Letter from Vital in Africa

Hello. We are Vital.
We are a group of young Africans
from different countries.
We want change.
Change is vital to the survival
of many millions of our people.
Change is vital and urgent.

Most of our countries are still colonies.
Not on paper but in practice.
Colonization mainly meant exploitation.
We were not helped to develop ourselves.
But we helped to develop the colonizing powers.
We helped to create their riches.

Many of our countries remain underdeveloped.
Poverty is rampant.
Many people die of starvation.
Politics are unstable.
Many conflicts and wars hit us.
Many the result of economic and social injustice.
Many thousands are killed or injured.
Many of our leaders seem to have copied
the wrong values of the colonizers.
They are exploiting the people now.
They lack the sharing capacity.
They seem to be in politics
to serve mainly themselves
and not really their people.
They hardly see the distress
and poverty endured by the people.
They often live in protected compounds.
Where life is like in the West.
Some even fly in their food from the West.
They colonize our people
often with the help of foreign countries
or foreign companies.
These help to maintain them in power
in exchange of access to our raw materials
that they buy cheap and sell expensive
on international markets.

This exploitation cannot go on.
Change is vital to our survival.
We want a new kind of politics.
We want a new kind of economics.
All based on human values.
Where justice is the keyword.
The wealth of our countries
should benefit all the people here.
Africa is too beautiful to lose.
Africans are too nice to be exploited.