"Was China, Korea, India, Brazil, etc. not colonised". Such 'informed' assumption lack grounding in knowledge of historicity.
Colonisation in Asia was not the same as in Africa. This doesn't excuse our iberibe. - Kelechi Deca
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The impact of bad leadership doesn't end with the tenure expiration of that leader. Check Congo since after Mobutu.
Having made that clear, and from first hand experience traveling across 47 out of 54 African countries, all it will take is leadership. A highly focused, commited, and visionary leadership, to save Africa from itself.
Now to business.
I've written here (on my Facebook) before that when you interrogate history with the benefits of hindsight, you're bound to arrive at judgements that may be logical yet off the cuff.
Events of an era is better understood and the likely reasons behind them better appreciated when placed side by side with the prevailing body of information and knowledge available at that time.
Oftentimes I think about the need to have an honest interaction about our past. The challenge is that in a society many people are so prickly about the past to the extent they even have "no go areas", it would be impossible to interrogate history with an open mind.
When we talk about colonisation, many people see imperialism. While both went hand in hand in some places, they're different.
Colonialism is basically “control by one power over a dependent area or people.” It occurs when one nation subjugates another, conquering its population and exploiting it, often while forcing its own language and cultural values upon its people.
The concept of colonialism is closely linked to that of imperialism, which is the policy or ethos of using power and influence to control another nation or people that underlies colonialism.
In Asia, imperialism came first, and was entrenched, even carried out by different nations against different interests. In Africa, both were introduced at same period and ran side by side.
While Asia never had the misfortune of some people sitting down over coffee to partition them into tiny bits and pieces of countries irrespective of their cultural and national boundaries, Africa didn't even know it was being shared like Umunna cow on Banana leaves.
Moreso, while Asia had more homogeneous societies already existing as blocs with same culture, religion and traditional make-ups, Africa has far more smaller ethnicities with differing cultural and linguistics make-up which invited merger of unfriendly groups into one bloc.
There are lots of things Asia had going well for them that made them recover faster from effects of colonisation. Most important was their preexisting culturally and ethnic homogeneous nations that were large enough to transform into nationstates.
Africa didn't have that. Thus immediately after colonial masters left, Africa started fighting internal tribal wars. The impact of tribal and ethnic politics is the biggest hinderance to growth in Africa.
For example, 90% of the civil wars fought in Asia were ideological, between different political ideological groups. But 90% of the civil wars fought in Africa were tribal, between different ethnic groups.
That should tell you something.
One day we would discuss this exhaustively.
Disagree if you like.
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| Journalist, History/Culture/Economics Buff, Wildlife Lover, Africa Analyst, Cartefile |
