Nigeria and many African countries do not need aid and foreign direct investment to initially fund its development agenda. Why? Setting natural resources and minerals aside, I want you to calculate the total monetary value of:
—Foreign assets and real estate held by African officials and their families through licit and illicit public money.
—Foreign education expenses (primary, secondary, university) by African officials for their children/family.
—Foreign medical treatments/visits by African officials and their families.
See the attached image: Per the Pan Africa Review, an estimated $192billion leaves Africa each year. However, I believe this is a conservative estimate for many reasons. One is that Africa has weak data collection infrastructure, so it relies a lot on foreign organizations. But if foreign firms and organizations also participate then how can the numbers be truly accurate. It is like asking a co-defendant to also prosecute themselves and expecting a fair trial. We live in reality, not Disney Land.
Just these three categories alone, if redirected and reinvented back in their home countries would likely be enough to fund a multigenerational 100-year development agenda. If you now include citizens of the respective countries to the above categories, the value of the natural resources and minerals, and monetary losses due to weak domestic tax enforcement of foreign companies, then these numbers would run trillions.
You would realize that it is only through visionless, avaricious, and pusillanimous leadership that many African countries can still ask for aid to fund their development, instead of giving it. In most cases, the aid money is not even used for development but as free money to fund the above categories. Thus it becomes a vicious cycle: foreign money comes in, foreign money goes back to foreign countries to fund the above categories, and a lot of money generated by the African country also goes overseas. It is an economic open wound!
Tell me, how can Africa develop under these conditions? It cannot. In most African countries you need a strategic social upheaval to sweep away the cohort of low voltage and rotten African leadership who refuse to be helpers and guardians of the welfare and interests of their people.
Nation-building visionaries of revolutionary character and bold temperament who are committed to aggressive African nation-building for the good of their people, need to step forward and mobilize to contest and take possession of government leadership! In order to intiate a new development epoch for the welfare and further development of the African people!
Onward & Upward.
~Dr. Ikenna A. Ezealah, Ph.D., MBA
Builder of the African Future
Nation Upbuilding 