Expanding on the "Internalist School"

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong discusses the Internalist way of thinking with George Ayittey:

Q. How did the “Internalist School” came about?
Ayittey: It evolved rather slowly in the 1970s. When Africa gained its independence in the 1960s, the euphoria that gripped the continent was infectious. “Free at last!” was the chant that resonated across Africa. African nationalist leaders who won independence for their respective countries were hailed as heroes and deified. Currencies bore their portraits. Statues and monuments were built and named after them. It was sacrilegious to criticize them. They outlawed opposition parties, declared their countries to be one-party states and themselves “presidents for life.” Their intolerance of dissent, lack of democratic freedom and creeping despotism sowed the seeds of internalist revolt.
Very soon in the late 1960s, the euphoria over independence and the honeymoon wore off. It became increasingly clear that Africa had traded one set of masters (white colonialists) for another (black neo-colonialists.) The oppression and exploitation of the African continued unabated. Soldiers stepped in a spate of coups in the 1970s but the soldiers were themselves another batch of “crocodile liberators,” far worse than the despots they replaced. Africa’s post colonial story is one truculent tale of one betrayal after another. This has little to do with colonialism but leadership failure.