We are masters at waiting…Even for strangers to pay us to save ourselves

A distraught IDP grieved about how the world had forgotten their plight, then said, “I don’t know if the Americans even know we exist and are suffering.”

We hate to break it to him, but on voting day, Sudan’s murderous war and its victims were the last thing on American minds. But, even in ordinary times, no, the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t know about Sudan and the horrors of its ruin. And, if truth be told, it is not their primary business, so they don’t have to.

The IDP’s lament demonstrated how deeply purchase into the Western saviour complex is still entrenched in Africa, and how much too many still wait to look to the skies for “international” mercy to drop on them in their direst moments.

The IDPs and refugees in camps aren’t the only ones waiting. In too many other places, Africans are waiting. And many African governments are bigger waiters than their people.

In West Africa and the Sahel, in recent times, a wave of military strongmen has seized power. Full of anti-imperialist zeal, they have kicked out former coloniser France and ended its military assistance programmes. In Niger, where the US had military bases, they too were asked to leave.

Read: War, malnutrition and disease follow Sudan refugees to the camps

After doing that, these radical juntas waited. They waited for Russia to accept their invitation to come in and replace the Western powers and give them military aid. And if they couldn’t, to nudge Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group to come in, take over security, and guard the president.

We demobilise soldiers or retrench the civil service in “modernisation reforms,” then wait for some Western country or agency to offer or lend the money to pay their severance.

We hold elections, and the incumbent president or ruling party flagrantly steals the vote and cracks down on the opposition. The African Union (AU), East African Community (EAC), or election observers from a regional bloc like the Southern African Development Community (SADC) will issue statements on whether the election was free and fair (usually siding with the incumbent).

But everyone else, including the opposition and the president who just stole the vote, will wait for what the European Union, the Americans, or the British have to say.

That is what matters, perhaps because it holds the possibility of punishment for the crime, like withholding aid.

Our governments release grand Vision 2030 and 2050 plans with much fanfare. The big men talk the big talk about education for all, feeding all children, ending HIV/Aids, building roads and highways crisscrossing the country and connecting with neighbours, declaring how they will build highly industrialised economies within ten years.

Then they will wake up with a hangover from it all, and begin waiting. They will wait for the World Bank to lend them money for their vision.

They will wait for the Americans to supply the school feeding programmes and free antiretroviral drugs for HIV patients. For the railways, ports, highways, and new airports, they will wait for the Chinese, the Turks, or the Emiratis.

And yes, as in Somalia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa will sometimes provide peacekeeping troops, but they will wait for the EU to pay for the missions.

Soldiers will sit at the airport for days, waiting for the Russians or Americans to send military transporters to fly the troops to the intervention site and to pay for their food and salaries while they are there.

The West cornered the saviour role in the African mind over a long period. It seems it does not require guns and boots on the ground, because the Americans, for example, have rarely been involved in peacekeeping in Africa.

Likely, all those years of USAid food, Western humanitarian agencies building tent camps, and dropping food from the air for hungry people in remote or dangerous places are what have done it.

Read: Samia asks rich nations to help fund Africa’s fight against hunger

African governments, in the spirit of pan-African solidarity, should be able to do some of these things in long-suffering places like eastern DRC, and now Sudan. Or, indeed, to flood and famine victims of recent years in Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, and South Sudan.

Fill a big plane with maize flour, beans, salt, glucose, and soap, fly over a distressed area, and drop the supplies to the ground. Easy peasy?

No. The generals and officials in charge, as they have done more times than can be counted, will steal some of it and give it to their mistresses to sell in the market.

Some of them might leave something to be delivered to the intended suffering recipients. But once the maize flour and beans have been located, they will wait for, yes, the EU, US, maybe the UAE and Qatar, to pay for it and send a plane to fly the supplies there.

Then, when the supplies get there, the people might appreciate it less than they do the flour which comes in sacks with American flags emblazoned on them. And so, we wait for that to change.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. X(Twitter)@cobbo3