1 Heywood, A. Politics 3 rd ed. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.

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1 The African continent is a beautiful continent temporarily blinded by its bright future, but instead of protecting its eyes from its glowing future, it is now going in the wrong direction, choosing the easy way out. The following essay looks at Africa s challenges under three microscopes, economic, environmental and socio-political. After that it evaluates the possible causes for these challenges and creatively discusses solutions to these challenges. The essay uses great example from around the continent to reiterate what it means. The essay hopes not to take a realistic approach without sounding pessimistic. Africa has built a reputation for being the dark and problematic continent that has no future and needs saving, however this view is usually one-sided, but at the same time there is no smoke without a fire. Africa has numerous economic challenges caused by various factors, such as history, political instability, abundance of natural resources and dependability. These factors have slowed the progress of the richest continent on this planet. The first cause to Africa s slow economic progress is colonialism the theory or practice of establishing control over a foreign territory, usually by settlement and economic domination by the Europeans (Heywood, 2007) 1. Although Africa has been mostly independent since 1980 Africa is still suffering from the consequences of that. When Europeans were occupying Africa, all they did was take African resources and export them to Europe to develop Europe and its economies. Africa walked away from this basic infrastructure, and an underdeveloped society. The political instability in Africa has lead to many decisions regarding the economy being made out of self interest rather than the benefit of the people. Africa has been struggling to develop since its independence due to greedy leaders who always preferred filling their own pockets instead of developing the greater society. Zimbabwe is a great example of a country in which its leader is more concerned with his own power and well-being instead of the development of the country and the well-being of its citizens 2. Africa s resources have also proven to be curse to our economic development, the continents resources have started wars and led to too much foreign interference on continental issues due to the resources. It is also because of these very resources that Africa is still so dependent on other countries. Other countries other than African countries seem to have use for these resources and instead of having a viable business of selling these resources to these countries for what they are truly worth, Africa has subjected itself to exploitation. 1 Heywood, A. Politics 3 rd ed. London: Palgrave MacMillan, Goldstein, J & Pevehouse. J. International Relations 9 th ed. Cape Town: Pearson,

2 The wealthiest continent is the most dependent continent on earth. This is caused by the already abovementioned reasons, because Africa has a serious lack of infrastructure and abundance of bad leaders. It natural resources have proven to be a curse rather than wealth. Africa s dependability has become a habit that has become difficult to break, from the days of colonialism Africa was dependent of Europeans for economic growth and development, postcolonialism Africa was dependent on aid from First World countries and currently it seems as though the East (predominately China) is going to provide that comfort of helping poor Africa out. The unfortunate truth however is that all this help from other countries has strings attached. Africa is selling its natural resources to other countries in exchange for aid, a very cheap and conventional exchange rate for other continents. Africa has always looked to the west for development methodologies, and it is probably because the west is globally considered to be developed. However the definition of development is subjective to one s view. This is an argument that many Pan-Africanist have made and as much as it is true, it is important that Africans do not use it to shy away from the harsh realities that face the continent. For example an American might consider not having access to the internet is underdevelopment, whereas not having internet access does not bother an African. In a situation like that then it would not be justified to refer to the African as underdeveloped. However, when a child dies from malnutrition because the continent was unable to provide food for him/her, then arguments of Africa being subjective should not hold or be justified. The arguments around global warming have created a lot of confusion as to whether the environmental changes happening around the world are because on transformation which has been happening all around the world, all these years or whether its caused by factors related to global warming. Either way it is important that Africa plays a sensible role within the politics of global warming as any decision made will affect it in some way or another. The most important environmental issues that Africa needs to address right now though are the abuse of African natural resources and the dumping of hazardous chemicals on the continent. Greenpeace claims that, logging is the single biggest threat to the Congo Basin rainforest. At the moment, logging companies working mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are busy cutting down trees over 50 million hectares of rainforest, or an area the size

3 of France 3. The dumping of hazardous waste in Africa is also another environmental issue that Africa should look at. This dumping takes many forms: donations of pesticides that are actually expired, illegally dropped containers of chemical waste offshore, or even sending broken electronics to be recycled in struggling countries 4. These are examples of how Africa is exploited, both for its resources and for being a vulnerable continent to being used for dumping and other unethical (illegal) stuff. It has been argued that global warming is a global scam to prevent African countries from industrialising, which would develop their economies greatly. The state that Africa is in at the moment is extremely beneficial to many First World countries because they can negotiate very beneficial trading policies and if these countries developed the negotiating will get tougher and the trade policies would not be as flexible as they are now. So, it might be beneficial for Africa not to participate in global warming initiative or they could pretend to participate but not really implement any of the policies like most of the First World countries have been doing. A serious and vigorous plan needs to be implemented to address deforestation and dumping, immediately. These are the kind of environmental affairs that the continent should be concerned about. Africa s political challenges are broad, from ethnicity to gender and religion. Africans seem to hate anything that speaks differently, prays differently or looks differently, yet Africa is probably the most diverse and diluted continent. Africa is diverse from Cape to Cairo, and in most instances there is beauty within diversity however, in Africa s case this diversity seems to be a curse. Although Africans are constantly fighting amongst themselves for cultural and religious reasons the unfortunate truth is that none of us are truly rooted to our cultures or religions. There was a lot of transformation that took place during colonialism that influenced African culture and religion, so it is quite hypocritical of Africans today to be so rooted in culture and religion. It is also hypocritical for Africans from different ethnicities to claim that 3 Greenpeace. Protecting Ancient Forests: The Congo Basin Rainforest. Retrieved on 31 March 2014 from 4 Stouppe, R Hazardous Waste Dumping in Africa. Retrieved on 31 March 2014 from

4 they will not be led by leaders from other ethnicities, whilst they were ruled by people from a different race and different nationality during colonialism. African political leaders are also a big problem to the development of Africa. They seem to be more concerned with themselves, rather than the societies that they claim to lead. Africans on the other hand are very tolerant of this kind of leadership style; very few Africans had expressed discontent about this but none of them have actually done anything. It is like Africans are waiting for someone to come and save them. Africa does not seem to have an effective, transparent and consistent leadership election process, there are a very few that have though. Another cause of this problem is the fact that the rest of the world is trying to implement western governance systems on Africans; these are systems that many Africans are not aware of. In the international politics arena, Africa is nowhere to be seen when it comes to decision making, but it has become a lab for experiment and a serious topic of discussion. IMF polices such as SAP (Structural Adjustment Programs) were tried out on African countries before they were scraped out because, they did not work 5. Africa has become a topic of discuss at almost every global conference, but the unfortunate truth is that Africans are usually not consulted during these discussions and worst part policies get drawn up and implemented on Africa without the input of Africans. However, it is understandably so as most of Africa s leaders are dictators who think that other leaders just want to remove them from their position of power. Africa has many problems and to fix them all would be a miracle and even if they were all fixed new ones would arise, because it does not matter in which phase of development a country or a continent it always has problems. It is important that Africa takes a step back and reflects on where it is, how it go there and where it wants to go. But then again who is Africa, who is going to take a step back and reflect. Africa needs a leader or a group of leader who have a vision, a vision to live in on a beautiful continent alive with possibilities, and these leader/leaders must be willing to get their hands, because it is a mess. These leaders would need to be strategic on how they address certain African issues. It would be firstly very beneficial for them to unsubscribe African countries from international organisations such as the UN, IMF and WTO. These organisations are led by First world 5 Baylis, J., Smith, S. & Owens, P The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations 5 th ed. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

5 countries and always put the interest of first world countries first, whilst their decisions affect African countries. For example, African countries and first world countries are at different levels in terms of development so the same policies can not adopted to both countries and expect the same results to emerge from the different countries. The second issue that these leader would need to consider are Africa s trade policies, so far Africa has been giving away its natural resources for aid and other unreasonable incentives such as building of soccer stadiums and so forth, in which non-africans are hired to build a stadium. It is important for Africa to restructure itself, find systems that work for Africa. African solutions for African problems type of approach. This means that these leaders would need to consider which type of governance works better for which areas. For example, South Africa has both constitutional courts and traditional courts. Constitutional courts cater for the greater society with serious disputes and the consist of judges and lawyers, whereas traditional courts on the other hand cater for people who live in villages and consist of the chief who s the judge and some even have counsels who would then be elders from the villages and the two people who are disputing are free to present themselves in a free environment in a language that they understand. Both these systems work well and have proven to be useful and efficient. Although Africa s problems seem too many to handle, there are solutions available for all of them. These solutions just need patient and dedicated leaders to implement them, however at the same time it is important that these leaders are from Africa and fully understand the problems Africa faces. Organisations such as the AU (African Union) need to take a firmer stand when it comes to African issues and should make sure that their decisions prevail over those of any other organisation outside of Africa or other countries. The AU should also speak out on some of the ills that prevail due to external interference. This might be hard for the AU though, especially if they are funded by external donors who are the very same one who interfere in African affairs. If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ~African proverb~

6 Bibliography: Baylis, J., Smith, S. & Owens, P The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations 5 th ed. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Goldstein, J & Pevehouse. J. International Relations 9 th ed. Cape Town: Pearson, Greenpeace. Protecting Ancient Forests: The Congo Basin Rainforest. Retrieved on 31 March 2014 from Heywood, A. Politics 3 rd ed. London: Palgrave MacMillan, Stouppe, R Hazardous Waste Dumping in Africa. Retrieved on 31 March 2014 from