CNN iReport

That is until she helps herself. Throwing money at Africa is like giving money to an addict when you already know how that money will be spent. I am not advocating not helping or worse severing ties with Africa. But as someone born and raised on the continent, I know what I am talking about when I say that giving money to our governments to help us, to build schools, roads, fight HIV/Aids or fight the hungry is a waste. Why you might ask? Because those who need, deserve and should get the pledged $60 Billion will not see a dime of it. Instead, it will serve our dictators; I mean leaders to send their children to Ivy League school while the rest of us can't even afford to pay for community college. It will go to those much needed mortgages on the French Riviera or on vacations around the world. It will also be used to terrorize and corrupt. Nobody loves Africa more than I do because she is my grandmother, my mother, my aunt. Nobody wants her to thrive, to develop more than I do because I am her. But for Africa to grow and enter the future, we Africans need to wake up and change. We need to stand up for ourselves and realize that we deserve better than 40 years presidents who rape and strip us barren only to leave us with unfulfilled promises and the country to their children to run. Our leaders don't know hunger, war, disease or thirst. Instead, the population's dignity is slowly ripped away from us. Do you know how hard it is to go to school hungry, cold and try to learn? Most kids in Africa do. For money to be worth giving to Africa, to me, to us, please don't do the easy thing of giving it to our pimps, I mean our representatives in hope that they will in turn do the right thing because they won't. Instead, it will be shuffled around the world from bank account to bank account until, we lose track. Don't pass the buck. Instead, form comities of accountable outsiders, who will fund projects, distribute money to worthy NGOs like Youssou N'dour's Birima Initiative and to women, mostly women. Aid given to Africa through our leaders serve no purpose beside buying mansions, cars, luxe vacations and gold for our leaders and maybe rice that will surely end up in the black market being sold at Three times the price it should be. If you really want change in Africa, if you want to help us stand up on our own feet and do more than survive, I beg you to bypass our leaders, dictators, kings, representatives, pimps and shameless blood suckers. Instead, give the money to the people, the farmers, the students who, like me, can't afford to go to school, and the mother who would take her family out of poverty by making clothes only if she had a sewing machine. Help Africa? I say help her children help themselves not her black colonials.