Washington, DC — Following is an expanded transcription of remarks Professor Akuetteh made as a panelist at the 2013 Africa Braintrust, organized in Washington DC as part of the Annual Legislative Conference by the Congressional Black Caucus.
Good morning. Our time is very short. It is thus impossible to thank all the many deserving persons inside this room and outside. Fortunately, something given in Abuja, Nigeria comes in handy. This is a gift-idea wrapped in arresting phraseology, “Please consider all protocols observed.”
However, one special obligation must be spelled out. I have now lived in Washington for decades. The streets here are more familiar to me than those in Accra my own birth place. And I know the corridors of Congress even better.
Most important, the principled legislators and staff in both chambers who, over the last 31 years have proven themselves heroes, friends and defenders of Africa are clearly and firmly etched on the walls of my mind. I consider them giants.
And none stands taller than Congresswoman Karen Bass.
So thank you, Rep. Bass. I appreciate for being on this panel. But you deserve serious gratitude for doing such a terrific job in organizing these Africa Braintrusts. And above all, thanks very much for fighting for Africa with such dedication, passion and love.
This year's Braintrust--especially this very first panel--is dedicated to the Golden Jubilee of the OAU/AU. We are highlighting and celebrating these first 50 years of the great African independence and unity project. It is altogether fitting and proper to celebrate this major achievement in the past.
But what about the future, the next 50 years?
As I understand it, that is my assignment this morning. My task is to peer through the next 50 years and report back. As a question, the task is asking, “In the coming half century, how should Africa advance--in what priority areas must we take giant strides--and how should our history inspire us in making that progress?”
Our panel is just the opening act, the seat-warmer in this year's Africa Braintrust. Hard on its heels comes the keynote. This year, it will be delivered by a formidable daughter of Africa, Her Excellency Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the African Union Commission's new Chairperson.
Here is something startling that I stumbled upon only hours ago. Her Excellency, in her very first year as Chairperson, has issued Agenda 2063, a blueprint for progress that Africa must make over the next half-century. In other words, Dr. Dlamini-Zuma has spelled out in a well-written plan, the very thing that I have been asked to outline in a few words from this podium.
Anyone who bothers to compare will quickly discover that Her Excellency's plan for Africa's progress is far superior to my halting words here. That should be no surprise. Dr. Dlamini-Zuma's plan comes from an accomplished, globally-respected stateswoman tasked with leading Africa's pre-eminent continental institution through turbulent international waters. Mine? Merely the quick and dirty wishlist blurted out by a free-lancing activist.
So what is on my wishlist? Four of the areas where I want to see Africa take giant strides. Be warned, each area is rather broad.
Human security. That is the term I am applying to the first and broadest area of the African progress that I want. This is a term that will jolt this panel's moderator and my friend, President Nicole Lee of TransAfrica. The reason is that TransAfrica produced a valuable monograph using the same term.
However, in today's remarks, my definition of human security is much more inclusive and eclectic, dumping many disparate elements into a big basket. It is a veritable grab-bag.
For example, African progress in conventional security is the first component element inside that grab-bag. In other words, I demand that Africa builds competent, respected security capabilities so that African lives and limbs are protected from military conflicts much, much better over the next 50 years than in our previous history. It remains an abomination and a searing indictment of my generation that tragic as the Rwandan genocide was, it has been followed by the snuffing out of the lives of roughly 6 million Africans in the Great Lakes. The even worse part is that nobody seems to care and people who should be indicted as prime suspects are frequently rewarded and lionized by global leaders.
But it is not just brother-against-brother civil war that Africans must be protected from. We must also defend ourselves fiercely enough to deter and discourage foreign aggression, invasions and interventions.
This is an historical duty: European imperialists used these very conflict types and pretexts to rob Africans of sovereignty and dignity.
And then there is terrorism. Does anyone still doubt that this is the violent conflict that menaces African lives the most today? I insist on being a proud progressive and Pan-Africanist. But I sometimes disagree and quarrel with fellow progressives and Pan-Africanists. Terrorism is one bone of contention. Some progressives have argued that terrorism is a fake problem concocted by the imperialists to generate profit for their military-industrial complex.
I disagree strongly, asserting the following: Terrorism in Africa is real. It is killing, maiming and terrorizing ordinary Africans from Algeria in the north to Nigeria and Mali in the west to Somalia in the east. It remains our sacred duty to find the smartest, most cost-effective tools to prevent or crush terrorism. If those tools include forming temporary alliances with even former oppressors, then why not--so long as we remember history and maintain hawk-eyed vigilance?
To re-cap: Much better protection African life and limb--from civil war, from foreign invasion, and from terrorism--forms a big part of the African progress in human security that I want to see.
Meeting basic human needs is another element inside my human security grab-bag. Great progress must be made for every African to get adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education, and other necessities. Some would say this is just another way to describe fighting poverty. I would not disagree.
However, there is another way of talking—and thinking--about poverty with which I do disagree. Even its biggest detractors, when honest, do acknowledge that the US is more democratic than any other great power.
It won its independence, and has been working to perfect its democracy, for more than two centuries. Along the way, it has built the biggest economy and become the richest country in the world, if not in history.
Despite all that, America has not yet abolished poverty. Indeed the current great recession has increased poverty in the US.
The message should be crystal: Eradicating mass poverty is extremely hard.
This causes me to send a message of my own to the sundry foreigners with hidden agendas who regularly appoint themselves Africa's saviors and poverty eradication magicians: Stop insulting Africa's poor. Stop saying you will remove poverty from the continent. Africans may be poor materially, but they are not stupid. They are wrestling enough challenges and do not need the additional burden of glib promises that cannot be kept.
My concept of human security does not stop at poverty. It goes next to the vast enterprise of comprehensive, multi-faceted socio-economic development. A few of the facets deserving special mention include job creation, infrastructure development, human resource development, and protection of not just of the environment but of our stunning wildlife.
To make decent progress toward real development, every African country must apply the countless ideas, lessons, policies, and innovations that have been shown to work. An approach that some have called human-centered development (empowerment and mobilization of Africa's entire human resource, especially youth) must be prioritized.
To sum up, human security here includes protection of African life and limb from the violence of civil wars, foreign interventions and terrorism. It also includes reducing poverty as much as possible. And it includes meaningful socio-economic development. All these components make up the first of the four areas of African progress I want.
Call the second area social equality. My meaning here is this: We Africans must wage fierce, all-out campaigns to eradicate prejudice, discrimination and injustice against fellow Africans. My special peeves here are religious, ethnic and gender inequality and prejudice.
It is shameful and unacceptable that some Africans would be denied their unalienable rights, including winning and holding high public office, because they confess the ‘wrong' religion.
Ethnic prejudice is equally abominable and intolerable—if more complex and recalcitrant. To win the difficult fight against it requires that we learn from prior efforts. Upon defeating colonialism, Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah boldly declared that ethnic chauvinism, being a divisive tool stoked or invented by colonialists, would be quickly eradicated “in five years.” This has not happened—even after 50 years. Today's and tomorrow's generations of Africans must recognize the formidable pull of ethnicity and must redouble efforts to find nuanced but effective ways to blunt and contain its dark side.
And then there is the mother of all African inequalities, gender inequality. The progress I want to see here is clearly-stated and cannot be over-emphasised: We African men must change. We must respect and appreciate African women. We must embrace energetic leadership in the work to achieve gender equality. Critically, we must understand that this is an unstoppable global emancipation movement and that failure to participate quickly and appropriately will bring costly sorrow to our private lives and leave our continent farther behind.
My work has taken me to dozens of countries on four continents.
Unquestionably, many people in this room have traveled even more widely.
But I will bet that their finding is identical to mine: Everywhere outside Africa, if you look honestly, you find darker-skinned people at the bottom of the heap, despised and discriminated against. Put another way, the rest of the world looks down on people of African descent and treats us abominably in ways that are big and small. The ignorance and small-mindedness driving deep prejudice always astound me.
But there is something that floors me even more: We Africans continue to look down on ourselves--even in an age when Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Kofi Annan all walk among us.
Here then is another fast African progress that I want: All Africans must arm themselves with knowledge. They must debunk the lies and fallacies that have implanted feelings of inferiority into their minds.
They must replace these with fact-based, unwavering quiet confidence.
But psychology is only a part of this area of progress. Africa's culture and image form the other part.
I call this area psycho-cultural progress, for obvious reasons. My old boss, Randall Robinson, has a better name for this—naturally. He has called it “defending the [African] spirit.”
By whatever name, this is the third broad area in which I want Africa to make great progress by 2063. The first two areas--just to reiterate--are progress in human security and progress in social equality. All three are vitally important, essential.
But the remaining area is even more so. Therefore, I saved it for last.
Democracy. My view here, simply stated, is that Africans, their leaders and friends must do whatever it takes to ensure that by 2063 democratic governance is deeply entrenched and vibrant, holding unchallenged sway across the continent--not unlike its status today in North America and Western Europe.
Before going any further, a crucial point about democracy must be driven home immediately and forcefully. In her introduction, our moderator Nicole (who, I must repeat, happens to be my friend and TransAfrica colleague), described me as a democracy activist. She is entirely correct: While clear-eyed about its limitations and frustrations, I believe in democracy deeply and see it as the key to Africa's advance.
But not everyone does. Indeed today, detractors of democracy abound, in Africa and shockingly, in the democratic West. They often seem legion, leaving me feeling, at most times, like a lonely voice in the wilderness. Fuelled by several factors (eg by corruption; by frustration with democracy's quarrelsome and slow pace; by China's dazzling authoritarian development; and by Western hypocrisy and double standards) elitist critics of democracy in Africa can be extremely loud in their disdain.
Ponder a favorite argument of theirs: Elections alone do not make democracy.
The required clear and forceful knock-down of this straw-man is not complicated: No serious person ever claims that elections equal democracy. To the contrary real democracy advocates are at pains to stress that genuine democracy is a never-ending journey, a complex array of institutions, processes, events and subsystems. For example in my November 5, 2011 Dyer Lecture, I listed 14 other components--in addition to free and fair multi-party elections.
Having stressed democracy's multi-faceted nature, I return to emphasizing its paramountcy among the four areas in which Africa must progress over the next 50 years. Here is a good way to look at this comparative importance: If the four areas constituted the cabinet under a parliamentary system, democracy would be the prime minister—the first among equals.
This begs a question: Just what makes democracy so important? Why must it be Africa's top priority and foundational area of progress? My answer is, two key reasons. In the first place, democracy constitutes a great goal in and of itself. Citizens and even non-citizens in democratic countries, even poor democratic countries, enjoy a far better deal than counterparts in others systems. These better democratic deals are too numerous to list here. They include: prohibition of abuse by state officials and others with superior power; protection of minorities; freedom to criticize not just state officials but others wielding great power, such as big corporations; and of course the ability to choose those to whom the huge powers of the state shall be entrusted temporarily.
Democracy is also the most reliable, sustainable means and instrument for accomplishing other vital goals—that is the other reason for making it Africa's top priority. As discussed above, those other great goals for Africa are psycho-cultural self-confidence, social equality, and human security, which in this essay, includes banishing food insecurity.
The ultimate in food insecurity of course is famine. The great Indian-born Nobel-winning economic historian, Amartya Sen, pored over centuries of available data from around the world and uncovered a startling truth: famines do not occur in democracies, no matter how poor. This Sen finding is powerful evidence bolstering the case that in addition to being a great goal itself, democracy is also an excellent instrument for sustainably achieving other important goals.
Consider now several tidbits about the Africa Braintrust. We, its participants, are sitting in Washington DC surrounded by the three branches of the US government. It is organized by the Congressional Black Caucus, deservedly termed the conscience of Congress. And Ambassador Huggins just preceded me with a sketch of the history of US policy toward post-independent Africa. A question then poses itself: How should Washington assist Africans in my top priority of entrenching democracy across Africa during the next 50 years?
My answer: American foreign policy must first do no harm. Consequently, it must immediately break its destructive 50-year habit of supporting and propping up African dictators, repressive regimes and warlords.
Skipping today, here is a partial list of US-supported tyrants from yesterday only—for anyone who needs reminding. Hissene Habre of Chad.
Apartheid South Africa. Mobutu sese Seko of Zaire. Siyaad Barre of Somalia. Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Even Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.
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Americans, even hard-boiled realists, should join African activists in terminating this friendly-tyrant policy. Reason: Never mind Africa; this policy is counterproductive and a bad bargain for the US. For short-term gain accruing to whoever is occupying the White House, the friendly-tyrant policy does longer-lasting damage to serious American national interests in Africa because as the African proverb observes, “the axe may forget but the tree does not.”
With that, I hope I have done a bit of justice to my main assignment today which has been to share my thoughts regarding what progress I want to see in Africa over the next 50 years.
However, my assignment also had a subsidiary question: What lessons from African history should inspire the progress I want for the continent?
Truth in analysis: I am no historian; merely a simple foot-soldier for Africa who often wonders about yesterday, hoping to make sense of today.
In this light, Africa's history since Columbus seems to me to consist of several sequential periods: the period of devastation and scattering which emanated from the slave trade, followed by the period of humiliating conquest and loss of sovereignty, after which came the determined and successful liberation struggle, which in turn has been followed by the roller-coaster first 50 years of independence as the final period.
From this history, I glean a few lessons. One is that African unity and common cause are vital. Bad things happen to us when we become divided and/or sue for a separate peace. Consequently the global Africa family must become brothers' and sisters' keepers—notwithstanding inevitable family quarrels that will try our souls. Another lesson is that we must become the best informed and the least sentimental about trends and motivations everywhere in the world. When we are ignorant or too trusting, the world descends on us like a ton of bricks. A related lesson is captured wonderfully by the Billie Holiday jazz classic, “God Bless the Child.” Call it self-reliance. Charity and dependency shackle and humiliate Africans, while donors, behind closed doors, are disdainful. The final lesson should have a familiar ring these days, “Yes, we can.” It is a lesson taught by the jaw-dropping achievements of enslaved Africans especially in the US, in Brazil, and in Haiti. It is also taught by Africa being the only one among four completely colonized continents that fully freed itself.
These four lessons from African history, in my opinion, must inspire and guide the progress that the continent must make over the next 50 years.
Here is a highly-crunched summary of that African progress I want: Over the next 50 years, as the number one priority, Africa must entrench democracy partly as the foundation and best instrument for achieving other vital goals. Specifically, we must also take giant strides in three other key arenas: progress in human security (here defined as a grab-bag that contains a lot--defending African life and limb from violent conflict, alleviating poverty, meeting basic needs, creating jobs, achieving broad economic development, preserving our gorgeous wildlife, and protecting our stunning environment); progress in social equality; and progress in psycho-cultural self-confidence (aka defending the African spirit).
To close: My assignment asked what progress I would like to see in Africa over the next 50 years. You just heard my answers. I hope they were worth your time.
Thank you very much.
Nii Akuetteh is an African-born, Washington-based essayist, analyst and democracy activist. He has taught at Georgetown University, was founding executive director of the Open Society Institute in West Africa, as well as editor and research director of TransAfrica Forum, founder of the Democracy & Conflict Research Institute, and executive director of Africa Action.
