Nick Freitas: Why doesn't Africa have a word for 'maintenance'?

What if one of the biggest obstacles to economic development isn't politics, natural resources, or government institutions, but something much more fundamental? Franck Zanu of Zanu Project Rethink joins Nick Freitas to examine an unusual observation about African languages: the apparent absence of a word for "maintenance.”

Zanu argues that the continent's relatively predictable tropical environment may have influenced how generations approach problem-solving, innovation, and long-term planning.

“One of those things that you never typically think about, this idea of maintenance,” BlazeTV host Nick Freitas tells Zanu.

“They could come up with a word for repair, but not maintenance,” he continues, asking, “So why does this not exist within, well, any of the languages that you inquired about with respect to African tribal languages?”

“Yes, why doesn’t the word maintenance, the concept, exist?” Zanu says, before explaining that a human being's “physical environment” during evolution is what allows a group of people to begin to problem solve.

“It just forces the human mind to say, ‘I need a solution to this problem because it’s repeating itself,’ and so when that happens in any environment where a certain condition just keeps repeating itself or when it happens it’s severe, the mind is forced to begin to look for solutions,” he tells Freitas.

However, in Africa, there is one environment and therefore reason to innovate.

“Africa,” Zanu says, “which is the only tropical continent in the world, you know, I mean, we have slightly, here and there, it gets a little chilly and then the rainfall.”

“Well, every place has rainfall, but we are tropical, which means you don’t have to think about the wardrobe and change it from wool to silk to cotton. No, it’s all cotton,” he continues, calling the continent of Africa “predictable.”

“Such an environment would never cultivate what we call proactive long-term planning maintenance,” he adds.

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