Innovation and Liberation: A Spoken Word Poem

Mastercard Foundation Scholar Poetry in Advance of Baobab Summit 2018 in Africa

The 2018 Baobab Summit’s themes are collaboration and innovation. We asked Scholars to share their ideas, in essays or poetry, on how youth can collaborate and innovate to fuel Africa’s social and economic transformation.

Innovation & Liberation – This is Our Becoming

Puzzle piece

Cog wheel

Keyboard keys

Unlike that puzzle we already know how to complete

And unlike that wheel that turns in the same, old way

And by all means so different from that same tune we love to play

We are Master-Innovators; free from

Pre-designed

Pre-set

Pre-orchestrated works

We are wanderers – somewhat unsettled with having to take the beaten path.

And that’s where the magic manifests –

when the edge of the seat is a bit too comfortable

when we itch to un-create then create

when what we know feels like a lie; feels like a lie; My Oh My!

It all feels like a lie.

 

There they are; do you see them?

Clad in orange suits? Yellow helmets? Do you see them? Do you hear them?

Are you choosing to ignore them?

How they grin at the sight of the Black Gold

How they tap and swipe and insert that Gold chip

How good they are at signing Paris Agreements and meeting later at the Paris Club to boast of their achievements.

 

But you dared to join in, didn’t you?

They forgot your name, so they called you ‘African Delegate’…

But you don’t mind.

Because they call you what you truly are ‘d-e-l-e-g-a-t-e’

You are the face of billions

You are the voice of

the president’s child,

the elementary teacher

Mama Kennedy who sells plantains

Grandpa Oduor and his household

And his neighbor, that boy who goes by ‘Stano’.

You don’t mind – because you are not there to brag about putting pen to paper on some Agreement.

You are there because you need to share the heart of your people; the brilliance; the wonders

You need to tell everyone that your people were unsettled – and they weren’t comfortable at the edge of the seat.

 

NO! They couldn’t keep

playing with the same puzzle piece

turning the same cog wheel

listening to the same, old keyboard keys.

 

So what did they do? They designed, created, innovated.

 

So you sit near them in this Paris Club…

“Hey! African Delegate, why do you look so lost in thought?”

Hmmm… “Let me tell you”, you say.

“I like this new name Africa has been given, ‘The Leapfrog Continent’

But at the same time, I do not like it as much

Makes me feel like the whole world has a common destination

Like it doesn’t matter if run, swim, leap, roll…

As long as we get to a common destination.

But you see…

Africa’s innovations are not our way of trying to catch up,

They are our liberation.

Liberation from structures that were built to serve everyone else but us,

Liberation from internalized inferiority and self-defeat,

Liberation from expectations that pay no attention to our needs,

Liberation from waiting in line for seven hours and still paying ‘something small’ to get served

Liberation from politics imbued with self-serving, ethnically-biased rhetoric

Liberation from overcrowded, air-filled rafts in the middle of the ocean

Liberation from blood and diamonds having the same value

Liberation from mining gold in our backyard and still being bankrupt

Liberation from having to accept being the ‘African Delegate’

My name is ‘N-J-O-K-I’.”

 

You sigh.

Then you raise your glass, look at each person in the eyes and say,

“Africa is not leaping,

Africa is not rising,

Africa is becoming undone.”

 

Cheers, my friends.                                                                                                                  

Njoki L Mburu is a Mastercard Foundation Scholar pursuing her studies in international development at the University of British Columbia.