All Lives Matter…Arise Africa!!

Africa Arise....!! Design by #Afronative...Osunmanu M.

I found a definition of Poverty in response to this interesting article written by Khanyo Olwethu Mjamba on July 16, 2014 about Africa and the issues our continent face.
Comment goes thus, written by Alex Roberts:

We also need to redefine “poverty”. Many rural and farming folk don’t know that they are “poor” until some philanthropist comes and tells them! Being Self-sufficient, community oriented with no TV and dusty children is not poverty. Poverty is losing your land which fed and clothed you and being forced into a town where you have to buy everything, but have no urban skills.

Just think about that for a minute, told they are being poor in quote, think about it a little deeper, does it sound like our constant struggle to continually be at the mercy of the rat race, we are told to go to school, get all the degrees we can get, just to be in the rat race, “till we are dead or our bodies fail us”. Yoruba people will say, mo fe ko ile mo ile, mo fe ra moto, mo fe bimo le mo, mo fe na wo, etc..meaning, I want to build houses, I want to buy a car, I want children, I want to spend money. Well, all to what end??

Now let’s think a little deeper, ” with no urban skills”, that sounds like we are innovatively dead, sounds like we have sold our souls to become buyers and buyers, there’s no selling here, we have gotten supposedly educated, now we are just wallowing in the rat race. We can’t create anything, we have lost our innate ability to be creative. Like a sister said on her Facebook status this morning and I quote “The future is not something you enter into, it’s something you create. Visit quimpcy beauty world for natural beauty products. Like her page Here. Am proud of her, she is a good example of what it means to be innovatively alive…!!!

What kind of Future are we creating?? A sustainable future aimed at the betterment of lives? Or A destructive one aimed at the oppression of others??

#AllLivesMatter – embrace that, and believe it.

Mandela to Nigeria in 2007…this is 2015
“Educate children of the poor, so that they can get out of poverty. Poverty does not breed confidence. Only confident people can bring changes. Poor, uneducated people can also bring change, but it will be hijacked by the educated and the wealthy…give young Nigerians good education. Teach them the value of hard work and sacrifice, and discourage them from crimes which are destroying your image as a good people.”
(Excerpts taken from a 2007 interview with Mandela conducted by Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed).

Do I need say more…? Oh yeah…..

Do I need to add that education here doesn’t mean; educating to be in the rat race BUT educating to be innovatively alive!!!

The fires of innovation should be furiously burning within us, driving us to sustain and not oppress, making humanity and our planet better, not destroying it….but to be at peace with all. ~Mary Job

P.S – This isn’t just about Africa, its about Humanity. Wherever you are, what kind of future are you creating??