In 2014, I was a regular on a construction forum website called Skyscrapercity.com. The Nigerian section on the site had a busy political discussion board where fellow regulars would congregate to discuss the coming election after cooing over construction photos of mega-projects from around the country. Broadly, the posters on this board were divided into two – those who believed that Nigeria was nowhere near political maturity after just 15 years of democracy, and those who believed that Nigeria had developed a solid two-party system like in the U.S.
A poster openly asserted in fact, that Nigeria not only had a solid 2-party structure, but also had a well-defined political spectrum with “conservatives” and “progressives.” PDP was the “conservative” party because it apparently was the entrenched political power, while the newly formed APC was the “progressive” party, possibly because it had the word “progressive” in its name. It seemed incredible to me that anyone would look at a new party dominated by decampees from the old one, and then conclude that they both somehow developed American-style economic and social ideologies overnight, but I was in the minority.
Needless to say these days, the board is almost entirely desolate as the events of the past 6 years have put paid to any such fanciful notions of Nigerian political maturity. However, the underlying problem behind such thinking still persists in Nigerian and continental economic and political discourse – an obsession with forcing ill-fitting American socio-political paradigms on our African situation. This can be especially observed nowadays with the resurgence of 1960s-era Pan Africanist sentiment and wholesale copying of American trade dispute tactics.
American-style Pan Africanism – an idea past its sell by date
At a time when racial and cultural conflict in the U.S. is at its 21st century high and the internet has made it such that someone in Johannesburg has the same ability to interact with American news and discussions in real-time, it is very easy to quite literally forget that one is on a different continent halfway around the world, with a completely different social paradigm and a unique set of problems.
SEE ALSO: Redeemer’s University scientists identify 7 lineages of coronavirus unique to Nigeria
The resurgence of independence-era Pan Africanist sentiment on the African continent over the past decade has coincided perfectly with the rise of public racial conflict in the U.S. This is no coincidence. As an African, it is hard to read news stories, watch social media videos and interact with real time conversations about the real sufferings of the African American population without feeling a significant amount of emotional connection to their historical and present situation.
There is no longer a white colonialist hate figure controlling government policy, education, public spending, infrastructure development, trade policy, elections, monetary policy or personnel appointments. Africans themselves are in charge of their own destiny now
Apart from retaining a significant amount of cultural alignment and an obvious genetic relationship with the African American people, we also had our experiences at the hands of a hostile dominant power within our parents’ lifetimes. Many of us born in South Africa and Zimbabwe may have even experienced what life under an amped-up version of the American-style racial caste system is like in our own lifetimes. In fact, this convergence of experiences is what birthed Pan Africanism in its original form if traced back to Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century. It is what birthed the African independence movements led by Sekou Toure, Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah and Obafemi Awolowo, which worked hand-in-glove with the American civil rights movement led by the likes of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
Viewing the African condition through the same lens as the African American condition made sense at the time and it played a useful role in achieving the twin aims of unshackling the continent from colonial tethers and obtaining full personhood for black people in the United States. The problem however, is that everything I have just described took place more than 5 decades ago. The world has changed in that time, but the Pan Africanist doctrine has not.
This doctrine, which centres “white supremacy” as the existential enemy of African life and achievement, no longer applies to the African continent. The African continent is no longer under the administrative control of anyone but itself. There is no longer a white colonialist hate figure controlling government policy, education, public spending, infrastructure development, trade policy, elections, monetary policy or personnel appointments. Africans themselves are in charge of their own destiny now.
‘White Supremacy’ is a real problem – just not an African one
By all accounts, we are doing a terrible job of it but the situation is still very much recoverable. Despite the many obvious failures of 60 years of African leadership, the continent does in fact have many things going for it which give cause for hope and optimism. Africa is home to the world’s youngest population with a median age of 19.7, and the world’s fastest growing urban middle class.
We also have a unique advantage of being a continent that has the sheer land mass to feed and support even double its current population, the natural resource inputs for any kind of development and potentially the human resources to power said development. If we can put the right continental trade policies in place and make the right investments in education and infrastructure, we are a huge success story waiting to break out.
The big problem with imposing an American-centred one-size-fits-all lens on our socioeconomic discourse is that it completely ignores this obvious ability to impact our own destiny and erases our agency. It instead outsources all responsibility and blame to the convenient scapegoat of white supremacy, as though an independent African nation and a black inner-city neighbourhood in Houston share the same problems.
In fact, if an African country elects competent leadership which institutes growth-oriented policy and liberalises the political and economic spaces, the resultant prosperity and freedom will make white supremacy an academic point for its citizens. African countries do have that power to positively affect the lives of their citizens – with or without the say-so of the white bogeyman.
In other words, the political goals of the African half of the 1960s ideology have already been won – we now need to focus on creating wealth for ordinary Africans by opening up and streamlining our economies with each other across the continent. It would be a huge mistake to interact with our African problems through the prism of those whose primary day-to-day struggle involves fighting against a perceived external enemy.
Similarly, with regard to American trade politics, especially its ongoing China trade war, it is very unhelpful to view such actions as templates for running an African economy. What African economies need above all else is increased trade volumes and velocities, not protectionist tantrums that may have little impact on the world’s top 2 economies, but will almost certainly multiply poverty and human suffering here.
The type of interaction we should have with the U.S. involves plugging into its giant economy and other elements that will be useful to us. We should pick individual aspects of America’s economic and political paradigm such as Trade liberalisation which leads to private wealth creation, a democratic open society, religious pluralism, ethnic diversity and enhanced social freedoms
Modern day continental Africans by and large, have scaled the second tier of Henry Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, while paradoxically failing to get past the bottom tier. Those whom some of us try to copy have done the reverse. Copying them can only lead to inadequate results. What we need is inward-focused politics and outward-focused economics.
We do not need America’s ill-fitting social theories any more than they need our poverty and lack of economic growth.
