Editor, RE: "African migrants are following their resources plundered by the West” (The New Times, November 24).

Well said Mwene Kalinda; couldn’t have put it any better if I tried. Your pointed critique can only be arrived at if one approaches the big picture narrative with an equally big dollop of cynicism and counter belief system to what big media relentlessly peddles.

It’s all down to financial emasculation, be it through pillage, pilfering, buccaneering, profiteering or outright theft of Africa’s resources by Western parties.

Just look at the sordid dirty undies won by Tanzania’s mining giants recently unearthed by the ever pugnacious President Magufuli. Deplorable! And lately it’s all about transfer pricing by MNCs relentlessly shifting locally harvested profits to offshore tax havens.

But then again, our poor education, and the resultant dearth of "capacity”, doesn’t afford us the wherewithal to counter these vices readily. They deliberately "programmed” us as such. Rwanda, in granting these poor slaves refuge/asylum, is leading by example. Well done!

Ggwanga Mujje ***************************

What is disheartening—though not entirely discouraging—is that Africa does not lack enough well-educated and highly intelligent people who should be able to read through the pernicious and highly exploitative relationship Africa has with our ‘erstwhile’ (in quotes because they are ‘former’ in name only; they never left) colonizers, which largely contributes to the misery that pushes our desperate youth to take these incredible risks. You only need to attend a few workshops and seminars at which African economists, social scientists, policy specialists and other experts speak to realize there is a widespread understanding of our condition and the forces contributing to it.

What we seem to lack are practical strategies to help us cut the umbilical cords through which our lifeblood continues to be sucked out of us to benefit others, and the political will and courage to take the bit by the teeth and not fear the reaction of those from whom we wrest our blood.

We need to stop agonizing; to organize and act decisively. We owe it to ourselves, but more importantly to such youth as we have seen traded yet again in slave markets as other generations of young black people many generations before. If we don’t history will judge us harshly, once again. Mwene Kalinda