Africa's woes started with wrong policy choice

From The Online New Vision Ugandan newspaper : Monday, 4th December, 2006



By Peter Mulira

WHEN Ghana became the first African country to be independent, everybody including the very young ones like myself was gripped with excitement. Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s leader became an African icon everywhere.

Our own independence came on October 9, 1962 but by the end of 1965 it was clear that our new state was headed for catastrophe which eventually started to unravel in February 1966 when five ministers were detained without trial. This shock was followed three months later by the battle of Mengo.

After Mengo, the country was put on a new course of constitutional order which ultimately led to the one-party state as was fashionable throughout Africa at the time. The history of one-party states on the continent is one of failure and retrogression and the reasons for this are not difficult to find.

Early into our independence enterprise a French agronomist wrote a book he aptly entitled False start in Africa in which he pointed out mistakes which were being committed in the new states but went uncorrected. and as the wise saying goes, the more you build on a weak foundation, the greater will be the ruin.

Africa’s problems can be attributed in the first place to wrong policies we followed right from the start. For example, while Singapore which was at the same economic status as us was positioning herself to be the epicentre of the service industry in her region, Uganda was busy nationalising 54 insurance companies and replacing them with one monolith which over the years sank under its own weight.

A vibrant insurance industry is always one of the barometers of a growing economy and accordingly when this industry died in Uganda the economy also succumbed. Nationalisation of other once prosperous industries continued to ruin our economy and retard growth.

With wrong economic policies went conflictual social agendas in which our nationalities which should have been the bedrock of our new states were seen as enemies of the state and as such the state machinery set out to erase them out of existence in an attempt to mould all of us into one.

The struggle between the state and its perceived enemies further debilitated our development efforts. While Africa was fighting her peoples’ cultures and diversity, other states in the developed world which had pursued similar policies in their history were changing course in the face of new evidence that people develop better within their natural cultural melieu.

Canada is today a nation of nationalities as a result of the Multiculturalism Act of 1988 which replaced the previous policy of assimilation by acceptance of peoples’ diversity and the United States long ago discarded its melting pot policies in favour of what is known as the mixed salad approach in which cultural diversity is encouraged.

In the United Kingdom after years of bitter contention parliament gave in to Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism by creating autonomous regions with their own governments and the country is the better off for these regions are now developing faster than before. When our Vice President visited Italy some years ago he came back overly excited about the achievements of regionalism in that country.

The fear of diversity is today a misplaced condition and it is only in Africa that the debate about it is continuing as evidence is gathering that aversion to change is harmful to our economies. Leading authorities on issues of poverty and development, Jeffrey D. Sachs and others, have established principles which show that (a) all regions of the world were poor in 1820 (b) all regions including Africa experienced economic progress (c) today’s rich regions experienced by far the greatest economic progress. Between 1820 and 1998 the per capita gross national product of the United States grew at an annual rate of 1.7 per cent per year with per capita income rising from $1,200 per person to $30,000 by 1998.

This means that over a period of 180 years the standard of living in the United States increased twenty-five hold. On the other hand in the same period, African economies grew at an average of 0.7 per cent per year with incomes increasing from $400 per year per person to $1,200 only a threefold increase in 180 years!

The difference of just 1 per cent between the American growth of 1.7 per cent and our 0.7 per cent may look small but accumulated over a period of 180 years it accounts for the difference in the high standard of living enjoyed in America and our poor condition in Africa.

Instead of learning from the American experience, African leaders in the 1960s introduced their own personal ideologies for economic development such as Nkrumah’s “conscienciousm”, Nyerere’s “ujamaa”, Kaunda’s “humanism”, Obote’s “commonman’s charter” and Kenya’s short-lived session paper No.5 all of which reaped a whirlwind.

Further modern studies have demonstrated that only liberal democracies such as the United States have managed to develop consistently over a long period of time. The one-party state we established in Africa is an illiberal system since by its very nature it excludes those who do not support the party from the national fold and persecutes them.

Our history is replete with human rights abuses, the absence of the rule of law and serious issues about governance. All these have contributed to our economic retardation.

Lastly, the primary function of a state is to provide a mechanism for balancing the exercise of our god-given individual rights by setting minimum standards for our behaviour. In doing this, the state has to impart the idea of justice but when the ruling party is identified with the state itself, the idea of justice is impaired in the eyes of those who do not support the party in power.

The result is that social conflicts are then resolved by other means. It is instructive to note that although Africa has more armed conflicts than any other place on earth cross-border wars are almost unknown. We fight for space within our own borders.

Colonialism ended 50 years ago and in any case countries like Singapore and Malaysia which are now developing fast were also colonies at one time. Both tribalism and religious chauvinism are acquired negative traits in our minds which, like crime and corruption, belong to the realm of ordinary law for correction and have nothing to do with the organisation of a good state and besides all successful states have similar traits.

It is therefore high time we realised that Africa’s problems sprang from wrong policy choice, state desecration of nationalities and people’s cultures which are their natural habitat for social development, harmful ideologies and the erosion of the idea of justice for all. It is in these areas that we need to put a lot of corrective effort.