Change Africa: Nice shirt, lazy concept

I got a phone call yesterday morning from one "Florence from Change Africa" inviting me to cover their unveiling for one of the online portals I often write for.

I got confirmation from the website's editor and 'booked' it against all odds.

As a Pan-Africanist who has been advocating for transformation for years, I couldn't wait to see what the sister and her crew had to offer.

I have spoken a lot and written a lot about this beautiful continent that I am always happy to see others putting in work to help the #changeafrica agenda, a hashtag I started posting since January 2019, which can be seen with a simple search on Facebook.

I canceled an engagement with my landlord and even dropped my beloved Galaxy S7 on the tiled floor which shattered its beautiful glass screen terribly just because I was in a hurry to lock my door and go to the Uber I had ordered to pick me right in front of my gate.

Long story short — I got there (at their own 6 pm) but the organisers delayed for approximately 30 minutes, cool, they apologised and commenced,... Hmm.

They were so confused they made one person, a project coordinator, read the same speech twice,... Hmm.

The most intriguing part was that the 4-paged document which was read 2 times was about their intention to sell t-shirts embossed with the signatures of 7 notable Africans including Ghana's Kofi Annan and Kwame Nkrumah.

According to the coordinator, people who want those beautiful t-shirts must visit a certain website and pay 5 dollars for each.

The question and answer time was another moment of confusion.

Shallow shallow shallow! And they want to make 5 million dollars from this sham!

I remember turning to ask a student of the University of Ghana who was sitting next to me whether he'll buy one of the shirts, to which he replied, "they're not convincing enough."

Short story long, Florence told me to wait after the programme and that she'll see me in 4 minutes. That was it! She was gone.

After about 40 minutes of waiting, and Florence not picking my calls, I decided to leave only to meet her at the parking lot getting ready to go with her crew. I was mad!

I gave them my piece of mind paa. Nkrumah strongly believed "organisation decides everything," not this hopeless muddle.

How can we change Africa with these people? Africa must change, and only we Africans can cause that change we want to see.

It is not about money, meat, shirts or skirts . It is not about signatures. It is about sincerity and respect for each other. That is what will change Africa.