MUNYAGA: Does Happy New Year augur well for Africa?

MUNYAGA: Does Happy New Year augur well for Africa?

For the sake of Africa, I deliberately downplayed, this time around, the usual “Happy New Year” catchphrase and greeting that many people use to welcome the new year.

For me, happiness is a function of two major factors, joy and a general state of elevated hope.  Where there is no hope, as is currently the case in many parts of Africa, it amounts only to hypocrisy or denial of the objective reality for one to simply mimic “Happy New Year.”

But let me be very clear from the outset that it is not all doom and gloom in Africa. There are a number of countries that offer a meaningful ray of hope into the future despite the massive poverty, misery, wars and the growing trend by many governments to disregard national constitutions.

Ringing in a new year is inescapable but to ride on a wave that eludes hope is probably the biggest tragedy in life. When he visited Ghana, outgoing US President Barack Obama, whom I consider a noble son of the land, said in order for Africa to develop it doesn’t need a strongman but strong institutions of state. And, that is one area where Africa has failed tragically.

Sadly, there isn’t inspiration from even the two strongest economies on the continent, Nigeria and South Africa. People could blame President Muhammad Buhari for failing to deliver but Nigeria’s economy did not take a nosedive under his stewardship. Nigeria’s economic woes stem from years of weak institutions that saw the country thrive as a corruption haven in the world.

For all its oil wealth, the quality of life in Nigeria is not different from that of Burkina Faso or any other West African country. In South Africa, there is gradual but highly discomforting attrition of the values attributed to a civilized country. In fact, in South Africa the presidency itself has become a laughing stock.

Yet, Nigeria and South Africa like to posture themselves as the de facto candidates for Africa backed permanent member of the UN Security Council, a seat that Africa should more than double efforts to demand in 2017.

 

Ghana and Tanzania have promised their people accelerated industrialization in a continent known for its net consumption of industrial goods, even where it should clearly have been a world leader, such as for edible oil production. My hopes really for moral leadership and therefore economic development in Africa rest with these two countries. It is partly a legacy of both Kwame Nkrumah and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, arguably the two greatest thinkers of the independence movement.

Generally, it is a tall order in 2017 for Africa to clean its house starting with The Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, who lost the presidential election, conceded defeat and a few days later changed his mind. Also, there is Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Unfortunately, at only 45 years old, he is still too young to retire but such is the nature of the office he holds.

Over and above all, African leaders should realise and be made to understand that there is life beyond state palaces. It is clearly a psychiatric case to believe, as Jammeh believed, that he could be president of The Gambia for a billion years, even if that was just meant as a metaphor for life president.

But my saddest case is South Sudan. The guys spent 50 years fighting against the north and making everybody believe that their cause was rooted in religious persecution by the Muslim majority government in Khartoum against the minority Christians in the south.

In just two years of independence from the north, the real contradictions within South Sudanese society emerged. South Sudan, which is predominantly Christian, is a case study in Africa’s woes. The real causes of war there are tribalism, oil wealth, water wars, weak institutions and blaming others for own failures. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 and slid into civil war in 2013, a stalemate that continues to this day. I am not so sure whether it is still Happy “New Year” in Africa.

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