Africa: Leaders Pushing Bricks in the Sand

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AFRICAN leaders always make it their business to think big. Whenever they gather, they give themselves monumental tasks just to appear to be freeing themselves from the bonds of colonialism. This fascination with building institutions to fight the ghosts of imperialism is an intriguing undertaking that has oftentimes reduced the rulers to comical characters fond of toying with replicas and not the real thing.

In the townships, children push bricks in the sand and pretend to be driving an F1 car. The same can be said of continental projects to which vast resources have been committed, only to come up with caricatures of the real thing.

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