In the period since
independence in the 1950s, Africa has undergone profound social,
cultural, economic and political changes. Some inherited and
historically rootless colonialist political and social systems have
collapsed, been transcended and reconstituted.
Different political
systems – single party rule, personal rule and military governments have
come and gone. New post-independence political and social systems;
economic institutions, professional associations and labour unions,
various types - traditional and new and varied cultural expressions have
all emerged.
Creative efforts to foster effective nation-building,
develop a sense of belonging and manage diversity productively have also
been made. New political systems, different forms of electoral
democracy and democratic government; political parties and groups,
varied social and intelligentsia organizations, confident youth groups,
civil society organizations are also emerging.
Disruptive and traumatic
political and social crises have occurred. These include civil wars,
secessionist wars, famines, elite generated manipulative ethnicity and
deadly intergroup conflicts, and recently home grown and imported
religious terrorism and their destructive wars, spectacular damaging
actions, the creation of refugees and internally displaced peoples and
the generation of general feelings of insecurity.
Social
development institutions like health and educational facilities that
barely existed under colonialism have been built. For example, vast
numbers of schools at all levels including universities and other
tertiary institutions – conventional and specialized have been
established and dot various parts of Africa. They have produced millions
of educated Africans as never existed before in African history. New
physical infrastructures: roads, railways, water ways and airports have
been built. This is a rough profile of profound changes in Africa since
the 1950s.
However, given Africa’s size and vast unmet human,
social and economic needs there is no question that substantial as what
has been built is, the extant physical and social infrastructures are
not adequate or abundant enough.
At the same time, it is quite
clear that the physical and social landscapes of Africa today are vastly
different from what they were 60 years ago such that it is unlikely
that people from those times will recognize Africa of today.
Yet
it is also true that there are some aspects of African realities that
have not changed substantively or for the better during this period
because Africa did not regain, recover or assert its ownership and use
of its autonomous self-direction capacities in some spheres over the
past six decades. These are primarily in the areas of economic
sovereignty, development capacitation, self-actuated development and
ideological self-direction. This failure is manifested in such
conditions as persistent underdevelopment, the pre-eminence of primary
commodities production and export in its economic interactions with the
world, import dependency, development incapacitation and poverty
generation.
It is also manifested in Africa’s ideological subordination
to external diktat through the acceptance and implementation of the
economic management dogmas and prescriptions of the multilateral
imperialist agencies – the World Bank, IMF and similar bilateral
external agencies. These prescribed non-development dogmas include:
privatization, deregulation and African states self-withdrawal from
promoting socio-economic development and the simultaneous promotion of
the ascendancy of “MARKET FORCES, FOREIGN INVESTORS, FOREIGN DIRECT
INVESTMENTS and FOREIGN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER ” as the primary and
indispensable engines of African economic growth.
The forceful
application of these disempowering dogmas through the active complicity
of psychologically programmed and ideologically defeated African leaders
and elite over the past three decades has yielded or in fact
consolidated Africa in its status as under- developed, under-equipped
and incapable of development self-propulsion. With African economies
arrested in primary commodity export and the mass importation of
manufactured goods they are mired in the same exocentric rut and this
inevitably results in the export of jobs and import of poverty,
therefore recurrent poverty-generation.
This condition and its
persistence over this period suggest that IT CANNOT BE RESOLVED WITHIN
ITSELF. It has to be transcended by African strategies of
psycho-cultural recovery and development capacitation. Psycho-cultural
recovery will entail the self-conscious efforts of liberated Africans to
peel off the layers of self-deceit, self-delusion, psycho-ideological
incapacitation, diminution of African self-worth, self-marginalization
of African agency in African development. It would also require the
expurgation from African leaderships and elite of their worshipful
dependence on outsiders and preference for all things foreign including
pre-fabricated solutions that have been introduced into Africa as dogmas
of disempowerment and mechanisms of control from the slave trade era to
the present.
In its various incarnations, African disempowerment was
partially procured through various seemingly neutral but ultimately
destructive external ideological constructs such as “Christianization”,
“Islamization”; European “Civilization” during the colonial era;
“Modernization” in the neo-colonial period after independence and its
latest expression, as multilateral imperialist “globalism” and
dictatorial globalization that ideologically and politically dictates a
single, global capitalist and liberal democratic system as the only
“approved” economic, political and social and order for all times. This
would be composite world of the rich and powerful, and the weak and
powerless with Africa at the top.
But all these disempowering
political, social, cultural and economic constructs and systems of
domination were politically and self-consciously created by organized
and mission-driven national and racial elites pursuing the objectives of
group ascendancy and global domination. They are not divine constructs
imposed on the world. In the same way, liberated Africans can
self-consciously choose and work to exit from this state of UNFREEDOM
AND INDIGNITY by dismantling and reconstituting the extant world order
(as Asians have done) and chose to create and enter the realms of
FREEDOM AND SELF-DIRECTION through development capacitation,
psychological liberation, cultural recuperation, mental freedom and
self-actuated development so as to emerge as powerful participants in
the world system as actors not subjects. This is the liberatory
imperative.
In order for Africa to assume responsibility for its
own transformation and elevation, and be able to undertake self-reliant
development and create secure domestic prosperity, it has to create its
own specific ideology and strategy of self-development. To do this there
are a number of irreducible components that have to be designed and put
in place. These are: the recovery and application of African agency in
African development, the creation of the liberated African state,
establishment of an African development capacitation system, the
creation and dissemination of the Affirmative Africa Narrative and
African comprehensive military empowerment.
The Centrality of African Agency in African Development
The first requirement of this liberated development strategy and process is the emplacement of African Agency
at the centre of African thought and action as the primary
psycho-cultural foundation, ideological premise and endogenous
propellant for Africa’s self-actuated development. In this context
African Agency is the endogenously created psycho-cultural software
embedded in societies with which African societies train, organize,
motivate, self-activate and direct themselves to accomplish desirable
ends individually and collectively. It is the absolute psycho-cultural
grounding and ideological ownership of the African project devoid of
compromises to any external imperatives. African Agency is grounded on
the supremacy of African endocentric thought and motive-forces as the
propellants of development as a self-directed imperative.
Without
contemporary Africans’ psychological internalization of this
understanding and ownership of their development vision and their
assumption of complete responsibility for self-actuated development,
African societies will remain dependent, underdeveloped and
insecure. Therefore the new liberated Africa vision must recognize the
absolute necessity of the restoration of African Agency to primacy for
any successful African actuated process of transformation.
This new
perspective is critically important because it has to be realized that
one of the major challenges and primary impediment to Africa’s
development since independence in the 1960s has been the absence of
African Agency in African development as the directive force. This was
due to the concerted and largely successful efforts of external
multilateral imperialist forces (posing as omniscient advisers) working
with psycho-ideologically unprepared and even naive African
collaborator-leaders to promote exocentric authority and the
corresponding marginalization, diminution and de-activation of African
Agency in African development. Consequently, without the unquestioned
ascendancy, centrality and directive role of African Agency, African
development understood as Africans’ self-equipment for total liberation
and radical transformation can never occur.
The Liberated African State
Second, is the imperative of the creation of a new Liberated African State
through the rigorous ideological cleansing, psychological
re-empowerment and administrative reconstruction of the contemporary
politically compromised and disabled neo-colonial African states that
are more representative of external forces than national interests.
The
decolonization of the colonial African state and the evolution and
emergence of the liberated state after independence was disrupted in the
1980s when most African states were captured and disabled by the
cancerous ideologies, dogmas and prescriptions of the multilateral
imperialist agencies – the World Bank and the IMF and their bilateral
supporters in the context of the economic crises of the late 1970s and
early 1980s. Embodied in various formulations and policy diktats such as
the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), and its unvarying
conditionalities: currency devaluation, subsidy removal, trade
liberalization and others like deregulation, privatization, poverty
reduction; these prescriptions have transformed African states into
disabled, compromised, neo-colonial political-administrative
contraptions that are responsible to neo-imperialist multilateral
institutions and not to Africans. They therefore cannot serve Africa’s
interests
This is why it is imperative to create the new
Liberated African state. It will be a strong and interventionist
developmental state. Its raison d’ etre would be the representation and
promotion of national interests. This Liberated African state will be
grounded on the affirmation and militant expression of its untrammeled
sovereignty; and the absolute non-compromise of national interests to
any external agencies, formulations, dogmas and imperatives. It would
self-consciously assume and assert uncontested ideological ascendancy.
In fact the new liberated state will represent the completion of the
decolonization of the African states and the emergence of truly
endogenous states. It is only such Liberated African developmental
states that can lead to the realization of the African citizens’
expectations for defence and protection, advanced development, material
prosperity and freedom from want and colonialist philanthropy,
psychological security and empowerment, dignity and equity with all
other groups in the world.
The African Development Capacitation System
The third critical requirement is the development and placement of an African Development Capacitation System as
the primary motive-force for Africa’s social and economic
transformation and creation of advanced societies. This is proposed
against the background of the complete failure of the extant
neo-colonial economic system inherited and maintained from colonialism.
In over five decades of its use and application as the dominant economic
management system and growth strategy it has yielded and maintained
Africa in a state of development incapacitation, primary commodity
exportation, secondary goods importation, dependency, poverty
generation, incapacity for self-propulsion, and subjection to the diktat
and control of multilateral imperialist agencies – the World Bank and
IMF. It is quite clear that the extant exocentric economic system with
its development motive forces externally situated is organically
defective, un-reformable and inherently incapable of propelling Africa
to the highest levels of development.
Therefore in order for
Africa to develop and achieve the highest levels of human development it
has to own the instruments and systems of self-actuated development.
This perspective is partly based on this author’s succinct definition of
Development - as a society’s self-equipment with the resources and capacities for its self-reproduction.
Consequently, the African Development Capacitation system is the
creation and existence within all African societies of the endogenous
capacities to conceive, design, construct, manage and operate projects
in ALL sectors of the economy. These include the technological,
scientific, managerial and operational capabilities for all facets of
modern industrial and agricultural production and development
self-propulsion.
Practically, the components of the development
capacitation system include the domestic possession and ownership of the
following capacities: Project Conception and Design capabilities; Technological Production Capacity or Capital Goods Industries
comprising : Engineering Industries for the manufacture of all types
and levels of machine tools, industrial machinery and equipment,
transport equipment, electrical and power equipment; electronic and
professional tools and equipment. Intermediate Goods Industries (Metals, Heavy Chemicals, Petrochemicals, Paper, Rubber etc); Civil Engineering Construction Capabilities for large, medium and small scale projects; and Project management and operation and supervision Capabilities.
This
endogenous development capacitation system is found in all successful
global examples of societal self-development as the prime movers of any
society’s self-actuated transformation from conditions of
UN-FREEDOM: material underdevelopment, mass poverty, indignity and
colonialist philanthropy to new empowered conditions of FREEDOM:
expressed as self-created material abundance and prosperity,
psycho-cultural confidence and dignified existence. This is
practically expressed in mass industrialization, modernized mass
agricultural production, mass mineral exploitation and beneficiation
primarily for domestic use; mass employment, mass prosperity generation;
cultural elevation, self-actuation, self-agency, human dignity and
societal power. This is in effect the enthronement of the strategy and
process of endocentricity and its ineluctable creation and production of
a state of development.
The Affirmative Africa Narrative
The
fourth basic requirement is the creation and permanent dissemination of
a self-elevating paradigm or narrative to be known as the Affirmative Africa Narrative. Currently
there is no global African created narrative that conceives, presents,
projects and widely propagates a truthful, complex and elevating
narrative of Africa and Africans. In its absence there exists a
universal externally fabricated, pervasive and routinely propagated
perverse perspective on Africa that I describe as the Pathological Africa Narrative.
This narrative which evolved from the era of the European slave trade;
was expansively propagated and consolidated during colonialism and has
been fine-tuned and expanded since independence to the present to
include other foreign propagators like Asians and even Africans. It
presents an image and impression; perception and narrative of Africa as a
world of deficits, lack, deprivation, absence, danger, disease,
inaction, native incapacity, immobility and a basket charity case that
is rescueable only by the self-assigned salvationary efforts of Western
multilateral imperialist agencies – World Bank and IMF - their dogmas,
experts and prescriptions. This Pathological Africa Narrative
is not only inaccurate but it is also dangerous and damaging as it
represents the software of African self-denigration, servility,
surrender and incapacitation.
In order to pursue the vision of liberated Africa it is imperative to create and propagate the Affirmative Africa Narrative.
This would be a robust and unapologetic statement of African
accomplishments in all areas of human endeavor since independence
despite all internal and external obstacles. It would provide the
psychological props and grounding among Africans for their
self-representation. The Affirmative Africa Narrative is intended to confront, combat, degrade, pulverize, defeat, eliminate and replace the Pathological Africa Narrative that currently pervades external and internal descriptions and representations of Africa and Africans. In its place, the Affirmative Africa Narrative
should become the primary perceptual representation and imagistic
projection of an energetic and boundless; resurgent and self-directed
Africa.
Consequently, for Africans committed to racial upliftment
and continental advancement and empowerment embodied in the new
liberated Africa vision, the requisite framework of self-representation,
self-projection and self-activation is the Affirmative Africa Narrative.
This is thus a necessary and indispensable accompaniment and organic
adjunct to the determined pursuit of the liberated African vision and
mission.
The Imperative of African Military Empowerment
A
fifth requirement of the liberated Africa vision is the imperative of
Africa’s military empowerment through deliberate provisions for
continent-wide development of military capabilities. In order to meet
the defence needs of a self-conscious people and continent determined to
assume responsibility for its own self-advancement, self-protection,
self-projection and emergence as a powerful and dynamic participant in
global affairs, two range of actions are minimally imperative.
First
is the establishment and development of military industries throughout
Africa to ensure that virtually all military equipment from the most
basic to the most advanced are manufactured (not assembled) in Africa.
This is will free Africa from its current pathetic situation of
dependency for military wares from the countries which participated in
the past in Africa’s conquest and colonization as well as from new
armament producers and traders. To be militarily none self-equipped and
self-reliant is to reside in a state of UNFREEDOM.
The second
aspect of African military empowerment is the revival, re-steaming and
realization of the long-standing grand visions from the 1960s for
continental defence institutions and systems. The founding nationalist
and pan Africanist leaders of the 1960s and 1970s, had canvassed and
proposed the development a comprehensive continental military defence
system. This is was to be known as the African Military High Command.
These pioneer leaders envisaged it as a powerful continental defence
force for self-protection, internal security issues, intra-continental
intervention, conflict resolution, contributions to continental and
global peace keeping and management as needed and as a force of
self-projection that announces Africa’s global presence. It would also
be responsible for the security of African geo-political and oceanic
spaces against foreign powers desirous of containing, controlling and
constraining Africa by the establishment of their military cordon around
the continent.
The over-all rationale for the prescription of
Africa’s military empowerment is due to the historical purblindness and
psychological incapacitation of African leaderships and dominant elite
since independence. In the light of the rapid conquest, colonization
and exploitation of African communities after the Berlin Conference
between the 1880s-1900s, self-conscious Africans should never have the
luxury of forgetting that Africa was conquered primarily because of
Western military superiority in arms and armaments. Thus it would seem
minimally patriotic, psychologically imperative, behaviourially logical
and eminently sensible that such a people and continent should give
premium attention to the establishment of a powerful military capacity
for defence and offense as indicated by its historical experiences and
new status as sovereign states.
Therefore a fulsome strategy for
African military self-equipment and a powerful and expansive African
Military High Command should be developed and incorporated as part of
the liberated development strategy to equip Africa to defend, protect
and project itself and to play a dynamic role in global affairs.
Conclusion
The
various elements outlined above constitute a new strategy and process
of endocentric development or African Liberated Development and their
application would produce Liberated Africa. This Africa would be truly
self-made: developmentally transformed, ideologically self-directed,
politically stable, technologically advanced, industrially developed,
socially prosperous, culturally renascent, psychologically assertive,
militarily powerful, a globally ascendant continent with self-restored
human dignity, an Africa of which all Africans will be duly proud.
Ehiedu
Iweriebor, Ph.d (Columbia) is a Professor and former Chair of the
Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College,
City University of New York, USA.
Source: APO
