The story of the African unity effort

In the 1990s as Africa was being trumpeted as the next frontier of international investment and growth, many did not see an Asian giant rising in the form of China. That 1990s decade was largely squandered by Africa.

Today, China has become the world’s second-largest economy and has swiftly and successfully taken up the place that should have been Africa’s. Africa, for its turn, has become what many would consider a dumping ground for cheap Chinese manufactured goods.

There is also a rush by several established and rising world powers to secure Africa’s gold mines, oil and natural gas reserves that seem to be discovered very often these days.

There are few signs that African countries will be able to pool together their political, diplomatic and military resources to fight off the new designs by foreign powers on their resources.

Cause for celebration?
The Africa whose leaders sit in Kampala this week will have a few immediate things to celebrate, most of it being the football World Cup and perhaps the impression in their minds that Africa is now no longer ignored as it once was in world affairs.

Much of this, though, remains unrealistic optimism. As the older generations that remember the days before or not long after independence, many have become circumspect and it is often said by them that on hindsight, the colonial era, with its sense of order and efficiency, might after all have been the golden age of Africa, the humiliation of being ruled notwithstanding.

Many more Africans certainly have been tortured, killed, raped, maimed and reduced to poverty in the independence era than those that suffered these abuses during all of the colonial period combined.