AFRICAN ECON :: THE OPTIMIST VOICE

EDITORIAL

African Governments at Fifty ...July 24, 2010

For most African nations, their journey of self-government or independence started some fifty years ago in the year 1960. This means they have reached the half century mark this year 2010. The time has come, therefore, for reflection as to whether the fifty year journey has amounted to significant gains for their nations. In short it’s a time when reports cards are issued, so one may find out whether his grade are in the high level, mediocre, barely obtained a passing grade or a failing grade.

Various nations are on different levels of development. But in general, the development obtained does not measure to the amount of years so far spent in freedom. Half a century is a long time. African nations may have obtained self-government, but if anything has been demonstrated more, it is proving their various colonial governments right, that they do not possess the capability to rule themselves.

You may think we are being harsh on them, giving some of the challenges they face. Many have cited the restrictive and discriminative nature of international commercial policies, where the developed world set the rules of engagement, but deliberately shortchange the developing nations. But African nations are not the only developing nations. Other nations of Asia and South America for example suffer the same discriminatory policies in international commerce, but a few of them have managed to overcome those obstacles and have ceased to be lumped into the developing world. While some are on their way to shirking the robe of underdevelopment.

One major reason for such abysmal performance in African nations, in our opinion, is lack of strong, committed, and sustained leadership. Most nations have entrenched for themselves a retrogressive culture of manipulating the leadership selective or elective process, with the result that those who get into positions of power are mostly too weak to chart a progressive and prosperous development plan with laudable goals. And in the rare cases where they were able to achieve that, the implementation process was sabotaged either internally, or with pressure from foreign elements who do not mean such countries well. The end result becomes weakened productivity and underdevelopment.

As time went on, Africa became a continent that supplies free-for-all mineral resources for the world. Either too weak to organize themselves into strong market forces who set reasonable prices for their resources and goods, or else allow manipulations from greedy foreign vultures who set them against each other in areas where resources are available. That gives those foreign corporations and their agents the opportunity to sneak in and take such resources free, while they kill and maim each other. This has happened since those early independence years to date in almost all the countries that have highly priced natural resources.

In Nigeria and Angola, two nations with large oil reserve, the wars started not long after independence. Though Nigeria’s did not last long Angola suffered war for decades. Sierra Leone and its diamonds is another example, so is Congo and its diamonds, tantalite, cobalt etc. Nations that can hardly feed themselves have young teenagers roaming their country with the most sophisticated weapons and ammunitions.

African Heads of Government for its 53 nations and their regional body the African Union need to wake up and start the credible journey towards freeing their millions of population from hunger, poverty and violence. The resources are there. All that their people need for them to do, is to be courageous enough to stand up for their rights, as every other nations does for its people, so they can enjoy their God given natural resources, enjoy freedom from insecurity, wars, poverty and disease.

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