Africa’s past is not its future
Mo Ibrahim, founder of Celtel and founder & chair of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation
November 1, 2022
We Africans need to look forward, not backward, and take responsibility for and ownership of our destiny. That means continuing to fight for better governance, the rule of law and decent leadership.
—Mo Ibrahim
Africa is a vast and abundant continent. Roughly ten times the size of India and three times the size of China, it is home to nearly 18 percent of the world’s population and roughly 30 percent of its mineral resources. With an average per capita GDP of just over $2,000, however, it remains the poorest continent by far. Of the 46 countries the United Nations has rated as the least developed, 35 are African. More than three-quarters of the continent’s population lives in countries where life expectancy, income and education are well below the global mean. Africa, as the Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan once said, “is a rich continent with many, many poor people.”
We Africans are poor for a variety of reasons—some that are of others’ making and some that are of our own. Slavery, colonialism and the Cold War caused serious damage to African societies and economies, much of which endures. Exclusion from Western-dominated institutions of global governance does still more harm today. But the blame for Africa’s failures cannot be pinned on external forces alone. The continent’s colonial history has another enduring insidious legacy: it gives some African leaders, and too many of Africa’s people, an excuse for not getting their own houses in order and for continuing to blame the West. Misrule, coups, and corruption have hindered progress and wasted many years since independence some 60 years ago. Yet we continue to point the finger at others.
Almost every nation suffered some form of colonialism or exploitation at some point. Unfortunately, that is our history as a human race. But most countries have picked themselves up and moved on.