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Veteran Zimbabwean investigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono has been invited to address African Leadership Institute Fellows in South Africa.
Responding to the invitation, Chin’ono said it is an honour for him to talk to Africa’s finest minds, that shapes the continent’s future.
He said this will offer him an opportunity not only to share his personal experiences and thoughts as a journalist, documentary filmmaker and anti-corruption activist, but also to learn from these young leaders.
Chin’ono writes:
Another annual speech pilgrimage to Stellenbosch, just outside Cape Town, to speak to the new cohort of African Leadership Institute Fellows.
It is always a great honour to be invited to speak to Africa’s finest minds, young leaders who will shape Africa’s future.
It is an opportunity not only to share my personal experiences and thoughts as a journalist, documentary filmmaker and anti-corruption activist, but also to learn from these young leaders
Africa is one of the richest pieces of real estate globally in terms of natural resources, but it is the lack of good, visionary leaders that has made it a laughing stock and one of the poorest of the poor basket cases.
We are living in historic times where nationalism is the new patriotism, and where collective defence against bad political leadership is the only way for citizens to survive.
But how do we do this in the absence of good leaders putting their hands up?
Nature does not like a vacuum, Africa has ended up with those without ideas having power, and those with ideas being powerless.
We are comfortable in our little 54 fractured states, and at times fighting wars against each other, yet those who once openly exploited us continue to laugh at us due to our disorderly leadership, whose mainstay is through the gun and not ideas.
As Dr Nkosana Moyo once said, Africa is one place where even the animals are ahead of us, because they know the importance of protecting their young ones to ensure that their species survive for many generations to come.
Yet our leaders are ensuring the churn of future generations of uneducated, unskilled, unprepared young adults, stuck in untold poverty and disease.
These young people have no access to the continent’s rich mineral resources to help position Africa among the leading places on earth, they are by-standers of Africa’s never ending great robbery.
Africa is one of the few places on earth where dictators like Emmerson Mnangagwa still imprison journalists for exposing corruption.
I am grateful to the African Leadership Institute, in conjunction with the University of Oxford and all the corporates involved, for this opportunity not only to speak to young African leaders, but also to learn from them and hear from their many diverse stories!
Zwnews
