It is becoming increasingly impossible to rationalize, defend, or explain the profligacy and incompetence of many African governments. The task is made even more difficult for those of us who, by reason of our professional associations with Westerners, have become, for good or ill, accountable for what is bad on the continent. Africans who teach, work, or socialize with Westerners have the unenviable burden of explaining the continent’s woes to a prejudiced, skeptical Western audience.

It is very common to be asked at parties and social events what one thinks of the never-ending civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; the genocide in the Sudan; the anarchy in Somalia; the disastrous elections in Nigeria; and other problems too numerous to catalogue here. That one is sometimes their teacher, boss, or benefactor does little to mitigate or complicate the simplistic certainties and stereotypes through which these Western friends and acquaintances understand Africa and Africans. That you are from one country in Africa , not all forty eight of them, does little to discourage the audacity and territorial scope of such inquisitive demands for explanations.

Westerners, Asians, and everyone else take liberties with African realities, substituting a part for the whole, generalizing recklessly, and projecting well-worn, self-assuring prejudices onto the continent and its peoples.

But if Westerners approach Africa with prejudiced preconceptions, the misbehavior of African governments and leaders help to solidify such prejudices and stereotypes, making it almost impossible to disabuse these Westerners of their bizarre notions of Africa .

Not to be misunderstood as trying to lend a sympathetic ear to prejudice or trying to understand and reason with the prejudiced, I am not attempting such a feat. The racially prejudiced cannot be swayed even by the most revolutionary transformation in Africa ’s fortunes. Their mindset of perceiving Africans and Africa as perpetual inferiors is already ossified in an innate need for self-assurance, which is itself driven ultimately by a need to assert oneself through the denigration and niggerization of others. These prejudiced Westerners affirm themselves paradoxically by irrationally putting down Africans. Intellectual dialogue on Africa and its travails is impossible with this kind of Westerners.

But what about the genuinely inquisitive; the slightly prejudiced, whose views on Africa and its peoples—condescending as they may be—are founded not on racial prejudice but nurtured by the unflattering popular images of Africa marketed aggressively to naïve and ignorant Westerners by mediums of mass communication? Don’t we, as a duty, have to help these misinformed folks understand the nuances, complexities, multi-layered culpabilities, Western complicities, and cultural underpinnings of the negative African realities of war, famine, AIDS, poverty, corruption, waste, and bad government that are persistently presented to them as the essence of the continent? Don’t we have a duty to do battle with the well-funded, sometimes organized, and commercially lucrative industry of Western denigration of Africa ? Aren’t our own identities as Africans under assault each time our continent or an African country is casually and organically presented as a land of wars, famine, AIDS and corruption? Isn’t it instinctive to fight back with facts and reason when the basis of your humanity is questioned with half-truths and generalizations?

These questions reflect one aspect of the moral dilemma of the African interlocutor in Western society. He feels that he has to help ignorant and prejudiced Westerners understand Africa more sympathetically. But he also feels that mediating the African predicament and African realities for Western audiences may amount to—or be perceived  as—rationalizing, defending, minimizing, or obfuscating bad leadership, corruption, political tyranny, and other evils.

Some professional and personal experiences can exacerbate this dilemma, forcing one to walk the tight, uncomfortable rope of faulting pedestrian understandings of Africa while not exculpating African actors who continue to impoverish an endowed continent. In these kinds of experiences, you are put on the unsettling spot of accounting for all that is wrong with Africa or its constituents. I have been there several times. Sometimes I got myself entangled in logical contradictions and pedantic distinctions; other times I offered explanations that were so qualified, modified, and riddled with caveats and nuances that they lost their explanatory power. Such explanations alternately left my Western audiences confused, entrenched in their preconceptions, or thinking that I was more interested in defending the continent than in explaining the source of its woes.

The most troubling times for me are when I am perceived as unwilling to acknowledge the African complicity in Africa ’s underdevelopment. This tears at me because I like to see myself as a harsh critic of bad African leaders and as intolerant of bad government and corruption in Nigeria , my country, and Africa . Because I have sometimes been upbraided by compatriots and some liberal Westerners for going overboard with my focus on African agency in analyzing the continent’s economic and political problems, accusations or perceptions of not sufficiently recognizing the role of African actions and inactions in the continent’s problems often catch me unawares, leaving me confused but determined to find a comfortable median to inhabit. 

I teach an undergraduate seminar on African economic history from colonial times to the present. As one might imagine, the students come to the class heavily opinionated about the causes of African poverty and economic stagnation. Their favorite quest, regardless of the temporal and topical focus of our discussion, is to try and pinpoint the cause of Africa ’s underdevelopment. A lesser quest is to pinpoint where I stand on the debate about the causal weight of historical injuries (colonialism, slavery) as well as modern day Western institutions (Bretton Woods) and practices on the one hand, and the disappointing and destructive choices of African leaders on the other. My students prefer cut and dried answers, not nuanced, complicated ones. They want me to take a position and explain it to them or convince them about it. Some of them almost want me to tell them what to believe about Africa ’s underdevelopment. But that is not my role as a teacher; which is why I suspect that, while they enjoy the class, they often come away from our discussions disappointed at my willingness to admit nuance, indeterminacy, and inconclusiveness into the discussion.

The most uncomfortable questions come from students that I suspectc come from conservative backgrounds. They are more likely to believe that Africa’s underdevelopment is solely caused by Africans and are less likely to admit the possibility that the West’s economic relationship with Africa, expressed through many institutions and practices, could also be responsible for the sad economic state of the continent. Their evidence, though carefully cherry-picked for hyperbolic effect, is hard to challenge. How, for instance, do you explain the decision of late Ivorian leader, Felix Houphouet-Boigny to build the biggest Roman Catholic Basilica in his hometown of Yammasukro with an amount roughly equivalent to his country’s annual budget? You could balance Houphouet-Boigny’s indictment by invoking the fact that France stood by him and egged him on while he engaged in this mindless waste of public fund. That might be warmly received by some liberal elements. But it is at best a feeble defense, a hard sell that is unlikely to sway a student nurtured on a staple of explanations focused on African degeneracy. This is one Westerner who will almost certainly go away firmly clutching the doctrine of African self-destruction. The problem is not that these opinionated Westerners strategically select bad examples to illustrate their prejudices and preconceptions--which they do. The problem is the abundance of such bad examples and the paucity of examples of responsible, prudent, transparent, and competent leadership on the continent. 

How do you explain Abacha’s $2 billion loot to a skeptical Westerner? Or Obasanjo’s transmogrification from a bankrupt farmer with N20.000 in his bank account to arguably the richest man in Nigeria today. How do you convince an already skeptical Westerner that these monumental acts of corruption are not responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment or are inconsequential to it, or that the complicity of Western banks, lobbyists, and businessmen mitigates these financial crimes against Africa ’s impoverished peoples? One is informed enough to appreciate the external Western complicities in these crimes, but transferring that understanding to Westerners is a huge pedagogical undertaking.

I love to cite as an example of the white elephant phenomenon, the $80 million Abuja Stadium, which, by the way, even the World Bank says could have been built for half that amount, and which, it must be said, is now mostly rented for religious programs. Try explaining to a simple-minded American undergraduate that building a national stadium for that amount was a priority that should have taken precedence over more pressing economic, social, and infrastructural problems.

Just when I thought my task of educating Westerners about the complexity of Africa’s problems and of redistributing the focus evenly between Africa’s leadership and corruption problem and global structural interpellations can’t get any more difficult, I  read in the news that Nigeria’s legitimacy-challenged government will spend N53 billion to build a Millennium Tower in Abuja! I can already see this headline feeding and fattening the conceited prejudices of Westerners who reduce all of Africa ’s problems to a congenital African embrace of incompetence and economic irrationality. I can see new ammunition for Western (and African) scholars and commentators who have built their careers and continue to make a living by peddling such inanities.

Now I have to hope that my students don’t have access to this latest example of African leaders’ excesses. If they do, my task will be magnified. The students will be impervious to my balanced, nuanced, and complex explanations and, conversely, will be more enamored and seduced by the easy, simplistic, and surprisingly pervasive belief that Africans are the only architects of their economic conundrum.

The more one tries to dispel the facile notion of a self-destructive continent, the more African leaders reinforce it through their incompetence, corruption, profligacy, and authoritarianism. 

Robot  # 1 | 28.09.2007 14:58

Just when I thought my task of educating Westerners about the compl...Read the full article.

Acting Major Benbella  # 2 | 29.09.2007 00:04

Ebe, A very excellent write-up. Your situation is made all the more cumbersome because you are dealing and interacting with at an informed group. Their assertions or thoughts regarding Africa's underdevelopment is not far removed from mine, or those of other informed evaluators who are not haunted by paranoia. Africa is largely the way it is today because of the mis-rule, incompetence, kleptomania and megalomania of its native born rulers. Even if we argue that the terms of trade as it presently exist is weighted against Africa, one is likely to point to the other truth, like for example, what are the strutures that govern internal trade and polices of African countries? We have in Africa productive examples of leaders who steal elections fair and sqaure, who destroy their opponents or critic's businesses by state fiat, who refuse to abide by rule of law. What Western country or leader is telling the corrupt African leader to do exactly that? The problem we have in Africa is that we have not shown that we are capable of deep reflection. We think we can reinvent the wheel. So everything that other successful countries have done to attain their success we frown upon and think we will come with a better and newer way of doing it. When that fails we advance the view that it is colonial mentality to accept the foreign ideas and methods that work. Instead, we select "new way" that opens the treasury to most predatory gang ever to rule a country. A nation where the Speaker of its House wants a N98 million massager for her office as if she intends to be running a prostitution ring from there in the midst of overwhelming and grinding poverty, to me suggests a country that is on a death march. It reveals a flaw not only of its values but also of its character. Westerners have built their society to the extent that they have because they have made their stands on the values they think matter, are important. No matter how much we blame them and deservedly so, for the sins of slavery, colonialism and exploitation, there is no denying that their societies are not corroded with the sort of corruption and pure malice that has turned ours into ramshackles of disorderliness, deceit, armed robbery and thuggery. We have become countries where its leaders pride themselves on how much abuse they can heap on the people. We have become countries that does not pay its workers salaries on time nor bother to meet its minimum obligations by paying the pensions of persons who retired on its service. These inappropriate values give rise to the misplacement of priorities. Why not build a Millinieum Tower in Abuja and in the process create spigots for enriching themselves through inflated contracts when they do not see the needs of the people as paramount. Who cares what the populace thinks. Didn't Obasanjo kick off his governance of the nation in 1999 with the staging of some Games that required building the stadium in Abuja that you now cite as a hosting ground for missionaries? It is really the silly season for us Africans. While the world marches on to achieve its dream of itself we waste our time playing at children's games whose results are failed societies and countries with a teeming population mired in poverty and ill-health. For defense we blame the West for colonialism (as if it is a permanent condition) for causing our disunity, hoisting bad and corrupt leaders on us and for all sorts of conspiracies . Which begs the question, what stops us from inventing our own conspiracy? Now, I will have to blame you for taking me off from my task tonight. I came just to peep and I stumbled upon your fine essay. Its been a pleasure. Cheers, AMB

DeepThought  # 3 | 29.09.2007 00:55

Ebe , Thank for that reasoned piece. AMB For defense we blame the West for colonialism (as if it is a permanent condition) for causing our disunity, hoisting bad and corrupt leaders on us and for all sorts of conspiracies No we don't While I see no sane person denying our own culpability in this quandry of underdevelopment, still , we should not be afraid to mention the part that colonialisation has played in this situation just because we are scared somebody will throw out the old line about "not taking responsibility" No one can say the answers to Africa's underdevelopment are that easy (just colonialisation), as Ebe explained they are quite nuanced and complicated ones with colonialism being just a part, albeit an important one.

Acting Major Benbella  # 4 | 29.09.2007 01:44

DT, I agree with your perpective. My point is that the effect of colonialism on Africa is not significant enough to become a barrier to Africa's development. Our native rulers have done far more damage to us in the last 50 years to negate colonialism as a significant factor to our lack of success.

Omovudu  # 5 | 29.09.2007 02:00

Ebe, Thanks for a beautiful piece. We seldom see such balanced and thought inspiring write ups on the village square compared to the plentiful insidious vituperations of extant props. On the subject, the "degeneration of Africa" as the earlier two comments conveyed is complex with multiple root causes. I however do not fully suscribe to the exergerrated position historical (and agreed significant) events are placed in the matrix of causes. While we can attribute root leanings of our current dismal position to slavery and colonialism we need to rise above the past and face the future working on the right things. We were not the only ones who received the short of events (excluding slavery). the asians were also colonised and many have since left those events in their past. Colonialism came with benefits and curses and we cannot continue to demonise its occurrence without acknowledging some of its (even if small benefits). We are currently the architects of our own failed destinies and it is entirely up to us to remedy our situation. Africa must take responsibility for its own failures. Mugabe in Zimbabwe is a complete farce and his continued reign is an embarrassing epitome of the mindset of African leaders. Coming closer home, the worst culprits in Nigerias despicable position (inspite of all her endowments - material and intellectual) are the crop of military "imps" who took power between 1983 and 1999. They had the worst impact in decimating all legitimate progress for the country in the period when virtually all other parts of the world were accelerating in development and this is over slavery and colonialism. I personally hold them far responsible for our current fate, not so much for their poor performance - not surprising given their background - but for the fact of thier interruption into our political life. If Shagari had continued his second term in 1983, we would definitely have made more progress even slow rather moving backwards when the world was moving forward. A trip to Asia would reveal the impact of the lost decade of opportunities for Nigeria especially when you see that there was nothing separating us and them in the early 80s (in fact we were better off than many of them). This interregnom, as bad as it was, however is now in the past and we cannot continue to dwell in the past. OBJ second return in an elective democracy brought some progress though he almost derailed in his latter years, because of the arbitrariness of his initially sincere desire to move Nigeria forward. Now we have a "simple" man who says he wants to espouse the virtues of "servant leadership" with commitment to the rule of law. These are stellar goals if he sticks to them becaue they can provide a foundation on which naturally innovative Nigerians can thrive. But would he be able? Would the metaphoric "40 theives" around him not constrain and nullify whatever good goals he has set for himself (sic Aaondoakaa!!). Ebe's story of the millenium tower is a typical example that gives cause for thought on whether it is actaully possible to be a good leader in the current Nigerian context. Our problems are more deeply rooted than the external impact of leadership. As I stated elsewhere when the discussion on OBJ's successor was rife "every society gets the leadership it deserves and Nigeria as currently constituted does not have the natural capability to produce leaders that would bring the change we desire. Our society's fabric, almost irredemable damaged by the crop of misguided militricians of the 80s and 90s (IBB) is in need of overhaul before we can attempt to have hope of nutured progress from our leaders. Our problem lies in our structure and until it is re-aligned to reflect the realities of our national composition would continue to work at odds with any stints of development. A typical case in point is the cross aligned objective and execution of the Okoloka LNG plant vs the Brass LNG plant delays. Society must earn from its citizens the patriotism it requires for its leaders to act responsibly and this is where we have missed it in Nigeria. You could attribute this to the misalignments occasioned by the intrustion of colonialism, but as a philosopher once observed "to dwell in the past is to ignore the present and blight the future". The problem in our continent is with us and not in our stars or in the white man. We must as a people arise and make the changes we require by "being the change we to see" (Ghandi) Welldone again Ebe for stimulating an interesting and thought provoking discourse.

Dr Damages  # 6 | 29.09.2007 02:08

Acting Major Benbella, If our native rulers are by some complex schemes an extension of that colonization, then, we cannot let colonization off the hook. In fact, I recently watched the movie Lumumba and I came to the staggering conclusion that Africa had no chance. Truly, by the very nature of Africa’s nation state formations, they were all designed to fail. And they will continue to fail not because there are not a few reasonable men and women who could move Africa forward, but because world’s socio-political intrigues more than anything else determine who runs these countries and the direction things go in most of the third world. It is hard enough to empower people in such false and artificial nation states, it is harder to get the will of empowered people to supersede the desires of the local and international gangs who determine who should be where and who should do what. Ever asked yourself why is it that those who know how to run African countries are busy driving cabs, cutting hairs, pushing trucks, nursing the sick and the elderly, and writing on the internet? Why is that? Nice one, Ebe. Nice one.

Omovudu  # 7 | 29.09.2007 02:25

Dr Damages, Agree with the majority of your points but this "Ever asked yourself why is it that those who know how to run African countries are busy driving cabs, cutting hairs, pushing trucks, nursing the sick and the elderly, and writing on the internet?" Those who do these things (including all of us currently writing and providing solutions on the internet) do so by choice. We could have made the choice to return home and be part of the force for change if we were willing to give up the comfort of our current emmigrations. In the end it is when the collective will of a people for change reaches a critical mass that the push crosses the tipping point for change - the french revolution is a typical example. Those of us, currently better off owe it to ourselves, and our upcoming generations to make the sacrifices that would bring the change we seek otherwise posterity would not be kind to us as it would not be to the generation before us that spoilt everything (the Soyinka's wasted generation). We can only hope and pray that the abnormal jolt that would create this change, since the normal means to this change may not come through (seeing that you and I are still writing on the internet) would not be violent (though it has historically been the more common alternate route to change). But as we know it is Nigeria and we have the knack of getting through the impossible by means considered unlikely in conventional climes. We can only hope and pray Ogadinnma!! - they say is some parts of our dear nation.

Acting Major Benbella  # 8 | 30.09.2007 13:35

Dr Damages wrote: Re: Explaining Africa and the N53 billion Abuja Millennium Tower Acting Major Benbella, If our native rulers are by some complex schemes an extension of that colonization, then, we cannot let colonization off the hook. In fact, I recently watched the movie Lumumba and I came to the staggering conclusion that Africa had no chance. Truly, by the very nature of Africa’s nation state formations, they were all designed to fail. And they will continue to fail not because there are not a few reasonable men and women who could move Africa forward, but because world’s socio-political intrigues more than anything else determine who runs these countries and the direction things go in most of the third world. It is hard enough to empower people in such false and artificial nation states, it is harder to get the will of empowered people to supersede the desires of the local and international gangs who determine who should be where and who should do what. Ever asked yourself why is it that those who know how to run African countries are busy driving cabs, cutting hairs, pushing trucks, nursing the sick and the elderly, and writing on the internet? Why is that? Nice one, Ebe. Nice one. Dr Damages, How have you been? Thanks for your post. I do not dispute your conclusion, seeing that the merit of your argument speaks for itself. Except that if we follow that line of thought we might as well close off the possibility of Africa or specifically, Nigeria, getting out of whatever disadvantages colonialism has meted to it. Throughout the course of history, nations have gone into other countries not to better the lot of the native populations but to exploit them. The Spanish dug out almost every silver and gold that existed in the Americas. These they all spent in buying silk and spices from the Chinese. The English to extricate some of the Spanish wealth that ended in China where the Chinese guarded them as if they were dragon eggs, got the Chinese addicted to opium. The French were culpable in sponsoring the thirty years (1618-1648) war in Europe as a way to foist the hegemony of the Bourbon Court and to stop the rise of Germania. That war destroyed half the population of the Germanic tribes. There is also no end in telling the stories of what the Japanese did to the Koreans and the Chinese, especially in Manchuria. These horrors and exploitations are a constant in history where the figure that holds sway is Hobbes first man, living in a state of brutishness, poverty and violence. No one disputes the horrors of colonialism, the same way no one disputes that there were also some advantages, no matter how miniscule, that also accompanied it. My contention and where I chose to rest my hat is, is for how long will the alibi of colonialism keep African leaders away from respecting the rules of laws and of ethics? How did the colonialists hoist on us the sort of leaders we have had in Nigeria since the death of Mohammaded in 1976? We may agree that they played a role in Gowon's rise but of Shagari or of Buhari or even of the immeserated one, Obasanjo, it is open to dispute. Both Botswana and South Africa, despite their constraints, seems to be on a hopeful tranjectory than Nigeria. Why did the foreign powers that be not impose on them the kind of of government of vice that "they" imposed on us. My dear Dr. Damages, it is true that countries, either through greed or the sin of invidia will act to affect other countries progress especially the ones they see as potential rivals. That fact is not in dispute. What is disputable is how did they readily find wiling collaborators among your country men and women? Colonialism is not responsible for that. Its source, I contend, is far deeper and more dangerous. Regards, AMB

Son of the Delta  # 9 | 30.09.2007 14:14

If I may ask are they building it to mark Ethopia`s millenium?

Onyeachonam-Okwu  # 10 | 30.09.2007 18:34

Son of the Delta: If I may ask are they building it to mark Ethopia`s millenium? That question is irrelevant. They are building it because, first, they want to develope the North, and second, because they have the pause strings of Nigeria and Niger Delta and the Yorubas have given them political will to do so. When they separated the Ogonis, Ijaws and the rest of Niger Delta citizens from Eastern Nigeria, and turned you against the Igbo, what did you expect? When the christian Eastern State was systematically being destroyed by the Sharia-stan of Northern Nigeria, you took sides with the Islamic North, and turned against the christian Igbo your neighbor. And you are christian too. Perhaps, you had hoped for Ijaw land, Ogoni land and the rest to look like Saudi Arabia or Qatar with massive skyscrapers, and all the acoutriments of Oil kingdom, right? Well, it never happened. And may never happen. Niger Delta may go down in history as the poorest, list developed oil kingdom. We all from the former christian Eastern State, can do one thing, think outside the box, come together and for the first time, work together to take back what is ours.

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