A number of African states continue to face daunting challenges in their socio-political and economic affairs. Current discourses on Africa’s political economy have been dominated by political instability, leadership failures, regional and ethnic strife, economic backwardness, diseases, and high rates of poverty in the general population. The World Bank reports that Africa is currently home to the largest number of the extremely poor in the world,1 after Southeast Asia recorded tremendous economic and structural transformations during the past three decades. This depressing state of affairs in African countries has expectedly generated a lot of interests from scholars, policy makers, and international development institutions.
While there are diverse explanations for Africa’s precarious social and economic conditions, not a few scholars point to African states’ governance arrangements, political institutions and culture, and the choices that these institutions support, as the major explanations for the continent’s inability to make meaningful progress toward sustainable growth and development.2 In most African states, subsisting institutions have generally supported crass exploitation of the commonwealth in favor of a tiny elite, leading to a political culture defined by cronyism and clientelism, dictatorship, and prebendalism.3 The questions that arise is how these forms of institutions evolved and why they have persisted despite their obvious disastrous consequences on the progress of the African state and the well-being of its citizens.
Scholars of African history point to two major epochs that shaped and perhaps continue to shape Africa’s sociology, politics, and economics. The horrors of Atlantic slave trade and the exploitation that defined subsequent European colonialism have been identified as two major historical events that set the stage of what we know as Africa today. Along these lines, scholars have, in various ways, articulated the devastating effects of Atlantic slave trade on Africa and its people.4 Slavery was and perhaps remains the highest form of exploitation. Atlantic slave trade devastated Africa for several centuries, setting the stage for a culture of exploitation, brute force, inequality, subservience, and instability—features that do not support sustainable development of any sort. The slave economy made it impossible for African societies to develop stable centralized political authorities over large geographical areas. This was because of the continuous raids, fighting, and wars that facilitated the slave economy. The kings and queens of that era could therefore only exercise effective control over a limited geographical area beyond which it would be impossible to control. Consequently, developing stable centralized authorities over large geographical areas were almost impossible. This made it difficult, if not impossible for authorities, to set up formal and effective institutions to engender civil order over large geographical areas.
Besides the inability to establish effective centralized governance authorities over large areas, slave trade decimated the population of African societies by sending away Africans as slaves to Europe and the Americas. The dynamics of the slave economy—forceful conscription of the citizens, continuous fighting, kidnapping, raids and wars that had to happen to facilitate such conscription—created a society at war with itself. Consequently, tensions and crises became almost a way of life, might became right, and survival of the fittest became the norm. This brand of social evolution permeated African culture and politics and created unequal societies that in turn facilitated continuous and systemic exploitation of the weak.
Most studies on the devastation of Atlantic slave trade focus on what can be described as the hard and perhaps measurable effects of the illicit trade, such as its impacts on the population of African societies,5 or the cost of lost output that could have been produced by Africans who were sold to slaveholders in foreign land, or the mental torture of the slaves, among other such factors. However, one can argue that the “soft” negative effects of slavery were even more devastating as these shaped the culture and sociology of the African society , creating permanent scars that continue to make it difficult for the societies to achieve stability and development. Slavery institutionalized what can be described as “master-servant” relationships among otherwise similar human beings with equal or similar cognitive abilities and imbued with the same natural sense of taste, feelings, and human instincts. By designating some people as slaves and others as slaveholders, human relationship became defined by exploitation, with the slaveholders (masters) assuming ownership of the intellect, labor, and products of the slaves (servants). This unequal relationship shaped social relations in African societies, with authority figures in political positions often exploiting the masses at will, sometimes with the active collaboration and support of the enslaved. By institutionalizing a culture of subservience and the belief that the master is always right and must be obeyed, slavery created a society that is antithetical to the tenets of Western democracy. Perhaps this is why the rhetoric of democratic governance in most of Africa has failed to produce real liberal democracy in substance, as political leaders continue to pander to choices that enhance their personal interests while putting the citizens at the receiving end. Dictatorships , corruption, and the patron-client relationships that define Africa’s political culture are all direct and indirect consequences of these unfortunate master-servant relationships. Unfortunately, these perverse political arrangements are often indirectly supported by the oppressed who in most cases find it difficult or “culturally wrong” to confront the authorities.
Colonial Exploitation
At the end of Atlantic slave trade, Africa entered yet another phase of exploitation under European colonialism. The history of European colonial exploitation in Africa is well documented in a number of studies.6 The official explanation of European colonial conquest was the pursuit of the Dual Mandate—to develop or introduce light to the “dark” continent, and at the same time advance the economic interests of Europe. In reality, African societies came out of colonialism fractured, exploited, and devastated, with permanent deformities that have so far proven intractable and not amenable to modern economic development. Products of the artificial bifurcation of African societies for allocation to contending European interests of that era later became African countries as we know them today. While the creation of these states was designed to serve the convenience of the colonial masters, little consideration was given to the colonial subjects in terms of the workability of the forced unions given differences in language, culture, and peculiar histories and orientations of the societies that were joined together into one administrative unit. Focusing exclusively on the interests of the metropole, the colonial masters did not give consideration to the workability of these divisions and unions for the citizens. Today, there are crises of identity and nationhood across several African states. One of the consequences of these state structures has been complaints of marginalization of one group by another, leading to disunity, ethnic tensions, and conflict in ways that cannot support social stability and economic development. A consequence of this precarious state structure has been that political contests have moved from being the contest of ideas to the contest of ethnicities, religions, and personalities, thus making mockery of the ideals of Western democracy.
Despite the rhetoric of Dual Mandate, Europe took control of African societ...