African Economic Independence is Only Possible if Africa Stops Playing the Economic Role Handed Down from the Colonial Era

A little over a century ago, right after the African continent was divided up in Berlin, European military might was felt on the entire continent of Africa. As one after another african polity fell to European empires, African elders and rulers were of the consensus that what ailed Africa at the time was western technological know-how. Getting the capacity to create western technology themselves would have been seen as the route to eventual African freedom. The basics of the problem remained well within sight of our ancestors. The problem from their perspective was simple and straightforward: africans had been defeated and the reason was known.

Not idle players in the game, the colonizing forces were aware of the advantage, and aimed to keep it, having sung songs to this effect as they slew resisting African armies. One of these would be the "we have guns, but they don't" chant the Germans used to give themselves morale as they chipped away at Togolese tribal resistance from 1884. The subsequent system of oppressive rule the colonizers introduced and maintained on the continent was aimed to keep them this advantage.

Two generations later, the fight for independence began to bear fruit. However, Africans of the independence era were different from Africans of the pre-colonial era. Their circumstances had changed a lot. Their problems were not as straight forward as those of their ancestors had been. Complex as these had become, the road to salvation lay in tackling the major problems first, the original first item to which a few others were added which could also be considered as primary.

First of these was the way the continent had been divided in 1884. Another was born when the period of cultural suffocation created within the African psyche a proclivity for strengthening the colonial system, also known as mental slavery.

If we agree that the colonizers were not yet ready to leave the vast reserves of resources on the continent to Africans, we can easily see why it's not wrong, or belittling to the efforts of individual African freedom fighters to claim that they were seen as the right persons for the positions of rule when the colonizers gave independence to African countries. By this careful selection, they ensured that conditions in their respective colonies were just right, that Africans were not going to tip the delicate balance of power they enjoyed. To this effect, the activity of colonial officials was increased towards the dates African countries were gaining independence, and not decreased as would be expected of a retreating power. The obvious aim here was to leave no stones unturned.

Saying that the majority of rulers they entrusted to rule were their good boys shouldn't take away from the contributions that individual African leaders from this era made to the cause. The term "interlocutors valuables", though not an accidental euphemism, was sometimes applied to persons who understood the odds well, who bid their time and waited for the right time to strike.

Most of the trusted African freedom fighters were thinking men too, who tended to know what they were doing, who sometimes stumbled on truths the colonizers would not have intended them to, whether knowing or incognizant of the qualities which made them fitting of the role assigned to them by the colonizers. In cases where these individuals would be known trouble makers, accidents waiting to happen, the colonizers either accepted to allow the person to rule knowing fully well that they had, and would keep the situation firmly under control. The retribution we have witnessed in instances when the extreme African went too far bear witness to this statement.

The Patrice Lumumba tragedy would not be a far fetched example to use for this.

Our freedom fighters meant well, but many had serious shortcomings, many of which we must recognize for our own good, especially now when we seem to be veering down the same old path. One of these was what has been termed "ideological poverty", the "let independence come and solutions will fall from the blue" mind set. This entrance into self rule meant that Africans had to learn how to manage a modern economy as they went along, entailing that they make many faults along the way, and since the other side was not standing still as Africans grew conscious, but continued to play a self-interested role in the developmental process, meant that our freedom fighters were beaten every part of the way.

A classic example would be the need by almost all African leaders to work hard to increase production of their major exports, believing as it were in the fruits of hard work, eager to prove the belittling words of their former masters that Africans couldn't do as well as whites at running a country wrong, as such playing into the trap. Contrary to what has been said about the continent in the era right after independence, from around 1960 to 1975, almost all African countries increased production of their main export item, only to discover that their earnings didn't increase with production, but stayed at the same level. They became aware, while in office, that the system was designed to give them a disadvantage.

As it turns out, the talk of the inability of African leaders to manage a country as well as Europeans served both to keep Africans in a frenzy of counter productive activity which enriched the west, while ignoring the real issue.

Those who made removing this disadvantage their first priority would not see their fight to its end, but would be removed violently from power. A typical example would be Kwame Nkrumah, whose original coining of the term neo-colonialism was an apt description of the relationship.

Ultimately, outwitted as it were, Africans couldn't play the game on their own terms. As such, the necessary changes to their colonial designs were not theirs to make. The fight to remove the impediments that the African suffered continued in full ernest, along the same old disadvantaged lines, with the results benefiting other countries.

Today, we have more knowledge than our freedom fighters had, there are sufficient highly educated individuals on our side. If there is anything we can learn from this short past, it is that the world never was willing to stand still and assist us out of our problems, and is not about to stand still for us any time soon. It has got more complex along the way, and will continue to do so, meaning that more insight and cunning is required of us, now more than ever.

We live in an era where complex issues have amassed making sight of root causes difficult. To the disadvantages which Africans had at the time our ancestors were defeated have been added other, more subtle issues whose identification and placing on the list of faults requires not only education, but a lot of vision. The resolution of the African conundrum requires not only textbook knowledge of the mechanics of economics, but an ability to play the game better than the best, to innovate. Knowing how the chess pieces are moved will not suffice. Becoming a good player, thinking ahead, knowing which moves matter is the solution.

So far, we have sought high and low for most of our problems, exacerbated during the short period of neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism, and today, even with our NePAD and the AU, have come up with solutions which, even though they do contain the resolution of the root cause of our misery in their agenda, relegate a secondary role to it.

Africa with NePAD or the AU is thus entering the foray blind, with only hope to guide us along, much as the freedom fighters did a generation ago. Ideological poverty is still an aspect of the African pioneer's makeup, even in this delicate phase of our struggle, which may turn out to be the last leg of the tournament, as Africa single handedly binds itself into a position of perpetual servitude to the rest of the world.

At base, the route causes of the African crisis remain the same, and are very simple. The problems have one source western aggression against peoples of this continent which manifested itself in slavery, the partition of Africa in 1884, and colonial rule. The failure of earlier attempts at pan-Africanism lies in the fact that they have tended to ignore the need to prioritize these three factors.

Following one of these root causes along the way reveals how much a simple act in Berlin some 110 years ago has affected our daily lives.

The fact that African border divisions after colonialism didn't reflect the ethno-cultural realities on the continent has not only provided fertile ground for tribalism, fueling regional conflicts, but, through this same tribalism provided for circumstances which support nepotism, creating mediocrity on management levels in both public and private sectors, adversely effecting decision making qualities of leaders and led, and the eventual productivity of these companies and countries on a global scale

Another failure can be seen in that today Africa has a reasonable number of highly educated people, but, if this abundance isn't utilized because of the above named reasons, it then falls prey to other ills, whose routes also lie in this inability of Africa to prioritize the problem of properly defining the profile of its inhabitants.

Since many countries neglected or gave insufficient attention to the pursuit of job creating growth for example, many of the highly qualified either languish the streets unemployed, or seek better pastures abroad in what is known as the intellectual drain.

All these negative factors notwithstanding, a situation where individuals leave their own country to seek a better life in places where they are sometimes only welcome for their expertise implies that their country has lost its value as a home. If we isolate cases where Africans leave their continent for purely financial reasons, we are still left with a large percentage who would have stayed behind out of loyalty to their group or tribe, even when there was mismanagement of the economy by this same tribe. As it is, the usurping of positions by another tribe in a dead end trend provides a reason to stay out of the country for prolonged times.

In short, to quote from a friend of mine, "a homeland that is not capable of maintaining the profile of its people in a predatory world is not a homeland at all", and that is what Africa is at the moment.

Though calling for the prioritizing of redesigning Africa according to ethno-cultural realities may sound like a tribalist's approach, it is at base an acceptance of a human condition. Further more, there is no country on this planet which is not run by and for a single ethnic group, and today's multicultural societies, though professing pluralism, have not made a move towards equal ethno-cultural status, but towards ethno-cultural hegemony. Cases where more ethnic groups have existed side by side are kept peaceful with considerable effort, and where the tutelage has been removed, there has almost always been an immediate outbreak of ugly ethnic conflicts.

The AU's Peace and Security Council, whose creation was approved by the Durban summit, is meant to handle problems whose route lies in the very lines which slice up the continent. The good point of the council is that, once governments agree to it, they accept a partial erosion of their sovereignty. The council can dispatch troops into their territories if there is a problem, a situation out ruled in the old OAU. This, coupled with the system of peer review, which many have seen as equivalent to the threat of an innocuous cold shoulder, may evoke a picture of clever moves towards a unified Africa, but is to me a resolve to ignore, not to prioritize the root causes of our decrepitude first, and rightly combating the easier to handel effects later in a same drive at unification. The way things are going, we are effectively rendering future effective remedies useless by allowing complicating circumstances to follow us whichever way we go. The situation is similar, if not the same as the independence era when African presidents carried explosive baggage into a new era.

The winds of change have visited the continent again, and it is important not to repeat old mistakes again. For the pessimists: the very fact that individual African rulers are willing to sit at the same table and even accept erosion of their sovereignty, even if partially, shows that the time is right to go all the way to place the major issue on the table and proceed in its resolution, a move which, once the advantages are made obvious, will surprise Africans by the willingness of individual members to play along, and the ease with which we will enter a new, united era.

I hate for my grand child, who may volunteer for the African army in future, to have to state the old colonially rooted geographical division, with all its ills and diseases still intact, probably also washed off on the boy's mind and physic, as his country of origin. I hate for him to associate this very division with race itself, like Africans do today, because this reveals the reality that the African identity is still a product of the Berlin conference. This, to my mind, will be the evidence that "the shackle on good sense" is still our predicament, that all we are doing in our age is changing names of countries and organizations without changing the constitution, and hoping that this affects the nature of the arrangement, wrongfully seeing in this the prospect of future success.