In the historical narration of Africa’s economic underdevelopment and political disorientation, much ink has been spilled assigning blame to colonialism, imperial conquest, and foreign interference. Indeed, these factors remain central in shaping the contours of modern African states. Yet, to gaze exclusively outward is to commit an intellectual crime of omission. Africa’s contemporary malaise is not solely the residue of European imperialism, but increasingly, a self-inflicted wound — an inheritance of systemic dysfunction and a betrayal of potential by its own custodians. The thesis that “Africans underdeveloped Africa” is both a lamentation and an indictment — one that compels an unflinching interrogation of our collective culpability.
When Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah declared that “political independence is meaningless without economic independence,” he was not merely invoking a revolutionary slogan. He was prophetically identifying the contradictions that would soon strangle the hopes of a newly liberated continent. Nkrumah himself would become one of the early casualties of Africa’s postcolonial betrayal, overthrown in a CIA-supported coup with the quiet acquiescence of domestic actors who valued elite comfort over continental liberation. His dream of a united Africa — a federation of shared resources, policies, and currencies — was dismantled by African leaders who had no ideological kinship with Pan-Africanism but were instead addicted to personal aggrandizement and patronage politics.
Today, this legacy festers. From the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea, the African continent sits on a paradox of abundance and poverty. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ivory Coast, once promising nations, now teeter on the precipice of permanent instability. Military juntas have replaced civilian governments under the pretext of national salvation, yet their regimes, devoid of popular mandates, reinforce a cycle of governance by coercion rather than consent. These states are proxies in an undeclared geopolitical chess game, where Russia, China, the United States, and remnants of French neocolonialism vie for influence, all while local actors become the willing midwives of external domination.
The tragic assassination of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, facilitated by NATO and sanctioned by a complicit African Union, remains a turning point in the continent’s regression. Libya, under Gaddafi, though imperfect, was a buffer against trans-Saharan extremism, a financier of pan-African projects, and a bulwark against Western meddling. His death unleashed a domino of insurgencies, refugee crises, and arms proliferation, destabilizing the Sahel and transforming Libya into a failed state with open slave markets — an abhorrence in the 21st century. Once again, African silence — and in many cases, African collusion — greased the wheels of imperial intervention.
Nigeria’s northeast remains a case study in state failure. Boko Haram’s reign of terror is not just a result of radical theology or foreign sponsorship but is fundamentally rooted in decades of neglect, poverty, and elite abandonment. The state’s inability to provide basic education, infrastructure, or employment in this region gave insurgents a fertile ground for recruitment. The militarization of governance, coupled with the politicization of security, has rendered Nigeria’s fight against terror a cyclical performance — tragic, costly, and unresolved. Here, we see the fatal fusion of internal dysfunction and external opportunism — a dance macabre of mutual betrayal.
Across the continent, economic mismanagement has become normalized. Currency devaluation is not a mere technical issue; it reflects deeper structural disarticulations. Nations that produce what they do not consume and consume what they do not produce have become entrapped in the labyrinth of dependency. The CFA franc, still tethered to the French Treasury, is a colonial relic masquerading as monetary policy. Francophone West Africa’s economic sovereignty is an illusion — and the silence of many African leaders on this injustice is deafening.
Moreover, Africa suffers a devastating loss not only of its resources but of its minds. The phenomenon of brain drain — Africa’s best and brightest fleeing to Europe, North America, and the Gulf states — is both a symptom and a symbol of failed governance. When universities crumble, when research is underfunded, and when intellectuals are hounded by autocratic regimes, talent becomes Africa’s most profitable export. The continent hemorrhages doctors, engineers, professors, and technocrats who build fortunes and futures elsewhere while their homeland stagnates.
The disillusionment of African youth is no longer speculative; it is existential. Disenfranchised by gerontocratic leadership, blocked from political participation, and excluded from economic power, young Africans are increasingly turning either to perilous migration routes or revolutionary ideologies. Adult suffrage in Africa has become a ritual without redemption — a four-year cycle of hope, followed by betrayal, punctuated by looting. The social contract lies in ruins. The result is a mental health crisis of epic proportions, visible in rising suicide rates, substance abuse, and the normalization of trauma. The postcolonial African psyche is fractured, caught between ancestral pride and contemporary despair.
The influence of foreign powers persists, not because Africa is inherently weak, but because many African elites are complicit. They invite foreign troops, sign exploitative contracts, and stash stolen wealth in offshore accounts while their people die in leaking hospitals and pothole-riddled roads. Development aid has become a narcotic, numbing the urge for internal reforms. Corruption is no longer clandestine; it is institutionalized — a profession unto itself.
The time has come for Africa to confront itself. This is not a call for ahistorical amnesia — colonialism, slavery, and imperialism must never be whitewashed. But the African condition cannot be healed by perpetual blame. We must reclaim agency — economic, political, and intellectual. Africa must invest in itself: in its farmers, its schools, its youth, its artists, and its technologists. Pan-African institutions must be reborn, not as bureaucratic echo chambers, but as engines of integration, innovation, and accountability.
Africa needs leaders, not rulers; builders, not looters; thinkers, not sycophants. It must decolonize its mind, its currencies, and its constitutions. A continent that cradled civilization must not beg for aid. It must reimagine its universities as laboratories of African renaissance and its parliaments as sanctuaries of people’s will — not retirement homes for revolutionaries turned kleptocrats.
The underdevelopment of Africa is both an effect and a choice. And until Africa stops bleeding from within, no amount of external sympathy or solidarity can save it. The time is now — not for slogans, not for blame, but for a rebirth, rooted in truth, forged in sacrifice, and anchored in radical transformation.
The world is watching. History is waiting. And Africa — weary, wounded, but still worthy — must rise.
By : Jide Adesina
Author| Publisher | activist| Cybersecurity Consultant by
@1stafrika.com
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