The Sunday Mail
Fraddy Mujuru Christ University, Bangalore, India
The emergence of Africa under provocative remarks is slowly predetermined as the continent is transforming from a purported “Continent of Hopelessness to a Cape of Good Hope.” Africa’s quagmire and disappointments can be expected to be fulfilled by the hefty promise of technology. However, the million dollar question to Africa is whether it has understood technology and its concepts, is she prepared for the transformation and willing to embrace the outcome thereafter.
Khalil (2000:2) defines technology as “products, knowledge, systems, and methods employed in the production of goods and the provision of services.” In that sense, technology may not be only “understood through or on machines and hardware, but on software and human skills.” Van Wyk (2004:23) purports technology as the “competence created by people, and is expressed in devices, procedures, and human skills.” The word technology, according to Burgelman et al (1998:2) can be “embodied in people, materials, cognitive and physical processes, plant and equipment and tools.” To start with, technology should be invented, developed, adopted, and used predominantly while reinforced by the knowledge and skills as elements significance.
Should someone safely say that Africans are submitting themselves to the harsh clutches and ill logic of machinery courtesy of their late entry into the modern dynamic zone? Can the spirit of tenacity in dynamism rise and keep hovering across the continent that people may be able to design and redesign what suits the demands of the developmental plan? This question stood on which may or shall going to become the future of “Africa’s Industrial Civilisation.” A better number of people in Africa argue the need of technology through “reason,” but others deconstruct it as an adversary to humanity (culture), against machines and mechanistic social organisation. However, the podium is set for Africa to show case its capability of building or breaking her development dreams.
The African Union Agenda 2063 do also focused on “Technology for Sustainable Africa.” It is rooted in Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance which is trying to give a compact framework for addressing erstwhile inequalities and the realisation of the 21st Century as the African century. The AU vision rededicates the Pan- African vision of an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the international arena.
With increasing technology, the noble AU initiative which includes mobilisation of the people and their ownership of continental programmes at the core, the principle of self reliance and Africa financing her own development and other priorities is likely to be realised. The AU – African Aspirations for 2063 (4) which outlines the desire for shared prosperity and well being, for unity and integration, for a continent of free citizens and expanded horizons, where the full potential of women and youths, boys and girls are realised. The freedom from fear, diseases and want, can be moulded by the application and use of technology to give a better progress towards the attainment of the goals set to Africa’s development.
Despite all negative connotations to the power of technology in Africa, Khalil (2000: xix) asserts the “interwoven nature of technology to society’s progress and the improvement in the standard of living.”Africa can achieve unimaginable higher living standards through application of technology in production and service provision because, realistically, there is a symbiotic association between technology and wealth creation.
The existence of a principal relationship between technology and wealth creation is that, by inventing, developing, using and by advancing technology gives the potential of unlocking endless possibilities. Some of the possibilities include the ability to produce new goods and services, produce existing goods easily and cheaply, may produce better goods; labour may be saved which may result in increased leisure time and so forth.
However, Africa needs to manage the technology for its benefit to be maximised. This involves managing systems that enables the creation, acquisition, and exploitation of technology. In other way, managing technology is assuming responsibility to create, acquire and spin out modern ways to aid the human endeavours and satisfy customer needs.
To comment, the prophetic doom in Africa still rest on her cultural values and sentiments. Some assert that technology is collapsing the original social rubrics and implanting a culture of violence. The traditional African systems of conflict resolution were demolished without something relevant given as a replacement. Adding on, the democratic processes, though rudimentary, was uprooted and replaced by technological colonisation which mounted an authoritarian command to people. Even in the societies, technology is breeding new seeds of elites, nurturing and weaning them on the altar of violence armed with the structures of a modern state, to continue carrying out the art and act of subjugation of the mass in an attempt to service technology.
To sum up, as it was not before, today choices are mainly mediated by technology decisions. What Africans are, and will become is heavily decided by the shape of the tools being used and less with the political actions of statesman, political movements or even revolutions. It is true that, the possibility of a radical reform to an industrialised Africa is hidden in technology, and from Cape to Cairo, the song of the century should be the Amazing Acts of Technology that is building a modern African empire and the world around.
Fraddy Mujuru is a Masters of International Studies student at Christ University, Bangalore, India. He writes in his own capacity and is more interested in issues related to African Studies, Sustainable Development, Diplomacy, Political Economy, International Economics, International Relations, Public Health and International Law among other areas.
Students, YOU CAN SEND YOUR ARTICLES THROUGH E-MAIL, FACEBOOK, WHATSAPP or TEXT Just app Charles Mushinga on 0772936678 or send your articles, pictures, poetry, art . . . to Charles Mushinga at [email protected] or [email protected] or follow Charles Mushinga on Facebook or @charlesmushinga on Twitter. You can also post articles to The Sunday Mail Bridge, PO Box 396, Harare or call 0772936678.
