Top 1200 West Africa Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

The only people who can fix Africa are talented young Africans. By unlocking and nurturing their creative potential, we can create a step change in Africa's future.

Africa has become the big game of the nation hunters. Today, Africa looms as the greatest commercial, industrial and political prize in the world.

'Africa shall be saved.' I heard God's message so clearly. In response, my family moved from Lesotho to South Africa in 1974.

Africa is where commodities are found, so it is vital that Glencore and other miners are there to develop those resources, helping Africa itself to grow at the same time.

The first myth to dispel is that Africa is not a country. It's made up of 53 different countries. So to say 'invest in Africa' is a no-go. It's meaningless.

If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case; so it's important to engage with the other Africa.

People try not to think about what's going on in sub-Saharan Africa. They edit it out of their daily lives. Especially Americans. We prefer a fantasy version of Africa.

South Africa never leaves one indifferent. Its history, its population, its landscapes and cultures - all speak to the visitor, to the student, to the friend of Africa.

I had intended to have gone into Africa incognito. But the fact that a white man, even an American, was about to enter Africa was soon known all over Zanzibar.

I did a lot of camping in Africa, because what does it mean to go to Africa if you don't camp along the river and see the animals come to drink at the water?

Someone else is going to read for me or go at my place to the mosque, and/or to tell me you shouldn't take anything from the West because the West is the enemy and so on. It is to me to decide. I am intelligent enough to be critical towards the West and take what I need and reject what is bad for me.

I'm uncomfortable, frankly, with the hype about Africa. We went from one extreme... to, like, Africa now is the best thing after sliced bread.

Now, I know it's a widespread assumption in the West that as countries modernize, they also westernize. This is an illusion. It's an assumption that modernity is a product simply of competition, markets and technology. It is not. It is also shaped equally by history and culture. China is not like the West, and it will not become like the West.

People in the West want to hear Indian melody, not someone who is aping the West.

I live in South Africa. I'm proud to live there. I've always said I want to be a comedian from South Africa in the world. I will stay in places for a bit here and there and pop into New York for a while, maybe stay in London for a year, but my home will always be South Africa. I enjoy it too much.

We're very prepared: Infection-control people in hospitals over the past two months have been reviewing all their infection- control procedures because we anticipated just this sort of thing happening-a person coming from West Africa, they were healthy at the time they traveled, but got sick here.

I'm like a gypsy. I've got a place in Beijing, a place in New York, a place in west Africa; I'm working on a place in Colombia. I like the fact that painting is portable - and I've wanted my entire life to be able to see the world, to respond to it, and make that my life's work.

If you go from the USA - which, relative to the rest of the world, is in pretty good shape in terms of biodiversity and sustainability - to the tropics, everything gets worse. You have Indonesia, which is destroying its own forest. In West Africa there's no control whatsoever. It's a global situation. For that reason it ties in clearly with the needs and relationships of low-income countries.

I love Africa, and Ulusaba, our home in South Africa, is pretty special. It's on a rocky hill overlooking the bush, and from your room, you can see lions stalking zebras by the waterhole.

You can fit two United States and maybe a third one into the entire continent of Africa, but on a map we make the entire continent of Africa look like the size of the United States, which is why a lot of people don't know that Africa is a continent. They think it's a country because it looks as big as we do.

The only people who can fix Africa are talented young Africans. By unlocking and nurturing their creative potential, we can create a step change in Africa's future.

The United States and rich countries cannot change Africa from within. It has to impose reform on Africa; it has to come from within.

The truth is, about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa.

The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.

The givers of most of the corruption in Africa are from outside Africa.

You haven't experienced anything until you've been to Africa. You know the world is bigger than you are after you see Africa.

I was in Africa once. I was in Kenya. I got off the plane, and I thought, 'Africa...' Some guy in a dashiki said, 'Mr. Bundy. Oh my God, it's you.'

During the Cold War, the West was extremely careful not to allow the gap between the rich and poor to widen too far, first and foremost to counter communist depictions of the squalid masses in the West. But the same remains true today: If the West does nothing about the growing social inequities, it endangers its internal legitimacy.

Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

The people I admire unreservedly are my parents. They are the real pioneers of Africa in many ways. They were born and raised in rural Africa during the colonial period. They are the ones who came to the U.S. long before I did.

When Nelson Mandela walked free, the world sang with joy. Ever since, South Africa has stood as a beacon of hope for Africa.

Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.

Beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.

Women's vulnerability around money is hardly exclusive to Africa. Throughout the world, women struggle with financial power. In the West, women's financial literacy is notably lower than men's. That lack of knowledge means that many women slide into poverty when they become widows.

When I was in government, the South African economy was growing at 4.5% - 5%. But then came the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, and so the global economy shrunk. That hit South Africa very hard, because then the export markets shrunk, and that includes China, which has become one of the main trade partners with South Africa. Also, the slowdown in the Chinese economy affected South Africa. The result was that during that whole period, South Africa lost something like a million jobs because of external factors.

We have this impression of Africa being a large mass of homogenous land but Africa is actually very diverse. I had shot for 'Vishwatma' there ages ago and then visited again for my honeymoon.

Nobody in Africa loves to be a beggar or a recipient of aid. Everywhere I go in Africa, people say, 'When are we going to stand up on our feet?'

Africa is not poor, Africa is being looted

I learned that along with the towering achievements of the cultures of ancient Greece and China there stood the culture of Africa, unseen and denied by the imperialist looters of Africa's material wealth.

Africa is on the move; a new Africa is emerging!

I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.

I think what we need is goodwill because now our struggle is harder because it is an economic struggle. And now Europe is organising itself. So I think there needs to be a rupture between Africa and Europe, and all the international laws being conceived here in the west have to be revisited and changed.

Off pitch, I keep things simple. I enjoy spending time with my family. I never forget my roots and regularly give back to children in West Africa. I support several youth associations, and I am also involved in the protection of the forest in my country [Ivory Coast]. When away from home, I mostly miss people and enjoying a good laugh with my peers.

If we study history and anthropology we will find that all over the world the original people are Black people who migrated from Africa. This is confirmed by recent DNA studies. The only reason that we don't readily accept this is because we are indoctrinated to believe that Africa is the worst place that has ever been. If we had a more positive attitude about Africa we would run to it instead of running from it.

The commentators of 1963 speak, in discussing Africa, of the Monrovia States, the Brazzaville Group, the Casablanca Powers, of these and many more. Let us put an end to these terms. What we require is a single African organisation through which Africa's single voice may be heard, within which Africa's problems may be studied and resolved.

People wonder why I love Africa so much. I say this is where I was born and raised. My roots are in Africa; that's were I developed.

Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.

Marcus Garvey was one of the first advocates of Black Power, and is still today the greatest spokesman ever to have been produced by the movement of Black Consciousness...He spoke to all Africans on the earth, whether they lived in Africa, South America, the West Indies or North America, and he made Blacks aware of their strength when united.

Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa's souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind? How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size? Why does needy Africa continue to let its wealth meet the needs of those outside its borders and then follow behind with hands outstretched for a loan of the very wealth it let go? How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?

The West has institutions that can punish the misconduct of individuals. What drove Rwanda and Africa into decline was the fact that certain people weren't held accountable. When we move to make corrupt mayors or officers answer to the courts, people always immediately say that we are repressive. But should we allow these people to continue to get away with it?

Well, Nigeria has played a constructive role in peacekeeping in various parts of West Africa. But unless and until Nigeria itself is democratic and respects human rights, it too may well be a source of much greater instability as political repression limits the ability of the people of Nigeria to achieve their full potential.

The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States has caused some to call on the United States to ban travel for anyone from the countries in West Africa facing the worst of the Ebola epidemic. That response is understandable. It's only human to want to protect ourselves and our families.

I profess accurately to describe native Africa - Africa in those places where it has not received the slightest impulse, whether for good or evil, from European civilisation.

You could say I was born into entrepreneurship. My grandmother, who was from Sierra Leone, was left to raise four children in the 1940s in a rural village in West Africa after becoming a young widow. To support her family, she made natural skin and hair care preparations and sold them primarily to missionaries and villagers.

In the industrial nations, there's a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn't do all that poorly either.

We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.

Do you think that the people of South Africa, or anywhere on the continent of Africa, or India, or Pakistan are longing to be kicked around all over again?

Drug manufacturers could afford to sell AIDS drugs in Africa at virtually any discount. The companies said they did not do so because Africa lacked the requisite infrastructure.

America needs to hear some good sounds from Africa, man. The sanity of the world is going to be generated from Africa through art.

Something struck me in Africa, in black Africa, where polygamy is legal: the solitary woman is the rule there, from at an extremely young age, and the children are always the mother's responsibility.