UNDERSTANDING THE ROOTS OF INEQUALITY AND POWER IN AFRICA By:Fodson Foday Kamara No Doubt,Most independent African countries inherited societies that were highly unequal. Political, economic and cultural power was unequally distributed between the colonisers and the colonised; or between white minority governments and the indigenous communities. The typical approach of almost every colonial power was to divide and rule communities by favouring one ethnic group.In the case of Britain, Belgian and Italy or class of citizens;In the case of France and Portugal over others. In addition, in the British colonialism case of indirect rule, pliant traditional leaders, chiefs and kings were also empowered vis-a-vis their ‘subjects’ to rule on behalf of the colonial power according to ‘customary law’. There were hierarchies of power. The colonials or white-minorities were the 1st tier of power. The second tier was for those indigenous communities ‘chosen’ to run the lower levels of the administration, including the traditional leaders and kings who were the instruments of the implementation of ‘indirect’ rule. At the bottom were the majority of the colonised and oppressed. Very few of the indigenous inhabitants were employed in senior positions in the public or private sector, while colonial and apartheid governments deliberately barred most of them from acquiring the same level of education or technical skills as the ‘settlers’. Colonial powers also developed their African colonies unequally. They only built infrastructure to serve the settlers small urban areas where they lived; tiny industrial areas where they established their factories; mining and commercial agriculture centres; and harbours to export raw materials to the colonial ‘mother’ country. The macro-economic policies of the colonial governments mirrored that of the infrastructure distribution: they were only meant to develop the narrow settler industrial and residential zones, and aid the export of raw materials. Fiscal and monetary policy, for example, was often determined in the mother country,but aimed at servicing these settler industrial and residential zones and boosting the national economy of the mother country. Colonial and apartheid governments typically left the countries they colonised as one-commodity countries with no long-term industrialisation plan because the colonies were always part of the supply chain of the ‘mother’ country. Sadly, the independence and liberation movements that took over from colonial or white minority regimes did very little to undo the economic and political inequality within countries, and failed to reduce inequality between African countries and their former colonial powers. In fact, many post-colonial governments reinforced the inequalities left by departing colonial and white-minority regimes,particularly where liberation and independence movements were dominated by one ethnic or regional group, or by one class or political elite. At independence, the colonial elite was often replaced by another narrow elite,the independence movement aristocracy: the dominant independence leader and dominant ‘struggle’ families, or the dominant ethnic group or political faction. The highly centralised nature of the liberation movements meant that they could seamlessly fit into the similar centralized power structure left behind by colonial governments. While in some cases there was an agreement that most big mines and/or commercial farms would remain in the hands of the ‘settlers’, many post-independence governments nationalised key industries and farms, which were then run by people with insufficient skills and experience to do so, thanks to the colonial pattern of preventing the indigenous communities from acquiring a decent education and critical technical skills. Meanwhile, in numerous cases, most of the ‘settlers’ who had been running the public sector (which was sometimes ‘indigenized’ in one swoop) and the small private sector migrated back to the mother country. Whichever path governments took, they largely stuck to existing trade patterns,exporting raw materials and importing more expensive finished products. Indeed, many governments had no effective economic blueprint for their societies, other than taking control of government and replacing the ‘settlers’ with black faces and so reinforcing inequalities, but this time between indigenous communities. Devastatingly, more than 50 years after independence, the economies of most African countries are still cast in the pattern left by colonial powers and apartheid governments. Yet, unless African countries go beyond the rigid inherited colonial and apartheid economic architecture, prosperity and greater equality will remain a distant dream.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 18:15:11 +0000
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