The Challenge for Africa Read Online Free Page B

energies and capabilities and taking actions today that will improve their lives in the future.
    Only Africans can resolve to provide leadership that is responsible, accountable, and incorruptible. It is they who must embrace their cultural diversity, restore their sense of self-worth, and use both to create thriving nations, regions, and the continent itself. It is they who must begin the revolution in ethics that puts community before individualism, public good before private greed, and commitment to service before cynicism and despair.
    Of course, these challenges apply not only to Africa but to the world as a whole. It is a simple, although often overlooked, fact that the planet's biological resources are finite, and that the current development path is imperiling the ecosystems on which human life and livelihoods depend. Reimagining waysof relating to the environment must become the major concern of the citizens of every country on this planet. This is especially important now that the scientific consensus is that climate change is already upon us and that Africa in particular will be negatively impacted. The challenge for Africa is, therefore, a challenge for all of us, too.

A LEGACY OF WOES
    ONE OF THE major tragedies of postcolonial Africa is that the African peoples have trusted their leaders, but only a few of those leaders have honored that trust. What has held Africa back, and continues to do so, has its origins in a lack of principled, ethical leadership. Leadership is an expression of a set of values; its presence, or the lack of it, determines the direction of a society, and affects not only the actions but the motivations and visions of the individuals and communities that make up that society. Leadership is intimately influenced by culture and history, which determine how leadership perceives itself and allows itself to serve: whether it has self-respect, and how it shapes public and foreign policy. I have no doubt that independent African states would have made far more progress if they had been guided by leaders motivated by a sense of service to their people and who therefore practiced better governance, creating opportunities for their people to prosper.
    Of course, poor leadership isn't an African invention, or a solely African reality. Colonizers, oppressors, and violators of human rights are to be found throughout history. In the modern era, dictatorships, military juntas, oligarchies, kleptocracies, and “Big Men” have bedeviled many nations in the world, as they have in Africa. These regimes have betrayed the aspirations and violated the rights of their people with impunity; they plundered national treasuries and resources, often plunging their citizens into fruitless wars, both civil and cross-border.
    Many people who care about the fate of Africa question why so many postcolonial African leaders treated their citizens so cruelly, and why after nearly half a century of independence so many African countries still remain bywords for failure, poverty, and dysfunction. As with many issues associated with the condition of Africa, no simple answers exist. However, a number of factors can be pointed to that suggest why the continent continues to have a considerable leadership deficit. Among these are the legacy of colonialism, the Cold War, post-colonial governance structures, and cultural destruction.
BEYOND THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN
    An important milestone in the creation of the modern leadership dilemma in Africa was the Berlin Conference in 1884-85. 1 Here, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, and King Leopold II of Belgium, among others, carved up the African continent into spheres of influence. The European powers were seeking to establish not merely outposts from which they could launch campaigns against each other to preserve their geopolitical dominance, but also new sources for the raw materials they needed to expand their industrial economies—or, in Leopold's case, a personal