My Beauty Best Teacher

Over the past several weeks, the international community has been speaking out loud and clear against Africa’s poverty in the wake of the G8 summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland this week. Previously, the Africa Commission set up by the British Prime Mister Tony Blair produced a report on Africa’s poverty, the causes and what to do about it. Many reasons have been advanced for Africa’s poverty, among which are poor governance and corruption by our African governments. Africa’s governments seem to be less worried about the poverty of their people than the G8 governments. The people of the world are holding concerts and demonstrations in their streets to make Africa’s poverty history. What are we ordinary Africans, the victims of bad governance, of government corruption, of poverty, doing in response to this global awakening about our plight? I challenge you to rise up and speak out loud and clear against bad governance, against corruption, against poverty. For it is bad governance and corruption that are the sins that those who are hesitating to write off Africa’s debts, to increase aid, and to practice fair trade, are citing to deny us of the much needed reprieve, to keep us under the bondage of poverty. I challenge the African people, from Nairobi to Darker, and from Cairo to Cape Town, to hold peaceful demonstrations across the continent for good governance, against corruption and against poverty. For, if the people of the North are now demonstrating in their streets to influence the decisions of their G8 governments to seriously address our plight, why then, may I ask, cant we ordinary Africans respond, and demonstrate to influence the decisions of our governments: for good governance, against corruption and against poverty? As we keep mum, we keep dying from poverty! Come on, Africans, stand up to be counted, stand up for your lives! Our African governments are meeting in Libya, and are asking the G8 for fair trade. But they are mum about bad governance, and about corruption, the twin evils they practice with impunity to our graves! Can we ordinary Africans afford to be mum about these? Only at the risk of our lives!

By Adrian Mukhebi

Mutumwa Mawere recently addressed the Nigerian diaspora he stated:

...There are countless examples of African entrepreneurs and professionals who have substantial amounts of money in Africa but it is evident that the prosperity has not been democratized to the extent of creating an African ownership class able to take the continent’s majority into a new and dynamically positive direction underpinned by new values of work, combined with saving, investment and an ownership mentality. It is also important to underscore that there is a distinction between being “rich” and being “wealthy”.
Yes, some Africans have made money but because financial literacy and “platinum rights” was not stressed as much as a sense of public justice and civil rights were by our founding fathers and we did not keep it (the money) and we certainly we did not grow it.
Many have made money but no one has really taught us how to keep it in our communities.
Imagine, after 13 years of South Africa’s democratic dispensation, we still do not have a new mutual for blacks? No one taught us about financial literacy and the basic tenets of a free enterprise system that appears universally to capture the imagination of many progressive and successful nations.
The challenge of understanding the free-enterprise system and making it work for the majority of Africans has to become a core part of any conversation among Africans concerned about wealth creation and creating sustainable wealth addresses for Africans. Most of our wealth addresses are not assignable and transferable let alone from one African generation to the next.
Any successful nation building enterprise must necessarily be sustained by a healthy, robust and growing tax base and not foreign aid. Africa’s post colonial budgets still remain principally funded by bilateral and multilateral sources of finance.
Africa must create its own dominant class of very successful entrepreneurs, at all levels. We should have our own wealth builders and not become a continent specialized in distributing other people’s wealth.
As we approach the 47th birthday of Nigeria, we must focus on converting ourselves from cash economy customers into banking (our own banks), tenants into homeowners, small business dreamers into small, medium and large scale business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage workers, economically illiterate into economically empowered citizens.
Many of us are consumed with directionless conversations that are primarily focused on what governments can do for us and not what we can go for ourselves. We tend to be good at being against something and not for something.
Literacy can be a sustainable instrument for poverty eradication. They often say that when you know better, you tend to do better.
Any when Africans know better, I have no doubt that we can transform ourselves from islands of affluence to oceans of hope and prosperity. We have not invested much in literacy and integrated the literacy challenge in our post colonial agendas.

Any nation is as good as the interests that inform it. The only power we have as Africans in any field on endeavor whether it is in politics or the wealth game is the power to organize ourselves. One hand cannot clap but two hands can surely make a noise.
Why then is it the case that we have not been able to use our collective spent to our advantage? Many of our African governments have benefited from the financial illiteracy of Africa’s intellectuals. Africa has invested in human capital and yet such investment has not been able to provide any leadership on the bread and butter issues.
Surely, it is evident to all of us that any consolidation of our pain and opportunities can create a critical mass that is missing in action. Imagine if all Nigerians resident in South Africa could consolidate their mobile phone expenses into one pool, how much impact would they have in the South African economy.
Equally, if all Zimbabweans resident in South Africa chose to use one bank, how much would that bank be worth? Even the obvious things that Africa needs to do are not so obvious to our leaders.
I think it is self evident that the poor need the rich in as much as the rich need the poor. Can you imagine a nation of only poor people with the same means and possibilities? On the key ideological questions, we have heard many people argue that a free enterprise system is not suited for Africa and many of our governments in Africa have perfected the skill of creating ideological and theoretical entrepreneurs/bureaucrats without asking the question whether in fact if all the rich people were eliminated, Africa would be any better.
The post colonial experience has confused many of us to the extent that we are now looking for intelligent leaders to govern us when leadership may have little to do with intelligence. Even in a family, it would not be normal for all the children to be the same. Those who do well in one generation inspire the next generation to do better.

Is Africa’s future safe with a system where the state thinks for its citizens or where the citizens think for themselves and act in their own self interest? Many believe that governments (created by the same citizens) can and should be expected to lead the anti-poverty crusade and yet human history has not given us any good examples of governments acting in the interests of citizens who are not in government.

We must take ownership of our destinies and we must be the change that we want to see in the continent. No one else is going to do it for us. We must sell ourselves as worthy of investment and we must change our attitudes because in the final analysis, our attitude to wealth determines our altitude.

Anyone can make money in a growing economy than can be stolen in a decaying and dysfunctional system. If we look at Africa’s unmet needs, then we can appreciate the possibilities that exist in the continent and yet we think and act in a fragmented and confused manner. Those who should ordinarily lead appear to be visionless preferring to focus on yesterday (which is gone) and not on actions that create a better Africa.
Before we can think of creating an African pool of wealth, we need to understand the meaning of wealth. Wealth has come to mean an abundance of items of economic vale or the state of controlling or possessing such items and encompasses money, real estate and any personal property.
In many countries wealth is also measured by reference to access to essential services such as health care or the possession of crops or livestock. Accordingly, an individual who has accumulated wealth relative to others is often described as wealthy.
Therefore, wealth refers to some accumulation of resources. In light of the above, Africa is not recognized as a wealthy continent because of the inferior relationship between the majority of us and items of economic value. We are generally challenged in the resource accumulation enterprise...

There is an appealing logic to the latest multimillion-dollar aid package for Africa announced last week by George Bush and Tony Blair. It is supposed to help rob terrorists of a breeding ground and, in a humanitarian spirit, relieve the continent of some of its misery. But anyone who has followed the fate of Africa over recent decades might wonder: Why should these millions of dollars have any better effect than the billions that have gone before? Why does the West feel the need to keep pouring money into Africa? One answer has to do with the underlying conventional wisdom, which blames Africa's miseries on the delayed effects of Western colonialism.
['Africa Unchained']
Yet as the decades pass it becomes apparent that, although there is some truth to the claim, there is more to Africa's problems than that: A solution will require radical changes in the way Africa is governed and in the way its economies function. George Ayittey makes such an argument in "Africa Unchained" (Palgrave, 483 pages, $35), a superb analysis of the continent and its recent ordeals................
................Colonialism plays a part in Mr. Ayittey's account, too, but in a different way. For him, the continent's problems stem from the characteristics of the governing elite. In "Africa Unchained," he draws a sharp distinction between African governments -- generally corrupt, socialist, centralizing -- and the informal sectors of the African economy, which the elite's misdeeds have impoverished. At independence in the 1960s, Africa was a net exporter of food; now it imports $18 billion of food per annum.
But where did the elites pick up their bad habits? Mr. Ayittey describes in detail the economics of precolonial African societies. Property was held in common among the extended family but not by the community as a whole, while economic activity was undertaken for profit, with prices set by hard bargaining. Government operated through consultation, with chiefs exercising power only after full discussion with a council of elders. Thus the modern pattern of one-party or one-person rule, state ownership and state controls over prices and distribution is an import from Europe, not an African tradition.
Free Institutions
Mr. Ayittey's claim that democracy and free markets, not autocracy and communal ownership, are a legacy of Africa's own past is important, since it provides a rationale for Africans to move toward a system that can work. It presents a striking parallel to the work of parliamentarian historians at the time of the English Civil War, who traced English civil liberties back before Magna Carta to the Anglo-Saxon "Witanagemot" -- a gathering of tribal eminences -- and to the free institutions ascribed by Tacitus to the Germans of the first century. These historians gave their liberal cause legitimacy; Mr. Ayittey's researches may give a similar legitimacy to free institutions in Africa.
As for what those institutions might be, Mr. Ayittey calls for independent judiciaries, independent media and, not least, independent central banks. He would like to see power devolve as much as possible to Africa's traditional leaders -- at the village and regional level -- who are closer to the people they rule and less able to escape abroad from the penalties for corruption and malfeasance. He notes that Africa's governments today too often divert what money they have -- from aid or from oil and mineral revenues -- to military spending, wasteful prestige projects and tax-haven bank accounts. Here, too, local control would help. Aid in particular -- Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair take note -- needs to be targeted locally and regionally, rather than nationally, and it needs to be dispensed much more quickly than it is now, and in much smaller amounts.
What chance is there of such reforms actually happening? Less than one might wish. Part of the problem still comes from the West. When the principal cadres of Westerners dealing with Africa are aid agencies, charities and NGOs, rather than the financiers and businessmen who predominate in India and China, one has to expect that Africans, elite and otherwise, will be exposed to a high level of economic illiteracy.
Still, capital and investment will not flow toward Africa until it has done more to shrink the power of its governments and provide havens, secure against tax, inflation and expropriation, for the savings of its striving peoples. And in this regard Western attempts at institution-building will be of little help. It is for Africans to build their own models of governance. Luckily, as Mr. Ayittey shows, they have a proud tradition to draw upon -- and never mind the colonizers.
Mr. Martin Hutchinson is the author of "Great Conservatives" (Academica Press).

At the CIPE Anna Nadgrodkiewicz writes:

....many of the roadblocks to Africa’s development have to do with the tendency of governments to be protectionist, interventionist, and perpetuating over-regulation – often in the name of defending the poor but rarely with the result of improving their lot. Meanwhile, more than 80% of poverty reduction in Africa in the past 30 years is directly attributable to economic growth delivered by the private sector, not governments, and often in spite of harmful policies of those governments...[continue reading]

"...Many African states have been addicted to Western aid for decades. Unfortunately, Africa as a whole has stagnated and some African countries are poorer today then they were in the 1960s. In recent years, advocates of foreign aid have called for making aid more efficient, but that may be easier said than done. The problem, some critics argue, is that aid supports predatory governments and perpetuates institutions that are alien to Africa...[continue reading]" -Cato Institute
Listen to the podcast

africa failed Cato Institute Event Podcast - Let Failing African Governments Collapse: A Radical Solution to Underdevelopment
Hatip Mootbox!

Gumisai Mutume writes about the progress being made in reforming institutions throughout the continent:

While repressive governments are yet to be eliminated across the continent, significant change is taking place in a growing number of countries. Civil society is growing and applying pressure for better performance, the media are demanding transparency across all sectors of society and governments are realizing that the days of coercive politics are numbered...In a growing number of countries, citizens are calling for independent judges, effective parliaments, measures that address corruption and the devolution of power from central to local governments. "It is expected that proposed laws will be subject to public dialogue and debate before enactment and that those representing the people will regularly consult and seek the people's views,",Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In a nutshell, Africans are demanding what is known among development practitioners as "good governance."...Narrowly defined, governance means the exercise of political power to manage the affairs of state. In a broader sense, it can refer to the various processes relating to leadership, such as policymaking, transparency, accountability, the protection of human rights and the relationship among the public, private and civil sectors in determining how power is exercised.

The Colonialism-Imperialism Paradigm Is Kaput
George B. N. Ayittey, Ph.D.
June 26, 2005.

Africas paradox is galling: immense mineral wealth yet inexorably mired in steaming squalor, misery, deprivation, and chaos. A few countries have sprinted ahead but Africas overall economic performance remains abysmal, lagging behind those of other regions in the Third World. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has warned that at the prevailing rates black Africa would take another 150 years to reach some of the development targets agreed by UN members for 2015. (Financial Times, July 9, 2003; p.1). Who ruined Africa?

The causes of Africas lack of development have always evoked heated emotional debates. On one hand are those who portray Africa as a victim of powerful external forces and conspiracies a group that may be described as externalists.On the other are those who believe that the causes of Africa's crisis lie mostly within African in the nature of government (governance) or how Africa runs its own affairs. This group may be described as the internalists.

The Externalists

The externalists believe that Africa's woes are due to external factors such as the lingering effects of Western colonialism and imperialism, the pernicious effects of the slave trade, racist conspiracy plots, exploitation by avaricious multinational corporations, an unjust international economic system, inadequate flows of foreign aid, the neo-liberal policies of the World Bank, IMF, and deteriorating terms of trade. Disciples of the externalist creed include most African leaders, scholars, and intellectual radicals. For decades, the externalist position held sway, attributing the causes of almost every African problem to such external factors.

In his book, The Africans, African scholar and historian Professor Ali Mazrui, examining Africas crises, attributed most of Africas woes to Western colonialism and imperialism. "The West harmed Africa's indigenous technological development in a number of ways" (164). Africa's collapsing infrastructure (roads, railways, and utilities) is due to the "shallowness of Western institutions," "the lopsided nature of colonial acculturation" and "the moral contradictions of Western political tutelage" (202). In fact, "the political decay is partly a consequence of colonial institutions without cultural roots in Africa" (199). Therefore, self congratulatory western assertions of contributing to Africa's modernization are shallow: "The West has contributed far
less to Africa than Africa has contributed to the industrial civilization of the West" (164). Decay in law enforcement and mismanagement of funds can be traced to Western colonialism too. "The
pervasive atmosphere in much of the land is one of rust and dust, stagnation and decay, especially within those institutions which were originally bequeathed by the West signal the slow death of an alien civilization" (204) and Africa's rebellion "against westernization
masquerading as modernity" (211). Western institutions are doomed "to grind to a standstill in Africa" or decay. "Where Islam is already established, the decay of western civilization is good for Islam since it helps to neutralize a major threat" (19).

Many African leaders also subscribed to and espoused similar views ascribing the causes of Africa's crises to external factors. In fact, since independence in the sixties, almost every African malaise was alleged to have been caused by the operation or conspiracy of extrinsic agents. This externalist doctrine totally absolved the leadership of any responsibility for the mess in Africa. The leadership was above reproach and could never be faulted. President Mobutu even blamed
corruption on European colonialism. Asked who introduced corruption into Zaire, he retorted: "European businessmen were the ones who said, 'I sell you this thing for $1,000, but $200 will be for your (Swiss bank) account'" (New African, July, 1988, 25).

In his address to the third Congress of the Democratic Union of Malian People recently, President Moussa Traore observed that, The world economy is passing through a period characterized by monetary disorder and slow trade exchanges. The worsening crisis is affecting all countries, particularly developing countries. Due to the difficult situation, which is compounded by the serious drought, socio economic life has been affected by serious imbalances
that have jeopardized our country's development growth. Debt servicing, characterized mainly by state to state debts are a heavy burden on the state budget. The drop in the price of cotton which accounts for much of the country's foreign earnings, has led to a great reduction in export
earnings" (West Africa, 16 May 1988, 876).

President Danial arap Moi accused the IMF and other development partners of denying Kenya development funds, thus triggering mass poverty (The Washington Times, June 3, 1999; p.A12). According to the Chairman of Ghanas ruling NDC, Issifu Ali, whatever economic crisis the nation was going through had been caused by external factors. He said the NDC has since 1982 adopted pragmatic policies for the progress of Ghana, adding that the macro-economic environment of 1999 has been undermined by global economic developments" (The Independent, Nov 18, 1999; p.3). Said the Zimbabwe Independent (April 27, 1999), Mugabe
rejects the criticism of those who blame the government for the economic crisis. It is, he says, the fault of greedy Western powers, the IMF, the Asian financial crisis and the drought (p. 25).

Naturally, African leaders would deny any responsibility and blame everybody else except themselves for the mess in Africa. The New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) echoes this orthodoxy when it claims that Africas impoverishment has been accentuated by the legacy of colonialism and other historical legacies, such as the Cold War and the unjust international economic system. Colonialism subverted the "traditional structures, institutions and values," creating an economy "subservient to the economic and political
needs of the imperial powers" (para 21). Colonialism, according to NEPAD, retarded the development of an entrepreneurial and middle class with managerial capability. At independence, Africa inherited a "weak capitalist class," which explains the "weak accumulation process, weak states and dysfunctional economies." (para 22). More recent reasons for Africa's dire condition include "its continued marginalization from globalization process." (para 2). NEPAD seeks $64 billion in investments from the West.

Frankly, this colonialism-imperialism card has been so overplayed that it has lost its relevance and credence. Even Africas children dont buy it. Chernoh Bah, president of the Children's Forum asserted that Africa's socio economic problems are a direct repercussion of incompetent and corrupt political leaders who usurped political office via the gun. "Some blame colonialism for Africa' plight while others blame the continent's harsh climatic conditions. I think the reason is the kind of political systems we have had over the past decades, he said. (Standard Times [Freetown], April 2, 2003; web posted). At the United Nations Children's Summit held in May 2002 in New York, youngsters from Africa ripped into their leaders for failing to improve
their education and health. "You get loans that will be paid in 20 to 30 years and we have nothing to pay them with, because when you get the money, you embezzle it, you eat it, said 12-year-old Joseph Tamale from Uganda (BBC News, May 10, 2002).

The Internalists

Internalists are the new and angry generation of Africans, who are fed up with African leaders who refuse to take responsibility for their own failures and, instead use colonialism and other external factors as convenient alibis to conceal their own incompetence and mismanagement.
Internalists believe that, while external factors have played a role, internal factors have been far more significant in causing Africas crisis. This school of thought maintains that while it is true Western colonialism and imperialism did harm Africa and continues to do so, Africa's condition has been made immeasurably worse by such internal factors as misguided leadership, misgovernance, systemic corruption, capital flight, economic mismanagement, declining investment, collapsed infrastructure, decayed institutions, senseless civil wars, political
tyranny, flagrant violations of human rights, and military vandalism. In fact, one can identify a whole lot of them but these will suffice. U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, himself an African, lashed out at African leaders at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Lome in July 2000. He pointedly told them that they are to blame for most of the continent's problems. Instead of being exploited for the benefit of the people, Africas mineral resources have been so
mismanaged and plundered that they are now the source of our misery (Daily Graphic, July 12, 2000; p.5). Earlier in the year at a press conference in London in April, 2000, Kofi Annan, lambasted African leaders who he says have subverted democracy and lined their pockets
with public funds, although he stopped short of naming names (The African-American Observer, April 25 May 1, 2000; p.10). During a brief stop-over in Accra, he disclosed in a Joy FM radio station interview that "Africa is the region giving him the biggest headache as the
Security Council spends 60 to 70% of its time on Africa. He admitted sadly that the conflicts on the continent embarrasses and pains him as an African" (The Guide, July 18-24, 2000; p.8).

Ordinary people are speaking out too. Said Akobeng Eric, a Ghanaian, in a letter to the Free Press (29 March - 11 April 1996): "A big obstacle to economic growth in Africa is the tendency to put all blame, failures and shortcomings on outside forces. Progress might have been achieved if we had always tried first to remove the mote in our own eyes" (2). Angry
at deteriorating economic conditions in Ghana, thousands of Ghanaians marched through the streets of the capital city, Accra, the economic crisis is due to external forces and therefore, beyond his control, then he should step aside and allow a competent person who can
manage the crisis to take over," Atta Frimpong demanded (The Ghanaian Chronicle, Nov 29, 1999; p.1). Appiah Dankwah, another protestor blamed the NDC government for mismanaging the resources of the nation.

By the 1990s, African governments had completely lost touch with their people; in fact, they were at war with their people. Citing "the credibility gap between the people and the leadership built up through years of mismanagement," Mr. Mohammed Boudiaf, the head of Algeria's
High Executive Council (HEC), lamented: "A large segment of the population has, I am afraid, lost confidence in the capacity of the leadership to provide jobs, housing, health care and its ability to combat corruption" (Financial Times, June 17, 1992; p. 4). Indeed, said Simon Agbo, a farmer in Ogbadibo, south of Makurdi, Benue state capital in Nigeria: "I heard we have a new government. It makes no difference to me. Here we have no light ( electricity), we have no water. There is no road. We have no school. The government does nothing for us (The
Washington Times, Oct 21, 1999; p.A19).

Rafael Marques, a journalist, jailed and convicted of defamation for a 1999 article in which he characterized President Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola as a dictator, wrote: "The government has created a stateless state here in Angola. Each citizen is responsible for his own health and welfare while the government is accountable to no one. The MPLA and
UNITA are like two gangs and the people of Angola are innocent bystanders caught in the middle of a drive-by shooting" (The Washington Post, Sept 18, 2000; p.A1).

As a result of the failure to provide the basic necessities of life, the state and those in power have increasingly alienated themselves from those they rule and from whom they claim to derive their legitimacy. The growing gap between the leaders and the people has made the leaders increasingly insecure, sensitive, repressive and less responsive to the wishes of society. The mass of the people in turn regard the state and its organs with fear, suspicion and cynicism because as far as they are concerned, they are no longer legitimate or relevant in their lives. The government does nothing for them. Insecure African despots spend inordinate amounts on the military and security forces, subverting other state institutions squelch dissent, prop them up in power, and serve their parochial interests. The masses on the other hand, sensing their
inability to meaningfully influence the policies of the state and the behaviors of those in positions of power, develop apathy and withdraw from participation in the political process for safety reasons.

Government, as an institution that cares about its people and attends to their needs, has ceased to exist in many African countries. What exists is a vampire state, where the government has been hijacked by a phalanx of unrepentant bandits and crooks, who use the machinery of the
state to enrich themselves, their cronies and tribesmen, while excluding everyone else (the politics of exclusion). The richest persons in Africa are heads of state and ministers. Quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself.

At an African civic groups meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nigeria's President, Olusegun Obasanjo, claimed that corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion (95 billion) from their people in the decades since independence (The London Independent, June 14, 2002. Web
posted at www.independent.co.uk). In August 2004, an African Union report claimed that Africa loses an estimated $148 billion annually to corrupt practices, a figure which represents 25 percent of the continent's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But these are gross underestimates. According to one UN estimate, $200 billion or 90 percent of the sub-Saharan part of the continent's gross domestic product was shipped to foreign banks in 1991 alone (The New York Times, Feb 4, 1996; p.4). Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused 220 billion ($396 billion) -- that is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the
continent (The London Telegraph, June 25, 2005; web posted). If this sum had been divided equally among Nigerias 120 million people, its income per capita would be at least $3,000, instead of the miserable $265, which is about the same as it was when it gained its independence in 1960. Between 1970 and 2004, more than $400 billion in oil money
flowed into Nigerian governments coffers. What happened to the oil money?

Eventually the vampire state metastasizes into what Africans call a coconut republic and implodes when politically-excluded groups rise up in rebellion: Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Burundi (1995), Zaire (1996), Sierra Leone (1998), Liberia (1999), Ivory Coast (2000), and
Togo (2005). Only reform intellectual, economic, political and institutional will save Africa but the leadership is not interested. Period.

Ask these leaders to develop their countries and they will develop their pockets. Ask them to seek foreign investment and they will seek a foreign country to invest their booty. Ask them to cut bloated state bureaucracies or government spending and they will set up a Ministry of
Less Government Spending. Ask them to establish better systems of governance and they will set up a Ministry of Good Governance (Tanzania). Ask them to curb corruption and they will set up an Anti-Corruption Commission with no teeth and then sack the Commissioner if he gets too close to the fat cats (Kenya). Ask them to establish democracy and they will empanel a coterie of fawning sycophants to write the electoral rules, hold fraudulent elections with opposition leaders either disqualified or in jail, and return themselves to power (Ivory Coast, Rwanda). Ask them to reduce state hegemony in the economy and place more reliance on the private sector and they will create a Ministry of Private Enterprise (Ghana). Ask them to privatize inefficient state-owned enterprises and they will sell them off at fire-sale prices to their cronies. In 1992, in accordance with World Bank loan conditionalities, the Government of Uganda began a
privatization effort to sell-off 142 of its state-owned enterprises. However, in 1998, the process was halted twice by Ugandas own parliament because, according to the chair of a parliamentary select committee, Tom Omongole, it had been derailed by corruption, implicating three senior ministers who had "political responsibility" (The East African, June 14, 1999). The sale of these 142 enterprises was initially projected to generate 900 billion Ugandan shillings or $500
million. However, by the autumn of 1999 the revenue balance was only 3.7 billion Ushs.

Now, their recalcitrance has transmogrified into extortion. Ask them to move a foot and they will demand foreign aid in order to do so. In 2003, some 30,000 ghost names were discovered on the payroll of the Ministry of Education, costing the government $1.2 million a month in salaries heisted by living workers. When Ghana demanded foreign aid to purge these ghost names, Japan ponied up $5 million.

The reform process has stalled through vexatious chicanery, strong-arm tactics, deception, and vaunted acrobatics. Only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic and fewer than 8 African countries can be described as economic success stories. Intellectual freedom remains
in the Stalinist era: only 8 African countries have a free and independent media. But without genuine reform, more African countries will implode -- Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Togo and Zimbabwe are already teetering on the brink

The slave trade, Western colonialism, imperialism and external factors have nothing to do with the naked plunder and wrong choices made by bad African leaders. The World Bank has nothing to do with monumental leadership failure in Africa. The IMF, which most African leaders relish
vilifying, has nothing to do with petrol (gasoline) shortages in Nigeria. Nor do Western agricultural subsidies have anything to do with why African governments cant supply reliable electricity and safe drinking water to their people. The slave trade has nothing to do with
Nigeria turning itself into the scam capital of the world.

The Flaws in the Externalist Position

The issue of Western culpability or complicity in causing Africas woes evokes such intense emotionalism that it often clouds rational analysis of our problems in Africa. Let us strip the issue of its emotionalism and examine it rationally.

Historical Wrongs Committed by the West

The Slave Trade/Colonialism

Everyone agrees that the slave trade was at once a brutally inhumane treatment that can ever be meted out to a people. The horrors of capture, the trans-shipment, the loss of millions of able-bodied men, the atrocities that were committed by European slave traders, etc. are all documented. We all agree to the humiliating experience of colonial subjugation. The discrimination against African natives, the exploitation of Africa's mineral wealth and artifacts, etc. -- we also agree on that.

Remedies

We may seek compensation (reparations) for the harm that slavery did to us. We may seek the return of the stolen booty. Ethiopia has just received its ancient obelisk, stolen by the Italian colonialists. But even here, African leaders have debauched the issue.

Back in August 1999, representatives of African governments met in Accra and issued a declaration: "Africa is demanding $777 trillion from Western Europe and the Americas in reparation for enslaving Africans while colonizing the continent" (Pan African News Agency, August 18, 1999). It added that the money would be demanded from ''all those nations of Western Europe and the Americas and institutions, who participated and benefited from the slave trade and colonialism''. Dr. Hamet Maulana and Debra Kofie, co-chairpersons of the commission, urged that worldwide monitoring and networking systems be instituted to ensure
that reparation and repatriation will be achieved by 2004. Problem is, U.S. GNP is only $12 trillion and amount asked- $777 trillion- exceeds the combined sum of the GNPs of the entire Western world! According to the British governments Office of National Statistics, The United
Kingdom -- that is England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland -- is officially valued at $8.8 trillion, a sum that includes all of its property and buildings, machinery, roads, bridges, planes, trains and automobiles. It also includes all the money deposited in its banks and other financial institutions. Plus everything on the shelves at Harrods (The New York Times, Jan 1, 2004; p.A4). So how do African leaders hope to collect $777 trillion?

We may argue all we want about the size of reparations but these historical wrongs cannot repeat, cannot -- be used to justify the cruel atrocities and grotesque misdeeds African leaders commit against their own people. Winning independence for their respective countries gives no African leader -- none of them -- the license to do what they want with their people and countries.

European slave traders or colonialists did not tell President Mugabe to raze down shanty-towns, destroying the propertied of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans and rendering more than 1.5 million HOMELESS. American imperialists did not tell President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia
to order his security forces to open fire on student demonstrators, killing more than 40 of them on June 15, 2005. British racists did not tell President Isaiah Afwerki of Eritrea to shut down all the private newspapers in Eritrea and jail all their editors and journalists.

These leaders must be held ACCOUNTABLE for their actions. Historical wrongs by the West do not factor in here because they are a separate issue and CANNOT be used to excuse wrongful actions taken by African leaders TODAY.

Colonial Legacies

It is also agreed that the colonial legacies bequeathed to Africa were pitiful. What the Portuguese left behind in Guinea-Bissau, after 200 years of colonial rule, was a small brewery for their local servicemen. There was no social development; industry was not encouraged. African colonies were to serve as sources of raw material and cheap labor for the industrial machines of Metropolitan Europe. The colonial economies were based on export mono-culture: the export of one or two cash crops.

Colonial education was geared toward training male clerks for the colonial administration. The Belgians and Portuguese never encouraged university education as that would teach African natives of their political rights. When Tanzania gained its independence in 1964, it had only 4 university graduates.

Infrastructure was Spartan. Few roads and railways were built. Even where built in West Africa, they exhibited a dendritic pattern: Straight from the coast to the hinterland to evacuate some mineral or cash crop.

All this is true but heres the problem: After independence, we, African elites, did not maintain, let alone keep the little infrastructure we inherited from the colonialists. In fact, we destroyed them! Infrastructure crumbled in the post colonial period. The few universities we got in Ghana and Nigeria decayed. In Uganda, Makerere University used to be called the Harvard of Africa in the 1950s. By 1980, it was a shambles. In Zaire, the Belgian colonialists put down only 2,000 miles of paved road appalling for that huge country the size of Texas. By 1990, only 200 miles were usable. So who do you blame: the Belgian colonialists for not laying down enough roads OR Mobutu for failing to maintain the little that Zaire got? Later, we learned that Mobutu allowed the roads and infrastructure to crumble in Zaire because it made it difficult for the opposition to organize against him!
(contd)

John Nellis argues for renewed vigor in the privatization of state owned enterprises."...the need to repair, modernize and expand African infrastructure networks remains very great. The financial resources required for this task must come from governments, official sources, and, increasingly, from private capital markets. The two approaches on which reform hopes have been based have both proven deficient, though in different ways. The revised tactics require further revision. The search for mechanisms that combine private capital and expertise with socially acceptable management and delivery must be renewed...Settling for the more cautious, politically palatable and socially acceptable PPI forms—for example, management contracts as opposed to concessions or divestitures—will not solve the capital shortage problem. Moreover, and somewhat paradoxically, the more acceptable management and lease contracts place heavy demands on governments, in terms of designing, negotiating, evaluating and enforcing them...The bottom line is that Africa has huge infrastructure needs that, for various reasons, are not being addressed the only way that is financially possible: with private money..."

Texas Board of Education on Friday recently approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

But liberal blogs are going crazy, stating that it is totally wrong to put a conservative stamp on social studies curriculum and that the only allowable stamp allowed in education is a firmly liberal stamp. Blogs like the Daily Kos, which Obama reads often, suggest that it is better to homeschool your children now that the Texas Board has prohibited discussion of "transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else."

There are a lot of reasons to homeschool children- look at Detroit Public Schools, in the firm solid grip of liberal policies and an utter disaster- but suggesting that you pull your child out of public schools because they won't learn valuable important information about transvestites in social studies is disgusting. I mean, in Detroit (firmly controlled by Democrats), kids have an equal chance of being shot or graduating high school, but that's okay to liberals and readers of the Daily Kos, as long as those students learn in their history classes about transvestites and transsexuals, and that's wrong.

For fun sometime you need to slum it in blogs like the Daily Kos and read the comments that liberals and Democrats put on that blog. They're voters too, don't forget that, and some of you may have even voted with them last election (or voted third party, which is the same in reality as voting for the most communist person on the ticket).

It's fun to read things on the Daily Kos like "unlike with socialist governments, we don't get a vote" and "But, in Texas, it is not a democracy. Their governor (Bush) lost the popular vote; and then lost the electoral vote. And then was appointed by the Supreme Court. So, to Texans, this is not a democracy." Yup, that's why I went back to school to get my teaching degree, and why I am a conservative teacher- I really hope that I can catch these idiots in school before they are released into the wilds and teach them that socialist governments (like China or Soviet Union) are bad, and that Bush won the 2000 election according to the laws of our nation.

Hopefully, the more conservative we can make education, by changing curriculum and standards and textbooks and methods and teachers to conservative ones, the better educated our children will be, and there won't be Democrat voters out there who comment "I compare the Texas right wing to the Taliban."

In the words of George Ayittey, Africa Unchained is about “unleashing the entrepreneurial talents and creative energies of the real African people…and a blueprint for Africa’s future.”

Dr. George Ayittey, a distinguished professor at American University in Washington, D.C. and the first among his generation to recognize that “African problems must be solved by Africans,” has written this book to help push Africa on to prosperity. His approach to the solution of African problems was much derided by some in the 90s, but is now gaining popularity with reformers and world leaders in the new search for ways to help Africa.

Whether at the front of Congress, in conference rooms at the World Bank and IMF,on numerous radio and television talk shows; or during the various crises which have engulfed the continent, Ayittey has sturdily maintained the “solution by Africans” approach as a departure point for solving the seemingly intractable problems on the continent.

Ayittey, in a sense, has all along been the Jeremiah of Africa, saying things that some don’t want to hear. Will his critics, who are many, now wait for result or would they rush out to call him a false prophet?

In Africa Unchained he sets out to explain why and how Africa ought to besaved.In a characteristic manner, Ayittey is unsparing in his prescriptions for Africa, and in his criticism of the African elite. He has no faith in either the current leadership, or the ones preceding them. Rather, he places faith in the new leaders to come, whom he calls the “African Cheetah,” his version of the term “Asian Tiger.”

Ayittey is often criticized, mostly by his fellow intellectuals, for his brutal assessments of conditions in Africa. They describe him variously as an “Uncle Tom,” a “Sell-Out,” or an Afro-pessimist.

Often, his response to these critics has been to draw “a distinction between African leaders and the African people,” or the field hands who are governed and the men in the state houses who are the governors.

In Africa Unchained, Ayittey’s analysis of the historical facts of Africa’s post independence experience makes his usual harsh style credible. So when he asks in his prologue “if I have a very strong cutlass (machete) whom should I go after?” you know exactly whom he has gone after and why.

For Ayittey, the problems gained their most impetus during the post colonial period, when leaders got their priorities mixed. Cherished leaders like Nkrumah and Nyerere are drubbed for policies Ayittey claims were wrong headed.

This writer would agree that, indeed, some of these policies, as described by Ayittey, were wrong; but differs in thinking that the period was also one of intense experimentation, and, therefore, things were likely to go wrong.

Many things under Nkrumah went right. The grace for his period is that no one would today doubt the sincerity with which he tackled the experiment. As for Nkrumah stashing money abroad, nothing has been tendered as evidence other than the hearsay which started on February 24, 1966 when he was overthrown.

Nkrumah, after nine years in office, never had the chance to self-adjust his policies before being overthrown. Those leaders who came after had the benefit and the responsibility to amend some of his policies. And indeed, Ayittey agrees with this assertion. Thus, it is the failure to do so by these pretenders to leadership that must give Ayittey’s book real vitality.

Ayittey condemns statist intervention in the economy. He commends some governments for recognizing lately the need to move from socialist models to allow foreign capital infusion by making their markets “more open, permitting profit repatriation.”

These governments had hoped to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to spark growth and development . But Ayittey laments that all the good intentions and the innovations are yet to overcome the “negative image” that Africa has acquired over the years. Thus the economies of these countries still remain sluggish.

Africa continues to remain unattractive for the investor; contrary to all evidence of healthy returns on investment. Not even rich Africans prefer to keep their monies there. Ayittey chastises the late president of the Ivory Coast, Houphouet Boigny, for asking “what sensible man does not keep his wealth in Switzerland, the whole world’s bank?”

It is perplexing to read Ayittey’s book and still be aware that some have called him a sell-out. His love for Africa is apparent in this book. His description of the “low level” efficiencies that make Africa work is lovely to read. What he calls the “astonishing degree of functionality, participatory form of democracy, rule of customary law and accountability of the traditional African society,” is respectful and easy to applaud. These are words of facts as well as love. He cannot be the Afro-pessimist his detractors sometimes call him. Otherwise, how could he put so much faith in the simple African peasant he calls “Atingah”?

The critical question to ask is: Is Ayittey being a romantic by placing so much faith in the African peasant and the simple things that so far have provided “low level” efficiencies to the economies of Africa? The notion may sound simplistic to some. But given that the technological and scientific marvels of the West had their primitive beginnings, I will give this approach a strong support. The experiments have been done. The need now is to provide the right environment to nurture the confidence that will make the feats possible. And this is what effective leadership can do.

As Ayittey’s long held view of solution for the African problem suggests, salvation “does not lie…in the crisis-laden modern sector.” It rides on the “backs of the Atingas (peasants) in Africa.”

Instead of investing in the Atingas, who support the bulk of the economy in Africa, Ayittey says African leaders have forgotten them in the shuffle for development and that the low class Atingas (peasants) never featured in the grandiose developmental schemes of post colonial Africa.

For Ayittey, it is possible to turn Africa around. This means empowering the peasants and freeing them to pursue the various enterprises they are already good at. Africa needs “a completely new approach” and an absolute paradigm shift for this to happen, according to Ayititey.

Ayittey describes the attempts so far as mostly disingenuous. And he blames this on the elite, whom he calls “the vampire parasitic elite minority group.” No wonder the majority of his critics, are found in this group.

Africa Unchained is Ayittey’s third book. It is published by Palgrave Macmillan. It was released about a month ago and already has caught the attention of the book world with favorable reviews from the likes of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

For anyone in academe, government or a seeker of solution for Africa’s seemingly intractable problems, Africa Unchained is the book to read.


E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Washington, DC, March 21, 2005

One of my sister's passed an article on to me where Doug Casey, a highly respected author, publisher and professional investor, predicts three possible futures. These futures are of what the world will look like 20 years from today (2031). Casey bases his projections on facts, research, and sound analysis, and while all three are possible and I encourage you to read the entire article, the second one to me is the most plausible and likely and so it is only that one which I will excerpt below:

MIDDLE CASE – FACTS ARE IGNORED
The world’s governments continue under the delusion that printing massive quantities of paper money will solve problems when, in fact, printing lies at the base of the problems. Most currencies lose most of their value. Some lose it all. This destroys the most productive people in society, the middle class, who produce more than they consume and save the difference... in currency.

And it injures successful corporations that have billions, or even tens of billions, in cash. Few of their managers know what to do with such sums other than to hold currency; at best they’ll buy their own and other companies' stock. The result is a stock market boom in the midst of a grim depression. But only one person in a hundred will be in a position to benefit from it, because most will be living too close to the edge, and the stock market will be the last thing on their minds. The destruction of capital sets technology back quite a bit in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Chindia increases its relative strength.

The U.S. government, believing it has both the obligation and the ability to “do something,” redoubles its control of the economy. Price controls and capital controls are the order of the day. Petroleum products are rationed. Enforcement of new regulations is assigned to a new agency, the “Economic Recovery Administration,” which resembles the TSA in most regards – except it has many plain-clothes employees, to better ferret out violators.

People think increasingly of politics as the way to get what they want. More and more Americans move abroad – although things are deteriorating in most places in the world. Poor, backwater countries offer the best opportunities because their governments are either weak, or corrupt, enough to allow new economic activity.