Africa belongs to Africans

Whilst thousands of Sierra Leoneans are fleeing the country, heading to the west in pursuit of a better life, corrupt individuals and businesses see the country as a land of opportunity, a place to exploit. Sierra Leone’s natural resources, which should have been a blessing, have been nothing but a curse.
A little over a decade ago, it was diamonds that played a serious role in the eleven year long civil war which devastated Sierra Leone’s environment as rebels exploited this valuable mineral to fund their campaign. Now even in peacetime, a possible new agent of war is emerging and this time it is buried deep in the bush and it’s known to the locals as “gbenie” a unique type of wood that is secondly only to ebony.
As in most parts of Africa, timber has become the new diamonds. The country’s forests are at risk of being completely wiped out.
Experts calculate that logging is a multi-billion dollar business in Sierra Leone with Chinese companies leading the trade. Logging companies have been destroying the country's forests, plundering natural resources and causing environmental problems but worse, it is mostly being done illegally with local Sierra Leoneans operating as the front men for the foreigners. A 2006 European Union report identified logging as "the leading cause of environmental degradation in Sierra Leone."
Even the country’s Forestry Ministry says that unless immediate action is taken, all of the country's forests could disappear by 2018. According to them, there is no legal, registered company in Sierra Leone with permission to cut down trees and environmentalists have warned that less than five percent of forested areas are now left in this West African country.
For these foreign investors their ultimate goal is getting their wood and making maximum profit, for the corrupt Sierra Leoneans, it is about lining their pockets without any care for the future consequences for the innocent people who will have to pay the price.
For me though, I can not help but think about those days of slavery when a few Africans used to team up with outsiders to exploit their own people and force them into slavery - today it is not our people their selling it’s our mineral resources.
When are we African’s going be free from the “resource curse”? When are we going to realise that only with the proper use of and respect of our minerals and natural resources would we be able to compete as a proud people rather than being the number one beggars of the world? Africa belongs to Africans and only Africans can save the continent. It is this kind of thinking that somehow gave birth to the series, Africa