Africa cannot continue to do things in the same way and expect different results. We need to re-write the book, so to say, and totally re-think our development strategies, if we are to navigate the risks and opportunities, and deliver social transformational success in the 21st Century. We need to bring greater harmony to our development strategies by reconciling the values within and the practice
s without – so that we operate from a more authentic place. In order to dismantle the structural design and institutional forces that have undermined Africa’s transformation – the first step must be to re-think, re-design and visualize what Africa really wants to be and what Africa wants to look like in the short, medium and long term. A lot of social-economic re-engineering is required in order to entrench the values of re-alignment, transformation and innovation in our national economies. There seems to be no harmonized visualization of the Africa that the different actors want to achieve. It all looks like a desperate effort to look like the west. Africa seems to lack an authentic approach that contests the inherited status quo of structural constraints and policy stereotypes - and envisions a new Africa. The much needed “incentives and realistic policy directions” to stimulate Africa’s transformation have not matched the aspirations of its people. Africa can be African, but this will take a careful identification and definition of the impulses, core values and principles that constitute the African fabric. This is the motivation for the establishment of IDPRC – an African centre of excellence for innovation and adaptation – that will transform the minds of Africans and African scholars into a new breed of game changers that will define the “Future Africa”, and define an agenda to reach this “Africa”. IDPRC will bring together all corporate and individual game changers and innovators that already exist across Africa – and brand them – into a “community of practice” that will become the “think-tank” for African development. The underlying principles in IDPRC are “transformation, re-alignment and innovation” – re-aligning structural and institutional barriers, transforming mind-sets and stereotypes – and creating new innovations based on African realities.
