Slavery and colonialism warped Africa’s trajectory of development.

Africans must take responsibility for the problems they are facing. It has been 50 years since Ghana’s independence in 1957. It has been 27 years since the independence of Zimbabwe. It has been 13 years since the independence of South Africa. So whatever is happening in Africa, we as Africans must take responsibility for our circumstances. There has been a major failure around vision in Africa – political vision and economic vision. There has been major failure around leadership – political leadership and economic leadership. So Africans . . . We Africans are guilty as charged in terms of failure. Having said that, prior to our independence, and even after our independence, there have been external factors that have made our existence and our development very problematic. Before independence, ________ slavery and the slave triangle. That distorted the history and trajectory of Africa’s development. After slavery, the project of colonialism. That, again, disturbed and changed the history and trajectory of African development. Okay? And then we fought wars and struggles of independence and anti-colonialism. We managed to get our independence. After that independence, there still were elements of neo-colonialism and external factors, external corporations, external governments that were involved in a negative way in our economic operations. In terms of manipulation of the economy, ownership of the industries without actually cultivating and building infrastructure and so on and so forth, promoting civil wars. Western powers were involved in pitting one ethnic group against another. Western powers and companies in Africa were involved – are involved in using ethnic conflicts to get access to diamonds, access to oil, and so on and so forth. So these are some of the forces that have led to our challenges in Africa – slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and sheer greed. Recorded On: 7/5/07