There is something deeply amusing about the way many African communities approach development.

A neighbourhood can be full of engineers, contractors, surveyors, architects, quantity surveyors, project managers, geologists, and hydrologists. Yet everyone sits comfortably in their homes complaining about dusty roads, potholes, and water shortages while waiting for government to rescue them.

Then one morning, a new District Chief Executive is appointed.

Yesterday, he was operating a photocopy machine in a constituency office, printing campaign flyers and stapling meeting minutes. Today, an entire community of highly educated professionals suddenly expects him to know more about roads than civil engineers, more about water systems than hydrologists, and more about infrastructure financing than quantity surveyors.

The expectation is almost magical.

A community with 300 houses, each spending hundreds of thousands of cedis on buildings, walls, gates, imported tiles, decorative lights, and luxury kitchens somehow cannot organise itself to contribute GHS15,000 per household towards a modest community road. Yet the same people are convinced that the newly appointed political officer, armed with a Nissan Patrol, two assistants, and a stack of files, will somehow solve everything.

The same applies to water. In many communities, a collective contribution of about GHS5,000 per household could finance shared boreholes and distribution systems. Instead, residents wait years for government pipelines while buying sachet water and tanker services at a much higher long-term cost.

This is not to excuse government. Roads and water remain fundamental public responsibilities.

The real question is why so many technically competent people surrender their initiative and wait for politicians to demonstrate the expertise they themselves possess.

A society that can build beautiful houses but cannot organise itself to improve the road leading to them has a problem that goes beyond money.

It is a problem of mindset.

Perhaps Africa's greatest shortage is not engineers, contractors, or funding. We have plenty of those.

Our greatest shortage may be the willingness of citizens to collectively solve problems that are well within their own technical and financial capacity.

Until that changes, we will continue waiting for the photocopy machine operator to perform engineering miracles. And then spend the next four years complaining when he doesn't.

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The photocopy man wey dey go save we

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