Read Time: 3 minutes

This is what the reset is all about… Mansa Musa writes 

By Mansa Musa

Mahama’s plan to extend the reset agenda to include neighbourhood matters is really a step in the right direction.

When Europeans face crisis, their heads of states, with their foreign ministers, would embark on journeys of criss-crossing capitals in their continent in search of solutions.

Africans face crisis, and our heads of states will be invited to travel en masse to America, Europe, and Asia in search of solutions to West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, Southern African and middle Africa problems. Why?

I, mansa musa, have over the years spoken on my radio shows and written volumes of articles about Africas’s leaders’ readiness, their eagerness to fly to America, to Europe, and to Asia. To faraway destinations, there to seek, to look for solutions to Africas’s problems. Problems in finance and economics inspite of Africans being the supposed owners of every natural resource that nature could provide. Mineral deposits of every kind. Africa has forests, salt, and even large deposits of sand. Africa has in overwhelming abundance everything that everybody across the globe wants, and yet the majority of black Africa finds themselves lacking in the basic requirements of life such as food and shelter.

The people of Africa should be in command and control of their own destiny with such a huge endowment of natural resources, but Africans are struggling to survive. While it is true that many a woes we suffer are orchestrated from areas far away from the shores of Africa, the search for solutions to issues of poverty, political instability, and economic difficulties should originate in our own lands and by our own people.

Isn’t it sad that while races in other parts of the world would strive to work out organic solutions and tackle their own problems, Africas leaders would travel en masse to wherever and whoever calls them to go seek for solutions to local African problems. It is for this reason that Mahama’s decision to touch base with our near neighbours to reintroduce his sweet comeback should be regarded as a good move.

There’s a need to reset the West Africa/Greater Africa agenda. We must be able as God’s human beings to solve our milliard of problems. How to provide adequacy in food, in shelter, in health deliverance, in good education, in transportation, in security, in economy and in good governance. The issues that need solving are huge, but so should be our ability to overcome through our collective efforts.

Though our problems are enormous, we have the advantage of sitting on a grumongours amount of wealth. We have the leverage, but without the unity of purpose, our birthright in what we own and belong to us is being taken away by outsiders, sometimes with the help of dubious intentioned and overzealous locals.

This disgraceful circling around and the cycle of false hope, the sort of headless chickens syndrome in search of or for salvation from the very people who are not just competing with us but are also actively taking advantage of our inability to present a united front. They have for hundreds of years capitalised on our division for their life survival, and this must end. It is time to revive our collective sensibilities in a united front, this for once to benefit our peoples and to guarantee our own survival.

To this, we in West Africa should, for a start, revisit the much vaunted and the equally maligned ECO currency. Imagine if we had the four hundred million West Africans trading in a unitary currency. The rest of the world would run to us as equals and respectable partners. Mahama’s plan to extend the reset agenda to include neighbourhood matters is really a step in the right direction.

Mansa Musa is the current affairs editor and host of the StraghtTalk program on Voice of London Radio. UK. A volunteer adviser from afar