My name is George Ayittey and I am currently the president of the Free Africa Foundation.
Many people believe that traditional African economies are inherently socialist, people
who put group or travel identities ahead of the individual, this has lead to the belief
that the socialist economic models are inherently African.
But is traditional African culture inherently socialist?
To understand this question it is imperative to understand the rise of socialism in Africa.
Contrary to what many people believe, socialism was never part of the indigenous African society,
in fact it was a response to colonialism and a fight for independence.
Many fighters for political independence mistakenly equated colonialism with capitalism, and for
that reason the rise of an ideology will be so as radically different from what we
had experienced under colonialism.
Political leaders, such as Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenneth
Kaunda of Zambia, embraced socialism and went deliberately to establish models of government
based on socialist ideology.
Unfortunately, socialism in Africa just like socialism elsewhere in the world has created
enormous poverty while fostering dictatorships, corruption and violence, nationalizing ownership
of both industry and resources.
In strict control, the government has said “All individual economic activity is the
biggest cause of high levels of poverty in Africa”.
However, contrary to what many people believe, totalitarian socialism is not inherently African,
nor does it arise from traditional African culture.
In the West, the basic economic and social unit is the individual, the American says
“I am because I am”, in Africa the basic economic and social unit is the extended family,
the African says “I am because we are”.
When the first European came to Africa and asked, “Whom does this land belong to?”
the Africans said “The land belongs to us”.
This is how the myth of communal ownership of land arose.
Land and resources were not owned by tribal governments but by extended families working
freely with each other without government control.
It is important to emphasize that no traditional government could dictate to an African what
crops to grow on his farm, where to take his harvest to sell, and how much he should charge.
On Africa’s free village markets, prices are determined by bargaining not fixed by
traditional authorities nor they could tell Africans what type of occupation they should
enter into.
Africans could become hunters, fishermen, farmers, musicians, or whatever that they
wanted to become. Free enterprise was the rule, and free trade routes like the trans-saharan
criss crossed the continent before the white colonialists arrived.
Government has been responsible for retrogressing Africa’s development, this has led to terrible
consequences for Africa.
Africa's salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions.
Botswana is the only African country who did this, which is why Botswana is doing very
well.
This also proves that the solution to Africa’s problems do not lie inside a corridor from
the US Congress or the World Bank, nor they lie inside the inner sanctum of the Chinese
Presidium, they lie in Africa itself.