Africanism, a wake up call for industrial revolution in Africa — Cross River Gov Ayade

The theme Africanism

So, it’s a call to consciousness that African must now be Africa. In 25 years, China shut her doors and says sorry, anything not manufactured in China you can’t consume, and you have to pay extreme tax to the government, market pay extreme tax to discourage importation intoChina. China has been very successful, so Africa had to learn that lesson, Africa must realise that Africanism is a call to Africa. For anybody who is a governor, president or in high responsibility today, in Nigeria and indeed Africa, must recognise that Africanism is a wake-up call to all Africa leaders to come together and pull out Africans from the wolves. Until that is done, Africa will continue to weep, our young people will continue to journey in the Mediterranean and they will continue to go through all those things because of the failure of leadership. We must change that narrative and start to create a direction. That Africa will be seen as a leading continent of the future and that is the energy, policy and the action path. I don’t want to see jeans unless that fabric is only an African fabric.

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Africanism is saying, do, act, and carry yourself truly as Africans. Engaging the youth in productive activities. The Carnival Calabar itself presents a great opportunity in terms of business to an average of a million people coming to Calabar in the season, translating numbers of hotel occupancy, food consumption and other auxiliary services, it will be very indicative that truly, the month of November/December is a huge business for everybody irrespective of trade and therefore, if you can put that in commercial terms, there is an injection of over a billion naira into the tourism market of Calabar just for the month of November/December. Now we need to find ways and means we can create programmes that allow this socio-kinetics to continue from January up to the month of November, I agree with you that yes, we need to  find spaces to fill, but because Cross River State and Calabar, in particular, has hugely reinforced almost seven months out of the 12 months of the year.

We are also putting indoor games to accommodate them, but the carnival itself apart from the economy that it creates, it also helps young people to develop skills that make Africanism. For instance, our shoes will be made from African products, our hats, our caps and whatever we are going to put or will come from Africa, preparing and producing the drums and all the makeup and whatever will be strictly African, so you can find young men, if you can get to their mass-camps you will see where young men are been trained in different areas of specialisation and those skills will translate into a success once we can train them and take them beyond this process of them developing to become professionals in arts gallery world.

Consequently, I believe that the economy of Cross River State has also invested a lot of money and then mentors and those who are partaking are coming in as well but it is critical for me to be honest to say the investment by government into the carnival, we want to see how we can slow down government participation and shift it to private sector. So by next year, we will perhaps see where we can sell the carnival as a franchise, as a business to an investor who will take it up, and improve on its management, improve its context and deepen it and make it more exciting, like the Rio Carnival in Brazil where they make billions of dollars from it and of course it professionally been managed. I will want to have Africans, so that ultimately, skills we acquire in film directing, event management, can control and all of this can naturally become skills that will now be diversified among our young Nigerians and indeed it’s a pride that, apart from skills, it also discharges young men of negative vice of the society, you can imagine how many young people participated in the dry runs and how many will be part of the carnival proper.

Importance of Miss Africa to Carnival Calabar

Miss Africa, originally was designed to tell a story of what a beautiful woman looks like. In the last two editions, we have tried to align ourselves with the international standards and concepts of what beauty queen is. So, for a beautiful woman in African perspective, our statistics are completely different from the western perspective and so, what we have tried to do is to start with the international acceptable standard of beauty. Remember ours is beauty with brains,so, we are migrating from the sharp, slim, fit, pretty looking young lady with brain and graduating into the African idea of beauty, which is more about us; elegance, morality, ability to take care of your husband, showing love and taking care of the family. Africans concept of beauty is completely opposite from the western concept and so Miss Africa intends to re-establish and convince.

Healthy ladies that truly has the African beauty don’t run away from the fact that you have got body mass and therefore you are not beautiful, no, that’s African beauty. Again, we cannot see beauty from the perspective of the white man but from the African perspective by instilling and building confidence into the African beauty and ladies, so Miss Africa indeed has encouraged a lot of young women and men to come out to say this is what Africa is. Also, recently the last two of the level of self-confidence they have developed is their articulation, their etiquette, everything has improved and they have become more like the ambassador of Africa.

For this edition,  whoever wins for this year, we are actually going to take the person round African countries to meet with the president, first, he will go to a school of etiquette; trained and qualified because it’s coming out of Africanism, he has to go to South-Africa for the training, not in school of etiquette in London or Paris, but in South Africa. When he/she is back, she’ll shake hands with every African president, and tell the story of leadership, of proper accountability and the need to invest in Africa and promote the values of Africa, but more importantly, to equip Africa generation of industrial revolution, because the whole world is undergoing a revolution  industrial-wise except, Africa.

So, the Africa beauty of this year will drive the story of Africanism in relationship with the economic bone of Africa using our great resources for the pure improvement of Africa it’s important that you must know that Miss Africa is not just beauty, it’s not just brains, its tying beauty brains to the economic emancipation of Africans. The beauty comes with Africanism and of course by the time we start showcasing a beautiful model of Africa descent, of African shirt &trousers, what you will find therefore is that the world will gradually begin to see beauty from the African eye, just like the world sees music from the African perspective now.

When I walk into shops in Paris or the US and hear Nigerian music play and from the trends of things happening today, Africa has captured the music industry, so Africa should capture the beauty industry so that why Trump and the rest are working very hard to change the statistics.

So, I use this opportunity to invite every young African woman that thinks that she’s got the care, right gifts in the right place to please, irrespective of her size come forth because what we need is not just the beauty but beauty with morals, and the need to know, because we are going to test how you are going to take care of your husband by the time you eventually get married, and that’s the rich culture of Calabar and Cross River.