Editor,

Reference is made to Lonzen Rugira’s article, "Africa must organise itself or let others organise it”, published in The New Times on May 19.

Bravo Mr. Rugira for a good analysis. I suppose the best way for Africa to escape the current deplorable situation and elude future recurrence is to opt for total independence in all spheres.

What is required for African leaders is to set a common agenda for all countries and get it executed. Unfortunately, powerful nations' watchful eye is always there to bar the desired development through the ever-present manipulative systems, including toppling governments they don’t like.

Ruhinda, Bukoba, Tanzania

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I wish to respond to Gitura Mwaura’s article, "Africa burns, but where are our intellectuals?” (The New Times, May 17). As long as throughout the continent, the formal education remains a mere borrowing process and an indiscriminate adulating reproduction of knowledge borrowed/imposed from elsewhere, with no impetus to methodically adapt only some of the acquired knowledge to local requirements, I am afraid Africa will never breed any single "bold risk-taking, educated leader with a triumphant attitude”.

A rather sad perspective is that we (African intellectuals) are bound to perpetually remain lazy, poor and inferior. While our "uneducated” relatives, "the most hardworking people on earth” will remain toiling in "export” business, run by and for the exclusive profit of the originators of related knowledge.  

Francois-Xavier Nziyonsenga, Montréal, Canada