is it reasonable or even tenable for hiring companies in Africa to prioritise those with western degrees and other advanced qualifications over those from within the continent and elsewhere, for example China or Russia, in the selection of candidates for a role?

the bias for western qualifications has been going on for the better part of a generation, and yet the continent still wallows in want, and things are not getting better despite the noise from the usual camp. isn't it about time Africans reassessed this selection process on account of results alone. if we are not doing any better thanks to our western educated throng leading us, then there must be something wrong with the education...

take economics as an example. I studied industrial management and can say the knowledge I gained is absolutely essential to running a modern day company. without it, I would be useless for any company, unless I self educate then start my own company. as they say, you do not really need to go to school to know economics. bottom line is the graduate is always better than those who learnt things by themselves, who will usually still have much to learn as they struggle to keep their business going, growing, etc.

but then where in the west has a business relied solely on the educated people leading the enterprise for its profits? better yet, which western country owes its success to these people alone? I am being simplistic, I know, but then I am cutting a long story short, without having to write a whole book on here, pulling into the story the wars meant at propping up currencies, the unfair competition, the subsidies, Enron, you name it.

to me, when a graduate leaves the western shores and returns to the continent, he takes with him/her a mere shell of what it takes to make success of the venture. without control of the media, without gunboat diplomacy, without the capacity to get the kind of subsidies and other breaks companies in the west are getting, without all the other breaks and protection from competition with external economic forces, a western education in running a company taken to the impoverished shores of Africa is but a shell of the whole thing. it will not make of Africa a success even when the critical number of such individuals is reached within a country as there is much more concerned with running businesses in the west than mere education alone.

this is to say the education as is is in fact useless without the economic infrastructure of which it is a product, to which it is a part.

I suggest to African governments that they set new policy for companies, to prioritise the selection of educated people from other countries, for example China. WHY? that continent has the knowledge Africans need to bootstrap. China never needed to invade another country to prop up its currency. China never needs to murder the opposition, especially African intellectuals to get its rubbish sold on the continent. China doesn't need to force idiotic leaders on us to create an atmospehre friendly to its economic dictates. obviously, an economic education gained in CHina will make an African ready for the world without the need for an advanced killer machine navy, without the need for terrorists, without the need for all the parafenalia associated with the west.

we do not have these things that make the west wealthy, albeit blood of innocents dependent wealth. we are not about to gain these things, so what are we doing getting education that doesn't work without these evil supporting structures?

And what is it of China's education system that you believe will better serve Africa?

any economic "doctrine", as much education overal, cannot be divorced from its roots. the sum of the objective of education is the transmission of culture, the transplanting of which is only workable where adjustments are made to fit in with the receiving ethnic environment. also remember here that there is always an elite group, the rulling class, who are very involved in the setting of goals of education. they want to keep those they rule in a particular way, benefiting them and the group at large as they see fit.

their mandates are the last an Afrikan wants to be unwittingly carrying out, no?

western cultures are imperialistic by design, the werewithal for which is a hate culture, euphemistically called a culture of war. this ideology no doubt seeps into the education material, and will not find expression in a culture without the tools to make ventures specific to this culture possible.

as an industrial manager, how am I going to use the knowledge gained from European climes to make my business work in an African environment? my government does not have a policy of taking things from other peoples by force, does not even have the army that will raid other countries for the resources I will get for give away prices, to use then resell to the source at exhorbitant prices. I will not be able to dictate prices of final products where the other side has advantages, etc.

this, and much more, would apply even to the chinese economic strategy, but then the chinese have learnt how to profit from the system from an underdog's position as well as without the need to keep other people in want, ignorance, decrepitude; commit mentacide or constantly bomb them back into the stone age in order to keep the edge over them. just check the chinese economic surplus the last years for proof of how well their strategy works, and it is no doubt inculcated into the economic doctrine they have developed over the period.

our present position is very similar to where they are coming from, meaning their way of doing things is one we can greatly benefit from. more of our people need to be educated to approach the economic world from their own level, which for Africans (us) means the underdog level, in much the same way that they did. more and more of our people need to learn how to operate on our terms, which is the part in the education that western schools give will not teach the Afrikan.

as I imply, the chinese model will also need adjustment to apply to our culture specific conditions, but it is much simpler to do than the western model what with the similarities.

i think many will see sense in what I am saying here...

i have read on here many say China's interest in Africa is the same as the west, implying they just want to loot and run. there are however some fundamental differences to their approach to dealing with other people that this article points out. for example, China never attaches conditions to whatever it does that result in the economic ruin of the country trading with it, just so that it can retain the advantages it enjoys in the trading relationship.

also, the countries in Africa that have the most trade with China have more developed industry compared with those leaning more to the west. just check countries like Sudan that now even has its own arms industry, and do not let the oil wealth mislead you about this outcome. there are many countries in Africa that should have made a fortune selling the raw materials they have in abundance that should by now be 10 times richer than Sudan.

lets face facts: the west destroys you in order to make you elligible, pretending/lying as it goes about the process that it wants to make you better, whereas it leaves you worse than you were before. the tactic is the good old devil in disguise where we have seen the "bible in one hand and gun in another", or the wolf in sheep's skin thing going on and if you keep getting fooled then maybe there is no escape for you.

China always welcomes you as you are. they are not afraid of you the way you are, and do not attempt to thwart your future growth, even if the chance exists it could sever trade relations if you get richer than them, or get fooled by someone else.

Would you say the same applies in technical fields such as engineering. Because I would. Take for example the way buildings are heated or cooled in Europe. Typically commercial and residential buildings in Europe are built to the environment that they are in ( i.e cold/ temperate climates). Within many cities in Africa/ Carribean identical buildings are built and designed that are expensive to cool and ventilate and are uncomfortable unless expensive energy guzzling Air Con is used. European methods are still being aped/ instead of looking at different solutions/ which are far more suitable to that environment at the architectual level/ which is the most important as energy use can be reduced at the design stage. But the tried and tested solutions are applied as if these countries have the primary energy surplus ( electricity/gas) as the west.

Look at Cuba a country that people routinely make their own products such as brake fluid from sugar cane. In many fields due to their 'head start' Euros are or were leaders in their fields. It would be nice to see an African state sponser its citizens to study abroad in a technical field because in my time studying it was only Chinese nationals who had the privilege. The very fact that Western or Chinese engineers are needed time and time again for civil projects in African countries speaks volumes. Although there is also the problem of the deal with the donor country having those conditions.

I am looking to do a course to sharpen my knowldege so that I can offer my services to a African government. Truth of the matter is Western (incl. Russia) technical knowhow is superior to the rest right now and established .So if I want that knowledge in that field its whitey Im going to first.

That selection process may be an education in itself and may take another generation which most African leaders or government official in office now will be long gone or manning other post maybe diplomat overseas.

Its much easier to work on the basis of close confidants and family members as selecting factors. But this is the nature of corruption.

@ Tolane

There is an assumption in your argument that, developement is related to education....Why?

Tolane wrote:

"our present position is very similar to where they are coming from"

Please, explain the comparisons

can you rephrase your question?
I would too.

this is a long read, but I hope it is written well enough to sustain interest to the end...

It applies to the field of engineering too, but in a different way from economics. Students of engineering, as economics and other subjects in Japan will tell you the learning material differs significantly from that in the west. This is a truth. Remember here that there is a method to the learning process. Students are introduced to a whole lot of other related, sometimes seemingly unrelated subjects intended to make them better at the core subject on which they only specialize towards the end of the degree course. A degree in Industrial Management starts with subjects that may appear not to be related to the study at all. Law, architecture, basic engineering, computing, metallurgy, etc. do not seem to be very essential to running a business, but they have been deemed essential add-ons because of lessons learnt from real time experience of such graduates.

This experience is culture specific. The subjects taught are therefore bound to differ from culture to culture.

Engineering feats seen more recently in the west are a continuation of technology that should by now be obsolete. They are far inferior to the type being used in other parts of the world, particularly the Far East.

It goes without saying that the most impressive structures in the world are no longer only to be found in the west, least of all the most efficient production processes evidenced in an endless supply of non-food products to the entire planet This shift in advancement has been so dramatic that now we can actually speak of a less advanced west in relation to the cultures in question.

True, western architects and other "renowned engineers" are known to work on some constructions and other projects in the far east, but then nowadays you require to be of some renown to be of any use to the levels the Asians are taking engineering and technology. You need to be someone they know they can learn something from. Consider Japan's Mega Float airport, the tallest towers in the world, the Petronas Towers, located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; high speed trains capable of a comfy 581 km/h (MLX01 - Japan) etc., and once again the euro feats being rolled out as we speak are way overrated.

High speed trains are one thing, but then take MagLev, better yet fuzzy logic as a good example.

The Japanese called this the final frontier of western logic, the point where it ends, and their brilliance begins. Westerners were immediately at pains to prove they understood the theory and practice of the concept, but we still have to see it emulated in western climes where it could come in very handy. As things stand, the relay switch or thermostat remains the best comparison, and it was invented in 1885 by Albert Butz.

Germany, Europe's leading country in technological advancement, has tried the maglev, even Fuzzy Logic and, considering its eagerness for technological advancement, has come up with results that are not very promising, including accidents. This makes you wonder: what ever happened to the dream we keep seeing on TV of life in the west in the future where everything is high tech? Some of us who have been seeing these promises of a space age future are living in the times when those changes were supposed to have taken place, yet all we see around us are the same old cars repackaged every year, going nowhere fast at the same maximum speed capacity. The usefulness to human kind of personal computers and mobile phones that are already following the same design trends seen in the automobile industry are over hyped. It looks increasingly that, as far as the west is concerned, someone else hijacked this dream.

It is not the case that the west is merely lagging behind and will catch up some time soon. They seem headed in a different direction altogether, much more to the application of an artistic facade to the outlook of their surroundings without changing much about the core structure, in much the same way automobile and mobile phone companies change the look of their products without adding much to them.

Problem with this method is a lot of these older systems are still as useful today as the latest that are rolled out. When what is cool to own or drive now is better than what was yesterday by virtue of appearance alone, then what is not so cool when seen from the perspective of the next day is a mere illusion, the making of which has made many a businessman stinking rich. If we are only as good as what we know, then the very same uncool look an old car or gadget gives to the future observer also applies to the very moment from whence the judgment is made; from the very first day a product made on such a basis is rolled out.

Cars are intentionally made to break down faster nowadays in a turnover increasing/profit maximizing effort, in which case the cooler customers were definitely those who purchased cars before the madness began.

This failure of the west in keeping up with its own targets in the march of progress has little to do with overall lack of creativity, but more with an unwillingness of those who became rich and influential at the height of these times of promise to give in to progress because it meant an end to their new found wealth, based in large part on exploitation and monopoly on natural resources. They have unwittingly worked hard to prevent the west from progressing by frustrating alternatives to the day's technology.

The east did not have this disadvantage, and here again must be applauded the success of an indigenous way of approaching reality since most in the same position would have simply emulated other people's way of doing things, then ended up far much worse. The east is where it's at in the realm of advancement, where human advancement is not undesirable. Evidence of this is overwhelming, seen in for example the truth gadgets that have already made rounds in Japan or even China only appear in the west much later.

Obviously, every human race has the capacity to create on as high a level as the Far East has shown. There are a number of factors holding those who are failing back, but then let us understand that the foundation for progress of this nature is education. Applied to the west, the knowledge required to emulate eastern standards is missing in their education, plain and simple, which is what the developing world should take note of. Fact of the matter is, to get there, they have to embark on a journey much like ours, that requires starting from where they are, which requires a good understanding of their particular culture. They have to develop their education system so that it gets them where they want to go. Complete imitation of the eastern standard will not get them there. In fact, it will ruin them.

In the same manner, western education, that is very different from eastern education, is not the education system an emerging continent needs to be following. Firstly, and logically, we are much better off learning from those who are leading in progress, not those left in the dust, holding on to outmoded, unsustainable means of doing things, who have turned to cults and watching others in the privacy of their homes to solve their problems.

We will of course need to readjust the eastern education to our standards, but then here is where we should be looking right now because, as I said already, there are more similarities with our situation. The journey will not be as complex. No man is an island, as they say. In our current position, we require to learn from other people, as we need to trade internationally.

(continued)

When all is said and done, it is all about mind set, that in turn is a product of past experiences. It is because of our history that today the relationship we Africans share with Europeans is a very frightening one, short of saying it is pathological. There is no race of humans alive on this planet who are as controlled and cheated by the white race as Africans are. Though we can clearly see how they make their wealth, we still believe when they give us the recipe in the form of books and their schools. We can clearly see how they keep their currencies strong by bullying opponents back to the stone age, how they monopolize world resources, how they use individual vulnerabilities and personality flaws within some African individuals to indirectly rule us, the very same leaders through whom the elimination of our talented is carried out.

The issue of elimination of people within the African continent is obscure. Most people do not know that it happens and if they do, they cannot make the international connections or realize the need that can lead to such acts. If they do know this, then they fail to see how it can come to the culmination of actual elimination.

Some African leaders will do anything for western powers, not because they are brainwashed or mentally enslaved, but because the past has left them committed; they have to. An African leader who has been given millions under some pretext, for example AIDS relief, money that is meant to be and is spent privately, will be called in the middle of the night and reminded of this reality, called all kinds of names and threatened if he raises objections, after which he will be asked what he is doing about some person living in the country who would seem insignificant to most observers considering the bigger fish every society has to contend with, but whom the west views as a threat for reasons best known to them. These could include setting up or visiting online discussion groups at which issues the west would not like to see Africans exposed to are posted, in which case this same individual would be a radical. This may seem as insufficient grounds for prosecution, let alone elimination, but remember here, or know that the single factor common among most of westerners who ended up at Guantanamo bay was an IT qualification. You can only guess what they did with this if it has not been presented as evidence against them, for if they were using their IT skills to win converts to their cause, then those holding them as enemy combatants would have been too happy to show the proof.

These wars are being fought on levels most people do not realize and, with such a president in control of a banana republic, the west merely needs to threaten exposure of official malfeasance, betrayal, or withdrawal of military or financial support, maybe including in this the prospect of being handed over to the opposition headed by an African who was abused by the incumbent in the past- who is at the very moment in question in exile in the same country the call is coming from. This, and many more case scenarios, will prove too much for a leader who has long since sold out/been bought out. Young and old African men and women, whose sole crime could only be posting to or starting a blog that has attracted a lot of interest internationally, are sentenced to die in such a cheap manner, and so we continue to lose our positive minded sons and daughters with our eyes wide open.

We know the productive capacities of European countries vary greatly, that this should be reflected in life standards, yet they all have more or less the same standards, meaning it has nothing to do with economic performance, but is a political ploy, yet we still stick to the rules set down in economic books given us by non other than western financial institutions, some of which are at the center of the north-south economic disparities. We use their knowledge in our attempt to wrest ourselves from the grips of poverty, without seeing from this or even the carnage they wreak around the globe the missing link to their wealth, that they would be as poor as we are if they too did as we do. Most importantly, we fail to see that to succeed at this level we need not only the economic know-how, but we also require to be as ruthless, as warlike, as strong economically and militarily as they are, which we are not. We therefore lack the means with which to make the knowledge work.

There is no race of humans alive on this planet who have suffered as much abuse at the hands of the white race as the Nubian. They have poisoned us, contaminated our water supplies, our polio vaccines, our crops. They have consistently forced us into poverty, and continue to take out those who attempt to empower the dispossessed, who happen to be our bright ones. In better times, these activists may well be our inventors and discoverers, and if we are to know the backwardness their eradication causes we just have to imagine a white race without their brainy inventors/discoverers who are constantly being eliminated by a paranoid colonizing race, fearful these same individuals will fuel revolutionary sentiment, either directly, or indirectly, by single handedly excelling at what they put their minds to, as such making the oppressed realize they can be as good as the oppressor at all he does.

They have wiped out entire African populations in some regions, colonized and enslaved us, and even today continue to do things to us as a collective and as individuals that are unspeakable, and ultimately gratuitous, yet, with all these realities and dangers glaring out at us, the first place an African thinks to go for better advise/material on his survival, to better his life or study is Europe or America.

There is something very wrong with this picture...

Standards of education set a few decades ago are one thing, and since our leaders have since independence been largely western educated, since even our African institutions of learning base the tutor material on western standards, failure to develop should already have sent a very clear message that the education material is at the core of the problem. Fact of the matter is it is providing us with a wrong strategy of survival in this particular world, one better suited to a different culture, rather than the explanations we have sought in high and low places. In using especially the western economics model, we have ended up merely servicing a system that is biased against us. We are as such the unwitting pawns in our own dismantling.

Education, both formal and informal, is the supporting pillar of any civilization as this is where the knowledge from the past is carried on into the future; as this is where the shaping of the personalities of individual members of our communities occurs, and failures in the overall structure of society find their source and/or resolution here. All else falls in place when a people realize this, and also realize the education they should put into the heads of their people should be culture specific. Its purpose is to see the group fare better rather than worse. Learning from other cultures is a must where they have uncovered realities one is not aware of, but even here it should always be asked whether the new material is worth having, what with the dynamics of one's own culture, irrespective of whether it is more advanced or not.

There are of course differences in how much a particular subject can be altered. Engineering applies universal principles, while economics is connected to culture. As explained above, culture specific developments may influence the direction engineering or technology takes that are undesirable for those not yet encumbered. Avoiding these pitfalls is easy where different cultures have different experiences. The choice of which is better can only be subjectively arrived at, this being the better path to take considering the choices available to one.

It is already established that western education is good, and many companies worldwide will not hesitate to hire someone with such qualifications. Question here is whether that which is passed off as better is in fact healthy for one, whether it is equally healthy to just take such standards as is and go with the flow, even when your personal circumstances cannot be helped by that which is considered better. This issue is much more for governments setting education policy than individual companies trying to make a dollar out of a few cents, who will no doubt act with immediate self interest in mind, rather than long term effects on the welfare of a group.

Following through with the choices Africans have made to date, our state of mind makes us to white people what a woman or man who has suffered severe abuse by another, who still runs back to this other, is to the abuser, and we should not be surprised if they mistreat us further, or even spit on us. The mere fact we are found at the scene of abuse even after the entire world advises we split reveals something is terribly wrong with how we are perceiving reality, much of the fault being in identity. This here is nothing more than a sick relationship that only we can break, otherwise face the real possibility to be taken out by the same person constantly abusing us. Happens a lot in abuse relationships that the very act of returning to the one who is meting out abuse fosters the negative behavior, and one time the attack could be fatal.