Foreign ideologies kill African family values

Africa over the years has become a highly valuable continent to foreigners, especially the Western world, because of its natural resources and culture. It attracted tourists, explorers, imperialists, and religious missionaries as a result of which it is heavily influenced over time by foreign cultures and ideologies.

The Western world started to explore into the heart of Africa during the 1800s and discovered immense wealth with the primitive occupants that could not defend themselves militarily.
Europe claimed Africa with its resources, including the natives.

They used the resources to industrialise their countries and when they finally left after African countries won independence, the newly independent countries were left in poverty. The Western countries remained the market for Africa whose governments became corrupt.
However, to control these corrupt governments, the Western world keeps giving aids. To date, after many years of independence, Africa still hires labour from the so-called developed countries to make their roads and manage key economic affairs, leaving out our own trained personnel - generally because outsiders bring in foreign currency. This helps these countries to find jobs for their nationals in Africa. This is a great pity because there is nothing worse than having a people who have no confidence in themselves.
African countries in 2002 formed African Union meant to promote economic and political growth within Africa. However, the AU is greatly influenced in terms of ideology by the United Nations, which is a mouth-piece of Europe.
The foreign policies are now touching on the very fabric of the African family. Sexual revolution started in Europe in the 1960s and we began to see with it marriage breakdowns; attitudes of – mind your own business.

Issues related to divorce began to emerge and laws strengthened to handle possible violence. The issue of gender equality started emerging strongly and social strata changed. The rights of individuals are now being emphasised rather than of the family.
Gender and birth control ideologies are not African. “Gender-based” programmes are not necessary. It is man’s forgetfulness of God, and his failure to give Him glory, which gives rise to violence. Gender-based violence is a big business in Africa. A newspaper recently quoted an advocacy group as saying Uganda loses Shs77b every year to handle gender-based violence across the country. This NGO was appealing to government to allocate more funds and step up efforts to protect women and girls against the evils of gender-based violence.

The Bible teaches that God created Adam from clay, and thereafter, Eve from one of Adam’s ribs (Genesis 1: 26-27; 2: 7, 18-23), which makes her equal to Adam. God created man in His image implying that man should be God-like by developing the moral perfection and holiness God intended for him.
In Mathew 19:5, Jesus said “ …the two will become one flesh”. God made man and woman different so that they can supplement each other - each has a unique role in the family. It can be compared with what St Paul said about the Body of Christ – comparing it with our own different parts of our bodies forming one body (Romans 12:5; 1Cor 12: 12) – all working for the same body (1Cor 12:14-27). The gender ideology is not Christian and it breaks the family. In Europe families have broken up. There are numerous divorce court cases and children grow up with single parents and they never actually experience a family love.
Family planning is also not Christian. You cannot control what you don’t create. Besides, the control is done in evil manner breaking God’s Laws and God cannot bless it. China tried a law to control birth by killing each female child, and this caused population imbalance.

In Europe today, there is loneliness typical of these who have no connection with others. They keep pets for company. Elders are abandoned; the youth lack clear points of reference. Crimes such as suicides are common in such societies.
Most tribes in Europe, as a result of birth control, experience negative population growth. If this trend continues, in the long-run, Europe will be occupied by immigrants. We have allowed technology to take over our lives. But the result will be confusion between ends and means. We are throwing away our family culture of sharing in exchange for financial aids.

Dr Okoth is a concerned citizen.
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