2026: The Year of the African Employee

 

Celebrating the Year of the African Employee

The African employee handles, manages and turns-over 95% of the continents production on farms, firms, factories, fisheries and yet owns far less than 5% of its wealth. 30% of African employees drive upwards of 65% of national economic gross domestic product GDP. The African employee provides upwards of 70% of national labor forces that prop up 35% of national economies in small business enterprises. Nonetheless, the uncelebrated African employee has lost the zeal to live in the registered economy, but remains responsible for building the nation alongside feeding and educating extended family of between five to fifteen individuals on a daily wage that is below the axiomatic poverty line. A line that keeps moving with any minor shift in foreign exchange rates. Yet the African employee is the bedrock of the society paying the burden of unserviced government taxes and carrying the future of more than a billion people in wage packets. Odd as it may seem, many employees on their dream jobs, or on jobs many dream of, earning far above the poverty wage line, number among those living from hand to mouth, month to month and from wage to wage. Creating personal wealth is really not a goal or priority. Most interestingly, if you are reading this article, chances are 9:10 that you are an employee falling in one of the categories described above. Read on you may learn something about your past and gain the power to substantially change your future.

HISTORY

The African employee has not always lived like this. For more than a thousand years, the employee lived on free range enterprise in a vast land of abundant resources where expansion was purely physical and geographic. Capital was acquired by the strength of one’s arm, aspiration and will.  There were economic wars, but the land was large enough to accommodate economic exchange for all. The employee was an entrepreneur, master of his craft, owner of trade and firmly in command of his destiny. All was going well until the east and west discovered the African enterprise, enslaved its creators and plundered its resources. His independence was violently taken from him and he, a slave, became the item of trade in his own land, and other lands, in the shadows of a false millennium that would be eclipsed by colonialism. For centuries, The African employee sank deeper and deeper into the dark, dank world of slavery. A place where broken spirits wander wistfully and no souls exist. He enslaved his dignity, his virility and sense of enterprise. He became an auctionable item of labor bought by lot alongside Adverts for cattle, tools, and fuel for no pay and no identity. He became a deconstruct of Adam Smith’s inanimate economic equation of land, labor and capital for the wealth of nations. The African employee, having lost the capacity of enterprise, denied the opportunity and freedom to work for himself, had to work for others. So traumatized was the employee that he forgot how to create wealth and became a consumer instead. He lost the understanding, the will and capacity to own wealth, engage in enterprise, form capital and became a laborer. A few lucky ones were rescued by Booker T Washington working their way up from slavery. The small number returned to modest independent dignity, and the knowledge of creating and managing personal wealth. Booker let them know it could be done, but many remained still born, numb and unbelieving in the eerie mental silence of bonded slaves. For decades, The African employee remained indentured as permanent and pensionable, only later to become a dispensable contract feature, a paid unit of manpower with no soul, no goals of his own; hardly ever returning from the fields of commerce with anything to call his own.

SET GOALS

However, the African employee is gradually regaining the ground he ceded to wealth creators. All is not lost. The employee must relearn enterprise, revise his understanding of money, rekindle the spirit of work, engage information technology for production, set his own life goals, create his own wealth plans and drink deep from the well of independent creativity. To do this the employee must revisit the purpose of employment and the personal benefits it houses that can be accrued for posterity and not just wait for retirement. This year, do not steal, set for yourself One goal to create personal wealth. Do not waste your time; Set One goal to develop yourself, and increase your knowledge, skills and understanding of enterprise to generate wealth. Finally, do not waste your money; there is no difference between your wages and capital. Set One goal to accumulate capital, invest in and control your own income stream, to leverage your own and family future survival and success… then PURSUE THOSE GOALS aggressively with all the life force in you.

 

Allan Bukusi is the author of the book; How to Prosper in Employment and creator of the Employee Empowerment Seminar, a ninety-minute motivational presentation challenging employees to prioritize creating personal wealth early in their careers.