Africa: Turn Strengths into Strengths

Africa has a long-running pattern of having things that ordinarily would be strengths turning into weaknesses. 

Having large amounts of natural resources should normally lead to prosperity; but instead in much of Africa the process of getting to these resources keeps resulting in murder or enslavement of locals, and the money gained from the use of these resources goes to fuel tyranny and corruption. 

Being beautiful and sexually attractive is normally a strength; but for African women their beauty and sex appeal has instead made them a target for rapists. The women who remain beautiful after they've married become a magnet for male sexual attention; and given how African people treat extra-marital sex, many of these women wind up dead. On a related issue, for a man, having a large sexual organ usually is a benefit; but in the Congo conflict it has resulted in men giving vaginal fistulas to the women that they have raped.

Being strong, athletic and brave is also normally a strength. But in Africa, it has resulted in people waging all sorts of pointless, destructive and parasitical wars where the strong and brave men kill each other and everyone else around them while doing nothing that benefits their countries, their people or their race.

How does this happen? How are strengths of African people being consistently turned into weaknesses? Perhaps this began during colonialism, when the more the person had going for him or her the more the person was attractive as a slave. However it's been centuries since then, and African people should be able to move away from such habits of thought and conduct.

Africa has a lot going for it. It has vast natural resources, strong men and beautiful women; and Africa needs to make its strengths strengths and to stop letting them turn into weaknesses. Intelligence must be applied toward achieving that outcome with regard to all of the above. Only when African people accomplish this will Africa become truly free, and only when African people accomplish this will Africa rise to the level appropriate to its potential. How will it do that? Well that's up to the African people themselves to decide.