Deep down its conscience, the African leadership knows it has betrayed the masses. While the war of liberation reaffirmed the independence of Africa, brought joy and returned a sense of being to many Africans, greed has derailed that legitimate project. From a revolutionary struggle built on the rhetoric of needs of the many, we have descended into an ideological trap obsessed with pursuing the greed of the few.

Greed has been turned into a god. The policies and institutions adopted after independence have prioritised the elite class’s accumulation and consolidation of profit and power over human rights, environmental protections and socio-political stability.

Ethical governance was the talking point for all liberation movements, and their socioeconomic and political narrative focused on the struggles of the suffering masses, improving access to power and decision-making and pivoting away from unrestricted capitalism, at the least, and towards socialism at the most. However, the reality of the contemporary Africa has turned out different.

Far from reducing the socioeconomic and political vulnerabilities of the average black citizen, the black leadership has weakened governance institutions, compromised transparency and accountability of the systems. The result has been the worsening of the status of the average citizen; allocation of resources is not based on merit or need but greed, proximity to power and other elite connections; the gap between the haves and have nots is widening, not narrowing, with every socioeconomic projection with no prospect of an immediate change.

The single most significant weakness of liberation movements led governments was the movements’ lack of experience in governing modern states when they took control. Governments were formed on partisanship rather than merit; positions were allocated as rewards for loyalty instead of the ability to perform assigned roles. Even worse, the leader had no obligation to justify decisions for inclusion and exclusion from government.

Many government institutions in Africa are profoundly shaped by the legacy of colonialism, often operating as replicas of colonial-era administrative, legal, and extractive structures. Governance structures and policies share very little to nothing in common with indigenous traditional institutions, values and needs. Unrestricted capitalism does not fit Africa’s communal living model; pursuit for profit has seen communal land being sold for profit by corrupt officials.

When it became clear the governments were failing to meet public needs, the diagnoses were politicised and often wrong, including ascribing all failures to the West, and so were solutions.  Blaming the West for all ills, not some, is a populist, accountability avoidant approach that has seen its day. Africa’s economic challenges are rooted in structural issues, including high debt levels, severe infrastructure deficits, reliance on commodity exports, and greed.    

It can be argued that the main feature of contemporary African states is liberation movements and their post-independence governments that have departed from their foundational principle of looking after marginalised communities and turned into a bastion for the elite; they have shown an eagerness to serve elites’ interests no matter the impact that may have on the average citizen; they have implemented policies designed to remove barriers to expanding resource access, control vital resources, and maintain political power dominance within the elites while masking their actions in the rhetoric of independence and security from the West.

What we are witnessing is that African politicians, as executors of the oppressive system, weaken institutions, perpetuate corruption at all levels of governance, and instigate internal division within working class communities as a diversion from real issues of impropriety just to ensure a steady stream of financial resources to their elite allies. Equally important to the state is media control; the media has been turned into a propaganda tool for those in power and their allies and used to manipulate public sentiment and suppress dissent to create a facade of national interest that conceals the true beneficiaries of unjust policies.

There is a moral bankruptcy that has taken a life form of itself within the continent; community is gradually being substituted by individualism and corporates; access to basics and happiness are no longer the priority, but materialism and hoarding are now the centrepiece of all planning. There is a deluge of postcolonial economic policies ably supported, enabled and maintained by an elitist political structure biased towards the extraction of resources for the benefit of the elite that dominates the ideology and policymaking philosophy.

Change can only be achieved through collective and collaborative engagement between leaders and the led; we need the whole society to be included in how countries are governed. Until African society confronts real issues afflicting the continent, it will be independent in word only despite its natural riches. Africa is poor because of greed not a lack of resources; governments and their elite allies have turned to greed as a foundation for policy and abandoned their duty to the public – investing in education, health and welfare systems, investing in green energy and other environmental protections, increasing access to decision-making processes, etc. Accumulation of both power and wealth is increasingly making the continent unbearable and inhabitable for the hardworking average person.