The metaphysical foundation for solving the problem of Africa’s development

Africa, despite the potential contained in its soil and subsoil, continues to experience a delay in its economic development. Experience in other developed nations has shown the important place that religion plays in facilitating emergence.

From the point of view of human medicine, a good diagnosis is always a prerequisite for a satisfactory therapy. In the same way, a missed diagnosis leads to the aggravation of the disease, even to death. If it is accepted that the social body is comparable to the physical body and functions according to almost the same principles and a similar mechanics, then it is necessary to consider that if the good diagnosis is not carried out on the evils of a country , then these are likely to deepen and span decades or even centuries, with all imaginable critical consequences.

The African problem in general can be summed up through the picture of a continent which, on the world stage, remains behind despite abundant wealth of all kinds. We have already had enough of an epilogue on the human and above all material resources of theAfrica whose subsoil and soil are real geological and mining scandals.

Despite the undeniable efforts made by a few States such as Ghana, Rwanda, Morocco, Botswana or Nigeria, the vast majority of our States remain in worrying socio-economic situations. More than half of our populations live below the threshold of poverty, that is, with less than a dollar a day. Massive underemployment, generalized misery, the glaring deficit of the most basic amenities of a dignified existence, are the daily lot of our populations. Human development indicators are the lowest on the planet.

Under-industrialization, under-schooling and under-education, under food and under medicalization, under infrastructure and under organization in all areas, under financialization, under politicization and under democratization are the sectoral variables of a global underdevelopment that has long since become structural and endemic.

The African problem seems hopeless and the progress made here and there always seems tenuous and threatened with relapse, so fragile are the economic, social, democratic and institutional bases. The explanation of the causes of this situation of permanent crisis in Africa has long been confined to its material aspects. Very often, under the leadership of development partners, it is only statistical and accounting parameters that are regularly brandished to justify the state of underdevelopment of our countries. The functioning mechanisms of the economy and governance invariably invoked to justify the shortcomings noted. On observation, has this materialist and Cartesian reading grid not shown its limits?

The inability of public policies hitherto advocated and conducted, to produce industrialization and emergence everywhere in Africa as it took place in Europe thanks to the industrial revolution of the 19th century, does it not reflect the impertinence of materialist diagnoses and rationalists hitherto given preponderance?

Far be it from me to totally repudiate the rational determinants usually mobilized. They obviously have their degree of importance, but are far, on their own, from being able to provide us with all of the explanatory factors required. Obviously, they represent in fact only the visible part of the iceberg of which everyone now knows that the submerged part is infinitely more consistent. The intelligible dimension of the universe of which Plato speaks will always be more important than the sensible dimension.

In this respect, a careful observation of the societies of the world establishes the predominant role played by the metaphysical or more generally intelligible factor in the trajectory of peoples towards progress. Obviously, three clear scenarios emerge.

On the one hand, there are the peoples who have made the civilizational choice to adhere, for the most part, to a spiritual orientation resulting from one of the three great revealed religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) following the example of the USA, Indonesia or Israel); then those who have chosen to adhere, for the most part, to a traditional and endogenous belief system like China or Japan;

And finally those who have made the majority choice not to believe in anything or often in human science essentially.

In this general table of civilizations who have often chosen a clear, majority and decided position, to believe or not to believe, to be hot or cold, Africa is illustrated by a different option. That of warmth and syncretism. That of the mixture of genres and beliefs causing a chronic existential and identity loss. Torn between various revealed beliefs, ancestral beliefs and practices, but also unbelief for many because of certain Western philosophical influences, Africa is tormented by phenomena of metaphysical oppression and possession that it has no control over.

States, governments and peoples, all invested in disparate endogenous and exogenous trajectories of spirituality mixing black magic, Indian, Western occultist rituals, African maraboutisms and fetishisms, inveterate atheism, end up producing, without ever being aware of it, an atmosphere diversely polarized, even divergent, spirituality that has been devaluing and desubstantializing our societies for ages. The necessary cosmogonic and energetic convergence which builds and structures a society to bring it towards higher horizons and orbits, cannot exist in such a context of multifaceted divergences in terms of representations of the world.

We are sometimes surprised to note the multiple aberrations existing among us, like the acute axiological problems of mentalities, corruption, greed, obscure mysticism and large-scale witchcraft which do so much harm to our societies. Fetishist and mystical practices are at the root of phenomena of individual or mass bewitchment, of appalling oppression, of curious and inexplicable illnesses, of destinies held captive or broken by invisible and evil works.

Our States, as a social body, do not escape these same phenomena of obsession and mass spells which weigh heavily on their destiny on larger scales. The indicators of material and physical underdevelopment are here only the result of a large-scale spiritual disharmony and entropy. Moreover, this considerable separation between various uncontrolled spiritual cadastres is a crippling factor of aggravation of the situation.

God the Creator himself says indeed and clearly in the Bible: “So, since you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth” (Rev 3.16). Certainly, an inherently hypocritical belief system that promotes such lukewarmness is necessarily a source of inability to elevate a society toward progress. Worse, it is only intended to propel society towards the abyss of decay and decadence.

In this, the church or more generally the spirituality of colonial essence which has spread in Africa since time immemorial, could not and cannot promote a theology of Liberation. Africa urgently needs belief systems of radicalism, to the exclusion of any form of lukewarmness or religious fanaticism. Either we resolve to be hot and boiling, without mixing genres and practices, or we resolve to be cold.

Either we decide firmly to be ardent Christians, Muslims or animists, or we resolve to believe in nothing, which, in truth, is another source of decay but of another nature. Ebenezer Njoh Mouelle rightly spoke of Christians who go to church in the morning and to the marabout in the evening. This is a source of weakening and societal collapse. This, I believe, is the primordial determinant of the African problem. I hope, by the way, that this text will serve as a clarifying medium for these interminable and useless debates between Africans on the religious model, endogenous or exogenous, which would be the most appropriate for us. I therefore suggest that if not to be hot and boiling in our faith, whatever it is, to be at least and simply cold.

Because the spiritual lukewarmness, in other words the anthropological hypocrisy which resides in the syncretism and the mixing of genres from the point of view of beliefs and practices, individually or collectively, could continue to considerably harm the destiny of glory and promise which is that of our Africa. It is no coincidence that a number of nations that have become cold in Europe are faring much better than ours, and are even very often in the front ranks in terms of development at the global level.

The political faith that I have been promoting for several years is in line with the very meaning of this dialectic of faith to be made consistent with the global universe of African societies. And I am well aware of bringing, through this contribution, a totally new reading grid and outside the most common exclusively rationalist fields of analysis.

Surely, our awareness of this subtle reality followed by our resolute positioning in favor of a predominantly hot and boiling option of faith will propel us to the Peaks of prosperity within humanity. Not realizing it would be suicidal because it would install us in eternal tribulations that we will never understand.

This is the real challenge that now challenges us. PRIMACY OF METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS IN THE AFRICAN PROBLEM

God bless theAfrica.

Prof. Olivier BILE,

The Liberators