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The Best People to Help Africa Are Africans
| Article
# : |
10790 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1993 |
2,559 Words |
| Author
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Terry Eastland, resident fellow at the Ethics and Public
Policy Center in Washington, D.C., is author of Energy in the
Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency (Free
Press). |
THE WORLD & I: To begin with, is Somalia typical or atypical? Is it an exceptional or, unfortunately, not an exceptional case? May I ask professor Ayittey to begin with that.
Prof. George Ayittey: Let me say that Somalia is not an exception, but it's a unique situation where you have a confluence of all these deleterious factors that have sort of come to a head: Drought has played a role, dictatorship has played a role, overemphasis on weapons and guns has also played a role.
It's an extreme case, but you also see other African countries drifting toward the same Somali-type situation: Angola, Mozambique, Liberia, Sudan, Zaire, for example. So it's not an exception.
Prof. Sulayman Nyang: Somalia is a microcosm of the African problem, a problem of underdevelopment. It was caught in the Cold War. In fact, Somalia is one of the beneficiaries of the Cold War because it was considered strategic, being on the Red Sea and along the Indian Ocean. Other smaller countries like Gambia, Benin, Togo, and others that were simply receiving aid did not benefit.
W&I: They were sort of ignored?
Nyang: Yes. They were ignored whereas Somalia benefited. The dictatorship that Ayittey was talking about was able to manipulate this factor very well in the case of Somalia. Siad Barre was able to play America against the Soviet Union, and of course the dictatorship next door in Ethiopia did the same thing.
So America and Russia have been played like yo-yos by these dictators who were exploiting their people, and what we see today really is the unraveling of that. So the end of the Soviet empire was accompanied by the end of African dictatorships, but in a bloody, violent way.
Prof. Eboh Ezeani: I tend to agree with professor Ayittey and Professor Nyang. One thing I need to add is, when you have a leadership situation whereby one person tends to be glorified, defied, then you have the problem of transition because when the leader goes, by any means, then you have a vacuum and a power struggle.
Usually this power struggle borders on ethnic rivalry for power sharing, for resources. So what is happening in Somalia is not unique.
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