A Second Life in our life time?

INDIA will turn 60 this year while Ghana will turn 50.
Africa has distinguished itself as a source of involuntary human capital movement and its citizens are now found in many of the world’s civilisations.
Being credited as the cradle of human civilisation, Africa has a rich heritage that unfortunately has not been translated into human progress. India being only 10 years older than Ghana has made tremendous strides to live up to the expectations of its citizens particularly in the last 16 years and already the global village is feeling the Indian factor in commerce and industry.
As world political and economic leaders meet in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) what is noticeable is that Africans are missing in the defining debates and dialogues about the continent’s future and a few unelected individuals and celebrities have now become the ambassadors of Africa in the First Life. Indeed, Gates and Blair now have something in common and that is Africa and equally Bono and many world leaders can share the same platform and all this is due to our inability to take ownership of our own problems. Yes, Africa needs partners and indeed it needs more Gates, Bono, Jolie, Pitt, Winfrey and others.
If in the First Life, Africans are challenged by their collective inability to respond to their challenges, what prospects if any exist for Africans to make a mark in the Second Life? Yes, Africa is at the bottom end of the digital world and yet Africans in the continent and the diaspora constitute a critical mass that can sustain an investment in the Second Life. The question is whether Africans can invest in this virtual life and through their collective behaviour distinguish themselves in the commercial, social and political spheres. The question we need to ask is what is Second Life and how important is it to Africa with 53 boundaries and with more of its peoples scattered in the global village.
Second Life has been defined as an internet-based virtual world developed by Linden Lab, a downloadable client program that enables users to interact with each other through motional avatars thereby providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. It is a virtual world built and owned by residents or users.
This second life is a digital continent without borders and citizenship and through this medium you can team up with people who may share your passion, experiences and more importantly whom a common thread of shared values can connect. Africans now have an opportunity of creating their own reality in the virtual space and yet when you scan the virtual world, what is striking is that the few Africans who are connected are not organised into a family of serious and forward looking citizens.
There is no government to stop Africans from trading with each other in the Second Life and yet any organised African group does not support the virtual marketplace. Among the millions of US$ in monthly transactions that are taking place in the virtual space, a small percentage has an African identity.As a regular contributor to the virtual world through my weekly column, I have been surprised by the reach of my personal reflections on a number of topics including those I am least qualified to make a contribution on i.e. politics to the extent that I thought there exists a distinct possibility that we can use the same medium to shift the debate from nation specific topics to broader issues that resonate with many people who call themselves African. Yes, I am African not because I am black but because I am a believer in the quest for an African identity.
I am acutely aware that it is difficult to take nationalism out of many Africans but the Second Life offers us an opportunity to go beyond the confines of where one is born to the reality that through others a better Africa is a not a pipe dream. Yes, there are many networking sites in the virtual space and it is not too late for Africans to invest in their own. The first stage should naturally involve giving ourselves a new birth certificate in the Second Life i.e. an email address and the next is to invest in content. Yes, we need to know each other and can you imagine how much power a million people who share one identity can have in the global market place. Many have observed that the African American economy in the US is probably bigger than even South Africa, a country recognised as the engine of Africa, with 47 million people and yet there is no visible connection between this economy and the rest of Africa for the world to notice.
Imagine everyone of us who are privileged to be connected could use our contacts and share them with our virtual friends in this Second Life and all of us can know each other through other people, how long will it take for us to create a social networking virtual space that we can collectively use to negotiate a better life for us and those connected to us. Can you imagine that the classified section of many newspapers is the key revenue generator and all it takes is that is for us to create our own virtual classified newspaper in the Second Life that can have the same functionality as the newspaper in this First Life. It can be done and it is already being done.
I am a member of http://www.myzimspace.com/, http://www.myafrispace.com/ and http://www.myjozi.com/ and all it takes is the discipline among the users to encourage their friends to join. May be in our lifetime we will host an African Economic Forum where Africans can speak their minds about poverty, governance and business without fear of losing citizenship or their lives.
If one were to count how many Africans of European origin are still in the continent, I am not sure whether the number would exceed 10,000,000 and yet this relatively small population accounts for a substantial claim on Africa’s resources. Many would attribute the relationship between Europeans who chose to be African and money to the colonial past and yet after 50 years of Uhuru, even Africa’s most senior decolonised state has not been able to define a clear relationship between its citizens and money. Africa’s brand unfortunately is not defined in terms of wealth but in terms of debilitating human problems.
I am convinced that more than 10,000,000 people who call themselves African live in the Second World and yet have not been able to establish a connectivity that is empowering. Yes, Africans have distinguished themselves in fighting against apartheid but have not been able to harvest. If 10,000,000 people can be so organised as to undermine the sovereignty that Africans fought so hard to gain, why is it not possible for Africans to organise themselves in the Second World and create their own world without borders but with the compassion of Bono and the selflessness of Oprah?