ESSAY. FORCE WITHOUT CONTROVERSY

Letter to Letter message electoral. The True of words By angel Bashile.
ESSAY. Coailiton party for the economical and social liberty of Africans around the World.
Essay. Sense du patriotisme Liberal Afro-American.
Essay. Sense du patriotisme Liberal Afro-European.
Essay. Sense du patriotisme Liberal Afro-Canadiense.
Essay. Sense du patriotisme Liberal Africaine.
Essay. Sense du patriotisme Liberal Afro-Asiatic.
Essay. Sense du patriotisme Liberal Afro-congolosai.

AFRICAN CORRUPTION 

Corruption can no longer be viewed as the “victimless crime”. Corruption is a crime against humanity. Corruption has existed since time immemorial; even in biblical scriptures corruption is present in many stories. The scourge of corruption in post-colonial Africa is gnawing at the progress that the continent could be enjoying. The continent has many ideological voices all seeking relevance. Politicians and statesmen in Africa are in an ideological tug of war. From Nkrumah’s Scientific Socialism, Nyerere’s Ujamaa socialism and Senghor’s Negritude-all these ideologies had good intentions but none materialized. Regardless of ideological persuasion, from the post-independence era to date, Africa has produced few states capable of creating enabling environment for economic development. It is not a contest of which ideology is suitable for Africa, it is a question of whether all these ideologies can be implemented free of the shackles of corruption.

Corruption emerges from many avenues. In Africa some of the identifiable causes of corruption include the negative colonial legacy, poor leadership, politics of the belly, omnipotent state, greed and selfishness. Clientelism and patronage nepotism, absence of popular participation of the public in government, weak institutions of governance, lack of accountability and transparency, lack of political will, weak ethical values, centralist nature of the state and concentration of state power, weak judicial system and constant insecurity and conflicts are also the causes of corruption. It is the top African echelons who are mostly the perpetrators of corruption.

Former Nigerian president Sani Abacha was estimated to be worth $20 Billion at the time of his death. How a president, a public servant ends up being a billionaire can only be attributed to corruption. In South Africa, Jacob Zuma was found to have unduly benefited from the taxpayers money in the infamous Nkandla debacle. In Congo, Joseph Kabila and his family are among the richest people in the continent owing their wealth to diamond mining. Uhuru Kenyatta, the president of Kenya and son of Jomo Kenyatta was on the Forbes list of the richest men in Africa. Jomo Kenyatta openly grabbed vast tracts of land from the British when Kenya attained independence. Paul Biya in Cameroom is also amongst the richest people in Africa and corrupt dealings have been synonymous with his name. In Zimbabwe, top government officials are notorious for their lavish lifestyles. Money has been stolen from the government coffers without any apology or remorse. The examples I have given here are not exhaustive. The mention of trillions lost to a few powerful individuals should make all of us Africans to pause and see that we will not progress if we do not tackle corruption by the horns.

The culture of corruption has entrenched its roots in Africa. South Africa the youngest democracy is seeing nascent corruption, grand or petty. Twitter was abuzz a few weeks ago- the talking point was bribes being paid for driver’s licenses. Of course the hype degenerated into a joke but the crisis cannot be minimized. We are unashamedly wearing the cloak of corruption without taking cognisance of the fact that it is our society that is rotting. Traffic violations that merit traffic fines are swept under the carpet as traffic officials openly ask for bribes. Civilians like you and me are familiar with petty corruption; similarly the ruling classes are familiar with grand corruption. Karl Kraus, an Australian satirist said that corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual; the former invariably endangers the morals of an entire country. Africa is poor not because the right political ideologies are not in place. Africa is poor because of the far reaching effects of corruption.

Political parties chant mantras of helping the poor. Irrelevant politicians were propelled into power because they were riding on the tide of “helping the poor”. Because of corruption, the poor suffer disproportionately from the effects of corruption. When health and basic education expenditures are given lower priority in favor of capital intensive programs that offer more opportunities for high-level rent taking (such as defense contracts), lower income groups lose services on which they depend. The poor do not eat political dogma; they need services provided to them by politicians who are not corrupt.

Corruption impedes economic growth by discouraging foreign and domestic investment, taxing and dampening entrepreneurship, lowering the quality of public infrastructure, decreasing tax revenues, diverting public talent into rent-seeking and distorting the composition of public expenditure. In Zimbabwe, funds that are allocated by donors are openly embezzled by the political elite. The purpose for which the funds are donated for end up at the lowest priority rung and suffering continues.

South Africa and Lesotho have the highest inequality in Africa. Politicians will make noise on what ideology will work to correct the income inequalities but the problem can be surmounted by vanquishing corruption. There exists a positive correlation between corruption and income inequality. Explanations for this link are that corruption distorts the economy and the legal and policy frameworks allowing some to benefit more than others. Corruption leads to unfair distribution of government resources and services. Corruption reduces the progressivity of the tax system. Corruption increases the inequality of factor ownership; and lower income households (and businesses) pay a higher proportion of their income in bribes than do middle or upper-income households.

While there is no immediate panacea for corruption, I am of the conviction that ethical leadership will be a huge leap towards creating one. Ethics, a branch of philosophy that deals with morality should be a compulsory discipline for our leaders. A code of ethics that addresses the limitation of power, accountability, effectiveness and justice should be mandatory for all public office bearers. I cannot think of one solution but there are colorful measures that we can take against corruption. Establishing a court that specifically deals with corruption like the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is essential for every country.

 Africa needs to strengthen democratic institutions in order to ensure governmental accountability and transparency. Public participation in decision- making, the working together of private sector and civil society institutions must be ensured. Economic rights must be guaranteed to all. The judicial system must be modeled on an autonomous foundation. An open review of public salaries and a free media which works closely with other stakeholders to create awareness to make sure the public is supportive of the anti-corruption campaigns are amongst the leaps we can take against corruption.

FORCE  THE VISION OF A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY

The World Economic Forum  in Davos (2018) will live on in mankind's history as the occasion which put an end to obsession with economic  African development. That "development" was no more than misrepresented growth of wealth along with a corresponding frantic squandering of mankind's natural reserves. The irrational vision of an "affluent society", an earthly material paradise, had dominated the mind of peoples for  years, to the point of blindness: all countries had thrown themselves into a competition of ruthless development and were concerned solely to measure their gross national income, on whose basis they compared themselves with one another, while being indifferent to the natural cost of this economic "progress". During the same period people were losing basic benefits enjoyed by their ancestors, such as the sun, the air, water, soil and nature.

It is true the above vision had become somewhat faded since systems scientists openly raised the problem of the limits of development, and their concern was done justice by the Stockholm Declaration on the Environment (1972). But for an ideology to be buried, its successor must first be born. The World Economic Forum in Zermatt is memorable because it succeeded in offering mankind the new vision of  African sustainable development: no longer quantitative but qualitative development, in other words a balanced striving for all human values, whether material or intangible, in harmony with nature. The old vision of the "affluent society" had resulted in an unjust and ardent "consumer society". The new vision proposes a "sustainable society" as the attainable model of a just and prosperous world.
In reality, what happened was that misconceptions were abandoned and development resumed its true meaning and moral content, which does not consist in the consumption of material goods but in improving education and health, securing a good natural environment, establishing harmonious coexistence between people in a just and peaceful world, and encouraging the stable joint development of civilisation and nature, in other words a development having all that "quality of life" which had ceased being accessible to most of mankind.

"Quality of life" includes in particular employment, which in the developed countries, however, can only be achieved by appropriate restructuring of their sustainable economy and not by its expansion.

Competetive Avantage

So, what is Competitive Advantage? In a number of industries, the average performance of the industry is usually no better than the average performance of industries' as a whole. However particular firms or groups of firms manage to do considerably better than average. In this case, the high performing firm or sub-group has something special and difficult to imitate to offer which allows it to outperform it's rivals.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Strategic management is a concept that assists management to focus on the key issues of the organisation that will help it develop a competitive advantage. The concept of strategic management and the notion of competitive advantage are therefore inextricably linked.
Often the implicitly assumed objective in any organisation is its dependence on effective management for ongoing survival - to ensure that there is still an organisation to manage in the future! Management must therefore make many important decisions to determine where the organisation should be heading and how it will get there. However, this is an ongoing process, for as market trends and internal factors change, so should an organisation's goals. Thus as part of the planning process, managers need to first understand the intricacies of their own organisation, as well as the external and competitive environment in which they operate. .

The most common approach is to use a SWOT analysis as the starting point, which involves analysing the internal strengths and weaknesses of the organisation as well as the opportunities and threats in the external environment. Evaluating an organisation's internal strengths and weaknesses assists in determining the competitive advantage of an organisation's resources and capabilities. This can include financial resources such as debt and equity, physical resources such as buildings and machinery, human resources such as skills and experience, and organisational assets of goods and services (Bartol et al, Management, A Pacific Rim Focus, 2003, pg 211). Bartol et al (pg 266) argues that the most important aspect of analysing an organisation's internal strengths and weaknesses is to identify how these intrinsic strengths are distinctive from its competitors. This could be achieved by asking the question: what makes an organisation different from the competition? The most ideal scenario is to possess a product or service that no other organisation could offer competitively and thus minimise the exposure to external threats.

One of the fundamental objectives of an organisation is to deliver sustained, superior performance, then it must do so by outperforming its competitors. In order to achieve this an organisation must effectively differentiate itself from its competitors. This would suggest that the aim of any strategy is to gain the competitive edge over the organisation's rivals. Competitive advantage is therefore central to strategic management, in that, it produces sustained superior performance.

LEGACY

I have often asked myself what kind of valuable bequest or inheritance I can leave my children, family, and friends. I feel that it is very important to leave some type of legacy behind, so that they will always have something personal and useful to remember me by. Education and life lessons I feel are sometimes more beneficial than money. I would like to leave behind the lesson of how important it is to obtain academic success. 

My goal is to leave behind the legacy that I believed I was never too old to learn, never to old to allow anyone to say I can't, and to instill a quality of humanitarianism in them.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY

When Mark Twain stated that "clothes make the man," he meant to criticize a society he considered superficial, vapid and shallow. Yet almost a hundred years after his death, his statement holds even more weight and rings even more true now that fashion is a multimillion-dollar industry. Fashion is currently responsible for millions whose livelihood is directly dependent on it, a major player in both the economy and society and an key influence on the environment. From production, to transportation, to landfills, sky-high rates of carbon emission and inefficient consumption of energy, the textile industry has both a massive negative impact on our environment and huge potential to decrease its carbon footprint in it. In this paper I will dig into the role of the fashion/textile industry regarding climate change and the energy budget, the how's and whys of its energy use and most of all, the amazing innovations taking place in high fashion that still aren't accessible to the mass markets and their impact on the environment. .

Humanity has been involved with the production and consumption of textiles for a significant portion of their history, but it wasn't until the industrial revolution that it factored into society as a major industry. Historically, merchants used to travel with cloth to sell and mainly created clothing items through weaving, knitting and spinning. During this time period most individuals owned few and basic pieces of clothing that were durable, of high quality and often reusable. Owing more pieces of clothing was associated with the upper class that could afford superfluous clothing items. The Industrial Revolution proved to be a changing point in history when clothing manufactured in England accounted for 25% (Economy Watch)1 of the countries total export becoming a significant force of the economy. This period also proved extremely innovative with the appearance of new technology and machines that allowed the increase of speed and productivity of the clothing production.

The priority during this time period was increased production and therefore the impact of this new industry on the environment was not factored into the process. Likewise it was during this time when the fast fashion and obsessive consumption for clothing was integrated into the society's subconscious. Yet, as society's needs and wants have developed, the fashion industry has evolved to meet the requirements of its consumers. The industry is currently incredibly fast paced as it is expected to change and innovate every season, but fast fashion comes at a devastating cost. At the moment, beyond the social trauma the fashion industry has caused to both the underpaid workers in foreign lands and the global mentality and attitude towards beauty, it gravely affects our environment through its excessive transportation, misuse of energy, landfill impact and carbon emitions.

Currently, this industry works under an extremely energy inefficient regimen because consumers and countries haven't applied the necessary pressure the create change. Regarding the consumer aspect there is a lack of information and understanding of how clothing items are created and how cheap prices result in high costs in terms of social and environmental capital. Furthermore, the wastefulness of the industry is not limited to isolated aspects of it but rather ongoing process from global production that is divided into countries and requires transportation to the need to maintain and care for poor quality products that are meant to be temporal. For instance we must take into consideration that the fashion industry is an international business and that the production of a single item of clothing often involves at least three different countries.

FORCE FOR AFRICA

ESSAY Keywords . #Moventment2TheFuture #thatisforce #forceforafrica #RDC 

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