1. Africa Liberation Day: Where is Our Independence? Part 1
Madi Jobarteh
Introduction
Today is 25 May 2016 exactly 53 years since the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU) was
founded for the purpose of kicking out colonialism out of Africa so that the continent can
become politically independent in order to create economic prosperity for its people. In his
speech at the founding summit of the OAU in the Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that
great African patriot Kwame Nkrumah reminded his colleagues that the fight for independence
was not just for them to replace the colonialists and carry titles as the leaders of their people, but
that political independence and the eventual unity of Africa was merely an instrument, a strategy
to lead to, and attain economic independence.
“Unless we can establish great industrial complexes in Africa – which we can
only do in united Africa – we must have our peasantry to the mercy of foreign cash crop markets,
and face the same unrest which overthrew the colonialists? What use to the farmer is education
and mechanisation, what use is even capital for development; unless we can ensure for him a
fair price and ready market? What has the peasant, worker and farmer gained from political
independence, unless we can ensure for him a fair return for his labour and a higher standard of
living? Unless we can establish great industrial complexes in Africa, what have the urban
worker, and all those peasants on overcrowded land gained from political independence? If they
are to remain unemployed or in unskilled occupation, what will avail them the better facilities
for education, technical training, energy and ambition which independence enables us to
provide?”
These are some of the highly rhetorical yet strategic questions Nkrumah posed to his colleagues
53 years ago in his opening statement. Today, none of our countries are industrialised. Today, as
it was during slavery and colonialism, Africans continue to be producers and suppliers of raw
materials and consumers of finished products from the West and around the world. Today,
Africa’s farmers remain at the mercy of so-called world markets and currents that determine the
price of their produce without regard to the cost of their inputs. What has independence brought
to Africa 53 years later?
In this three-part series I will first dwell extensively on the situational analysis, and in Part 2 on
the diagnosis and finally the prognosis in Part 3. Here is Part I on the state of affairs in Africa.
Africa Rising
Many of Africa’s so-called experts (intellectuals and politicians) and Western controlled
international organizations such as the IMF, World Bank and the UN and multinational
companies and mainstream media have arrogated to themselves the position of spokespersons for
the continent. They claim that this is Africa’s century. They claim that Africa is rising. Yet they
do not show any indication of powerful African armies. They do not show any territories that
Africa has conquered. They do not show African dominance in any aspect of the global
economy. They do not show any dominance by Africa in any global trend in technology, ideas,
and culture. They do not show any indication that African voice and participation is prominent in
the centre of any global decision making and policy centres and processes. While they are quick

2. to point out that Africa has the largest number of mobile users as well as having 10 of the fastest
growing economies in the world, yet Africa has no indigenous mobile phone manufacturers,
while the continent has the largest number of countries with least human development in the
world.
These so-called ‘Afro-Optimists’ lull us with figures to show rising economic growth rates and
falling mortality rates, and claim that Africa is not one country and therefore one brush cannot be
used to paint it. But these experts just wish to forget that in actual fact each and every African
country is essentially at the same level with any one of them. You just need to step out of their
capitals to realise the squalor in which communities live. Even in their capitals, the same young
men and women and children as well as old women you see selling everything from oranges to
cigarettes on a plate on the streets of Banjul are the same you will find on the streets of Nairobi
or Abuja or Kinshasa. They all share the same deep and widespread inequality and urban
poverty. Where are we rising?
The Reality. The Truth.
Corruption and Poverty
In its 2014 report, ‘Regional Integration: Uniting to Compete’ the Mo Ibrahim Foundation noted
that trucks have to negotiate 47 roadblocks between Kigali and Mombasa. The report which
highlights the incredible opportunities available to the continent yet being missed for various
reasons, states that the total intra-African trade amounts to only 11.3% of Africa’s total trade
with the world. In fact Africa’s share of global trade is only 3%, i.e. equal to that of tiny
Belgium. The report went further to state that non-African airlines account for 80% of the intra-
continental market share, while the average cost of exporting a container overseas from Africa is
twice as high than if exporting from Asia.
In the human development arena, various reports have recorded the dire social and economic
indicators in the continent where basic social services are not only expensive and erratic but also
not available to all, 53 years after independence. Half of Africa’s population have no electricity
(in spite of the huge amount of solar energy and water power), while the majority of its
population cannot read and write. The incidence of health mortality and morbidity are so high
that 3000 children under the age of five die each day from malaria and nine other preventable
diseases including diarrhea, whooping cough and measles. Consequently, while worldwide
absolute poverty has fallen to 20%, still today over 40% of people living in sub-Saharan Africa
live in absolute poverty. The annual world acclaimed Human Development Report of the UNDP
has shown consistently that African countries have been traditionally the majority occupants in
the Low Human Development category since the series began in 1990.
In its 2015 report on global corruption, Transparency International reports that in Angola
alone 70% of the population live on US$2 a day or less. One in six children die before the age of
five – making it the deadliest place in the world to be a child, with more than 150,000 children
dying each year. In fact the president’s daughter Isabel dos Santos is said to be Africa’s youngest
billionaire, worth US$3.4 billion from the national diamond and telecommunications business.
Again, since the Corruption Perception Index publications began many years ago, African
countries have fared largely in the ‘Highly Corrupt Society’ category. Typically only a few

3. countries will be considered ‘clean’ with Botswana usually leading the pack to be followed by
the usual suspects: Cape Verde and Seychelles.
Natural Resource Management and Capital Flight
This brings in the issue of extractive industries, the natural and mineral resources of Africa.
According to Kofi Annan, in a foreword to the 2014 report, ‘Grain, Fish and Money: Financing
Africa’s Green and Blue Revolutions’ published by the Africa Progress Panel which he chairs,
“For much of the region’s history, Africa’s resource wealth has been plundered and
squandered. It has served the interests of the few, not the many. Revenues that could have been
used to improve lives have instead been used to build personal fortunes, finance civil wars, and
support corrupt and unaccountable political elites.”
This stark reality is better captured in the 2010 report, ‘Capital Flight from Sub-Saharan African
Countries: Updated Estimates from 1970 – 2010’ published by the University of Massachusetts,
which showed that 33 of these Sub-Saharan African countries lost a total of $814 billion from
1970 to 2010. Out of these, the oil-rich countries, i.e. Nigeria, Angola, Congo and Chad account
for 72% of the total capital flight from the sub-region amounting to $591 billion. The report
concluded that capital flight from Africa is a chronic problem that is still accelerating. To
buttress that point, Global Financial Integrity conducted a study on the subject and the report,
‘Illicit Financial Flows from Africa: Hidden Resources for Development’, states that the
continent lost $525.9 billion between 2003 and 2011. The report notes that during the same 10-
year period, Africa in fact received almost more or less the same amount of aid ($348 billion)
and foreign direct investment ($248.1 billion) combined.
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are monies that are illegally earned, transferred or utilized. These
funds typically originate from three sources:
1. Commercial tax evasion, trade misinvoicing and abusive transfer pricing;
2. Criminal activities, including the drug trade, human trafficking, illegal arms dealing, and
smuggling of contraband; and
3. Bribery and theft by corrupt government officials.
The issue of IFFs has become such an urgent issue for Africa in particular that in 2012 the AU
and the UN Economic Commission for Africa established a high level panel chaired by Thabo
Mbeki to look into the issue as to the causes, nature, and extent of the problem, and how to tackle
it. In his foreword to the 126-page report, ‘Track it! Stop it! Get it!’ of the panel, Mbeki
explained that illicit financial flows must be,
“…understood within the context of large corporations having the means to retain the
best available professional legal, accountancy, banking and other expertise to help them
perpetuate their aggressive and illegal activities. Similarly, organized criminal organizations,
especially international drug dealers, have the funds to corrupt many players, including and
especially in governments, and even to “capture” weak states.”
This assertion by Mbeki casts a déjà vu on the Panama Papers in showing the sophistication of
corruption and tax evasion using highly technical, legal and accounting systems and institutions.
Both the Mbeki report and the Global Financial Integrity study showed that Africa loses between

4. $50 and $60 billion annually. Quite interestingly, NEPAD had said in 2001 that African needs
$64 billion annually to spur its economy, while the NGO, Transparency, Accountability and
Participation Network says Africa needs $66 billion a year in order to eradicate extreme poverty.
These sad facts clearly demonstrate that Africa indeed has the capacity to make itself one of the
most advanced countries in the world without having to rely on anyone outside but itself.
But to further highlight the nature of capital flight and its relation to the plunder of Africa’s
natural resources in better understanding their extent especially on poor governance, weak
leadership and low human development in the continent, one needs to look at one particular case,
i.e. the Niger Delta and Shell in Nigeria. The Royal Dutch Shell company has been exploring oil
in Niger Delta region since 1958. While failing to bring development to communities from under
whose beds the oil comes, in 2011, UN Environment Program says 1,000 square kilometers of
Ogoniland has been contaminated by the company. It says the clean-up will take 25 – 30 years,
costing $1 billion. Instead of owning up to this mess and clean immediately, and the Nigerian
government stand with its people to hold Shell to account, instead the company, according to the
Nigerian NGO, Centre for Constitutional Justice,
“From 1990-1995, Nigerian soldiers, at Shell’s request and with Shell’s assistance and
financing, used deadly force and conducted massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni people living
in the Niger Delta to repress a growing movement in protest of Shell.”
The NGO said between 2007 and 2009, Shell spent at least $1 billion on security (same amount
needed to clean up Ogoniland), and almost 40% of this, some $383 million, was spent in Nigeria.
Several lawsuits were directed at the company in both Nigeria and in the Netherlands, the home
country without much success. But all can vividly recall how on November 10, 1995, nine Ogoni
leaders (the “Ogoni Nine”) were executed by the Nigerian government under the abominable
tyrant Sani Abacha after being falsely accused of murder and tried by a specially created military
tribunal. Among those executed was an internationally acclaimed environmental and human
rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Weak Leadership and bad Governance
The above shameless situation reflects one incontestable fact, and that is, poor leadership is the
bane of the continent. There is no other explanation as to why this most endowed continent
remains the wretched of the earth other than the fact that the region is laden with leaders who
have no interest in their own people other than to entrench their individual selves in power at any
cost, indefinitely. Consequently Africans suffer from a cancer of corruption and bad governance
that can produce only such stark reality. According to Freedom House in its ‘Freedom in the
World’ 2016 report, regional rankings in terms of freedom enjoyed by peoples of the world
stands thus:
 Europe: 86% Free
 Americas: 69% Free
 Asia-Pacific: 38% Free
 Sub-Sahara Africa: 12%
 Middle East and North Africa: 5% Free

5. According to the 2015 Ibrahim Index for African Governance (IIAG), overall governance
progress in Africa has stalled since 2011. Given this state of affairs, is it any wonder Africa is
notorious for human rights violations and conflicts? The cause of this governance malaise lies
squarely at the feet of the leadership which has largely remained alienated from the masses of the
continent. All across the continent, one can see a general trend in the strict centralization and
personalization of state power by these leaders, while state institutions and officials remain
weak, inefficient, and lacking in transparency and accountability thereby giving rise to
corruption, human rights violations, conflict, and impunity. These excruciating conditions have
caused a high incidence of a myriad of ailments, among which are unemployment, limited
opportunities, high taxation, poor service delivery and poverty. Consequently the able-bodied
youth and intellectuals have no choice but to resort to migration thus giving rise to the brain
drain phenomenon which further disempowers Africa. On the other hand, these difficult
conditions also generate a fertile ground for terrorism, coups and civil conflicts thus effectively
making most, if not all nation-states in Africa completely fragile.
Conflict and Destitution
Thus 53 years down the line, Africa has produced the highest number of armed confrontations in
the world costing at least $15 billion annually. Several studies indicated that between 1990 to
2005 alone, 23 African nations have been involved in armed conflict, costing the continent
almost US$300 billion. Has the situation changed since then? Hardly. Even when the UN is
hosting a World Humanitarian Summit in Turkey (23-24 May 2016) instigated mainly because
Europe faces a direct and present threat of refugees from Syria and Iraq, the world continues to
downplay the reality of refugees, illegal migration and internally displaced persons in Africa,
which has the largest number of such persons in distress. According to the Internal
Displacement Monitoring Centre of the Norwegian government, there is cumulatively 11.3
million internally displaced Sub-Saharan Africans while Middle East and North Africa combined
has 11.9 million IDPs. In fact in its 2016 report, ‘Global Report on Internal Displacement’, the
Centre says,
“Meanwhile, at close to 12 million, the number of IDPs in sub-Saharan Africa has more
or less flatlined over the last decade, underlining the chronic nature of displacement in the
region. Failure to address the causes of protracted displacement is one of the main factors
behind the ever increasing number of IDPs worldwide, and the stubbornly high figures for
Africa.”
Culture of Human Rights Violations
In celebrating 50 years of the founding of the OAU/AU in 2013, the continental body unveiled
its Agenda 2063 as the roadmap to transform this continent into a habitable place, for want of a
better description. Yet the leaders who envisioned this dream, remain recalcitrant in allowing
their citizens to enjoy freedom. Until now, only 29 African countries have ratified the protocol
establishing the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. And only seven of these countries
have accepted that their citizens can sue their governments to the court. At the same time, these
African leaders (excepting Botswana) have all ganged up against the International Criminal
Court which is seeking to bring to justice those leaders in Africa who have committed crimes
against their own people. Furthermore, even though African states have all accepted the African

6. Charter on Human and People’s Rights and recognize the African Commission which monitors
the charter, yet individual states and leaders continue to disregard the recommendations of the
commission with impunity. Without shame or conscience, African leaders finally demonstrated
their utter contempt for accountability when in 2014 they met in Malabo, Equitorial Guinea, a
country reeling under one of the most stinking despots the modern world has ever seen, decided
to amend the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights to give
themselves immunity from prosecution in Article 46A: Immunities,
“No charges shall be commenced or continued before the Court against any serving AU
Head of State or Government, or anybody acting or entitled to act in such capacity, or other
senior state officials based on their functions, during their tenure of office.”
What is this other than to justify and defend the violations of the rights and freedoms of African
citizens by their own elected leaders with impunity! How can Africa achieve the objectives of
Agenda 2063 when its leaders refuse to be held to account? How can we have leaders in the
continent who refuse to step down by any means even when they have absolutely no idea as to
how to move their people forward in freedom and dignity?
As if the insult is not enough, African leaders continue to conveniently flout the decisions of sub-
regional human rights courts and the various protocols and conventions in their regional blocs
that they have all signed up to. Until today, West Africans cannot still enjoy unfettered free
movement of goods and people within the region as each and every country mount huge customs
and immigration border checkpoints that are notorious for extorting the meager resources of their
populations crossing their borders thus stifling private enterprise and dissipating the potential
that small scale enterprises could have generated on the sub-region. The height of ridicule is
when inside the Africa Union, in many cases citizens have to obtain visas to visit each other’s
countries including Ethiopia which hosts the AU and by any standard the capital of Africa!
Yet Africa is a Donor to the World!
Yet African is the most strategic and lucrative place on earth, for everyone except Africans.
According to the Brookings Institute, the three major powers of the world are making super
profits in what they consider to be legal trade with Africa in 2013 alone and rising. China has
over the period made $170 billion. The US made $60 billion, while the EU profited $200 billion
from trade in Africa. Considering this, and coupled with the illicit flows that are mostly lodged in
banks in Europe and America, plus the fact that 14 francophone countries keep their reserves
with France to which they also pay a colonial tax, one is bound to conclude that indeed Africa is
a donor to the world. This is not even considering the contributions we made during the Atlantic
Slave Trade and then colonialism which were the basis for the Industrial Revolution that saw the
emergence of big cities such as London Liverpool, Paris, Amsterdam among others and the
overall development of the West.
Since independence, unfair global trade and imposition of Breton Woods structural adjustment
programs created a situation in which African farmers continue to suffer unfair prices, without
any subsidy from their governments, while industrialization continues to be stifled in favour of
cheap finished goods from the West and now from China, a country that has shown its utter

7. disregard for the interest and welfare of Africans so long as it can fetch any resources it needs on
the continent.
To better appreciate how and why Africa is the most strategic centre of the world, consider the
following: From 2010 to 2016, all the major countries of the world have at least once called on
Africa’s leaders to answer to them in their capitals for a summit about Africa. Why? Here is the
list of the 10 most important summits:
1. 25th
Africa – France Summit in Paris June 2010
2. 5th
Forum on China and Africa summit in Beijing July 2012
3. 2nd
Africa – Turkey Summit held in Istanbul in June 2013
4. 5th
Tokyo International Conference for African June 2013
5. 3rd
Arab – Africa Summit in Kuwait November 2013
6. 4th
Africa – EU Summit in Brussels April 2014
7. 1st
US – Africa Summit in Washington DC August 2014
8. 3rd
India-Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi October 2015
9. 6th Conference on China-Africa Cooperation Johannesburg Dec 2015
10. 10th
U.S. – Africa Business Summit in Addis Ababa February 2016
Have you ever considered the fact that the population of Africa is a little over 1 billion, and by
2050 the continent will have more people than China and any other place on earth. In its current
demographics, more than half the population is under 25. It is the most centrally located place on
earth, the richest continent in natural and mineral resources, and holds the most arable land and
waterpower in the world. The continent has the most favorable weather than any region of the
world, with almost no incidents of natural disasters or obstacles such as earthquakes, tsunami,
chain mountains, snow, hurricanes, or flooding. This effectively makes the continent the best
habitable place on earth for humans, wildlife, agriculture and industries. Disasters that happen
such as famine, droughts or floods are more the cause of poor governance than nature.
Marginalization of Africa
With such unimaginable advantages and prospects, Africa remains the most marginalized
continent in the world. With the largest membership in the United Nations, Africa has no
permanent seat in the Security Council, while there is absolutely no chance for an African to lead
the IMF and the World Bank. Even when it provided two UN secretary generals, Boutros-
Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan and heads of other UN agencies like FAO under the Senegalese
Jacques Diouf, yet the continent remains on the periphery in influencing and moving the UN and
global efforts to its desired goal. This incredible marginalization lies squarely at the feet of the
weak and corrupt African leadership that has kept the continent eternally disempowered and
unproductive.
It is this marginalization and disempowerment that after half a century of self rule, still Africa
has been unable to industrialize and create the jobs necessary to uplift its people out of
wretchedness. And the world has taken us for a ride in that path. While the West invested heavily
during the Cold War in South Asia in the fight against Communist China and the former Soviet
Union by propping up those countries that are today referred to as the ‘Tiger Economies’, on the
apart of Africa, these former colonial masters, Europe and America merely halted the continent
at a standstill and used it as only a producer of raw materials for their industries and consumers

8. of their finished products. Until today, 2016 Western leaders continue to invest in these Asian
economies more than in Africa as is evident in the current US president’s visit to Vietnam.
There, Pres Obama led numerous US companies to sign trade deals with Vietnam, promoting
technology transfer and providing expertise through US tech giants and universities which
augurs well for the industrialization of the country and the entire region. Meantime, when
Western leaders visit Africa, it is not to promote technology transfer and sign trade deals that
will transform our economies, but it is merely to bring more arms, build army barracks and
continue to keep dictators intact, while opening the belly of the continent for their companies to
continue looting our natural resources without satisfaction.
Conclusion
Thus 53 years down the line, Africa goes to beg everyone else, while everyone comes to Africa
to make money and better their lives. We remain, as Frantz Fanon said, the wretched of the earth
that serves as the global picture of sympathy – on posters and movies and songs that one will see
displayed in major hotels, airports, business centres, conference halls and on television among
others. You go to any regional and international summit, one world always find numerous
displays and advertisements of malnourished African children, bare-skinned African youth,
crying African mothers and stunted old African men providing high paying jobs to young and
inexperienced foreign aid workers, western diplomats and international civil servants – an
opportunity to make them feel good and satisfy their souls that indeed they are doing good to
humanity. These so-called good Samaritans, philanthropists, activists and artists seem to be
oblivious of the fact (or just pretend) that the African fiasco is not solely and wholly the design
of Africans. The West and the rest of the world have equal share, if not more in the injustice.
Africans must refuse to accept the lullaby that we are making progress just because many
countries have presidential term limits, while others such as Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal among
others continue to have free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power. Or because there is
Botswana, Seychelles, Cape Verde or Rwanda. We must assess our progress against the
opportunities and resources available to us and the amount of time we have already taken with
the investments made so far. When such analysis is conducted, one will come to the realization
that in fact by now there should have been no poor person in Africa. African countries should
have been producing their own aeroplanes, computers and processing their own food products
and manufacturing their own automated equipment with advanced infrastructure and well
functioning economies as one would see anywhere in the Western world. If China, or South
Korea or Singapore, countries with whom we gained independence around the same period could
become key global producers and players in science and technology with growing economies,
what about Africa? It is evident that if indeed we have the right leadership and less Western
interference (even without their support), Africa stands a better chance than these Asian
countries simply because Africa harbors more and better comparative advantages than Asia.
Today, May 25 must be a Day of Rage by African citizens against African leaders and their
institutions. These leaders and their institutions have woefully failed the continent and her
citizens and they must be condemned and ask to pay for it dearly. With this kind of abominable
leadership, there is no guarantee that the next half century will be any better as we see the
incredible exodus of our youth, the educated and able-bodied leave Africa in droves. Who will
build Africa? What is responsible for this classic failure of a continent that holds so much

9. promise in its natural potentialities with a people who are innately law abiding, optimistic and
hard working?
The End