Colonialism and apartheid may be part of Africa’s heritage, but the promise of freedom that independence offered is yet to be realised by the majority.
Opinion by Mutumwa Mawere
The transition from colonialism to an inclusive and cohesive Africa requires connectors.
Knowledge acquisition and application can and should bridge the majority of Africa’s peoples from the past to a future of possibilities and opportunities.
After more than 56 years of independence, the majority of Africans do not have the knowledge they need to open the door of opportunity that independence was meant to provide. They were oppressed by the colonial order and remain outside the mainstream even in post-colonial Africa. Freedom has proved expensive in post-colonial Africa for it requires the means to enjoy it.
Real freedom has proved elusive and the inherited dualistic political economy is still intact, albeit, with different actors and faces, but the reality of poverty, inequality and unemployment is all too obvious.
The gaps in public resources and informed debates on what is good for Africa have broken the bridge that was supposed to convey people from poverty to prosperity. There can be nothing more urgent than bridging the gaps so that Africans can once again believe in the promise of a better life that has eluded them for so long. There is an obvious need for citizens to take ownership of their future by trusting less the power of state actors to deliver the promise of a better life.
Investing in knowledge systems on what has made industries grow and thrive in the so-called Dark Continent may assist in framing the kind of dialogues required to correctly position the role of the state and its actors in post-colonial Africa.
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There is an urgent need to craft a new order that provides disincentives for bad policy choices that have condemned the future of many Africans to abject poverty. State actors in democratic states are created to make sound policy choices for the future and yet the enterprise of policy-making calls for vigilance on the part of the governed for human history has provided no evidence that human beings in state positions are capable of rising above self-interest.
The post-colonial experience has transformed and bridged freedom fighters into often rent-seeking and maximising arrogant agents. A democratic bridge that was supposed to convey poor Africans into a new land of plenty was broken so that only a few could cross over. Political actors by nature and design are dreamers who have the potential to bind heterogeneous groups together like a quilt, but in state actors citizens need and deserve efficient delivery of government services.
During the fight for independence, Africa produced its own dreamers who were good at inspiring people to rise against injustice. However, after independence, the people who devoted so much energy and time to destroying institutions were expected and trusted to transform themselves into institution builders.
Every election time, citizens are told who Africans are as a people, what and why Africa is what it is, and what Africa ought to become. Instead of investing in a futuristic vision, it is not untypical that citizens are encouraged to lean backwards to what Africa was like under colonialism and more significantly what dangers imperialism poses to the future.
Rarely do political actors take responsibility for the lack of progress in addressing the policy challenges that confront contemporary Africa. The skills required by Africa do not only require political imagination, but statecraft bureaucratic rationality. Yet in post-colonial Africa, the only visible face is that of dreamers who are not capable of pulling the levers of government to deliver the services that the African people so desperately want their governments to provide.
In 1986, the people of Zaire were so desperate for telephone services and the government actors were smart enough to trust private actors to intervene. If African states were run like the mobile phone operators, there is no doubt that citizens would be leaning forward to use the freedom that independence promised to cross the bridge from poverty to a decent life.
To serve more than 700 million subscribers is not a joke, but under our watch, the mobile phone operators have demonstrated that it is possible to construct and implement a service platform in post-colonial Africa that can give people the service they need and deserve.
The industry has enabled people to connect missing pieces on the opportunity bridge and as a result the impact on poverty, inequality and unemployment has been positive.
The democratisation of the telecommunications space and the invisible response of the market has demonstrated the need to rethink transition issues for Africa’s better days will only come when stock is taken of the numerous positive stories that have unfolded to give the continent a complex and confusing character.
The living examples of what is possible in Africa exists and yet the character of the continent is increasingly defined by vocal political dreamers who have little to show for their hegemony on the state in terms of connecting freedom and choice. Today, citizens of Africa can choose among many providers of mobile phone solutions and Africa is better for it. The plurality of players is good for democracy and progress.
It is not difficult to imagine what Africa’s mobile landscape would be if there was only one provider of mobile phone network in the continent yet in the world of politics, the fewer the players the better.
The short history of the mobile phone industry has taught us that competition based on service is healthy for the beneficiary is the customer. However, the contestation for political power is rarely based on the impact of political choices on the quality of life of the intended beneficiaries.
The need to bridge the knowledge gap using the examples of running business models like the mobile phone industry cannot be overstated.
The industry is not perfect, but to the extent that its viability is anchored on the support and willing participation of users, it is possible to make the case that exposing Africans to opportunities can produce encouraging and rewarding dividends.
The mobile phone family has grown not only in terms of investment, but also in terms of players. The pioneers of the industry have not clung to power, but have stepped aside to allow other people to come into the market.
The consolidation that has taken place in the industry has been underpinned by the need to marshal resources to deliver the kind of service that the expanding market expects. The bridge that independence was expected to erect should have moved the majority of citizens from the past to the future, but the passage of time has not changed the fortunes of the majority for the better.
The knowledge that citizens have been exposed to has not opened the door of opportunity and the freedom that is available is not usable to advance the interests of the very people it was meant to advance.
There is no doubt that the service that mobile phone companies deliver is not perfect, but acceptable to the extent that people are willing and able to pay for it. President Woodrow Wilson wrote eloquently that: “Liberty has never come from government. It has always come from the Subjects of Government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.”
The liberty of Africans will never come from the benevolence of state actors rather it will be a consequence of struggle. The architects of the colonial project were acutely aware that arming natives with education and knowledge posed a real threat to the model and yet could find no better model that would have denied natives the knowledge required to interface with the model and yet remain on the other side of the bridge.
Knowledge will always provide sustainable and durable power to those who aspire for a better life.
We now know that the people who have monopolised state power have done so on the basis of abusing the state for personal interest rather than using the state to open doors for citizens to do what they know best when freedom rings.
The manner in which the mobile phone industry has organised itself over the years from shareholder, board, and executive management gives hope that it is possible in one generation to lift Africa from its current condition to a better platform that is inclusive and prosperous.
- Mutumwa Mawere is a businessman based in South Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
