Epilogue and Conclusions

Abstract

This book owes no one any apology. Africa is a mess—economically, politically, and socially. Despite Africa’s vast natural resources, its people remain mired in the deadly grip of poverty, squalor, and destitution while buffeted by environmental degradation and brutal tyranny. Most Africans are worse off today than they were at independence in the 1960s. African leaders have failed Africa. African politicians have failed. African intellectuals have failed Africa, too. The failure is monumental and the international community is fed up with incessant African begging.

Africa will have to rely upon Africa. African Governments will have to formulate and carry out policies of maximum national and collective self-reliance. If they do Africa will develop; if they don’t Africa will be doomed.

—Julius Nyerere, ex-president of Tanzania, in an October 9, 1997, speech at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

It is really difficult to ask foreign investors to come and invest on our continent when our own people are not investing here. There is no better factor to convince foreign investors than for them to see that our own people, both those based at home and those in the Diaspora, invest in Africa.

—Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, President of the African Business Round Table on business partnership with New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) at the Commonwealth Business Forum on December 3, 2003 in Abuja, Nigeria; This Day, Lagos, Dec 4, 2003.

The average African is poorer (now) than during the age of colonialism. Whereas colonialists had developed the continent, planted crops, built roads and cities, the era of uhuru had been characterized by capital flight as the elite pocketed money and took it outside their countries. Among them were the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. The money Abacha had plundered had been discovered in Switzerland … In the 1960s African elites/rulers, instead of focusing on development, took surplus for their own enormous entourages of civil servants without plowing anything back into the country. The continent’s cash crops, like cocoa and tobacco, were heavily exploited by the state-run marketing boards with farmers getting little in return.

—Moeletsi Mbeki, Chairperson of the South African Institute of International Affairs, and brother of President Thabo Mbeki (The Mercury, Sept 22,2004.)