When did the rain start beating us?

Over 20 years ago, I sat in the development studies class, dreaming that one day I would be an expert on African development. Naïve then, it was easy to also hope that one could be the voice of the village, making development happen.
Joining the university seemed like an open door to many possibilities for us. We were taught, especially the roots of underdevelopment. Our professors must have read Simon Sinek well, ‘start with why’. They explained to us why Africa is underdeveloped, who did it and why there are some exceptions, those who in the universe of cases would qualify as outliers.
Talking of exceptions, my professor, one of those who told us the problem with the international community and so on, are here wondering why Rwanda is able to reconstruct itself from ruin, achieve things that defy all assumptions, while the rest of us seem to be marvelling at them.

My professor turned to me and asked, ‘when did the rain start beating us?’ We are both attending a meeting at the Kigali Convention Centre, and like most people who visit Rwanda, in awe of some things, that we in Uganda can only dream about.
I cannot tell my professor that I know when the rain started beating us in Uganda. Yet, reflecting on the years, from being a young student of development, mastering and teaching development studies for more than a decade, I doubt that I would know what to teach students of development today.

Perhaps, I would still be talking about how Europe underdeveloped Africa, the postcolonial and neo-colonial agenda, the neoliberal and globalisation evil twins and of course, the global institutions perpetuating underdevelopment in Africa or kicking away the ladder of development from Africans.
I was reminded of this narrative in the Kigali meeting. What an irony, listening to an eminent panel discuss the enduring legacy of foreign interference in Africa, and how hollow this blame on historical factors now sounds.
No doubt, there is enough reason to connect the dots to slave trade and colonialism, even those who came holding the Bible in the name of peace as well as its modern equivalents working in the name of the poor. The problem is that we continue to imagine that all the social changes we are witnessing due to technological advancement have not altered significantly, to enable us think differently of our development challenges and the tools with which we can address them.

Over the years, engagement with multiple narratives of development has allowed me deeper skepticism over the role of different actors in development. This has also afforded me the opportunity to choose the enemies of development. When you have engagement with sustained failure of implementation of government policies and programmes, and corruption, it is difficult to stand anywhere and name foreign interference as the main enemy of development.
Looking back to 20 years ago, when I taught my first class of development economics at Makerere University, and seeing my students today, disconnected with the history that placed the blame of underdevelopment elsewhere, I wonder if it will be long before these young people tell us that they do not care about who did what in the past. How do we deal with young people who may find difficulty buying into that narrative in the face of failed development?

For most of these young people, impatient to the core, I wonder if they will have the time to be lectured about the need to be patient, the fact that the whole world is suffering from high costs of living, and requiring that they love their country through lessons in patriotism, even when their country presents them with little to make them proud.
We can decolonise our curriculum, fill it with patriotism and many of the things that appear to present answers, but without recognising that so much has changed around us, including narratives that explain our development challenge, we risk sitting in the past while the future goes with the proverbial wind.
Like those of us who choose to now say yes, there was colonialism, and still, foreign interference with its many faces, but we must take responsibility for the rain that is beating us, with hailstorms in fact. Young people will have to question the historical narratives that use slavery and colonialism as a whipping post and fail to address ourselves to the contemporary challenges sitting at the feet of African leaders.

Ms Maractho (PhD) is the director of Africa Policy Centre and senior lecturer at Uganda Christian University.                       [email protected]