The reason for the ethnonationalism campaign in Africa.

“We have artificial 'nations' carved out at the Berlin Conference in 1884, and today we are struggling to build these nations into stable units of human society.” - Mwalimu Julius Nyerere

I think most of our leaders try to discourage tribalism in Africa for a benevolent reason & while anti-tribalism sentiments are to encourage unity in our states, these sentiments are often in vain because tribalism has not ended in decades after the age of African independence.

I always maintain that certain ethnicities should simply govern themselves because under the rule of others they fall into disarray & become disorderly but to this some say, "Africa never had borders." Sure, there were no physical walls or barbed wire borders except in a few places like Benin or various city-states across the continent but it was know that certain rivers, forests or mountains were borders to certain kingdoms, chiefdoms, confederacies & empires. Just because there were no man-made borders, it doesn't mean that Africa was one united country. There are places with no borders between two or more countries in Eurasia but it is know that crossing a certain river or mountain range means you're in a territory of a nation that is not the one you just left.

Now, seeing the ethnic conflicts & tribal tensions in Africa - you'd think a few leaders would think, "No, the Berlin Conference made a big mistake here" & correct those borders & sure, quiet a few leaders have spoken on Berlin Conference borders but they either are too overwhelmed by the task of reclaiming/relinquishing territory, do not have legislative power or their voice is so meek in a distant rural region that it is easily ignored by the larger state they are in.

FAMILIES DIVIDED BY THE SOUTH AFRICA-MOZAMBIQUE BORDER

I often see how ethnostates in Europe govern themselves & notice how they make rules for the benefit of the people in the land & not just laws that prevent individualism like in Africa. How is it that it makes sense to make laws that make your people struggle instead of systems, legislature & infrastructure that allows them to thrive & live freely? It is counterproductive to create a land that you yourself would not want to live in as a commoner.

Now, people will say that an ethnostate Africa is "fanciful" or "An ethnostate Africa will never happen" but just because you've accepted being cooked in a melting pot, doesn't mean that it's good for you or benefits you in the long run.

Former president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere on the borders Africa was left with. 

President Paul Kagame on the borders that made Belgian Congo. 

I've gone through a whole lot of benefits of the ethnostate for years. It is common logic that an ethnostate works but would take some shifting of the "struggle mentality" of Africans to a progress & solutions mindset. When you see other ethnicities having proper schools, I doubt you'd let your own ethnic group go to school in roofless mud schools. This is one of the main benefits of an ethnostate, it allows you to work towards your people's cause instead of getting a Ferrari for your youngest son while people you govern are starving. 

I don't care what political system the new ethnostates in Africa use after we finish our reverse Berlin Conference in Accra or Addis Ababa. The nations will choose what works best for their people & ethnicity whether it's a president, monarch or collective group of chiefs or elected leaders... It makes sense to have an ethnicity govern itself than be ruled by someone of another ethnicity who would ultimately develop tribalist sentiments in time & stifle the progress of certain ethnicities/nations just out of spite that his own ethnicity isn't as developed as others. Because of Berlin Conference borders, you become stuck with a president who hates your ethnicity/nation for developing while their own are incapable of doing so for one or another reason. Just unprovoked hatred because of being born your ethnicity. It would be better if this man were just in charge of their own people & left your people alone, separate the country if need be. Silent, secret, tribal hatred festering unnoticed is worse than open campaigning for self-determination of ethnicities & nations. 

This is what we notice when we campaign for an ethnostate Africa, it's not because we're being rebellious or vain - it's because ethnicities governing themselves was the norm in Africa. Even in greater empires, the individual tribes within that empire were given a decent amount of freedom to govern themselves so they do not starve or become dependent on an unsustainable, centralised state where there was no motorised transport, information relay & telecommunications networks to make governing the land easier. Each tribe in a greater tribal confederation would have it's own set of warriors which could be of use to the tribe or the greater nation, a decentralised national unity. We discard ancient African governance systems as outdated but they made a lot of sense when you look at them in the context of what individuals played in the community of certain nations. 

Multicultural/multiethnic rule is discredited when you rule in a way that diminishes a people's freedom, you risk being seen as a foreign entity & not beneficial towards the people you rule. We need to understand that tribalism is not always disliking other ethnicities but also ruling a certain people in a way that they live in squalor under your rule. 

We need to take a look at the idea of reversing the Berlin Conference borders & even if we do not make a Pan-African Conference to Repartition Africa, we have an idea of what Africa would look like with country borders defined by original ethnic rule. 

Repartition Africa 

Black leaders who caused the most damage towards the black cause.

While we celebrate black heroes & black people who contributed positively to the world, we do have evil-doers who may have been celebrated in some corners but on a grander perspective, did tremendous damage to the dignity & livelihoods of the black/African people they affected. These are six of the black leaders that I feel did understated damage to the image, dignity & progress of the black cause. 

Tippu Tipp: Tippu Tip was said to be a notorious slave trader who had a large army which raided slaves all along the Swahili Coast & further inland into the Great Lakes region. He contributed in the continuation of the brutal Zanj slave trade, where Africans would be sent to Arabia to be made eunuchs & ultimately slaves.

Mobutu Sese Seko: This was a leader of the former Belgian Congo after the horrible death of Patrice Lumumba. He was backed by Western powers & plundered the land he renamed Zaïre for his own personal gain.

Jean-Bédel Bokassa: This was a leader of the Central African Republic who wanted to be Napoleon so badly that he renamed Central African Republic into the "Central African Empire" & ordained himself as the "Emperor" in a very lavish ceremony. When the people rebelled against one of his laws regarding school uniform, he arrested them, including children who he was said to have beaten in jail.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang: This lady was the health minister in South Africa when she denied the existence of AIDS, claiming people simply need to boost their immune system by eating beetroot among other things. The AIDS disease ended up killing 1,4 million black people in South Africa.

Nzinga-a-Nkuwu (João I): One of the Kongo kings that gave slaves to the Portuguese in exchange for firearms & other traded items. This slave trade led to conflict & turmoil in the Kongo kingdom which the Congo region has never fully recovered from.

Autshumao: He was the leader of the Khoisan tribe called the "Goringhaikona", he helped Jan van Riebeeck & the Dutch settle in the Cochokhoi land of the Cape called ǁHui ǃGaeb (now Cape Town). The Dutch along with the Huguenots & British would later exterminate & rape the Khoisan leading to their near complete extinction from modern South Africa. 

"The shortest line between two points is a straight line."

"The shortest distance between two points is a straight line." is a quote by Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse. 

This is not so much a mathematical concept as it is simple commonsense. Ignoring potential obstacles, the shortest path between two points is a path directly towards the other point. 

Artists impression of a futuristic passenger drone. 

Flying cars already exist but their implementation is tricky because of the perceived dangers of them malfunctioning, falling out of the sky & damaging infrastructure. Whereas if a vehicle on the ground malfunctions, it can be stopped on the side of the road or crashed into an arrestor bed. 

SHORT-RANGE AIR TRAVEL

I've been searching some information on heavy-duty vertical take-off aircraft (helicopters) & found aircraft such as the Mil Mi-26 of the Soviet Union/Russia & the Boeing CH-47 Chinook. Both these aircraft have a cruise speed of over 250 km/h, both can lift over ten tons (i. e. over 70 people & their luggage) & both can travel over 400 km without refueling. They cost ten times less than the Boeing 737 most commonly used in South African flights & about the approximate price of eight buses. What I am thinking is custom made Mil Mi-26 & Boeing CH-47 Chinook aircraft with passenger seats, passenger windows, some lighter carbon fibre fittings. This could be done to make an air service that works like a bus service, using shorter range stops to pick up people at select launching pads as opposed to airports with extended runways. Just several small patches of landing pads with a separate parking lot to make an airbus stop/micro airport setup. This could be as an (air)bus service for people who need to travel 100 km to 300 km. The advantages could be; 

1) no traffic, 

2) shorter travel time & 

3) no road/rail infrastructure (& it's associated infrastructure problems) needed. 

Taking into account that these aircraft - the Mi Mi-26 & Chinook cost about US$ 3,5 million a year to maintain including fuel (that's US$ 9600 a day), a ticket for a trip could be US$ 48 per passenger for the air service to cover costs. Provided that the aircraft are carrying a full load of passengers each trip. 

If my concept of vertical-axis wind-turbine powered electric vehicles comes to reality & translated into aircraft, we could have aircraft that need less external power whether it be kerosene or electric to make a full trip. 

Black stereotypes & their origins.

• Black people are ignorant / uneducated: 

Black people & education has always been a thorny issue because the very Western education we're given almost always clashes with our lived realities. So most black people often dismiss education as unnecessary because they are being given knowledge they will likely not use in the real world of taxes, fluctuating markets, government documents & affidavits. A black African needs to know just six things things; national law, the national language, how to read, how to write, how to count & basic geography of his/her country. The twelve grades Frankish Charlemagne education system the world has adopted is not always ideal for African societies so we may need our own education curriculum to be taught to all African scholars. Education & knowledge systems need to be Africanised so they don't seem so foreign & frightening to educators & students, respectively. This will eliminate the "ignorant", "uneducated" tag from our societies. 

Ignorance is also a matter of perspective, you can't expect a carpenter to know climatology concepts. Likewise, Africans can't be expected to be familiar with Western concepts so the ignorant tag will always apply to someone from a different culture. 

• Black people are loud: 

I think being loud among black people comes from the sense that our existence (since colonisation) has made us lack peace. The most uncolonized places are inherently the places where you find the most peaceful/quieter black people. 

• Black people don't know how to be civil / criminal behaviour: 

This also comes from the fact that our recent existence has been filled with turmoil, so we respect authority less & tend to get in trouble with Western legal systems because of our disdain for the lands we live in. 

• Black people are lazy: 

I think this stereotype depends on what cultures consider lazy. For example, a lot of black people in rural South Africa consider office work "lazy". Whereas in Western society, productivity or laziness depends on the outcome, infrastructure & visible results of your culture & society. So what is lazy is largely cultural. Unemployment in black societies where black youths are found loitering around on the streets may be seen as "lazy" by Westerners who do not consider a failure of governance in black lands a factor as to why youths are unemployed or unwilling to work. You usually get motivated to work for something that works for you in return, when the system you are meant to work for is against you - it feels futile to work for anything in that system/culture. 

• Dark skin & kinky hair: 

Dark skin & kinky hair has nothing to do with any biblical curses or references to hell. The "Curse of Ham" in the bible refers to Hamitic people (ancient Egyptians) & not black people. On the equator where the first homo sapiens lived by, it gets very hot & naturally our bodies adapted to that. Likewise, Nordic people adapted to life with less sun & more cold. The whole of Africa is mostly sunny & hot except mountainous regions, so Africans naturally adapted melanated skin & kinky hair. 

• Stealing Eurasian culture: 

We can't really steal something we are constantly encouraged & forced to adopt. When you're indoctrinated in Western systems, you subconsciously look to Europe as a compass in your life. African spirituality, knowledge systems, sociocultural traits & scripts are undocumented & not understood in detail by the world so are seen as unserious, obscure & unsupported by any serious institution. For example; there is no digitised African version of Wikipedia with the knowledge from the Timbuktu library or even a reputable organisation for any African faith/spiritual belief. 

• Can't govern themselves / Africa poor: 

Whenever Africans govern themselves well, it seems like some foreign power always wants to come in & claim some of that success or disrupt the progress Africans made. It happens so frequently that you almost expect good African governance to constantly be fending off attacks from foreign powers. This is why Africa is seen as poor; wars & destabilising objectives are constantly being funded by outsiders, leaving us almost always on a constant economic & development backfoot. The last few people to promote African sovereignty in economy & agriculture were ripped to shreds (reputational, health & financial ruin), if not killed by foreign powers. We're going to have to defend ourselves against sabotage if we truly want to develop. 

• Living in huts / dirty / smelly: 

I'll be honest; in the heat, it's harder to stay clean. Things rot faster in the heat also. Huts are still basic shelter & provide protection from the elements so are not nothing. Most of Africa has modernized though & adopted modern construction techniques. Most Africans no longer live in huts & deodorant has been introduced to Africa as well since it's invention in 1888. We have adopted modern hygiene methods also. 

• Punctuality: 

I honestly don't know why black people are said to be "never on time" but I guess it depends on the importance of the occasion because I know of black people who are very punctual for things that matter like work & job interviews etc. but come thirty or forty minutes late for events & get-togethers with their friends. I guess it has to do with consequences, if there are no consequences for arriving late - many black people will take their time.

Conclusion: 

We simply need to look at ourselves & compare ourselves to developed lands & ask ourselves what it will take achieve a certain level of development. I feel that if we can feed ourselves, house ourselves & our people as well as express ourselves in our lands fully in our own languages - it would be the best outcome of any situation Africans are in. It would create a generation which has faith in it's land & more eager to comply with national law & national institutions. If we can re-Africanise / decolonise our lands while being fully capable of feeding ourselves & sheltering ourselves, it would be the greatest triumph any African generation before us — since colonisation — has ever achieved. I imagine that these above-mentioned stereotypes can often sound so damning as a young, black individual. Being made to feel responsible for the behaviour of an entire race when it's not the responsibility of any one person but rather the collective responsibility of every member of that race to do an introspection as to whether or not they are contributing towards the hatred other races have towards us. 

What I don't really understand about modern automotive manufacturing...

Growing up without much, I learnt to do without items of opulence. Today, I still appreciate minimalism & things that focus on absolute necessity rather than luxury. This taste transcends into my taste in cars. I've never really understood the concept of giant cars with massaging seats & "ambient lighting" - I understand that it must be nice but what is the core purpose of a vehicle? To get an individual from point A to point B under a certain speed limit. And as much as we appreciate supercars, they would have to travel under a national speed limit to really make sense. If your national speed limit is 120 km/h (75 mph), what use is a vehicle that goes faster than that? 

I'd like a commuter car to be three-wheeled (two front wheels & one back wheel), an electric vehicle with a speed limit of no more than 125 km/h (78 mph) & a 100 to 150 km (62 to 93 mile) 

range make sense to me. And, of course, it needs to have the capacity to carry at least 500 kg (1102 lb) for the groceries, giving friends/family a lift & moving items around with a two front seats & single back seat arrangement. Vibrating seats & touch screens can wait, this is the blueprint of my vehicles should I start a vehicle making factory. 

I wrote this blog after seeing this vehicle called the Masserschmidt Kabinen Roller & wondered why aren't there more three-wheeled, compact vehicles like the Microlino & Masserschmidt Kabinen Roller... The safety & enclosure of a motorcar with the simplicity of a motorcycle. 

Today, we have people in giant diesel vans (i. e. pick-up trucks in America) travelling alone to simply buy groceries & that's not what diesel vans were meant for. Diesel vans for me - were meant for carrying big work tools, a small workforce, construction equipment & perhaps farm animals. If your trade is not technical, manual work — my above-described vehicle (second paragraph) should suffice for a daily commuter. 

Electric vehicles for Africa

Optimal Energy Joule