8 Things the G8 Should Know

Ken Wiwa is a writer, broadcaster and social entrepreneur. He speaks on behalf of the Ogoni people of Nigeria, and has taken up the mantle of his father, the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, as champion of their rights. He is one of 19 sub-Saharan Africans selected by for the Young Global Leaders Forum. He is regarded as one of the world's most engaging voices on human rights and social justice.

You can't go and dance and sing about love and not have the music carry a message, or take the music to the people to inspire action.

The debt Nigeria owes is like a second form of slavery. It is a noose around the neck of every single Nigerian.

Let's not forget that the amount of money Nigeria originally borrowed was 5 billion dollars. We have paid back 16 billion dollars yet we still owe 35 billion dollars. Now just think about that! We borrowed 5 million, we've paid back 16 billion and we still owe 36 billion. How the hell is that possible?

I don't believe that aid is the answer to Africa's problems.

There are a lot of highly-skilled Africans in the diaspora who want to go home to work. This idea is rarely included in aid programmes. But a few years ago the French government agreed to continue to pay Malian doctors who wanted to go back to Mali the same salary as they were receiving in France. This was in recognition of how much the doctors had contributed to the French economy.

Africans work with invisible networks that Europeans don't understand. It is only Africans who understand these invisible networks. You can't bring NGOs from the west to monitor how aid is spent in Africa because they won't know.

There's this notion that Africans live on less than one dollar a day. When I go back to my village I don't see people living on less than a dollar a day. I go back and I'm fed at a big feast. We are not a cash-based economy.

Let's not talk about corruption in Africa. There is a lot of looted money in Swiss banks and offshore accounts so don't tell me that corruption is an African issue. The North is part of the problem too.

[With thanks to the Observer magazine on whose "This Much I Know" format this piece is based]

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