Africa: We are what we want to be

By African Bulletin on November 12, 2010

Ndalla Claude Ernest, former Congolese activist in the Federation of Students of Black Africa in France in the 50s, has demonstrated that the struggle against slavery and colonialism, the Africans’ participation in the Second World War and the Bandung Conference were the decisive factors and circumstances that led, in 1960, to the independence of many African countries. These countries have posed, 50 years ago, the problem of the African development.

Unfortunately the international financial institutions, IMF, World Bank, Club of Paris and others, under control of the West have imposed a development strategy called the development of underdevelopment. Today, some countries are trying to review their relations with these institutions and at the same time find endogenous solutions to their development like China, India or Brazil. About the responsibility of the African leaders, he added, it was huge because of a certain naivety but also because of the failure to cut the umbilical cord with the former colonial powers. We still rely on them to seek help or funding, he said. So the responsibility is shared and we, Africans, we have our share of responsibility in the decay of our country. We have to take in charge the future of our countries, and fix the measures necessary for our development. Between the failed communism that has shown its limits and capitalism which have been found frailty, Africa must be able to draw on its traditions, to know the real objectives and needs of its population, and develop a model of its own. What takes longer is what is built upon its roots. Our problem is to stand on our roots, through a large federating and successful organisation, with an affiliated economic branch to ensure the regional economic integration. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is a set of intentions. But intent is to take root and mature and it should not stay at the level of the heads of States and Governments. It must reach the population level and once done, then changes and progress will be felt within the lands of our ancestors. Here we can say that NEPAD is moving forward; if not, it will remain merely a good intention, and the best closing remark was done at the second regional meeting on Aid Effectiveness, held this month, in Tunis: Time had come for African countries to rely more on their internal resources; such as taxation, the capital markets and better prices for their valuable commodities, and less on international aid for development. To demonstrate how aid leads to poverty, we can point out that aid in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 3.4 % of Gross National Product (GNP) in 1980 to 16.3 % in 1995, while sub-Saharan Africa‘s contribution  to world trade declined over the same period. Thus trade, rather than aid, is the way forward for the “continent-sized beggar”. That was a strong affirmation of the need for home-grown solutions to Africa’s development challenges.