Un-Africanize Your Mind

Dearly lovely people,

Firstly, this post is not going to be like any other Living Lecture post you’ve read before so sit up straight and tight…lets go…

Africanization literally means making something African. A great concept especially when it has to do with contextualizing things but then, has it occurred to you that Africanization also means making things that work everywhere else not to work normally? Of course a significant proportion of things and processes that work in other continents don’t work in Africa. I can see somebody shaking the head in denial, rather ask yourself why? Yes…

Why is it that Africa is home to the world’s oldest civilization and today has some of the fastest growing nations in the world yet is left behind in so many things?

How is it possible that the African continent which is the world’s oldest populated area and equally the second most populous continent with about 16% of the world’s population is at the same time the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped continent with a continental GDP that accounts for just 2.4% of global GDP?

David Cameron – former British Prime Minister spoke compellingly about international aid. Eradicating poverty, he says, means certain institutional changes: rights for women and minorities, a free media and integrity in government. It means the freedom to participate in society and have a say over how your country is run. So true but trust me, diagnosing a problem is one thing; fixing it another. And I personally don’t yet see the political will not in Britain or elsewhere that could turn this analysis into a practical agenda.

Africa’s collective mind has over the centuries been Africanized and today functions like the relationship between employee performance and the size of employee pay packet. You know it’s thought that the level of employee performance on the job is proportional to the size of employee’s pay packet. Although this may be true in a minority of cases, the fact is that salary increases and bonuses for performance, in many instances, have a very limited short-term effect. The extra money soon comes to be regarded not as an incentive but as an “entitlement”.

There are other factors that when combined provide a more powerful determinant of employee performance. When these other factors are missing or diluted, the employee does come to work only for a paycheck. In this case, the employee is present at work in body only, leaving their mind outside the gate. That is precisely what happened to the Africa of today. A collective demotivation and an over concentration on the first person singular has pushed Africans in to handling issues of both common and personal good as if they were handling somebody else’s private affair has so destroy us that it will take centuries to repair.

It is the quality of the employee’s workplace environment that most impacts on their level of motivation and subsequent performance. How well they engage with the organization, especially with their immediate environment, influences to a great extent their error rate, level of innovation and collaboration with other employees, absenteeism and, ultimately, how long they stay in the job. Many studies have revealed that most employees leave their organization because of the relationship with their immediate supervisor or manager. Take a look at how most African governments operate today, do you see a difference?

So, what are the workplace environment factors that need to be taken into consideration by any serious manager? If you can be critical enough in your answers to that question, you would be on the path to finding some lasting solutions to African’s malignant problems starting with yours and thus, you would not only be boosting your performance but that of the continent equally.