Poverty Drives the Poor African Child to Europe

from All Africa

The New Times (Kigali)

By Rwembeho Stephen
Kigali

The conviction of the poor African youth is that when you go to the west, then you are done with poverty. They are instead disillusioned and end up in a miserable life as they are subjected to all forms of torture. Most of these poor Africans do nasty jobs where they are reduced to the life of an animal. Most of them regret and find themselves unable to get transport back home. Remember they go to Europe after paying handsomely all they have as property and cash or escaping when sent on national duty.

According to a report by experts on Refugees, "Asylum Seekers and Policy in Europe, the number of refugees worldwide is now 12 million, up from 3 million in the early 1970s.

And the number seeking asylum in the developed world increased tenfold, from about 50,000 per annum to half a million over the same period. Governments and international agencies have grappled with the twin problems of providing adequate humanitarian assistance in the Third World and avoiding floods of unwanted asylum seekers arriving on the doorsteps of the First World. This is an issue that is long on rhetoric".

We continue to watch with disgust images on our televisions screens of Africans being deported or dying struggling to find their way to the rich west. When we see them starve and suffocate to death in their hidings, we should know that they are not running away from their country because they wish to. They are simply comparing starvation to slavery and the choice becomes the latter.

It is an undisputable fact that if some other poor countries neighboured the rich countries, they too would be experiencing the same cases.

The rich west do not now need to bother themselves hunting slaves to use in their farms, industries, factories, armies, etc as the cheap tool called poverty is doing it successfully. Part of why the Rwandan Genocide was a success is that the people who were used to kill were poor.

Go to all the rich countries and see what jobs Africans are doing; they are toilet attendants, mortuary attendants, sweepers, attending to the very old who cannot take themselves to a loo, splitting fire wood in farms, etc. All this hazardous work is done with very little payment.

This little payment is also paid back to their masters in exchange of services like electricity, telephone and water. That is why they cannot manage to pay tickets back home when they are affected by long term nostalgia or feel very much marginalised and segregated.

What kind of slavery do you want that exceeds this! Look at the so called Niggas or black Americans; they are the prime victims of all natural hazards, fighting in wars like the one in Iraq, e.t.c We should not again forget that in the efforts of trying to keep their countries going, African governments have to respect and abide by the conditions of donor countries.

This is a new neo-colonial success! We cannot claim to be independent, when we cannot even get what to half feel our stomachs. Even the so called well doing economies in Africa use the superficial/ scientific gauges like GDP, GNP and so on. But the whole point is that do you have people starving in your country? If you do then, forget the GDP's and know that you have a lot to do as fighting poverty and hunger is concerned. The majority in the poor nations are hungry!

According to FAO; taking population density into account, the poor sub-Saharan Africa and Rwanda in particular, poverty is the number one cause of under nutrition. About three-quarters of the world's poorest people live in rural areas.

Improving agricultural productivity in poor rural communities, improving the performance of small farms in poor rural and peril-urban communities offers one of the best and most sustainable avenues for reducing hunger by increasing the quantity and improving the quality of locally available food.

In many cases success also depends on developments beyond the farm boundary, such as improvements in roads or in the supply of irrigation water, expansion of rural infrastructure and market access, strengthening capacity for knowledge generation and dissemination.

It is only after addressing these standing issues that we shall be able to save our children the misery they continue to experience when trying to fight poverty naively. When the youth see the poverty and hunger environment they live in and compare it with what they see on TVs in the west, they risk the west venture. The fact that their decisions are based on reality, we are therefore carefully not to wholesomely blame them. Instead, we should resort to sensitizing them against myopic decisions that are guided by ignorance.