French President Nicholas Sarkozy addressed
"Africa's Young" in a speech at the University of Cheik
Anta Diop in
Dakar, Senegal, on July 26, 2007. Africans widely and roundly criticized the speech,
little noted by the U.S. media, as racist and condescending.
Mr. Sarkozy offered up the "accepted" litany of difficulties
confronting his "wounded continent" of Africa "wars,
genocides, dictators and corruption. He asserted that it was not the slave
trade and/or European colonialism that gave rise to these problems, but rather,
he opined, "that the African has not fully entered into history,"
preferring to hold on to some "mythical past" rather than launch
"himself towards the future."
It would appear Mr. Sarkozy chooses to end African "history," not
like Francis Fukuyama in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but rather at
African independence. He seems to argue that Africans missed this early
universalization of Western liberal democracy and opted to pursue instead a
return to a "golden age "of Africa that
"never existed." Africans, he implies, chose Hobbes' "First
Man" (solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish) over Fukuyama's
"Last Man" (free, universal, just, and reasoning).
Mr. Sarkozy is curiously silent on the effects of post-independence African
interaction over 50 years with the international system, including the former
colonial powers. It is more in that interaction, I would argue, that we
discover the genesis of the problems that Africa faces
today. We, African leaders, must make an honest appraisal of this recent past,
acknowledge its darkness and accept and/or assign responsibility for decisions
made and/or avoided. Only then can we shine a harsh, but cleansing light on the
continent's current state of affairs, permitting us to undertake necessary
corrective action.
We must recognize that African states emerged from the colonial era with
nascent political, economic and social institutions, an immediate and direct
consequence of the colonial experience. The Cold War sent those institutions
into stasis until 1989. The leaders of neither "West" nor
"East" concerned themselves with the authoritarianism, corruption,
stagnation or abuse that arose across Africa. With the
fall of the Berlin Wall, however, Africans were asked to demonstrate immediately
democracy, free markets and tolerant, open civil societies. African states were
expected to emerge like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, full-grown and clad
in armour "an improbable, if not impossible prospect.
Moreover, many of the challenges of the post-Cold War era African leaders
are asked to address were not foreseen in the immediate post-colonial period.
You need only consider the many and varied consequences of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic, climate change and the globalization of trade and finance. Africa's
national institutions were not, and are still not, as yet sufficiently broad,
deep or flexible enough to deal effectively with this range of varied and
complex issues in a systematic and timely manner.
But addressing these concerns is not simply a question of capacity building.
While it is true that African leaders can affect change through coherent
national institutions that bridge the gap between the state and society,
providing necessary services to the people, this assumes the leader has this as
an objective. All too often, African leaders, faced with the choice of building
an integrated national political process and permitting it to mature or
retaining personal control, have chosen control, submerging collective goals
for the sake of personal advantage and interest.
Weak institutions are not in a position to constrain such a leader's
ambitions and are more susceptible to facile manipulation. Many African leaders
have been all too ready to resort to "neo-patrimonialism," using the
institutions of the state to deliver personal favours. Rather than imbuing
society with idealism and a sense of possibility and responsibility, some
African leaders fostered self-serving sycophancy focused on posturing, personalities
and egos without regard or concern for the nation. It is all too easy to
understand why many African leaders have not seen Cincinnatus as a role model,
but rather sought to cling to the perquisites and trappings of power.
Africa's greatest problem is failed leadership, in a
moral not technical sense. No matter how many finely crafted International
Monetary Fund/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development adjustment
programs are put in place or how much development assistance donors pledge or
how often "free and fair" elections are held, if this continent's
leaders are not prepared to serve the needs of its people, Africa will remain
Mr. Sarkozy's "wounded continent," unable to affect an exodus from
its plagues.
Faure Gnassingbe is president of the Republic
of Togo. This article was first published in the American Washington Times.
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