct is not inherently evil. It is driven by a healthy, deeply human desire for belonging and mutual aid.”

Eghosa Osaghae, professor of political science and director general, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), said tribalism thrived across Africa because the state disappeared. According to him, tribalism is the basis for collective self-reliance. “The state has disappeared in critical areas where the state should have been active,” he said.

Osaghae also disclosed that he has been able to distinguish between positive ethnicity and negative ethnicity through his writings over the years. According to him, negative ethnicity is conflictual and very disruptive in nature.

“But positive ethnicity is the one that talks about what you can benefit from self-help and reliance on what you’re able to galvanize and mobilize in a self-determined manner, which belongs to your autonomous space.”