Much has been written and discussed in various fora about the poor leadership across the African nation, both continental and diaspora.A point that is often neglected is the fact that the culture within which our leaders are raised shapes their leadership. The cultural leadership of the continent is deficient in fundamental areas. I will highlight only a few area:

Over the past few centuries, Africans have been subjected to very humiliating circumstances by imperial forces. In all cases, while the Africa masses were the main victims, a few Africans (leaders)benefited immensely, often amassing immense wealth and even power. From slavery, to partitioning the continent, wars of conquests and later colonialisms, some Africans have always thrived at the expense of the masses.

The liberation wars which ushered 'democracy' installed in place leaders from this paradigm; no attention has ever been paid this culture that produces self-centered autocrats who are not ashamed to see the masses starving while they wallow in luxury.A careful examination of the culture often reveals that patriarchal excesses (and womens submission)at the house hold level has been allowed to define the current leadership at the national level.

If Africans want accountable leaders who respect the will of the people, these values have to start in the home. It is not uncommon for an African man to squander the family wealth outside the home. Likewise, national leaders often steal from the public coffers with impunity, the money of finding its way out of the continent to be spent on luxury goods and lifestyles.

Africans seem to treasure their place in society as victims, instead of making the necessary sacrifices in order to become victors. We cannot raise our children on starvation diets, then expect them to compete as equals with others. We cannot ignore setting good examples in the home, then expect our leaders to have good morals. We cannot ignore discipline, hard work and honesty in the home (among other virtues), them expect the same values in our leaders at national level.

Now that Kenya has got a modern constitution, it is going to be very interesting to watch and see how the different regions manage the affairs of their communities. No longer will the leaders hide behind and blame "state tyranny" for the backwardness of their communities.Soon Kenyans will be able to tell who true leaders are. For good leadership has to start at the family/community level.

A friend forwarded the video below and wanted to know what I think:
www.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D07RcoY8PM5s%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded&h=03c7cy5cbbXiscARFvjeBCo8Szw

My reaction:
Many traditional Africans had weaved in their diets cereal-based alcoholic drinks made from traditional cereals. Research done during the colonial period confirmed that they were rich sources of B-vitamins and minerals.

These were however later criminalized, and in their stead, European spirits (which have little nutritional value)were promoted.Christianity helped make them even sinful. The situation remains the case in many countries today, including Kenya.

While I don't know what particular brand of alcohol this man is promoting, his message makes scientific sense in view of the above. Notice how him and his partner look look relatively healthy compared to the sceptic observers, most of whom look very wasted!

I discuss these issues ie the criminalization of traditional brew, the promotion of European (highly alcoholic) drinks, and the role of christianization in empire building (among other issues)in my second book to be released later this year.

Notice also that the dearth of traditional cereals and alcohols, followed by the introduction of white hybrid maize, a poor source of B vitamins, have all contributed to the continuing poor health of the continents' peoples.
Read more about maize and your health in my book A HEALTHY YOU, availlable at www.nutritionafrica.com, or at Amazon.

Read more about maize here:http://www.nutritionafrica.com/

Africans shipped out of Africa as slaves helped generate wealth for the host countries wherever they settled globally. This helped spur global commerce to unprecedented levels: for example, the cultivation of sugar cane in the West Indies helped facilitate more European distillery of Rum. Rum was in turn used to pay for more African slaves off the West African coast. By the time slavery was outlawed, a market for European spirits was well established on the continent. The biological impact of maize helped facilitate this adherence to alcohol.
The end of slavery was followed by the partitioning of the continent into political entities in order to facilitate European exploitation of Africa’s resources and African labor. This period was preceded by the ‘wars of conquests’: the Europeans encountered fierce resistance from many tribal groups. This resistance gave rise to the wars of conquest, the most famous of which are the Ghanaian and the Zulu wars. It has been said that in some places, brother rose against brother, taking sides either with the invaders, or the defending army. In Kenya, many tribes, including Western Kenya tribes resisted British intrusion. However they were pacified after conquest.
There followed a period of ‘colonizing’ the African. The Kenyan experience follows: a new religious order, Western governance institutions , and socio-economic reorganizations were enforced. In places where maize had yet to make an impact, this was gradually enforced in the diet. By international standards, the colonial experience in Africa cannot be said to have been very long. Yet its impacts continue to shape modern Africa. The overall goal and impact of colonialism was to align Africans to international global commerce, mainly as producers of primary goods for export, and consumers of imported industrial goods. Various colonial forces were employed in order to achieve this goal: Christianizing missions, a Western education, Western governance and value system…
To govern effectively, a collaborator population was slowly nurtured: they were enabled to acquire part of the extractive wealth that left the continent, in addition to vast tracts of land. In addition land tenor was reorganized: previously community owned lands became either state, or individual ownership titles. A Western education also helped prepare middle level personnel who would later became part of the emergent middle class. This group were later allowed to grow cash crops mainly geared for the European market. But peasant farming was reorganized to favor the mono culture of maize. The perpetuation of hybrid maize promoted by government agents became the norm just before, or soon after independence. Crop diversity (and diets) began to suffer one hybrid maize was entrenched.

The process of socio-economic empowerment was however tilted in favor of collaborating tribes. The wars of independence would later be spearheaded mainly by these initial beneficiaries. Infact, a general observation can be made that those tribes that dared resist colonial intrusion fared far worse at the end of the colonial experience, because of deliberate disparities in development. At least in Kenya, such tribes were further burdened by the under-developing qualities of white hybrid maize. This state of affairs persists today, some 40+ years after independence: government agents continue promoting white hybrid maize as the main government supported food crop in affected areas.

In the 1980’s SAPs were introduced by Western donors; many people lost their government jobs, and the private sector, which has not grown in proportion to the size of government could not support them. Extreme poverty worsened, as did malnutrition. Many retrenched people died prematurely. The eighties was also the time HIV/AIDS was first documented in Kenya. In my second book, I document the concurrent presence of full blown pellagra with HIV/AIDS in some communities. Many signs and symptoms of nutritional AIDS (NAIDS) mirror those of HIV/AIDS (e.g. wasting, opportunistic diseases, chronic diarrhea etc).
In resource poor Africa, many people have wrongly been labeled HIV/AIDS patients when infact all they have is pellagra. Maize was initially presented as a superior food by the colonialists. This lie is yet to be disabused. The fates of the children who continue to be weaned on maize porridge graphically highlights the contemporary leadership poverty (both at cultural and national levels) all over the continent. Below is one among many families in downtown Nairobi affected by the persistent misinformation.
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/GrowthsoundslikeGreektomanyKenyans/-/1056/922788/-/fo
Notice that the youngest child, who is probably still breast fed is the healthiest(although he already shows the puffiness consistent with early Kwashiorkor). The older girl is increasingly looking more and more like her mother.Notice the relative under-development of the middle one third of the nose. In my first book, I document how maize malnutrition is passed from mother to child. This causes relative organ underdevelopment, including the immune system (and even the brain). Many African communities are in decline because of this under-development. Children raised on maize porridge tend to be vulnerable to many diseases (including heart disease), and have a shortened life expectancy. Available resources are poorly exploited, and poverty is rampant.I outline safe and cost effective weaning practices in my book 'A HEALTHY YOU: Tame Africa's Child Malnutrition.'

Many governments across the continent come into office on a populist wave promising land redistribution, only to see the country’s food production fall, as the new recipients are unable to exploit profitably the new parcels of land. It happened in Zimbabwe, and South Africa is no better as shown below:
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16248651
In many countries now, in addition to monopolizing the spoils of mineral extraction by the political elites, large parcels of agricultural land are being leased to foreigners under very opaque circumstances. In Kenya, for the well connected, selling large parcels of government lands, often acquired illegally has become an easy source of wealth for the well connected.

The growth of a large middle class that would have championed true economic growth remains captive to disease, lack of jobs and brain drain. The masses still feed on starvation diets, in addition to support by donors in many areas. Many scholars view the current leasing out of large tracts of land as a re-colonization of the continent. What will happen to Africa's masses when all the natural resources are exhausted? Donor support in many areas is running dry.The escalating conflicts among communities on the continent should be an indicator that the current paradigm is doomed.

In Kenya, those who have profited immensely from this status quo continue to be obstructive to a new constitution and socio-economic order. Meritocracy has happily been sacrificed at the alter of ethnicity.While in the diaspora, we happily partake of the civil rights benefits that Black-Americans fought and paid for so dearly. Yet when back home, we revert to our ethnic cocoons: the law is not applied to everybody equally.Kenyans should welcome a new socio-economic in order to diffuse the pent up rage that gross disparities have nurtured.

If they don't, what is beginning to happen in other African countries will happen here:there is an unwritten understanding in many countries now that the most economically empowered tribes are no longer voted into power. Examples in include Tanzania, some central/West Africa countries, and even South Africa.This is not the path true democracy should take.

Read more about maize here: http://www.nutritionafrica.com/

Read more about hybrid maize here: http://www.nutritionafrica.com/

This series was inspired by a conversation I had with a colleague, and which is gaining currency in the media: Africa’s masses are so powerless because they are too poor to pay taxes; and therefore they cannot influence what their political elites do. The elites fund the running of our impoverished countries using donor assistance (and loans). In return, they exploit our natural resources for the development of other economies. Unfortunately this paradigm of development in Africa has not changed, for many centuries: the resource drain that started with the people being captured as slaves continues to date. Lets go down our historical memory lane:
In the 13th century, European exploration encountered West Africans who were then thriving people with food surpluses for trade . They even mined their own minerals and fashioned artistic works that were later declared “not African,” and shipped away to foreign museums. Mansa Musa, is reported to have carried so much gold that he destabilized the Egyptian currency when he visited, on his way to the pilgrimage in Mecca.
In the 14th century, Christopher Columbus initiated the now infamous “Columbian exchange”: “new world crops,” (maize and cassava have had a negative impart on the nutritional health of the people who assumed they were superior foods) were imported into the continent and in exchange, African slaves were exported to global destinations. This exercise was in some cases coercive, but later, Africans willingly captured and sold their own to foreigners. Africans from other tribes were viewed as 'enemies,' to be captured and sold into slavery.Africa’s history as the ‘dark continent,’ was rewritten. The history of the continents’ food culture was changed to read, “the traditional food of Africans is maize." Today, tribalism has worsened, but resource marginalization, malnutrition and disease are the weapons used.I retrace this history in my book, 'Maize is Killing Africans: The Kenyan Story,”(to be available soon). Black Americans are today beginning to question the kind of culture that sells their own to strangers; some want reparations. See this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html
A recent visitor to West Africa from the US was shown children in a waiting house headed into servitude:the parents have given up their children into servitude,for a few pieces of silver. His remark?: There is still a lot of cruelty here.
During the slaving era, a majority of African women remained quite peripheral to the goings on, apart from being efficient vehicles of production and reproduction. It was not uncommon for the patriarch to offer his younger wives, or daughters to his important guests for 'entertainment.' A few women however wielded power, and commanded respect:there is one Congolese queen who features prominently in my book, for having engaged the Portuguese to end the slave trade. The slave trade is said to have been responsible for the loss of more than 15 million Africans, most of whom were the strongest, and in their prime. To date, Africa is yet to document the impact of this period in our history, and the meaning of it. Because we have not critically examined the meaning of this part of ‘African culture,’ we are happily repeating the same mistakes of the past, today.
Next week, we shall examine the period after, ‘The Coming of the Europeans,’ on the continent, for colonization, and more resource extraction. You will remember that it took the good will of a global alliance of forces to tame the violence, and finally stop slave trade, as African chiefs discovered that they had nowhere to sell their slaves. Infact, a majority had to be sidelined during the colonial period, as the Europeans sought new alliances. But there is a resurgence of this group. In recent years, many are now being wined and dined by forces whose agenda in the coming years is still unclear, yet there is no question that a ‘take over’ of the continent is in the works. Our politicians seem too mesmerized with ‘material wealth’ to pay attention to these forces. In fact, they are happily complicit: for they govern their nation states as if they were still tribal fiefdoms.
Read about the plunder of Africa's past here:
http://www.africareview.com/SpecialReports/TheplunderofAfricaspast/-/825444/916254/-/5420

Read about the kind of Impunity that retards Africa's development here:
http://www.nation.co.ke/News/BlamegameovernewKenyalaw/-/1056/917518/-/26ovm0z/-/
Read here about a proposed way forward:But the influence of 'cronies to the throne' must be tamed to avoid perpetuation of the status quo:
http://allafrica.com/stories/201005120402.html

Read more about hybrid maize here:
http://www.nutritionafrica.com/

Read about hybrid maize here: http://www.nutritionafrica.com/

I have listened to, and read a lot in recent weeks many discussions touching on the right to life of the fetus. This topic has lately become more heated because of the ongoing discussions around the draft constitution. Listening to those who want the protection of the totality of 'life' entrenched in the constitution (irrespective of doctor advice and mother's life), one would be forgiven for imagining that we live in a Utopian country where all the children are loved and cared for equally; or at least their basic needs are met.Africa needs to outgrow this out-dated notion that children are 'womens' responsibility.' We want to see the fathers of these children in any discourse.We also want to stand in solidarity with our Muslim brothers because they are also taxpayer; in addition, Kadhi's courts are in the current constitution and have not affected us adversely:Kenyan law is supreme.Pravin Bowry has written a very persuassive piece, 'Demistifying the Kadhi Courts,' below. Thankfully, Kenyans are beginning to realize that 'The Church' is really a front for our political elites. No wonder all Kenyan communities are represented. You must give it to our politicians; they do know when to portray 'The face of Kenya.' http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/columnists/InsidePage.php?id=2000008136&cid=588&

Where are these people when some communities in the country register an infant mortality approaching 200 per 1000 live births, when the country's average is reported to be about 70? (less in some communities), (K'Okul 1991); add mortality beyond one year from numerous diseases that plague the most affected communities.Where have these people been as a majority of Africa's children are increasingly being raised by single mothers, often single handed? Go down town-Nairobi and see extremes of child neglect,abuse in all its,'splendor'(including pedophilia). Do these people notice that Africa is being recolonized even before we "develop"? To what do they attribute the socio-cultural decay that is in evidence? How about the burden of poverty? The Chinese who are now colonizing us put in place strict fertility control measures before they could climb out of the hell-hole of extreme poverty.Were they more immoral than Africans for doing so? Are we more 'Christian' than the Western world from whom we borrow our contemporary culture?

Kenya cannot survive as a nation-state with the current levels of self-centeredness and disparities among communities that the current constitution has nurtured. We can not continue doing what we have been doing and expect a different result. We don't want a "negotiated referendum." People should be allowed to vote, like in a 'true democracy' that Kenyans like to profess.Part of the reason there is such moral decay in Kenyan society has to do with this 'negotiations' behind closed doors. People should be allowed to take responsibility for the positions they take, or fail to take. Women should not be blackmailed by the church to take positions on the draft that have nothing to do with morality. The church has many failings that touch on our contemporary decadent culture and should focus energies there.

When will our Church leaders start standing for the real social issues that plague our country instead of hiding behind womens' issues in order to entrench their own hidden partisan agendas. Why do they teach 'sacrifice,' if they can't show by example? Kenya's political culture should become more transparent (democratic)in order to be truly inclusive:we should learn to say what we mean, and mean what we say. Until this happens, there is no difference with,imperialists who preach love for all humanity, yet,their actions are contrary to what they proclaim. Indeed, this culture of deception is what a new (more inclusive and holistic)Kenya should avoid, in order to grow as a nation. See a similarly themed article as articulated in Mr. Ochieng's article below: http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Prolifersshedcrocodiletearsforhumanlife/-/4

Read about hybrid maize here:
http://www.nutritionafrica.com/