THE Government’s introduction of innovation hubs at all State universities is perhaps the best self-development initiative that has happened in the entire history of the motherland. If handled with delicate care, this should translate to sustainable self-development. The ‘caution’ is in view of the fact that many well-meaning initiatives have already failed and become economic liabilities because the context in which they were launched failed to sustain them.

This submission introduces a new Patriot column called Sustainable Research and Development and interrogates the context those manning the innovation hubs must also consider in order to successfully champion sustainable development. The biggest sticking part of the context is Africa being the most resourced and yet least developed and, consequently, the weakest continent on the planet. Consequently, Africa has no permanent representation in the United Nations Security Council which, in turn, means that on the global stage, her own security concerns are always treated as peripheral. In the same context, with a total of 68 discovered minerals, Zimbabwe is the richest country on the planet in terms of mineral wealth per person.

In the ‘longer view’ of that, it makes a lot of sense that the bloodiest resistance to colonial occupation of African land was also waged in Zimbabwe. It is actually flattering to imagine that, though unknown at the time, the whole struggle was actually in defence of that wealth. And, then, to complement all that, the same Zimbabwe went on to achieve the highest literacy rate +92 percent in Africa. And yet, for all the good they could translate to, all these are positives contradicted by the underdevelopment on the ground; the underdevelopment which the innovation has been introduced to address. And it is as if, for generations, few people, if any, had thought of this as an indictment that assigned Zimbabweans, in particular, and Africans, in general, to introspect.

This essay is, therefore, also in another sense ‘an introspection’ driven by the firm belief that Africa can still give herself sustainable self-development. And, the informing perspective is that no race was favoured by the creator because it is self-evident that we all started with one basic tool and it was the mind. It is also self-evident that the mind is a sustainable starting point because everybody has one. In that regard, the blame for Africa’s underdevelopment cannot lie with the creator but ‘self-evidently’ with the failure by African citizens to effectively exploit that sustainable natural resource. The hope, in this regard, is that those manning the innovation hubs will understand not to accept prescribed or sponsored innovations susceptible to ulterior sanction by the handlers. The hope is that those manning the innovation hubs will understand it is the mind that made everything possible. All civilisation was imagined.

All human development was imagined. It is imagination that made civilisation take root even in the most inhospitable of environments – from the most arid desert lands where Dubai now stands as a miracle of sophistication and grace to the perennially ice-bound polar regions of the planet where volcanic activity has been tamed to generate electricity for human development. It is imagination that tamed wild rivers into dams, irrigation schemes and hydro-power stations. It is imagination that bridged impassable rivers and cut tunnels through mountain ranges to enable synergies between originally disconnected sites of development. It is imagination that invented the wheel, the automobile and the aircraft.

And, the question that comes to mind is how the continent that resourced much of that progress should be the one that least benefitted from the resources. And, it also comes to mind kuti if Zimbabwe’s resistance to colonial occupation was the bloodiest on the continent; if we could imagine freedom and come to accept that it was worth struggles that involved life and death; if we could imagine freedom and come to accept that it was worth the ultimate price of a fighter’s life, how could we have failed to also imagine the responsibilities of self-development that define ultimate freedom? How is it possible for survivors of armed struggles for self-determination to ‘not’ imagine self-determined development? How do survivors of armed struggles for self-determination end up imagining foreign aid and investment in the same breath with ‘independence’ celebrations? It has become the tradition for Africa to blame slavery, colonisation and sanctions for her underdevelopment. But when one considers that human civilisation was imagined, the failure to appreciate that these atrocities too were imaginations of those who victimised us for their own development works against us.

The saddest of all denied truths is that slavery of Africans was also imagined in the same manner human civilisation imagined the taming of animals, even the most dangerous ones, to power man’s development. The saddest truth is that slavery of Africans was imagined in the same manner humans imagined the taking of a fellow life to nourish their own. The saddest and most self-indicting truth is that even the enslaved, colonised and sanctioned Africans also sustained and still sustain themselves with fellow life, be it flora or fauna. All the beef, chicken and pork we take in our everyday meals are fellow life.

The issue with slavery is simply that to us, the victims, the atrocities of slavery, colonisation and sanctions are within species and, therefore, cannibalistic. They are what Herbert Chitepo called “the equivalent of homicidal or genocidal extermination of a people”. And they are also the logical conclusion to what Arnold Toynbee — in his Study of History — proposed as the fate of the native: What shall we, the lords of creation, the white people, do with the natives we find? Shall we treat them as vermin to be exterminated or shall we treat them as hewers of wood and drawers of water? There is no other alternative if niggers have no souls. The question this brings to mind is how, in the face of this ‘homicidal or genocidal extermination’ by fellow human beings, Africans have not imagined self-defence and self-preservation.

Why have Africans, from Cape Town in South Africa right up to Cairo in Egypt, not imagined weapons and machines built from their own resources; the very same resources being plundered by the enemy for their own capacity to pillage Africa? Why have Africans only imagined AID from the enemy and not self-sustenance that weans them from victimhood? Why have Africans imagined ‘not’ the creation of their own technology preferring to, instead, imagine the purchase of technology imagined by others? Why do Africans define their affluence through the finished products of their enemies and not their own innovations? Why do Africans posture, as affluence, private jets and Lamborghinis created by others and not their own innovations? It is critical that those manning the innovation hubs should seek answers to all the foregoing questions in the context that informs the superstructure of African imagination. The answers lie in Africa’s capacity to locate ourselves in that context; her capacity to locate herself in the universe in which she must thrive.

The answers lie in understanding that we imagine from where we stand. We see and imagine in relation to ourselves from where we stand. We must look out into the universe and imagine from where we stand. Looking out means we do so from within ourselves. It must be impossible to look out from outside ourselves except through prescriptions that define us from the prescriber’s perspective. When we look out at the universe, we see everything in relation to ourselves; we see the universe in relation to where we are and that location is multilateral in the sense that it is not just physical.

The coordinates are also racial, historical, cultural, political, educational, economic, gender-based as well as social. It is those coordinates and location that determine our worldview. They determine our consciousness of who we are and where we stand as a people in relation to everyone else – Mozambicans, Nigerians, British, Chinese, Russians, etc. But, it is a consciousness that is both defined and refined by how much we know about the universe in which we must thrive. The more we know, the more we benefit from it. The less we know, the less we benefit from it. When we know very little, our worldview will be parochial and, accordingly, compromise how much we can benefit from the universe.

When we don’t research, ignorance reduces our worldview to angels and demons and hapless gentiles pleading to enter heaven on a praise and worship ticket. This means that every research project the innovation hubs undertake must complement and translate to a critical step towards self-knowledge that leads to self-determination. This is what self-knowledge is all about and its acquisition is a responsibility that is so personal and so delicate that it cannot be delegated without tragic outcomes.

If relevant research gets the coordinates right they will determine if a particular innovation is necessary or just attractive and desirable. It will determine if the innovation can be implemented from locally available or accessible resources that cannot be sanctioned by the enemy. It will determine if the innovation is safe, improves or complements existing systems instead of negating them. Once an innovation hub’s relevant research establishes these terms, development becomes sustainable and its growth assured right to exponential proportions.