Whats wrong with being African? Errrr.... Nothing really ....

For the past two weeks, my facebook newsfeed has been filled with affirmations made by my Sierra Leonean friends who are upset over the West's discrimination of Africans from Ebola hit nations such as Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. I see slogans like 'My name is David. I'm a human being. I'm Sierra Leonean; I'm not a virus'. 

I dont know if these affirmations will reduce stigmatization of nationals from these nations ; I really do not think so. I believe that rather than focus our pressure outwards, we need to focus inwards. A post I read on one of my favourite blogs, 'Africa is a Country' was able to put this Ebola crisis into perspective and perhaps even highlight why this crisis is not just a health problem. 

I learned that 73% of Liberia's income comes from foreign aid. A nation that dependent on foreign aid with scores of international NGOs in its capital, would have been able to deal with the crisis effectively if only foreign aid was the answer to all of Africa's problems; it obviously isnt. The problem with Africa can not and should not be blamed on Western countries; it's with us. We have failed to build institutions and where we have , we have simply copied and pasted a model that is alien to us and therefore can not work.  

Foreign aid has made our leaders lazy. They have not bothered to take advantage of foreign assistance to create systems that will ensure that their countries remain stable, long after they've gone.  Instead, our leaders feel entitled to  aid; they view it as a form of compensation for the damage caused by the former colonial masters. What our leaders dont realise is that we could have easily repaired that damage if we had wanted to. We could have dismantled the very structures left by the colonialists and created those peculiar to our context. Instead we inherited these structures and started practicing politics of exclusion just like our former colonial masters and we are where we are because of it. Just like when governments are overthrown, the structures remain the same even when the people dont; basically same script different cast. 

The African Union which apparently is meant to evolve into the United States of Africa (not sure this will happen in my lifetime) seems to have lost its relevance. The Union has failed to provide support to countries that need it; we have not seen the AU mobilise resources to curb the spread of Ebola or even stop wars on the continent, so I guess 'African solutions to African problems' remains distant in sight. 

Like Professor George Ayitteh says, 

' The statement that a people deserve the leader that they get is NOT true in most African countries. The statement would be true if and only if the people participate in the process of choosing the leader. But that requirement is often vitiated by two common mal-practices. The first is when a military officer stages a coup and imposes himself on the people. The second is, though the people participate in choosing the leader, the selection process (voting) is rigged and their votes nullified. Under those two circumstances, one cannot say the people deserve the leaders that they get.

The cause of bad leadership is systemic, not cultural. Bad leadership is the product of alien political systems and ideologies blindly copied from abroad with no cultural underpinnings; for example, one-party state systems, Marxist-Leninism, Confucius Institutes, etc.

Any political system that concentrates a great of power in the hands of a buffoon degenerates into dictatorship and tyranny. To fix the problem, reform the political system, not just change the leader through elections.'