Ben M Yombwe

Supply Chain Specialist,
Optimistic about Africa,
Alma mater: @CBU_ZM & @UnilusOfficial,
@Mckinsey Forward 2023,
Stylish Roan United⚽.

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

Located in Luanshya, Serioes made quality cloths that would compete with big brands in the 70 and 80. Am told some Zambians would buy suits in Europe only to discover that they were actually made in Zambia later on.

[Nkanda Yatu Design @NkandaYatu]

In the 80/90s ,Zambia owned a clothing manufacturing company called serials.They exported suits as far as Italy,United Kingdom and the United States.They were the first company that made the KK suit. Yesterday , after the showcase at Milan fashion week in Italy

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

Once upon a time, Fifa gave Trump the FIFA Peace Prize. Looking at the antics being pulled by the US, you wonder what that award was about.

[𝕂𝕦𝕤𝕤𝕞𝕒𝕟 @kusssman]

At least sepp blatter had balls , this new president is useless.

[HAPPY TICKETING ASSISTANT🎫🎟️ @Jaks_369]

Kenya was accepting Ebola affected victims from USA while the said USA is denying VISA to African teams & referees?

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

@CollinsBriche Fifa just looked the other way. Imagine if these antics were being propagated by some host country in the global south or the middle east we would be reading endless reports from western megaphones.

[Divock Origi @DivockOrigi]

My purpose in the game is fulfilled ⭐️

I lived out my childhood dreams, played on the biggest stages, won the biggest trophies. Grateful to God for all of it.

To all my fans, the clubs, my teammates and my family: this will forever be ours. Thank you.

The mission is complete. Now I step into my next calling.

More of the journey to come.

Love,

Divock Origi

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

There’s something beautiful about having an amazing conversation with a stranger and never seeing them ever again.

[Ziyad Yakubu @Ziyad_yakubu]

Africa has two loud unserious camps pretending to be intellectual movements.

One camp looks at Europe and America the way village children used to look at white missionaries: everything from there must be superior. Their roads, their accents, their laws, their schools, their atheism, their democracy, their fashion, their manners, even their confusion. If the West sneezes, they call it civilization. If Africa breathes, they call it backwardness.

The other camp is the mirror image of the same sickness.

They claim they are anti-West, anti-imperial, Pan-African, decolonial, revolutionary, conscious, radical. But scratch the surface and you find another type of laziness. Their own fantasy is that Africa can wake up one morning, shout “down with the West,” chase away every foreign influence, reject Islam, reject Christianity, reject liberalism, reject capitalism, reject everything that came through history, and then somehow industrialize by vibes.

It is Wakanda for people who do not understand steel production, electricity grids, ports, banking, military logistics, semiconductor supply chains, pharmaceutical production, aviation, insurance, food systems, or the simple fact that no serious country builds itself by shouting slogans at the global system.

They think revolution is a mood.

They think development is anger.

They think anti-imperialism means refusing to understand the world as it exists.

That is why their politics always sounds powerful for thirty seconds and childish after two questions.

Ask them how Africa should industrialize.

They will say: “Decouple from the West.”

Okay. Decouple how?

From which technology? Which machinery? Which export market? Which financial system? Which shipping route? Which medical supply chain? Which aviation standard? Which internet infrastructure? Which currency settlement system? Which university research network? Which pharmaceutical input? Which military equipment? Which refinery component? Which fertilizer supply? Which spare parts?

Silence.

Then they return to slogans.

“Reject the West.”

Fine. After rejecting the West, what exactly are you producing on Monday morning?

Can your country manufacture MRI machines?

Can it produce aircraft engines?

Can it refine crude at scale without importing critical components?

Can it produce industrial chemicals?

Can it build ports, rails, power plants, transmission lines, and machine tools without foreign inputs?

Can it feed its population without imported fertilizer, imported machinery, imported improved seeds, imported pesticides, imported fuel, or imported logistics systems?

Can it defend its borders without imported drones, imported surveillance systems, imported aircraft, imported ammunition, imported communications equipment, or imported spare parts?

This is where the fantasy collapses.

They do not want statecraft. They want emotional revenge.

And emotional revenge is not a development model.

The funny thing is that even the people they worship did not live inside this childish fantasy.

They worship Ibrahim Traoré, Abdourahamane Tchiani, Assimi Goïta, the AES, Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Gaddafi, whoever is currently wearing military fatigues and speaking hard against France.

But look closely.

Their own heroes were not religious-free cave revolutionaries trying to return Africa to some imaginary pre-Islamic, pre-Christian paradise.

Tchiani is Muslim.

Ibrahim Traoré Muslim.

Goïta Muslim.

Thomas Sankara came from a Catholic background.

Kwame Nkrumah was baptized Roman Catholic.

Julius Nyerere was Roman Catholic.

Gaddafi was Muslim.

Nkrumah did not build Ghana by telling people to return to the bush and worship the ancestors.

Sankara did not rename Upper Volta Burkina Faso because he wanted everyone to abandon modern institutions and live inside precolonial nostalgia.

Nyerere did not build Tanzanian nationalism by declaring war on Christianity and Islam.

These men understood something today’s Twitter revolutionaries do not understand: Africa’s problem is not that history touched us. Africa’s problem is that we have not learned how to consciously select, adapt, discipline, and organize what history left behind.

That is the difference.

A serious society does not ask, “Is this foreign?”

A serious society asks, “Does this serve our survival, our order, our productivity, our dignity, and our future?”

That is statecraft.

Japan did not become strong by rejecting everything foreign. Japan became strong by studying foreign systems, copying what was useful, adapting it to Japanese needs, and protecting Japanese sovereignty while doing it.

China did not rise by shouting “West bad” and running into the mountains. China studied Western science, Soviet planning, global capitalism, manufacturing, export markets, finance, infrastructure, technology transfer, and then bent those tools toward Chinese power.

Singapore did not become rich by romanticizing village life. It built a disciplined port state with law, housing, education, bureaucracy, trade, finance, and ruthless competence.

Even Iran, the country many of these people secretly fantasize about, did not survive by rejecting modernity. Iran has universities, missiles, engineers, nuclear scientists, industries, bureaucracies, religious institutions, intelligence networks, oil infrastructure, and a deep state that can actually execute policy. 9

That is what our slogan merchants do not understand.

A state is not a flag.

A state is not a speech.

A state is not a young soldier in sunglasses.

A state is not “France out” written on a placard.

A state is the boring machinery of power: tax collection, internal security, energy, courts, ports, roads, census, schools, hospitals, land administration, industrial policy, agricultural extension, standards agencies, intelligence, procurement discipline, currency management, and the ability to make people obey rules without collapsing into ethnic and religious suspicion.

That is the work.

And that work is not sexy enough for people addicted to revolutionary theatre.

They want Africa to “decouple,” but they do not want to discuss the capacity required to decouple.

They want sovereignty, but they do not want bureaucracy.

They want industrialization, but they do not want technical education.

They want dignity, but they do not want discipline.

They want anti-imperialism, but they no idea how to build production.

They want Pan-Africanism, but plan of how we can even talk to one another without hauling insults.

They want to defeat the West, but their entire movement is hosted on Western platforms, typed on Chinese phones, powered by foreign operating systems, boosted by American algorithms, and explained using Marxist language from European intellectual history.

Then they turn around and say Islam and Christianity are foreign.

This is the part that exposes the shallowness.

Some of them are not really against foreign influence. They are only against the foreign influences they have chosen to hate.

Marx is foreign, but acceptable.

Lenin is foreign, but acceptable.

Socialism is foreign, but acceptable.

Military fatigues copied from modern armies are foreign, but acceptable.

Twitter is foreign, but acceptable.

Smartphones are foreign, but acceptable.

French language is foreign, but acceptable when quoting Sankara.

English is foreign, but acceptable when insulting Christianity.

But Islam and Christianity? Suddenly, purity must return.

If your argument is that Africa must reject everything that came from outside, then be honest and throw away the whole package. Throw away the phone. Throw away the internet. Throw away the modern university. Throw away the hospital. Throw away Marx. Throw away the AK-pattern revolutionary aesthetic. Throw away the imported microphone you use to record your anti-foreign podcast. Throw away the English language you use to preach ancestral purity.

But they will not do that.

Because they do not actually want purity.

They want a costume.

They want the emotional satisfaction of sounding “more African” without doing the hard work of building a functioning African state.

There is also another childish assumption inside this movement: the idea that precolonial Africa was one clean, peaceful, spiritually balanced paradise before Arabs, Europeans, Islam, Christianity, and capitalism ruined everything.

That is nursery-school history.

Precolonial Africa had beauty, knowledge, art, trade, kingdoms, scholarship, architecture, moral systems, diplomacy, and deep civilization.

It also had war, slavery, conquest, hierarchy, patriarchy, superstition, human sacrifice, internal oppression, ethnic conflict, and ruling classes who exploited people like ruling classes everywhere.

The past was not hell.

But it was not heaven either.

A mature people can honor their ancestors without lying about them.

A serious African does not need to pretend that everything before colonialism was perfect.

The Western worshipper says: “Africa was nothing before Europe.”

The nativist romantic says: “Africa was perfect before Europe.”

Both are wrong.

Both are childish.

Both are allergic to reality.

Africa was human before Europe. Brilliant in some places, broken in others, advanced in some sectors, weak in others, moral in some traditions, cruel in others. Like every civilization on earth.

Our job is not to worship the past.

Our job is to study it, rescue what is useful, reject what is harmful, and build something that can survive the modern world.

That is conscious adoption.

Not Western worship.

Not ancestral cosplay.

Conscious adoption means you can take English as a tool without worshipping England.

You can use Chinese infrastructure lessons without becoming China.

You can use Western science without accepting Western political domination.

You can use capitalism where it builds productivity and reject it where it creates oligarchic extraction.

You can use socialism where it protects the vulnerable and reject it where it kills incentive and creates bureaucratic stupidity.

That is what serious civilizations do.

They select.

They adapt.

They discipline.

They absorb.

They domesticate.

They do not scream at history like wounded children.

This is why the fantasy of total decoupling is so empty.

Africa should absolutely reduce dependency. Africa should absolutely build industrial capacity. Africa should absolutely stop being a raw-material appendage of richer powers. Africa should absolutely resist military, financial, and diplomatic manipulation. Africa should absolutely stop behaving like a continent of client states.

But reduction of dependency is not the same thing as childish isolation.

You do not decouple by announcement.

You decouple by building capacity.

You build power generation, technical schools, rail, ports, refineries, machine-tool capacity, pharmaceutical production, competent customs systems, courts that enforce contracts, armies that can secure your territory, intelligence services that understand threats, central banks that understand production, local capital markets, food systems, manufacturing clusters, bureaucracies that can survive one president, and a ruling class that is afraid of consequences.

That is decoupling.

Everything else is noise.

And let us be honest: many African “anti-imperialists” do not even want that kind of decoupling because it is too demanding. It requires study, patience, institutional discipline. It requires telling your own people uncomfortable truths. It requires admitting that foreign exploitation is real, but local incompetence is also real. It requires admitting that France is not the reason your local government chairman stole the borehole money. America is not the reason your customs officer collects bribes. Britain is not the reason your university laboratory has no reagents after twenty years of budget allocations. The IMF is not the reason your governor buys SUVs while schools collapse.

Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Unequal exchange, and Foreign sabotage are all real.

But if your analysis stops there, you are not doing politics. You are doing therapy.

A serious anti-imperialism must be able to say two things at once: the global system is rigged against weak states, and weak African states are also kept weak by their own corrupt, lazy, predatory ruling classes.

That second part is where the slogan merchants start coughing.

Because it is easier to curse Paris than to build a tax system.

It is easier to insult Washington than to reform procurement.

It is easier to shout “sovereignty” than to stop soldiers from becoming politicians.

It is easier to praise the AES than to ask whether military governments can build durable institutions beyond charisma, uniforms, and emergency decrees.

It is easier to worship Traoré online than to ask what happens after Traoré.

That is the question unserious people avoid.

What happens after the hero?

What happens when the assassination attempt is successful? 

What happens when the young captain becomes old?

What happens when the military council disagrees?

What happens when insecurity persists?

What happens when the economy needs foreign exchange?

What happens when wheat prices rise?

What happens when fuel supply is disrupted?

What happens when Russia, China, Turkey, the Gulf, or any new partner starts pursuing its own interest?

What happens when the same people who shouted “France out” discover that every major power is transactional?

That is when fantasy meets statecraft.

There is no permanent friend in geopolitics.

There is no savior civilization waiting to rescue Africa.

Not France.

Not America.

Not China.

Not Russia.

Not Turkey.

Not Iran.

Not the Gulf.

Every serious power wakes up every morning thinking about its own interest. The only people still looking for moral saviours are Africans trapped between colonial trauma and revolutionary immaturity.

The pro-West camp wants the West to come and save us.

The nativist camp wants the ancestors to come and save us.

The tankie camp wants China or Russia to come and save us.

The religious cynic say leave Islam and Christianity and we would be saved.

The cultural romantic wants precolonial memory to come and save us.

Enough.

A serious continent must grow up.

Africa’s future will not come from rejecting everything foreign or swallowing everything foreign. It will come from building states intelligent enough to know what to take, what to modify, what to resist, and what to discard.

That is the actual work.

I am not someone that likes to mock people's ideology no matter how ridiculous I find them. But in service of humanity we must mercilessly mock this fantasy. 

We must mock it because it deserves mockery.

We must mock the person who wants to defeat the West using Western apps, Western languages, Western theories, Chinese hardware, while hunting for western payouts in western currency, and then claims he is returning Africa to purity.

We must mock the person who thinks Islam and Christianity are “foreign poisons” but quotes Marx like his village elder.

We must mock the person who thinks wearing cowries and shouting “ancestor” is an industrial policy.

We must mock the person who thinks anger can substitute for electricity.

We must mock the person who thinks coups are automatically revolutions.

We must mock the person who thinks anti-French slogan is a substitute for food security.

We must mock the person who thinks decolonization means deleting 1,000 years of African Islamic history and 500 years of African Christian history, as if millions of Africans did not live, think, write, trade, fight, build, pray, govern, and create through those traditions.

We must mock it because childish ideas become dangerous when they start sounding deep.

But after mocking it, we must offer the serious alternative.

Africa does not need Western worship.

Africa does not need nativist cosplay.

Africa does not need revolutionary cartoons.

Africa needs conscious adoption.

Take what works.

Reject what weakens you.

Build what you lack.

Protect what is yours.

Discipline your elites.

Produce more than you consume.

Trade without kneeling.

Partner without becoming a client.

Modernize without becoming culturally empty.

Remember the past without becoming trapped inside it.

That is the path.

Everything else is la-la land with a flag.

[Pedro Sánchez @sanchezcastejon]

The world, Europe, and Spain have faced this critical moment before. In 2003, a few irresponsible leaders dragged us into an illegal war in the Middle East that brought nothing but insecurity and pain.

Our response then must be our response now:

NO to violations of international law.

NO to the illusion that we can solve the world’s problems with bombs.

NO to repeating the mistakes of the past.

NO TO WAR.
https://t.co/KpRjBfwY4B

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

Mark 10:14 NKJV
[14] But when Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased and said to them, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God.

https://t.co/koK01JU7Ns

[Lewis Chimfwembe @Lewis_Mulinda]

No one is truly lazy — everyone puts in effort. The difference lies in priorities. Some focus on real economic & financial progress in life; others invest the same energy in appearing successful without being so. A soft life requires hard work. Anything less is water in a basket.

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

@ulubemba They pushed you on this one. The move was necessary. You will now be in the neighbourhood of the big banks.

[KALUBEMBA @ulubemba]

@BenYombwe Safety boots, jeans, a safety jacket and hard hat for the next 2 weeks, starting tomorrow 😂

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

@ulubemba The corporate side 😅

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

Acts 20:35 NKJV
[35] I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

https://t.co/5JNrVEOGAR

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

Failing at something doesn’t make you a failure. Failing is just another outcome

The thing didn’t work out. It doesn’t define you. Maybe you could’ve done better, you did your best, whatever.

Take the lessons & move on. As long as we have breath, we’ve got some winning to do.

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

Matthew 16:24 NKJV
[24] Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

https://t.co/xXWfVM16cf

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

@futnostalgico Jankulovski, Cech, Ufalujsi, Poborsky
2004 to 2006, the Czech Republic had a serious team.

[Ben M Yombwe @BenYombwe]

@DavidChapoloko Ze rommie, we need one of those things ku Luanshya. 😅
For a country this under developed, we seem to have a lot of affinity for wrong things.

[Sentimental Foodie @SentimentalCook]

HH of all people should know that it is output per hour and not hours worked that drives productivity. There are a number of factors that affect output per hours such as management practices, workers skills, technology, Infrastructure & utilities (reliable electricity, internet penetration, roads) and inputs such as capital.

Even if public holiday were cut to 10 days per year, it won't boost productivity if a worker spends 4 hrs playing solitaire while at work or spends 3 hrs out of office supervising his/her building project.

Just go and look at the World Bank stats on Human Capital Index. Zambia is 0.40, meaning a child born today will realise just 40 % of their potential productivity, while Australia is 0.77, almost double Zambia's score.
Blaming holidays for low productivity in Zambia is a red herring

[Mr. Funganakwaki 🇨🇩🇵🇹🇸🇳 @SeverinoTheWolf]

@BenYombwe Yeah they almost wiped themselves out clean and it’s not even a joke. Which is why our parents aren’t phased when they find out someone is positive in comparison to our generation cos they saw it first hand + there’s plenty treatments these days.