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There is no better time to reflect on independence than now. The countdown has already begun-in a couple of weeks, Nigeria will be fifty. Indeed the end of this decade has seen many other African countries achieve this same feat. The turn of the 1950’s down to 1960 formed the turning point of our continent’s history when African countries began attaining independence one after the other.

In The fate of Africa, Martin Meredith begins by describing how communities existed before colonisation and the scramble for Africa. He describes how the boundaries we see today didn’t exist before colonisation. We see how smaller communities were merged by the colonialists with larger ones for ease of administration, and how others metamorphosed into new communities as a result of such merging instead of managing the millions of tribes and ethnic affiliations and communities that dotted the landscape of Africa. For example, Nigeria had over 250 ethnic groups and in Congo, Belgian officials identified 6,000 chiefdoms on their arrival. Perhaps this partitioning is where the problems began for Africa because over there somewhere in Britain or Belgium the colonialists blindly carved up territories, oftentimes tearing a single community into several like in Somaliland and brought together rival groups, like Bunganda and Bunyoro in Uganda into a single territory without necessarily visiting the place or learning of the cultural and social realities of the place. Muslim communities were also joined with non Muslim ones which they hitherto had no dealings with as was the case in Nigeria and Chad. They used maps, longitudes and latitudes to do the partitioning- the people that were partitioned and divided were not always taken into consideration.

And then the wind of change started blowing. All across the continent, there was unrest; natives wanted to take charge of their affairs. All over Africa, nationalists like Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Habib Bourgiba, and Mohammed V, emerged. The tidal wave of agitation for independence that started sweeping the whole Continent couldn’t be stopped. In Algeria, Kenya and several other places, lives were lost as a result of the agitation for independence.

But it wasn’t long after the hope, anticipation and excitement that despair began to set in. The same leaders that championed self rule and exhibited selflessness and patriotism, the leaders of Africa like Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor and Jomo Kenyatta became corrupt and disregarded the very principles of democracy they had earlier wholeheartedly sworn to uphold. They amended constitutions to suit their whims and caprices not necessarily for the good of their countries and in several instances insisted on a one party rule to stamp out opposition. A nouveau rich political class which mainly consisted of Government officials emerged. The gap between the rich and poor kept widening. Africa became the melting pot of bad and corrupt leaders. Prominent among them were Mobutu Sese Seko, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Idi Amin, and Kenneth Kaunda. Most times, they perpetrated their acts while enjoying the patronage and friendship of the West.
African leaders became known for amassing and acquiring state owned resources for personal use. Patriotism gave way to nepotism, hard work and determination gave way to bribery and corruption. Potential gave way to despair, hunger and desperation. Military take-overs and sit-tight leaders Like Robert Mugabe, Hosni Mubarak, Moammar Gaddafi, Omar Bongo, Leopold Senghor and Gnassingbe Eyadima came to define leadership in Africa. When dictators were pressured to ditch dictatorship for democracy, they merely exchanged their Military uniforms for civilian robes.

Even though the continent is laden with God given assets like mineral resources and human capital, it wasn’t long before many African States sought loans (Senegal was the first Country in Africa to go for the loan in 1979) from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. World Bank’s Structural adjustment and foreign aid became the new order in Africa and the leaders still used the loan to further enrich themselves which only contributed in making a bad situation worse. By the end of the 1980’s, external debt had reached $ 160 billion (a sum in excess of gross national product).Debt service accounted for 25 per cent of exports of goods and services. Crude oil became a curse on the continent because even though a country like Nigeria boasts of 35 billion barrels of oil reserves and another 5 billion is already being explored (U.S imports, mostly oil, amounted to almost $28 billion in 2006 alone), 70 percent of Nigerians live below a dollar a day.

The scourge of HIV/Aids has proved to be a burden difficult for a struggling continent to bear. Botswana has the highest infection rate in the world. Within the age group of 15-49, infection rate is 40 percent and this year, life expectancy fell to 27 years.

The Rwanda genocide also remains a blight in our continent’s history. Within a hundred days, close to a million Tutsis (some claim the number is closer to 2 million) perished. The total lawlessness and anarchy wreaked on Somalia by rival factions left the country without a government for more than a decade and extreme hunger and poverty compounded the problem. Darfur crises still remains a stain on the conscience of the whole world. UN officials described it as ‘the worst humanitarian crisis in the world’. All across Africa, rebel groups have been killing, maiming and wreaking havoc on their communities.

The struggle against apartheid is also another drawback Africa faced. It was only in 1994 that blacks in South Africa became equal with the white population and the system of segregation that existed, a system that so many blacks lost their lives to. After, the fall of apartheid, black people came out for the first time to vote in South Africa.

Due to appalling conditions in Africa, millions of professionals have departed the shores of the Continent in search of greener pastures in America and Europe. This has left Africa without the much needed doctors, nurses, pharmacists, teachers and other professionals a young continent like ours desperately needs for proper development to take place.

The verdict, according to Martin Meredith, after 50 years is due to the above drawbacks and others not listed here experienced by our continent, for Africa to harness her potential, a lot has to be done. The stepping stone is political reform and every other thing will fall into place. Out of all the leaders that emerged from Africa, the only true heroes of Africa are Nelson Mandela, Rawlings and Julius Nyerere. Julius Nyerere, who though didn’t achieve much economically for Tanzania, was well intentioned and was not corrupt. Nelson Mandela, whom he had written a biography of, he described as the world’s last hero.

This summation about African leaders may very well have been rather harsh because just in Nigeria, a place whose political history this writer is very familiar with, the account of the events of post independence, the account concerning some first generation politicians, the founding fathers of the Country was misleading. The corruption they were said to have been involved in and their lack of achievements did not give a fair account of their stewardship to our Country. The cynical and contemptuous stance adopted when mentioning these leaders cast a shadow on the entire book because they were the greatest men Nigeria ever produced.

At twenty one, martin Meredith embarked on a journey from Cairo through to central Africa and ever since, he didn’t stop writing about Africa. He was a reporter for The Times of Zambia when the mood was potent with the wind of independence. He continued as a foreign correspondent based in Africa for fifteen years and in this time so much has changed from the winds of independence to war, hunger and despair. He has written extensively about Africa, with South Africa taking the lion share of his writing.

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