everything in the world has context... understanding context is key to everything...

may be the wealth the african woman is after is a roof and food on the table for her family, ama what do you mean in your context of wealth.

context of where 'hardwork' gives results.. I agree with @muchr... focus has never been in our culture. We love lots of business... you are employed, you have some chicken and quails, some cows at home, some plots in ruai, some flats in kinoo, some green house to plant green beans or tomatoes or [PLACE WHATEVER GROWS IN A GREEN HOUSE HERE], you own a matatu and taxis, you have a photo studio, you also are doing some wheat farming in Narok... you have some tea you grow in Limuru/Kaimosi/Kericho. it's a bit difficult to for you to be excellent... hard for you to provide world class excellence in one of these. YOU ARE A REAL HARD WORKER BUT NOTHING FROM THESE WILL EVER BE WORLD CLASS.

Sio timbosho alisema. Ni Uncle Lee alisema, the great Lee Kuan Yew. Personally I'm not quite sure why it is Asians and whites dominating the world economy and politics, not black people. But come to think of it, outside of Egypt, Mali and Ethiopia, what have we contributed to the world in terms of scientific, economic or cultural achievements? The Chinese can point to tea, philosophy, gunpowder, paper money etc. What can we point to? I do not know if its lazy thinking or not, but when you open the book of African achievements in the past and now, it is mostly blank outside Egypt, Ethiopia and Mali. Either what was achieved was lost in time/forgotten, or just was not there to begin with.

Hmm...How else can we compare/value ourselves? By changing what we value?

The point of comparing ourselves with others is a delusion. It supposes an objective reality as a standard. But there's no such thing. Values are about adapting to internal and subjective needs and experiences.

All humans are the same, but different experiences lead to different learning and behavior. One, I have learnt, should be very careful when labeling behavior. 'Laziness' can be either taught, or can be 'passive aggression'. 'Lack of focus' is easy when there's a feeling of desperation or frenzy to 'catch up'.

GDP, designer wear, 'formal education' and the like aren't universal metaphors or values. There are many more metaphors available to humans, each equally valid.

you see other races doing stuff and you think... hey... why have we not done that? how come africans have not [INSERT ACHIEVEMENT HERE] not realising that the situation is more complex that what you can comprehend.... Naturally you think... 50 years is a long time we should have been like [INSERT ASIAN TIGER HERE] because we got independence at the same time (like years of independence is some sort of metric that contributes to growth or "development"... but I digress). What you want is to be seen like others, to have some form of pride... like others. You think that people need to do some things to be seen as people and you want africans to have done some of those things and your bitterness is that... here in lies the very root of your problem - the problem to be seen as a 'person' in the eyes of other races or so you think. You think that if we could only do [INSERT SOME ACHIEVEMENT HERE] we would be in the ranks of 'people'. You think that you will have some social currency if your people built some contraption and sailed the seas 6k yrs ago... too bad... not such thing happened. As for the other achievements you are seeking? Well... we have not done [INSERT ACHIEVEMENT HERE]! that's a fact... we are not the only ones not to have done that. polynesian, american indians, inuits, mongolians, australian aborigines, people from papua new guinea, latinas e.t.c. have not done it.... but that's not even the point the point is YOUR BEING A HUMAN BEING (PERSON) HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT YOUR SOCIETY'S/ANCESTORS' ACHIEVEMENTS.

can someone answer my question... why do all these IQ issues emanate from one Race? We don't here it for the people at the very end of the so called intelligence bell curve.

disease, famine e.t.c. are also contextual.... even if we had exactly the same context... even if we were right in the middle of the old world not having the sahara separating us from the rest of the 'action'. Even if we were right in the center of things and we did nothing... we would still have been humans (people)...since the being human has nothing to do with doing stuff.

yeah... let's say we have answers to all those questions... so? you ask about the last 2000 years...why stop there? well the modern human has been walking this planet for 150k-200k years - WHAT THE F**K WERE THEY DOING ALL THIS TIME? they suddenly woke up 10k years ago? what was up with the 140k-190k years? Biologically speaking they were the same lot - right? just a few cosmetic changes in hair color, eye color, density of melanin e.t.c.... so to answer your question... Africans had been doing exactly the same S**t the rest of the humans were doing for 140k-190k years - so sue us! Accept your fate and don't be bitter, cut corners when you can - the rules are not made for you.

And by the way - you need to answer the question... when you get to be Singapore or Malaysia or Japan or China or US or Sweden... SO? will you be more human than you are now?

Best thread ever @timbosho, mkeid and Torio. Keep the brain racking. @Tycho please keep contributing with simple english. @Masukuma, you are lost, calm down and try and read the thread from page 1.

Question. What is Africas/kenyas biggest problem?

The more I think and read the thoughts here. The more I am convinced its our lack of knowledge of state building. There is no evidence of organisation of a people beyond the village level in subsaharan africa before colonisation. May be thats what we have been trying to do for the last 50 years.


Once the brits left us 50 years ago we got a piece of land called kenya. This could as well have been kenganda had the brits decided to have a single administration in east africa. Infact is there a subsaharan country that is cohesive and proud of their country.

The Asians may have been conquered by the European in the 17th century to date. But records show they have lived in organised societies for years. It was therefore easy for them to pick up from where the colonialists left.

at least if you care to go back several years back you would have tripped across that ka achievement of turning a monkey into some crude form of a human being, if africa and to a good extent kenya had not done that we would all be jumping from tree to tree, picking ticks from each other.

If you also got into the ka time machine and zoomed back into some carefully selected time you will realize that there is that ka achievement of selling its people abroad to work in some plantations, i am told that fed into some good chunk of what the west has now.

Ama how are we measuring the achievements ?

But seriously why would you measure achievement of a region then remove the achievers from it.