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Africans are too Afraid to be Free

I think that Africans are too afraid to be free. They have the capacity to be free but they ignore their potentials. Each Francophone African country, for instance, has defence agreements with the metropole (France), yet we could sign the same agreements among ourselves, we could put in place conflict resolution mechanisms ourselves.
The Marcoussis Agreement, which was a very bad agreement, could never be signed in any African capital. The Ivorian crisis revealed to me that Africans underestimate themselves and do not have confidence in themselves. Time has come for Africans to have confidence in themselves, to take their destiny into their own hands. Time has come for Africans to have partners and not masters. And all this is possible.
As for the rest of the world, we have just witnessed changes at the helm of the United Nations with a new secretary general but the world has worrying trends. When I look ahead, I see dangerous confrontations between the United States and China. For the moment they're about commercial problems and I hope their antagonism remains at the commercial levels. But I fear that tomorrow these could turn into something else. I believe that Africans could play a stabilising role in the world and not be relegated to the role of colonies. Africans are not aware of their important role in the world. [...]
In major financial institutions around the world, it is the youth of Africa who are in management positions. They are good at managing other people's funds but when you ask them to put up capital and manage it for Africans, for ourselves, they would not have a lot of confidence in doing that. That is the reason why I call upon Africans to wake up.

By President Laurent Gbagbo in New African, April 2007, p. 46