Africa And The World
By: ALEXACTUS T KAURESIX African countries will make it to the 2010 World Cup. That is quite an achievement for the continent. But what else is there to show for the continent? What really is Africa’s place and role in the broader structure, process and trajectory in the contemporary world development?
Before independence Africa seemed poised for greatness. The legendary singer, Jackson Kaujeua, sang proudly of the winds of change and freedom blowing across the continent. And, of course, the great statesman Kwame Nkrumah enthusiastically spoke and wrote at length about how Africa’s political independence would herald on the continent economic development to benefit its people. It was actually Nkrumah who coined the term ‘African Renaissance’ but Thabo Mbeki just gave it more political flesh and perhaps academic respectability.
But where is the continent after almost half a century after gaining independence at least for some of the countries? I was in Accra in 2007 when Ghanaians and the rest of Africans and other well-wishers were celebrating Ghana’s 50th anniversary of its independence from Britain. In the same year Malaysia also celebrated its independence from Britain as well.
Well, Africa got its political independence and that’s important. And therefore we have to celebrate the heroic deeds of those who went before us to get rid of colonialism. That is to be applauded – that’s political change but are we free? How can we be free while the majority of our people are mired in abject poverty – illiteracy, hunger, homelessness and perhaps hopelessness in some cases? What happened to Nkrumah’s political dispensation that was supposed to have led to the economic kingdom and thus prosperity?
In my view a good part of Africa is now just a shadow of its former past. And the politics of rhetoric and symbolism seem to weigh heavily on our shoulders. There are, of course, some bright spots here and there but these tend to be overshadowed by the bigger picture.
Former President Nyerere, for example, was an early advocate of self-reliant development policy in Africa. Put in simple terms, this quest for Africa’s place in the sun has centred on the search for capital, knowledge and know-how. And ironically that meant Africa has look to the outside world for help. At independence most African students graced the halls of universities in the countries of their former colonial masters and they still continue to do so, perhaps even in much greater numbers than before.
And remember how in the 1970s and ‘80s everyone, including Africans, saw Japan and the five Asian Tigers as models of development to emulate? The conventional wisdom was that the Asian Tigers shared the same characteristics as Africa and therefore we could learn from them.
But those countries have moved on to another level of economic development. And Africa is now once again caught in the vortex of having to search for direction in terms of political and economic direction and alignment.
We are now told that China and India have been the missing link in the continent’s quest for knowledge, renewal and development. I remember various Namibian delegations going to India, for example, to study their green schemes or the recent one to look at how their electronic voting machines work – although at the end of the day we ended up with flawed elections ourselves.
But Africa’s belief that it can learn from somewhere in order to spur its own development continues unabated – perhaps blindly. So, you have endless trips by high-ranking Africans to foreign lands in search of this rare commodity called knowledge. There is one lesson that Africa need to learn and is pretty simple: that no outsider can develop Africa - Africans themselves have to.
So, let’s learn from our own mistakes, but more importantly from our own people - they are a repertoire of knowledge and should be the first port of call in our journey towards learning and development.
Unless we do that Africa will remain what it has been since colonial times – a reservoir of raw material and cheap labour for others. We are now witnessing fierce competition between China, India and the West over Africa’s rich natural resources. But the benefits that Africa would reap from a greater India, or China’s engagement in terms of high commodity prices, technology transfer and capital injection are sweet lies.
But how we easily tend to lose track of history? Are these not the same benefits that Western multi-nationals used to promise? So both China and India are just joining a long tradition of exploiting Africa with the connivance of African leaders themselves.
The collapse of socialism and the subsequent onslaught from an animated capitalism – masqueraded as globalisation – explain this scenario. But people have to distinguish between internationalism and globalisation.
The former was a way of looking at the world through the lenses of humanity; whereas globalisation is an ideology about the market and the centrality of capital and its disrespect for national boundaries and local labour laws.
So the Latin American leftist wind won’t blow into Africa. Thus we will remain on the margin of contemporary world development. And the shame of the continent will continue.