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This paper contends that while the history of Africa's underdevelopment is often traced to the Atlantic and Arab slave trade and to colonial rule, African leaders have been heavily responsible the continent's underdevelopment and backwardness. It concludes that irresponsible and irresponsive leadership, vampirism and prodigality, corruption, lack of respect for democratic ideals, insecurity and endemic civil wars - which are not legacies of the slave trade - are the fundamental causes of Africa's underdevelopment.
Key Words: Africa; African underdevelopment; Causes of African underdevelopment; Effects of Atlantic slave trade and colonialism on Africa; Leadership in Africa.
Introduction
Africa is the lowest income region in the world.1 This paper revisits the issue of the continent's chronic underdevelopment and backwardness. Although endowed with enormous and almost inexhaustible resources, Africa lags behind the other continents in every facet of life - economically, technically, politically and technologically.2 In most African countries, public utilities are perpetually comatose forcing many Africans to live under some of the most horrifying socio-economic conditions. Thus, in the failed-state index published in 2010, Africa had seven of the top slots and almost half of the world's sixty economically weak states.3 A failed state is one with a "government that cannot or will not deliver core functions to the majority of its people, including the poor".4 This means that failed states are those that are unable to provide their citizens with the most basic levels of employment, health care, infrastructure and overall security. It is therefore not surprising that the Foreign Policy and Fund for Peace categorized a majority of African states as failed states.5
Probably with the exception of Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), virtually all first generation post-independence African leaders attributed the socio-economic and political failure of the continent to the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism.6 For example, President Sékou Touré of Guinea asserted that "Africa's level of development is a product of the economic conditions brought about by foreign intervention and domination".7 In their own assessment of colonialism, Malian leaders insisted that apart from the Office du Niger, a gigantic agricultural project, French colonialism contributed nothing to Mali. According to them, "...in public works, health, power, transportation, education and the general infrastructure, Mali made almost no progress under French control".8 In...