Why Africans lag behind in technological innovations By bigfive In virtually all the technological spheres Africans trail the others. This is despite the resources endowments relatively highly educated populace in some countries and rapid integration into the global scene. The apologists like Walter Rodney in his landmark book on development: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, have tried to put a case for Africa’s poverty and backwardness in technological advancement as being the result of colonization. European powers lead by Britain appropriated Africa at the infamous 1884 Berlin conference and immediately went on an offensive appropriating different part of the continent. The plunder of the continent’s resources is now said to be the one behind building of Europe. The ornate chapels,theatres,castles etc that today dot Europe stand as an imprimatur of Africa’s heavy price it had to underwrite the old continent’s luxuries. This would by all stilts make a convincing read for Afrocentrics, and just about everyone else but for some startling realities. Most of Africa has been independent for the last 50 years, a time long enough to recover from the injuries of colonial domination. But instead, the continent is ever poorer, indebted, and an underdog in almost all spheres.Literacy, health, governance, poverty, life expectancy, child mortality, disease incidence; all these indicators are the worst. And the worst is, technologically we lag behind. There have been apologists, historians and scholars who have spent a lifetime explaining our predicament. There is the excuse that Europeans stole our technology and patented it. In Kenya; there are some academics who still claim that solar energy was ‘a Kenyan technology stolen from Western Kenya.’ We have heard accounts of how ancient Egypt provided the world with basics of physics, mathematics, astronomy, engineering (remember the pyramids of Giza? and just about everything else. Civilization along the Nile might be the first hub of technology as the recent discoveries have proven. But that does not trash the most important question of the moment: What happened to Africa? Innovation after innovation, we have been left behind. We never invented the wheel, we never invented the gun powder, combustion engine, airplane, computer, nor manufactured goods to sell to the other continents like Britain did for over 200 years, USA did for a half a century and China is doing currently. It might sound preposterous but even South Africa, itself the most industrialized country in Africa won’t manage to attain that feat. It won’t even rise to be the workshop of Africa leave alone the world! Where did the rain start beating this continent which is the cradle for mankind then? One folk theory has it that once the three races that inhabit this world went to see God, the creator each with a list of requests to make. The first one was a Caucasian. He prayed to God to give him only knowledge to ‘invent things’ forever. The second in the queue was the Indian. The Indian went confidently to God and requested to be given the power to do business all through his life.Finally; the African was the last to enter. Upon reaching God, he didn’t speak prompting God to ask: “Man, what would you like me to do for you?” With shyness, the African said, “I had brought the two.” “Ok,” God said, “in that case be following your brothers forever,” God told the poor man. Even today, the African trails the other races. After the whites innovate even an airplane, the African soon becomes an expert repairman. The computer, that wonderful human invention testifies this. In Africa, the computer revolution spawned all sorts of half baked experts, technicians and teachers. In business, the African slaves in his kiosk while the Indian prospers in his supermarket. Were it not for the fact that the myth is tinged with racial prejudice against the African race, it would be taken as true but it nevertheless captures one of the many presumed reasons why Africa falters on the road to technological development, as the rest of the world rolls out new innovations every other minute. There is another reason though but which is more observable than researched on. Africans consider anything mechanical as dirty or beneath them. If one started to do experiments on their own, the society will say, they are mad or are wasting resources. It is a tragedy that only African engineers aspire to work in offices as managers and do not give a damn about what they trained in-to innovate. Physics is studied in all schools and even most children can recite Bernoulli’s principle, but they can hardly invent anything nor repair even a watch. At its best, the physics and science as taught in Africa is no distinct from any other art. There are no practices done and even those training as engineers graduate to take administrative posts and not take their rightful place in the lab or in the field constructing and researching on innovation. Science and innovations are seen as stuff of some mad people. Woe betides anyone who tries to apply their physics to invent something, and every asernal is brought out from aemoury to attack and dismiss the idea as unworkable.A young schoolboy in Western Kenya made what he claimed would be a plane that could fly,though it was a contraption,the handiwork nonetheless indicated a serious investmnent in thinking and application of science.So,on the day he was to try it out and hopefully make a maiden flight,police stormed their home with a letter from some civil avation authority reminding him that the licence to fly is issued by the aviation authority.There a young inventor’s dream was crushed. Nothing has ever been heard about him since. The other reason is that Africans do not support homegrown innovations. They would rather spend a few more dollars an import anything from Europe, USA,China.but then one cannot solely blame the consumer, but also the so called innovators are their own worst enemies. They like to sell their goods at very expensive prices. They hide any hint as to how they made their inventions. True to Ali Mazrui, in Africa, technology is secret but in the West, technology is open African governments hardly devote even 1% of their entire annual budgetary estimates to research activities. Worse still, most governments don’t have any research department. Hardly can such a people be innovative. Lastly, Africa is doing injustice to her younger generation. Instead of emphasizing on technology as the most important thing, they are showing their youth the most important things are football, politics and entertainment. Virtually every other youth in an African village or suburb wants to become a musician and not an innovator. This is quite pathetic for a continent that suffers lack in virtually every sphere. Technological and innovation culture will only be developed if these areas are projected in our nation’s traditions and culture as the most important aspects in life.