By Abena Dekyiwah Agyekum
In many African corporate circles, the persistent if unconventional issue of inferiority remains widespread. Particularly in spaces with expatriates, conversations often devolve into reflections on how African nations are not only lagging behind but also fundamentally lacking what it takes to catch up.
In classrooms, teachers without passports unhesitatingly tell students they are not enough because their Chinese peers are building phones while they struggle with ‘simple’ equations. These educators often overlook that the rigorous training many African children endure sometimes produces remarkable academic abilities—abilities that ultimately lead nowhere because they exist within a rigged system.
How many American nine-year-olds know their multiplication tables from one to twelve by heart?
When Ama, the average Ghanaian child’s mathematics teacher, assigns eight daunting exercises—long division with recurring decimals, unnecessarily difficult fractions, cruelly confusing word problems—Riley in America receives a homework pass simply because she appeared distraught twice during one lesson.
To be fair, Ama has more troubles than Riley. She may lack romantic distractions, but she serves as her single mother’s emotional outlet for frustrations about Ama’s “useless father.” The blows from a shaky economy are gently passed down to Ama. Yet, she never receives the “Sorry, sweetheart” comforts that Riley gets for comparatively minor inconveniences, like a disliked babysitter.
Further into their future, Ghanaian youth face many deprivations that make certain comparisons brutally unfair. This does not imply Africans should become complacent about their economic difficulties or other crises.
The problem has never been a shortage of creativity. Africa has produced inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars in abundance. What has often been scarce is opportunity, infrastructure, and institutional support to transform that creativity into global influence. Our excessive deference to foreign models stems from lack of confidence and inability to be original.
Instead of sliding woefully at the push of comparison, we must be original. We have spoken English to the point where African languages are going extinct. UNESCO estimates that between 428 and over 500 indigenous African tongues are threatened out of roughly 2,000 to 3,000 total languages—some with only one fluent speaker. You find completely African people without a single African name, while it remains questionable for a Ghanaian to lack an English ‘formal’ name. African names are not merely domestic labels, just as African wisdom is not mere unconventional indigenous skill. It is as trustworthy as foreign principles. Let us not forsake African principles; instead, let us adapt them to the modern world.
France is known for fashion, Italy for cuisine—what about Africa? Instead of chasing others, let us be our best selves. Africa has its own fashion traditions: Kente, Aso-oke, Kuba, Adire, Akwete, Batik, and many others. We also have architectural heritage beyond round thatched huts—the dry stone masonry of the Giza pyramids, the Sudano-Sahelian style of the Djenné Mosque, and the decorated earthen dwellings of Tiébélé.
There is ignored yet remarkably effective indigenous technology in metallurgy and blacksmithing—iron smelting and tool fabrication from Nigeria’s Nok culture, and symbolic procedures from Tanzania, Rwanda, and East Africa. In medicine, lifesaving African methods have been substituted with foreign ones, some inferior. Beyond efficient herbal therapeutics, indigenous healers employ specialized bone-setting, herbal antiseptics, and psychological integration within solid community healing frameworks.
At this point, Africa has limited opportunities and harsher climates, but that is not the end. In every successful society’s history, there arose the need to organize, innovate, build institutions, and create opportunities—they did not appear by chance. No nation prospered by talent alone; prosperity requires creating institutions, investing in people, encouraging innovation, and leveraging existing circumstances. Africa should not give up and watch with folded arms. Let us completely discourage inferiority and surge forward brave and free. So many attainable goals remain beyond reach because we disbelieve in ourselves. With greater confidence, we will be unstoppable, and our greatness boundless—a revitalised continent reaping the fruits of opportunity once sown.
