Whether African independence era leadership
is a total failure depends on what yardstick is applied. A widely acceptable yardstick
asks what such leaders aspired for at independence. Colonialism focused on effective
expropriation, investing minimally only in functional Africans for expropriation,
while ignoring the general human condition. Consequently, African nationalists’
1950s campaigns for self-determination promised to eradicate poverty, ignorance
and disease (PID). Interestingly, UNDP’s
1990 Human Development Index (HDI) focused on the same three areas.
Into independence, some leaders
fought the PID scourges; but others fanned their flames. Some pursued ‘socialism’
and failed to the delight of the West; others pursued ‘capitalism’ and failed,
despite support from the West. The intellectual and visionary socialist Nkrumah
failed for being… well, too intellectual and visionary at a time the soldiers
wanted a ‘pragmatist’... The similarly intellectual but pragmatic Nyerere failed
for trying to build socialism without socialists.
Conversely, vacuous Mobutu – with CIA
– killed socialist Lumumba to perpetuate the imperial hegemony of Congolese
mineral wealth, thereby stagnating African welfare. In Kenya, alleged Mau Mau fighter Kenyatta greatly admired
the expansiveness of settler agriculture, became both a neo-settler and neo-Governor,
turning his back on the Mau au and ordinary
Kenyans. Both primitive accumulators to the hilt, Mobutu and Kenyatta defended,
and were defended by western capitalist interests, never threatened by the sea
of military coups surrounding them.
Africa has had coups by the hundreds,
many fueled by youthful misadventure. Other coups had substantive grievances, and
transformed countries. At the time of Gaddafi’s 2011 assassination, Libya’s HDI
stood at 0.773 – 5th highest in Africa, despite US-led embargoes
against Libyan oil; but has dropped to 0.724 in 2021. Meanwhile, wealthy Congo
DRC’s HDI has risen from 0.369 in 1990 to 0.480 in 2019.
So the yardstick is important for
gauging African failure or successes. Many failed for being non-starters; others
for environmental reasons: Nyerere’s Tanzania paid a heavy price for the independences
of Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Others still failed because of their ‘stomachs’.
But the continent has myriad success stories over poverty, ignorance and
disease: after all, the continental HDI average has risen from 0.42 in 2000 to
0.55 in 2019.