Editor,

Reference is made to the article, "Industries: Is ‘Chinese therapy’ Africa’s answer to stunted growth?” (The New Times, July 3).

I think Africa has no issues—we are just some 50 years old; we are not stunted; we are nascent and growing up.

Emmanuel Karake

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Mr Karake is right; Africans have no other issues than those ideologically imposed upon us, and precisely stunting us, such as that we have to "grow”: yesterday the European way, today the American way, and tomorrow the Chinese way.

What about, instead, choosing to grow our own way, the African way? Shall we remain in the infancy forever?

Sitting idle and with expectation of Chinese to come and employ our youth? In what kind of employment?

Producing what kinds of products and services? How much money paid for such jobs? Enough to correspond and preserve our individual and collective dignity now and in the future…

These questions and many more need to be immediately answered by ourselves and nobody else.

Francois-Xavier Nziyonsenga

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I partly agree with Mr Nziyonsenga. But, What technology do we have that can help us do it alone? He sounded like Uganda’s Retired Major Roland Kakooza Mutale who came to address us at Makerere University immediately after NRM had just captured power in Uganda. He suggested that they could exploit their minerals such as iron ore without help from the outsiders.

This, according to him, was going to allow them get the maximum value from their minerals. Twenty-eight years later, no single iron ore has been extracted from their soils. At that time various people, not necessarily the government, had several ambitious projects in their mind.

During a sociology lecture, one professor even suggested how it was possible to dig a channel to connect a river to the Indian Ocean and allow ships to bring imports from overseas right to Masaka in Uganda.

Sometimes, we need to put aside our national ego if we really want to progress. I am not suggesting giving away our resources but we can partner with those with advanced technology to exploit them and add value locally without exporting them in raw form.

For instance, we import shoes from all over the world. We do not really have to export leather. It is one of the raw materials we have in plenty which we can use locally in our own industries.

We can create thousands of jobs making shoes, belts, handbags, furniture such as beds and sofas, using our own leather. All it takes is to train our people and partner with people like Ms Hai who have the knowhow and the capital (machinery) – so much the better if we could acquire the machinery ourselves.

There is a market for shoes in Rwanda and across Africa; shoes are some of the products that are consumed by both the rich and the poor. Therefore, the market is assured as long as we can manufacture them targeting both market segments.

Kelly