Vision and leadership principles of people of Africa
Version: 0.5 - DRAFT
I have looked at all aspects of the current situation with respect to Africa, and the countries of the continent of Africa, including its deep wound bared by African-descendant, immigrants, and supporters, this deep moral, economic, and cultural scar left by colonialism and slavery. There is this feeling that most African descendant knows because, at some point in their life, one is subject to racism or has to confront condescending terms born from the association of skin color, your status as a child or grandchild of someone that has immigrated, the blatant defeat of your ancestors, therefore, one will not completely feel at home. And you wouldn’t naturally feel this way, the environment, due to occasional reminders, made you develop this feeling, despite the natural rejection like antibodies, because, naturally, you want to belong. Even worse, this is not exclusive to Africans, but also Caribbeans, African-Americans, and native Africans that are emigrating for better conditions are also targeted here.
But absolute clarity and definitive resolution came when I realized that, if you observe it from a purely rational and absolutely logical perspective, the way you consider racism or react to it, or the images and messages that you hear from other cultures, which are often synonyms of lack of wealth, not only physical wealth but also the lack of knowledge wealth and mental resource, which result in these induced ideas and tacit knowledge about Africa, Africans, Afro-descendant and the African Diaspora, is just the natural product of the dumbness of people thinking this because these ideas are the only knowledge displayed on mainstream free mass media such as television, ads, social media, books, teachers and parents and the product of « still winning ». The imbalance is still present, yet this balance isn’t what is sought because balance is perceived as one population is winning while the other one is losing, binary thinking falsified by a closed perception of the ecosystem.
This enlightenment is born from facts: some people from Africa suffers because of the cascade of consequences that resulted from the era of colonialism, such as rerouting of resources to other cultures, like taxes, and multiple disruptions in term of the stability of democracies and political systems, often the result of special ops and external military warfare, overarching governance of the financial system (CFA franc, IMF, Central Bank System) has not permitted African and afro-descendent to establish the building blocks of a civilization growth. In addition, the growth is slowing down: the progression encounters external and internal roadblocks, in an ever-changing worldwide development and mutations. And this ever-changing world is the answer to answer to everything: the competition can favor Africa at each and every moment because the competition is actually perpetual: there is no winner, but you would be winning in a continuous manner. It is not about winning at the expense of other cultures losing, but winning within your people, winning for yourself.
The first chapter was written when African countries were at the pinnacle of world civilizations, I am thinking about Ethiopia, Namibia, Mali, Egyptians, Arab kingdoms, Congo, etc.
The second chapter occurred during the age of colonialism.
The following is the Masterplan for the third chapter and the perpetual win.
First, before this strategy is discussed, each and everyone should ask in his deeper self, if is there such a thing as an African nation, moreover is there something you, as an individual, are willing to build? If the answer is yes, then know that only invested time and actions matter, even though it is a small and one-time action. Each individual is a unit of the African Nation, and the African Nation has no meaning, no existence without the people. And each individual has the occasion and the power to make a difference.
Second, in modern times, we are used to hearing “the pen is mightier than a sword”. But do not be fooled, African nations, even if they were shining by their culture, peace, simplicity, artistic beauty, musical and dancing depth, folklore, spirituality, and order, they have been crushed by the greater military forces of Europe. This power has permitted to enforce of cultural transformation, enslavement, forced relocation, resources appropriation, culture erasure and replacement, social structure disqualification, and the consideration of a master owning the most powerful and capable tool, just like a biological machine selected for its potency, and disposed of, to not say killed otherwise, having the status and the utility between the horse and the worst human of the western civilization. It is important to see it with a cold and open eye without bad feelings, such as anger, hate, resentment, or sorrow. Nowadays, most of us have not experienced slavery, hence we must keep our heads cool, and focus our analytical power on the plan that lies ahead. And, from this great suffering, great nations such as the United States of America, or the Caribbean island have emerged, and their development has permitted to deliver great advances for humanity, along with the creation of new cultures, languages, and artistic styles.
The foundational principle is that there is no end game, it is a perpetual game, and it is about to thrive at each second.
What a nation should do:
The vision must be precisely described (take the time to shape it, perfect it), overwhelmingly simple in its message so that even a kid can understand it, and, finally, free from any form of interpretation. Thus:
We propose to establish a plan spanning the next 30 years. Why 30? This time frame represents a full generation, allowing a new cohort of children to grow up, complete their education, enter the workforce, and garner sufficient experience to excel and take charge. In parallel, it also allows parents to gain wisdom from their experiences with their offspring. Furthermore, 30 years serves as a timeline for a nation to convene and commemorate its rejuvenation.
This 30-year period should be divided into sub-phases of 3 years each. Why 3 years? From a societal perspective, this duration is sufficient to construct large-scale projects such as housing, buildings, factories, etc., establish businesses, design power plans, finalize international agreements, and review strategic milestones. It also provides an opportunity for periodic review. From an individual perspective, three years is ample time to observe significant changes relative to one’s position three years prior.
Upon the completion of these 30 years, it will be time to conduct a retrospective, compile a report, and then revise the global strategy by defining a new overarching master plan.
Let’s embrace the rhythm of life.
Natural selection is an essential process for sustained continuity, serving as a “life continuity algorithm”: - Preserve what is beneficial - Eliminate what is detrimental - Innovate to improve and supplant what is merely good - Remember your decisions, the contexts in which you made them, and the reasons why
Strategic Growth through Bio-Architecture: In bio-architecture, each “limb” serves a function, and there is redundancy to ensure resilience, precision, and balance: - Divide the country into regions. Strike a balance considering current population, land fertility, buildable land, existing fauna and flora, and the connected value-chain. - Each region should strive to become a center of production and excellence (i.e., research and development). For instance: ○ Consider Casamance, which could be the center of peanut, banana, and agricultural transportation systems. A research center could focus on enhancing the yield of these products (in an ecological and safe manner), and how technology can improve the quality of life for workers and consumers. To ensure continuity, a university (complete with dormitories and international exchange programs) should be developed, focusing on this specific expertise. ○ Dakar could be the center for Administrative Services and GovTech. ○ Saint Louis might serve as the regional center for fishing organization, technologies, and research, etc. Multiple such centers should exist throughout Africa (for redundancy and collaboration, considering various environmental contexts for diverse data inputs). - Monitor each region (through data collection, analysis, and recommendations to corporations and individuals) to assess their performance relative to other cities (in Africa) with similar functions. This is where competition through cooperation comes into play (harking back to natural selection). Share and compare what works, what works better, research findings, data, analysis techniques, and potential synergies among these cities to identify things that can be produced in one place and shared with others. - Consider implementing redundant systems in multiple regions to ensure resilience. Each subsidiary of the system should be able to operate on a smaller/more local scale.
Upon reflection, the exact nature of the geographical divisions—whether they are departments, cities, states, or even countries—doesn’t really matter. What’s crucial is the structure of the system of systems, starting with how the regions are governed, where the decision-making power resides in the system of change, how fluid the system of information and communication is, and how efficient and fair the counterbalancing power is. Ultimately, the concept of a nation is constructed in our minds and is shaped by our recognition of the people within and outside of this nation. To take it further, we can envision a nation that transcends the confines of a continent, extending to sub-communities in other countries.
- Strategic Planners are necessary to act as conductors.
- Transformation Program Managers are required to oversee strategic progress and monitor investments.
- Engineers are needed to design sustainable constructions.
- Designers are crucial for creating new things in an artistic manner to enrich the culture.
- Subject Matter Experts are essential for construction.
- Researchers are needed to expand horizons in the future, the past, and the present (economic, technological, and cultural perspectives).
- Logisticians are crucial to manage the flow of goods and services, as well as to anticipate and mitigate the risk of shortages in certain areas, even creating reserves and backups in case of catastrophic events.
- Educators are vital to ensure the continued strength of the nation. They enable the nation's capacity to accomplish everything, fix everything, and expand beyond current limits.
- Sages act as trustworthy and uniquely experienced senior advisors, recognized and elected by their peers. They strive not only for what is best for all and the individual, but also seek what is "good" in terms of ethics and preservation of shared values. We entrust their guidance, akin to a "village chief". They will serve as collective heads of the corpus. There should be 10 sages per corpus.
- There's no obligation to return to your home country; you can start assisting from your current location:
○ Educate your relatives
○ Invest in the future: students, companies, non-profit utilities, and social services (orphanages, religious organizations, arts, etc.)
○ Learn from other cultures, embrace their best attributes to incorporate into your own, provided it enhances your personal growth. This, in turn, will enrich the African culture and contribute to creating a better living environment.
- However, if you feel drawn to return, consider visiting from time to time, or even moving back permanently.
- Strive to cater to the needs of Africans, considering cultural specificities.
- Prioritize buying African products and services, unless they are not available. This principle creates a self-reinforcing loop that leads to exponential growth. It follows the rule of compound interest. Therefore, it's a medium to long-term strategy that should be formulated by leaders and strategic planners, but taught and executed by everyone.
- If there are no offerings within the African community, it signifies:
○ An opportunity to establish a new market.
○ An opportunity for innovation.
○ Potential issues with product discoverability, logistics, or product placement. Therefore, there is room for improvement (potentially a vertical increase of offerings) or the need for marketplaces.
- Conversely, immigration/emigration programs in each African region should facilitate and promote the return of individuals who have something valuable to contribute.
Being African isn’t solely about being born in the continent or having brown skin. It encompasses living, embracing, and sharing African cultures and values, and defending the continent’s fauna, flora, and land. A nation exists because of its people, and nothing else. These people take care of one another, as well as the animals, plants, and minerals that come from African soil.
To grasp the essence of the following guidelines, consider these questions: Can you eat money? Can you drink money? Can you feel money? Is God money? Do you have faith in money? Can you converse with money? Can you grow money from the soil? Is money composed of atoms? Is money governed by the laws of nature (laws of physics, biology, chemistry)? Can you physically protect yourself with money? Can you mentally protect yourself with money? Does money contain knowledge? Is money alive? Can you build something with money? (Not what you can buy with it) Can money love you? Can money be your friend? Can money enable you to travel?
I would wager that all answers to the above questions are “no”. Why? Because money is a concept, a mental construct. To be more precise: - Money is information, a number indicating some value (your bank account balance, a price tag, a transfer). - The financial system is an information system specialized in managing value. It’s designed, developed, and optimized to maintain a balance between consumption and production through trading. Nowadays, this value-centered information system is composed of Information Technologies and exchange of values of resources, goods, and services between humans. The current attempt to grasp the value of things and people is based on an unsteady balance and flawed logic. The balance is realized by the constant adjustment of “prices” and the acceptable speed of the change of value, and the acceptance by parties (producer, buyer, seller, consumer) need only be acceptable, not necessarily fair. To truly build a system of value with an unshakeable and universal standard, money should be measured in Watts, the metric of energy. Then, everything becomes clear and self-explanatory. Money is the energy required to execute a transaction. The variation in the surplus of valuation is about rating the need in the spectrum of abundance and scarcity. If something is abundant (with abundance defined in relation to the amount of need/demand), then the surplus is null. But if something is scarce, then the excess increase in value follows the mechanisms of an auction, similar to the mechanisms of a stock exchange market.
The corollary is that stored money has no value, because it produces nothing and is used by no one. So, only the flow of money, within a transaction, which embodies energy transfer, makes sense.
No, we don’t. We don’t even need money. What we need are people, ideas, long-term planning, focus, talents, continuity through legacy, coordination, protection against sabotage, peacekeeping services, and the elimination of obstacles that would hinder collective success. If you still believe you need to follow the world’s rules, then consider government debt: an internal debt is a debt to your children. And if you trust your plan and execute it for the right reasons, then this debt is an investment for your children’s future.
Firstly, utilize all mechanisms that enable African countries to be self-reliant, building internal resilience by relying solely on external exchange of ideas, techniques, practices, technology, and wisdom. All else is value created by people and value consumed by people, aiming to reach prosperity. If there is a surplus of value, then share it with the world. As it is said in the holy book: help thyself, and God (as, we, your people) will help thee.
Secondly, if the economy still needs to rely on money as a technology to circulate value and manage the balance between production and distribution of value, then create a unique currency. This will not create any differences among people; on the contrary, it will establish a unified system of reference for the financial aspect of the economy. For external trading systems, for the aspect of exchange with the outside world, allow other countries to buy the African currency at a relatively high cost so that it always benefits the children of Africa. Technically, there is an incentive to use a single financial system technology, like the blockchain and a single currency system, interchangeable with existing local currency at first, until local currencies become redundant and unnecessary for everyone, so that only one social-financial technology remains.
Demonstrate financial, cultural, technological, social, educational, political, productivity, resilience, sustainability, abundance, and theological strength, until mutual respect is naturally earned—neither begged nor conquered—by everyone, from the structure of your family to the way other continents perceive the children of Africa.
Disconnect from the global economic system, but develop/integrate even more into the global trading system Firstly, there must be a clean break from the superstructures that have neither reason nor necessity to influence the African nation in any shape or form. This includes the IMF, World Bank Group, SWIFT, BIS, and NGOs that are created to raise money from philanthropic activities and donations. Given that the African Nation possesses resources, solar energy, and fertile soil, it does not need money for trading; it needs expertise and services.
- There should be no destructive competition. It's not about 'eat or be eaten', or 'beat or be beaten'; it's about being the best at something and striving to improve in other areas.
- There should be local and global marketplaces where the prices of primary goods and resources are the same, constituting an immutable frame of reference based on labor. Only transformed goods can be subjected to competition, if necessary, to establish a free market.
- Limits can be set in terms of size to encourage competition and create opportunities that benefit both the end consumers and the employees of the company.
- Everyone should have a home:
○ The society must agree to build enough dwellings to ensure that people have places to live. This commitment is based on economic and environmental plans.
○ When people contribute to society, they effectively have a mortgage: part of their contribution is given back to the people, and a part of the rent serves as the person's savings. When the person is ready to make a purchase, they can access the money that was set aside for this purpose (locked in a smart contract).
○ People should have the option to build their own houses in designated spaces.
- Penalties for crimes should be substantial.
- It should be fully open-source.
- The law and code should be public property.
- Every citizen who modifies the code and algorithms must be clearly identified and held accountable for each change.
- Changes must be reviewed.
- Issues must be clearly explained and documented so that they can be fixed.
- Changes should be clearly expressed in a Request for Comments (RFC) manner.
- Education should act as a preventative vaccine against corruption.
- Education is the thread that connects the present to the future. It should consistently reinforce the mission and values, what we aim to avoid, and where we don't wish to end up. Education should equip individuals with all necessary tools for independence, such as the ability to learn anything, mental fortitude, and examples of pitfalls (like deception, treason, theft, treachery, betrayal, etc.) that can destroy individuals, families, communities, and the nation.
Recognition of Goods and Services Produced by the African Nation Certification and labeling are useful for identifying products produced by the African nation, for several reasons: - They indicate compliance with shared principles. - They confirm the African origin of the products. - They guide buyers to prioritize these products, thus keeping finance within the African nation. - They ensure that when goods need to be recycled, the materials stay within the property of the African Nation. To prevent counterfeiting of transformed products, each product must be uniquely identified and tracked. Imported products should also be handled with care as the exchange of technology is essential for the benefit of humanity as a whole. However, priorities should be maintained: 1. Preserve prosperity. 2. Incorporate new technology or diversity only if it fosters the growth of the African nation without violating the principles of unity, respect for individuals, cultural diversity, and sustainable abundance.
The greatest enemy is within us. Collapse is what ends nations. The most significant threats are nations that have adopted the strategy of ruthlessly exploiting other nations to sustain and thrive. This leads to anti-development or “nation-killing” actions such as: - Corruption - Lack of enduring programs for education in jobs requiring high-level skillsets - Deficiency in leadership skills, project management abilities, and delivery oversight - Piracy of local lands and infrastructure
One of the critical problems that needs to be addressed at the core level from the very beginning is the eradication of corruption and scams, which can sometimes be perpetrated by familiar individuals. My proposed solution to this problem is to communicate the risk of severe punishment in the event of corruption and scams. The reason is simple: Trust is the primary currency of a nation’s strategic development. And trust generates another essential resource: reliability for the future.
Communication is the foundation of freedom and liberty of action. A nation cannot rely upon another’s means of communication unless an agreement is in place to establish a common service for the people, with explicit and balanced decision-making power. The channels of communication should be tied to each corpus, avoiding centralization and concentration by the government (except for the corpus of governance, speaking only about governance) or media conglomerates, which ultimately may represent the interests of an individual or small group of individuals. Given societal anti-patterns, these concentrated media channels can be “hacked”, with power being redirected by another hidden influential group through corruption, blackmail, or the exploitation of weaknesses. Therefore, platforms like Twitter, YouTube-like TV networks, and phygital world platforms should be established as foundations of society, leveraging a platform operating model. In this model, everyone can create their own channel, space, forum, or group for a small fee, ensuring collective ownership. This presents an enormous opportunity for setup.
The ability to nourish the entire population consistently is an essential foundational building block that must be perpetually maintained. It is based on: - A system of cultivation - A transportation system - A system of warehousing - A system for long-term conservation - A system of continuous energy distribution - A regional system of disaster management - A system of resource management and forecasting - A system of education - A system of research and development
While having innate skills and powerful cognitive abilities is beneficial, what matters most is the wisdom accumulated from experiences, enabling informed decision-making based on what works and what doesn’t.
Bad leadership is only magnified when it holds power. Poor decisions can then have an enormous impact on the population, with damage potentially taking years to recover. Hence, the best organizational structure involves a multidisciplinary coalition of sages, each of whom is recognized by their peers as an expert in their respective field.
The system of job renewal should maintain and enforce the recruitment of new workforce members directly from local and continental schools, with a small percentage of individuals studying in foreign countries to import skills that African descendant communities are lacking. However, the most crucial aspect is to make job discovery as transparent as possible to foster the circulation of talent and cross-pollination. Emerging skills must be supported by training curricula, either at school (incorporated into regional or national programs) or through online courses. The career journey should ideally follow this path: - School - Open help in career orientation - Multi-mentoring (perhaps mentoring by experts should be a national service which enables them to add time for retirement) - Multiple internship opportunities - Professionalization of university exchange programs - Wide-open job boards with national obligations to publish available vacancies - Incentives for the first two years of joining a local company (tax-wise). For example, reduced or no tax for young workers, benefitting both the young worker and the company, with additional incentives for the mentor - Incentives for entrepreneurship and startup creation, facilitated by multiple startup/co-working hubs with shared innovation/R&D/fablab capacity - Recognition and promotion of field experts so that multiple companies within the industry can benefit from their techniques and involve them in national/international/mission-critical programs
Set up this international network that extends beyond the physical boundaries of Africa to include all African descendants and new African partisans.