In as much as the slave trade is relevant to the wider dynamics of the
evolution of the African reality, it is not the reason for Africa to be cursed,
if ever it was.

    By the time the decolonization of Africa was taking place, Africans who
led the struggle for independence were intellectually prepared to take the
challenges of nationhood, but sacrifice the desire for the common good for their
own selfish interest and machinations. Those who were raised from the bowels of
poverty, acquired the best education in western institutions and return to
Africa to lead the struggle for independence and emancipation, instead of
helping in the greater framework of building an African unity, of building that
Pan-Africanist agenda extol by the likes of Ghana's Nkrumah, they regressed in the
colonial legacy of subjugation and domination of their own peoples; basked in
the colonial designs of grandiose, pomp and pageantry that has contributed a
lot to create the decadence that has since then been the norm which is our
curse.

     To maintain their citadel of power, African leaders promoted tribalism,
nepotism and all the other ism's and their attendant retrogression of
corruption, inefficiency, misplaced priorities, embezzlement of public funds and
defrauding of their national coffers to the point of national bankruptcy. The
legacy of wars, disease and ingrained poverty is much an attribute of the failure
of leadership in the post colonial African era.

   If African leaders have lived up to their expectations, have fulfilled the
needs and aspirations of their people; have harnessed the abundant resources
within the continent to build the infrastructure that would have eased poverty
and eliminate disease, create political structures that does not worship or
glorify people in power and make change of government, as feasible as possible
then the legacy of slavery, in as much as it was brutal and painful, would
have much been compensated for in the quality of life that would have been the
post colonial African era.


    Rene

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