The Challenge for Africa

*Maathai argues that Africans need to revive their sense of identity, their cultural inheritance, and a shared sense of common purpose to face the challenges posed by endemic corruption, the legacies of colonialism and the Cold and civil wars, poverty, and most urgently climate change. *Countless images of nameless starving children aimed at guilt-tripping westerners have been internalised, leading to a demoralised and passive inertia among millions of citizens. Elections may have spread but the true tenets of a democratic society are often tragically absent. Only once the continent has rediscovered its own cultural inheritance and history can it take active responsibility for its own future. *Ultimately what Africa needs is a revolution in leadership, but this cannot be ushered in by western governments, well-meaning NGOs, or even Bono and Sharon Stone it must happen within African civil society itself. *As in Unbowed, Maathai s voice is decisive, authoritative, and unsentimen