Do African leaders love Africa?

“What exactly did we do to deserve these people?” my Nigerian friend asked on the telephone very early this morning, as though there was a lump in her throat. In fact, she was almost choking with tears. "Who are those," I hastily responded, fearing that something terrible might have happened to either her or some other member(s) of her family. She retorted, “Those who call themselves leaders on the African continent,” laughing out loud this time around. Relieved of my earlier apprehension, we both laughed for about a minute before turning on our usual dirge about what we call “the African condition.”

A question that refuses to go away is this: Why is a whole continent “cursed” with such terrible leadership?

Certainly, our forebears could not have survived in the harsher conditions of their world,if those who led them through the desert down south had been this cruel to their own subjects.

One of the best definitions of “leadership” I have ever come across was given by Daphne Mallory of Mallory Companyin the United States of America. According to Mallory, “Leadership is the art of serving others by equipping them with training, tools, and people as well as your time, energy and emotional intelligence so they can realise their full potential, both personally and professionally.”

Unfortunately, nearly every single one of the people that have led the countries of Africa, whether elected or self-imposed over the past fifty-eight years of Black Africa’s independence, has come with personal agenda. This has been devoid of a concrete urge or practical desire to serve the people over whom they ruled. Indeed, the pattern has been to enrich themselves and members of their families, and then pass on the mantle of leadership to other family members, emulating the Cuban style or the North Korean “father to offspring” prototype. Sadly, veritable service to the people has been a missing part of the equation, as exemplified by the lengths that African leaders go to protect themselves and governments with security and capricious laws.

Harnessing of resources The one area in which African leaders have perpetrated near criminal cruelty on the mass of the people of the continent has been the utilisation of the natural resources, aid and loans that have flowed into the continent over the past sixty years. Under the Marshall Plan which the Americans harnessed to lift Europe out of the devastation of the Second World War, the countries of Europe received about $500 per person.

During the years of the plan the recipient nations experienced economic growths of between 15% - 25%. Industry was quickly revamped and agricultural production sometimes exceeded pre-war levels. This boom helped push communist groups out of power and created an economic divide between the rich west and poor east as clear as the political one. The plan also alleviated the shortage of foreign currency that was created in the war years, allowing for more imports, thus contributing to more prosperity.

According to official United Nations figures, over the past 60 years, at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa; that is about $3000 per child and adult on the continent. Yet real per capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled over the past thirty years. More children of school-going age are out of the classroom than ever before; the cases of Kwashiorkor or malnourishment are increasing at an alarming rate; more children die before their fifth birthday than ever before; youth unemployment is worse on the continent than any other place on earth. In fact, the negative statistics are endless.

Against the ebonised background of such grim statistics, the rich enclaves of the continent are getting richer and richer. The interminable chasm separating the rich— mostly the political class—and ordinary people continues to widen and deepen. Strangely and worryingly, it appears the images of half–clad children with distended stomachs and dripping noses do not seem to bother our leaders, one jot.

In the days of the Haile Selassies, Mobutus and Bokassas, African leaders shipped national exports' earnings, aid money, loans and all, in trunk boxes and suitcases into unnumbered Swiss Bank accounts. Perhaps, in the twenty-first century they are a little more refined, using family members and friends who link up with penniless “foreign investors” to use stolen state funds to purchase industrial and other commercial state assets they themselves would have run down in the first place. And the sickening irony here is that most of these so-called leaders call themselves devout Christians or Muslims!

The Ghanaian example The case of Ghana’s resource management over the past seven years would have been a great script for a concert party show, were it not so tragic. What little that is let out into the open shows that the country was placed in the right frame for the economic development take off that has eluded it for the nearly sixty years of its political independence.

By the end of 2008, Ghana was considered to be a middle income country.

ii) Through the hard work of its technical experts, itwas producing oil in commercial quantities for the first time by the middle of 2010.

iii) The country was one of the fastest growing economies in the World in 2011, with an estimated GDP growth of over 15%.

iv) Tax collection jumped from a miserly $5bn during the period 2001-2008, to a mouth-watering $20bn, a 400% increase between 2009 and 2014!

v) The massive increase in the price of gold meant another $25bn ingold exports over the period 2009-2014 compared with $9bn over the 2001-2008period.

vi) Ghana’s traditional mainstay cocoa, would not be left out, bringing in a handsome $14.5bn over the period 2009-2014, compared with the $7.4bn over the period 2001-2008.

However,by the time the new government was finally sworn in, in August 2012, the country was broke, even by the president’s own account. And the reason is not far-fetched: plain thievery on the part of state officials and corruption in every facet of society. Nonetheless, those who dipped their itchy fingersin state coffers are walking the streets of Accra and other places with impunity. Do they trifle care?

The heartrending part of the Ghanaian tragedy is that after literally cleaning the state coffers with nothing to show for by way of infrastructural development, the government has gone cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund, for a bail-out loan of $918m! How wicked can any group of people be to people they claim to lead? Is it then surprising others call Africa a basket case, with such prevailing levels of callousness being perpetrated on the populace?

As a result of this state of utter hopelessness being replicated in nearly every country on the continent, able bodied young men and women are now adopting desperate measures to better their lot. There are also harrowing stories of whole families from various parts of West Africatrekking through the unbelievably harsh conditions of the Sahara Desert, with the hope of reaching Libya and eventually, Italy. The recent catastropheson the coast of Italy tell it all.

Suggested solutions Answering a question at New York University a little while ago, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron said,"I think there is a huge agenda here where we stop speaking simply about the quantity of aid, important as it is, and start talking about what I call the ‘golden thread.’" This, he explained, as his idea that, "You only get real long-term development through aid if there is also a golden thread of stable government, lack of corruption, human rights, the rule of law, transparent information."

AsDaron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (authors of Why Nations Fail), writing in the Spectator highlight as part of their commentary on the Prime Minister's address:"Promoting his [David Cameron's] golden thread means using not just aid but diplomatic relations to encourage reform in the many parts of the world that remain in the grip of extractive institutions. It means using financial and diplomatic clout... to help create room for inclusive institutions to grow.This may be a hard task—far harder than writing a cheque. But it is the surest way to make poverty history."

Naturally, the Prime Minister of Great Britain has to be diplomatic. Nevertheless, I believe the situation is so drastic it requires equally drastic solutions:

i) An aggressive naming and shaming of corrupt African heads of state.

ii) Open support of non-governmental institutions, student and other identifiable groups to educate the largely illiterate populations of Africa about the importance of their votes at national elections so they begin to reject inducements at election time in order to throw out corrupt and callous leaders at national elections.

iii) End voting along ethnic and religious lines, to show thedispleasure of African voters at bad governance on the continent.

It is worth highlighting thatNigeria has shown the way. Will others follow? Any African president (that is what most of them are) who fails to improve upon the lives of his or her people in their first term in office must be thrown out at the next election.If we could make one-term presidents of these failing leaders in the next twenty years, perhaps, African leaders will begin to take their people much more seriously than they have done in the past.This realisable practice may very well beat a shiny track out of the morass of bad leadership and governance in which we seem to be everlastingly stuck.

On that I shall return with my beaded gourd soon; it’s a crystal promise.

NaanaEkuaEyaaba has an overarching interest in the development of the African continent and Black issues in general. Having travelled extensively through Africa, the Black communities of the East Coast of the United States as well as London and Leeds (United Kingdom), she enjoys reading, and writes when she is irritated, and edits when she is calm. You can email her atnaanaekuaeyaaba@gmail.com, or read her blog at https://naanaekuaeyaaba.wordpress.com/.