Professor Godfred A. Bokpin may not be a household name in Africa but he is a renowned economic researcher and Professor of Finance at the University of Ghana, consulted widely for his work and views by a number of governments and multilaterals, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), African Development Bank (AfDB), UN Habitat, and many more.
Typical of the Africans’ propensity to make light of their plight, he recently described the continent’s economic and financial woes in poetic prose. Talking to GhanaWeb’s BizTech, he said:
“Africa is the only continent where water flows upwards,”
— a metaphorical reference to the more than US$90 billion Africa loses annually in illicit financial flows. By comparison, that is roughly equal to Tanzania’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He struck well-known chords about Africa’s poverty such as Africa being actually a net creditor to the rest of the world since it loses more than what it attracts in investments and foreign aid.
“Africa exists for the rest of the world, not for itself. Africans should hate to live in poverty in the midst of plenty and much more so, to have their wealth stolen from them. If Africans cannot say, ‘never again colonialism, never again slavery,’ then there shall be no bright morning for the continent.”
Africa indeed sustains the entire world as the global system denies Africans an equitable share of their own wealth. That is slavery and that is colonialism.
He traced that inequality to Africa’s colonial past.
“If you look at the way Africa was designed… there is very little fiscal connectivity within Africa itself, because Africa was designed to serve the rest of the world,” he said.
The solution to that? Prof. Bokpin recommended stronger governance, regional cooperation and economic re-engineering to ensure Africa’s wealth serves its own development.
With due respect, that is not entirely new. In fact, our forefathers fought for freedom and independence from colonial rule precisely for that reason. The only problem so far has been that the march away from mere flag independence has proven more complicated than was hitherto envisioned, due to both external and internal factors.
Blaming colonialism for Africa’s current woes is not entirely correct or even intellectually honest.
Africa laments, and it likes to lament but apparently, it never hates. Our leaders and some intellectuals have made it their career to merely impress rather than stamp down their foot firmly to make lasting change.
Take good governance for instance. It remains a very catchy phrase but with varying degrees both of conviction and practice, reducing it to mere sophistry.
What I want to say is that economic and financial freedom constitutes another phase of Africa’s liberation struggle. Given the right political will, intellectuals are the next soldiers in that frontier. As such, intellectuals should not be apologetic.
Our leaders and some intellectuals have made it their career to merely impress rather than stamp down their foot firmly to make lasting change.
