Why Do African Leaders Want To Look Un-African?
If you go through African Union group photos of African Heads of State, only Nigerian leaders have consistently dressed in exclusively Nigerian clothes from head to toe (I can't vouch for their shoes). Leaders from other nations consistently wear Western suits. And it is even sad that since the death of Muammar Gaddafi, North African Arab leaders have joined this trend.
If not for Nigerian leaders, the group photos of African Union leaders would not have featured African fashion.
For example, please look at this group photo of the ongoing 38th Ordinary Session of the ****** embly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union.
This could be mistaken for a fashion shoot at Paris Fashion Week. The only person wearing African Indigenous clothing made from made-in-Africa fabric and designed and produced in Africa is President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria.
What does that say about us as a people, race and continent?
Two immediate things telegraph your cultural values: your name and your appearance. Sadly, African leaders largely fail in both regards. They have either a Western, Middle Eastern or Asian first or last name or sometimes even both.
Why can't African leaders bear wholly African names and wear entirely African clothes, like most Nigerian leaders? Your culture is your anchor. And without prioritising our culture, Africa will continue to be a carcass that vultures from other continents feed on.
This is why we have the lowest intraregional trade and travel in the world. 68% of Europe’s trade is intraregional, compared with an abysmal 18% for Africa.
The whole of Africa makes a paltry $2.4 billion from chocolate imports. In comparison, Germany alone makes over €4.5 billion (Euros, not dollars) annually refining and re-exporting cocoa imported from #Africa . That is double what the entire African continent makes from her sweat.
A Black African will need visas to visit a fellow Black African country, whereas that country has a visa-free policy for #Europeans , #Americans and Canadians. What better way to project your inferiority complex than to have a lane at your international airport for Whites to enter your country unimpeded while another lane has your sternest immigration officials projecting animosity and looking down on your own kind?
Again, it boils down to how we perceive ourselves. If we continue to see ourselves as less than enough unless we attach a foreign name and dress in foreign clothes, we will never trust each other enough to collaborate. This means that we will always be in competition, and the end result is that economic and political completion will continue to elude us.
Read more...👇
