"Africans have to learn to pull themselves up by themselves"

In an interview with Pambazuka titled "Africa and China: Then and now", Kwesi Kwaa Prah stated:

One of the things we have to learn is that advancement in our time must be home grown. Africans have to learn to pull themselves up by themselves, one. Two, this process has to be based on their own cultural pre-requisites. It is not possible to develop Africa grounded in languages like English, French or Portuguese or Arabic for that matter. Africans have to realise that the cultural base for development has to be their own. That is not to say they should not learn other languages, no, but they must make their languages the centre of all the development efforts that they make.