Your April issue was full of good articles and comments. I was especially pleased to see Moses Oremo’s comments about the Berlin Conference and after. He hit the nail on the head and eloquently so. I hope many of your readers take the message to heart.

Africa cannot depend on handouts and wait for reparations which will never come. Africa can only advance through improved production, better trading within the continent, improved governance and collective efforts to establish fair trade with the developed nations who make all the rules to their advantage.

I must also commend Carina Ray’s brave battle in confronting homophobia in Africa. Hers may be a very unpopular stance with many Africans but she is quite right. The very small percentage of gay people in Africa represent no meaningful threat to anybody and they deserve the same human rights as the rest of society. The much greater threat are those who seem to think they have all the answers and are more than willing to impose outdated views and regressive laws.

Pierre Trudeau, a former great Canadian prime minister, when confronted with this very polarising issue a few decades ago, came out with one of his more memorable statements: “The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation…” I think this applies equally well to all nations, including those in Africa.