Africa day was celebrated across the continent yesterday. Only recently designated the hopeless continent by no less than the Economist magazine, the world is finally taking this continent seriously as an economic partner. I suspect this is driven by the West's desire not be to be out done by China, a country that has invested heavily on the continent in the last decade. The African economy has finally left the hangar and is on the highway, warming the engines up in preparation for taxi.

Parallel with this must come the shedding of victim hood. The world's economy is lopsided, the playing field uneven with farm subsidies, protectionist trade regimes and all manner of unfair business practices but these are raging the world over. There are economic battles between Europe and the US, China and the US, Latin America and the US as everyone tries to gain a foothold in the battle for resources and markets.

If a South African in Elon Musk can send the first privately owned craft in to space, then Africa can compete with the best of them up there. What Africa needs to do is create the environment that allows it brightest to shine their brilliance from African shores. The awarding of a major portion of the SKA array to South Africa is a case in point. We now have a platform to nurture the next generations of the Strive Masiyiwas, Samuel Esson Jonahs, Mo Ibrahims, Sindi Mabasos, Wendy Luhabes and many others right across the continent. http://www.africansuccess.org/rechRub.php?idRech=5&lang=en

The people you will find on the list above get on with it. They fight their battles in the boardrooms, courts and in the markets. The fight for Africa is for each country to produce millions of similar people running SMEs and large corporations, creating wealth rather than amassing it and, in the process, creating the room for Africans to walk with their heads held high.

Africa must not forget her pain of slavery and colonialism but she must not carry it around in her bosom passing it on to future generations in a continuous state of victim hood. It is Frederick Douglass, former slave turned liberator of hearts and minds who said: "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."

We must heal and we must fight the fight in the markets, with exemplary and dignified leadership for all Africans. In his book, Architects of Poverty, Moeletsi Mbeki calls for a change of mindsets in the African elite. He calls for the protection of property rights, rule of law, diversity and growth of skills in the labour force, cooperation between labour and management, a healthy labour force and a stable social and political environment. Samuel P Huttington in the book Clash of Civilisations reminds us that in January 1989 in Singapore, the President Wee Kim argued that it was necessary to identify the core values that "capture the essence of being a Singaporean." This exercise culminated in a white paper that defined the shared values of Singaporeans as: Nation before (ethnic) community and society above self, family as the basic unit of society, regard and community support for the individual, consensus instead of contention, racial and religious harmony." I must remind readers that Singapore is roughly 76% Chinese, 15% Malay and Muslim and 6% Indian, Hindu and Sikh. Sound familiar?

Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore probably said it best at a national day rally on August 19, 1979; "If we can test men, weed out the nervous and jittery, you can bank on your future in Singapore long after this government has stood down. We have got to find them. We have some of them. For any group of men, the final achievment is to see their creation bloom and flourish. They must be able to select, to judge, to impart what has been learned from exeperience and then say, 'Now the rest is up to you.' There will be new problems but the basic factors are the same. The world is different, the economy is more complex and sophisticated, but what makes a society tick, what gives a people flexibility, the cohesiveness, the thrust, the dynamism, always seeking new ways to overcome new problems or old problems- that's as old as the beginning of man and the first tribes. That, I hope, will be the story of Singapore."

This too, must be the story of individual African countries so that the continent can flourish.