We have seen our Africa continent go from mildly well to sickly and poor over the last 20 years. Noted we have also seen South Africa relieved of Apartheid and the rise of Nelson Mandela but civil war, dictatorship governments, ethnic cleansing, drugs, rape, HIV, AIDS, Malaria and corruption has taken many African countries from being afloat to circling the drain. One of the biggest issues around not fixing the problem, apart from our huge lack of authentic leadership is the use of ‘free grant; monies coming in from outside sources.

Each year we see billions of dollars pour into various initiatives run by Non Profit Organisations. This money is filtered, skimmed and wasted up to 75% before reaching the actual need that it was intended for. With this and the poor performance of job creation organizations, we have seen a huge rise in the entitlement attitude of people at grass roots level.

In my books entitlement is the opposite and as far from entrepreneurship as you can get. Never will we be able to succeed and turn the tide for Africa if we continue to breed millions of people who expect and even demand the right to things that they have not contributed a single ounce of effort towards.

What we need is a structure that offers self help, a process of self development that requires people to get up and actually add value to their community before they are able to receive a single cent. We need to shut down the NPO clusters that pretend to offer job creation but are unable to show any fruit of sustainable businesses for their effort. We need to close down the schools that just pump numbers through programmes to satisfy their funders, but never graduate anyone with enough wisdom to do anything with. Money should be put to work on creating structures of mentors, coaching and programmes that demand accountability from those on the receiving end. A get-up-and-do-something or get-out attitude. This is the way we will see action.

Yes, we will see huge resistance to this sort of thing because entitlement is so entrenched and widely supported by politicians securing votes, but we need to start somewhere and today seems like a good time to get it right.

So from today forward: This office shall never give or invest without seeing a plan for sustainability with evidence of fruit. We will not engage those who demand but only with those who collaborate and give back. We will focus on empowerment, cooperation, leverage and innovation to create a better Africa for our generations to come. Our future starts today.