A few years ago, after the horrors of the electoral crisis in Cote d’Ivoire and the bombing of its presidential palace with the capture of President Laurent Gbagbo and First Lady Simone Gbagbo, I watched a video interview of the Franco-Cameroonian journalist Charles Onana who was talking about his book “Côte d’Ivoire : le coup d’État, Duboiris, 2011 (with a preface by Thabo Mbeki).” At the end of the interview, Onana stated, “… Quand vous avez un pays riche qui est convoité par des multinationales, par des groupes mafieux, par des états, etc, vous devez décupler votre intelligence pour défendre votre pays. … En face vous avez des équipes de think-tanks qui sont là pour penser comment destabiliser le pays, donc les Africains ne peuvent pas faire l’économie d’un travail acharné, d’un travail surhumain pour s’en sortir … Pendant que la crise se calme ou s’apaise, les autres continuent de travailler pour vous destabiliser, ils refléchissent à d’autres stratégies, mais il faut que [les Africains] apprennent à refléchir à differentes stratégies de manière à ce que le Président de la République ne se retrouve pas toujours seul à penser à tout, seul à reflechir à tout, …” [When you are a rich country that is coveted by multinationals, by mafia groups, by states, etc, you must increase your intelligence tenfold to defend your country. …  On the other side, you have think-tank teams that are thinking ways to destabilize the country, so Africans cannot avoid hard work, superhuman work to be free … When the crisis calms down or subsides, others continue to work to destabilize you, they think other strategies, but Africans too need to think different strategies so that the President of the Republic does not always find himself thinking not the only one think all by himself, …]

With the New Scramble for Africa, African countries should have think-tanks, the enemy has think-tanks strategizing over decades, how come we, Africans, do not? Even in times of peace, we should be strategizing… as we heard the French general, it is clear that they are already planning the defeat of Africa, and the return of Africans into their fold in 10 years… how come? When Sekou Toure said NO to the General De Gaulle and Guinea gained independence, not only were the French busy destabilizing his regime politically, militarily, arming his local opponents, but they even flooded his economy with fake currency to destroy his own free Guinean Franc (as he had said NO to the slave currency that is FCFA); the attacks were non stop for several decades, and honestly, are still going on. Thus, Africans, we need to gain our independence, and for our independence to be complete, we need to have strategies for the immediate day-to-day events, but also long-term, over 20-50 or even 100 years. It took China 100 years to get back Hong-Kong and Macau from Great Britain and Portugal… that happened because of a clear vision and strategy of defense against the enemy and reclaiming of lands.