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Perspective, Stephen Mpofu
Insularity can be said with equanimity to be the bane of development in some countries in Africa, whereas interdependence would be a magic wand for economic and social emancipation.

Fallible to a complex of inferiority, some African countries would rather cough up a lot of money in hefty salaries for even unqualified or half qualified expatriates from countries overseas than recruit more experienced black experts.

This pen can vouch that after achieving independence a certain country neighbouring Zimbabwe recruited medical “experts” from India who had to undergo further training on the job as they lacked experience to work in hospitals where they were employed.

Yet, blacks with better experience could easily have been recruited from an African country and for less financial expenses than what was spent on the half-cooked recruits.

Today Zimbabwe rides high in popularity as the most literate nation in Africa with a literacy rating of well over 90 percent, and yet this educational bonanza has remained unexploited even by other countries in our region.

However, it is not too late for other countries to share in Zimbabwe’s educational exploits, and the good news to the effect that Zimbabwe and South Africa are working on an arrangement to regularise the teaching profession is no doubt a fore taste of more co-operative initiatives in other areas between and among more countries in Sadc.

It is known, although not as yet quantified, that large numbers of trained and qualified Zimbabwean teachers work in South African schools, or do menial jobs there for lack of work in their profession in this country.

Under the process agreed between the two countries’ educational ministries, Zimbabwean teachers in South Africa will be registered and licensed with the result that they will earn what befits them as professionals, and no doubt with more unemployed teachers heading down south to fill professional vacancies in that country.

South Africa and Zimbabwe also need to cooperate in curriculum implementation and assessment to modernise the two in line with the demands of post modernity, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Lazarus Dokora said during a recent press conference in Harare, also attended by South Africa’s Basic Education Minister Angelina Matshekga.

This followed a two-day conference on identifying areas of cooperation between South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Other Sadc states might also wish to enter into arrangements similar to the one agreed between Zimbabwe and South Africa, with part of the pay of the Zimbabwean employers being remitted home by the employer for investment in this country’s development.

Sadc countries as well as other, regional economic groupings might wish to exchange their expertise in various other areas as a way of enhancing social and economic advancement.

Interdependence has the potential for enhancing growth in regional economies especially when one realises that governments overseas to a large extent remained close with their capital or use the money to wring the arms of smaller poorer countries for concessions that are sometimes obscene.

Thus, African countries scratching each others’ backs in social and economic initiatives will no doubt produce handsome dividends in developing our continent.

A thorough- going study might expose areas where Zimbabwe lacks expertise and where such personnel can be recruited from other African countries under an exchange programme to fill the gap.

Thus, when African states cooperate in various developmental initiatives, such cooperative measures will no doubt lift the continent to a higher level of development.

And yet what does one see happening in most cases?

African countries fall over one another in beelines to their former colonisers to come back and raise them, in the same way as parents lift children to safety from, say, a mud quagmire.

The tragedy often inherent in patronising former racist and oppressive colonial rulers is that these same people often want to cut a huge chunk of flesh in the form of hegemony from small, struggling nations.

Small wonder then that contemporary imperialism with its subtle exploitative nature keeps some African countries under remote control by their former masters through aid as a conditionality for economic cooperation so that self-determination remains a far cry in many countries on the continent.