Changing The Negative Stereotypes; Let’s Be Committed

What if black man was the one referred to as an European and the white man an African? We all descended from Adam and Eve, not so? Why so much discrepancy between the white man and the black man and why does the black man have to be mocked because of his colour?

Increasingly, there are so many negative stereotypes about Africa for that matter Ghana that is becoming true or reality. The white man was not born with ingenuity and neither was the black man born otherwise but the reality today is that the white man is ahead of the black man in most if not all facets of life due to reasons that if the black man is willing to overcome, can do so and rise to greatness.

The black man has been characterized as inimical to progress. To do things for collective growth, no, we would rather cheat the system for our singular good. For this reason, our leaders, especially politicians have become more corrupt or at least perceived as corrupt. In 2017, Ghana scored 40/100 ranking 81 out of 170 countries in the corruption perception index according to Transparency International. This does not in any way augur well for the country’s growth.

The white man is termed as technology savvy whiles the black man continues to deal with ancestral witchcraft. While the white man is always inventing technological instruments to enhance his daily life, the black man not only sometimes consumes the technology the wrong way but also stereotypically lacks the mental capacity to invent same.

Africa increasingly is seeing poverty take away its dignity. Do European countries ever borrow money from Africans to boost their economy vis a vis development? But why are African leaders always borrowing at even higher rates from Europeans to develop the continent?

While His Excellency Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo, the President of the sovereign republic of Ghana talks of making Greater Accra Region the cleanest city in Africa, citizens not only continue to indiscriminately and unpardonably litter the environment for lack of dustbins at vantage points, at least that is the claim of some individuals, they also defecate in water bodies. Now, some of these water bodies serve as a source of drinking water to other communities. Some communities in the Greater Accra Region may be clean but if you visit places like Tudu, tema station, Circle, Kaneshie, just to mention a few, you would realise that the slogan of making Accra the cleanest city in Africa is far from accomplishment.

Africa for that matter Ghana is fortified with enviable amounts of natural resources that if well developed and managed can propel this continent/country to the peak of development but because the stereotypes are now becoming our reality, we sit idle while all our resources are exported to Europe for a penny of the dollar.

Ghana has cocoa, timber, gold, diamond, bauxite, etc, not to mention all the undeveloped tourist sites that have the potential to fetch this country millions of cash and yet we complain of so much. Our tourism ministry must wake up from their slumber and do better for this country, we have a lot to earn from that sector.

Even our educational system which helps train the most essential of the resources, our human resource is considered poor quality. This in a way has polarized the confidence we have in our education structures. And yet, despite this assertion, when Ghanaians get onto the world stage, they rank high in whatever they are meant to do.

Granted that Ghana’s educational structure needs changes to suit the country’s need at the moment, it does not mean that what we currently have is utterly poor or useless.

We need to break the cycle of perpetual talk and zoom into action. The ordinary citizens need orientation that doing what is best for this country not only benefits us but all of posterity. It is high time we realized that what the first president of this country Dr Kwame Nkrumah said that unless the independence of Ghana is linked to the liberation of the whole of Africa, it is meaningless, pales in comparison with the fact that our individual rise is meaningless unless it is linked to the whole country/continent’s greater good.

In the same vein, if cities like Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast and the likes are developed without the various small towns around these cities also seeing some of these developments, it will be an exercise in futility because then the country would have been half developed. And consequently, the rural folks will move to the cities (rural-urban migration), which by the way is one of Ghana’s biggest problems at the moment.

We can’t always positively stereotype the white man as the best of humanity in terms of development, ingenuity, capacity, etc, we also have to believe in our own self and gradually and continuously rise to become a highly developed country.

Taking big fancy positions does not solve the problems we are confronted with. We must actually apply ourselves to work.

We can do whatsoever we set our minds to. Just as we can cheat the system, we can also equally help make the system robust to ensure practical development.

The task ahead is daunting but not impossible. All we need to do is to take the first practical step towards it and to never quit. We have to stop kowtowing to all the negative stereotypical comments about us and rise to a status befitting of all the resources God/Allah has blessed us with.

A better Ghana we want, let us be responsible.

YUSSIF AHMED

[email protected]

GHANA INSTITUTE OF JOURNALISM