What Is Africa’s Problem

21. The Crisis of the State in Africa

TWENTY-ONE The Crisis of the State in Africa When I received the invitation to come and address this seminar, I tried to put some thoughts down, but I shall not read the written speech. I shall summarize what I think are the salient points of this important subject: "The Crisis of the State in Africa." Soon after the formal departure of colonial rulers at independence, the state in Africa was beset by many problems and I shall concentrate on the most crucial of them. The first problem was that the state was economically dependent on the former colonial powers, especially for technology. We often talk of economic dependence, but this dependence is coupled with and aggravated by an absence of technology: we do not have the technical and managerial skills to enable us to solve our own problems. After a number of years of independence — more than thirty years in some countries—we have been able to train a few economists and some scientists, professional people like yourselves. If these people could have helped us, we would have gotten somewhere. But because we have not solved the problem of technological dependence and been able to participate in technological developments, we are not making much headway. The only way we can participate at present is by someone giving us technology in the form of aid. The donor finances it and then his people Address to Dag Hammarskjold Foundation conference held at Mweya, Uganda, May 13, 1990. 166 The Crisis of the State in Africa 167 come and build a factory in our country. Occasionally, we buy technology with our own money. Right here in this area, there is a salt factory, but it is not producing anything because our people bought technology from Germany and found that it was the wrong kind of technology . They are completely dependent on the Germans or some other outsiders to come and put it right. This is a verybig handicap indeed. Since the modern African state cannot be independent, it becomes easy prey to manipulation. If our states can be so manipulated, how can they expect to solve the problems of the people except with the permission of the former colonial rulers?A state that does not have the capacity to tell the colonial or neocolonial rulers that it will act independently , in spite of what those rulers think, is completely handicapped. If you need ideas for how to solve problems, why must you borrow from or imitate somebody outside? Ideological Dependence The problem of economic and technological dependence wasaggravated by ideological dependence. If you want a microphone, like this one I am using now, you must import it because you do not have anyone in your country who can make it, which is bad enough. In addition to that, however, you are also ideologically dependent: you need ideas on how to solve problems and you must borrow from or imitate somebody outside. In Africa's case, this problem wasvery serious because our states were born during a time of conflict between the Eastern and Western European countries, which had their own arguments about how best to organize themselves. Some said that we should use market forces and others that we should have planned economies. Behind these ideological arguments were European nationalism and chauvinism. There were ideological and nationalist tussles and there was always the old quest for domination—more organized peoples dominating less organized ones. Africa was thus dragged into European arguments. As soon as any country came to the fore — as soon as any country became independent — the question would come up: "Areyou pro-East or pro-West? You must answer that question first before you can do any business with us. What is your ideological color? You have to take a position." Some of 168 The Crisis of the State in Africa our people did not have the capacity to be able to say: "This is not my argument or my quarrel. Or even if it is my quarrel, it is only partially so." Some countries tried to be precapitalist and others tried to be proMarxist , even when the conditions were not conducive to being either. In Uganda for instance, in 1980 and earlier on, wehad political groups that had existed since the days of colonial rule. These groups were artificially divided between those called "leftist" and others called "rightist." But when you examined them closely, there was no...