There’s a brilliant article up on the Croydon Constitutionalists website on how Africa poisoned its own economic well by turning towards socialism instead of one of the many flavours of the free market. It’s a sobering piece and makes me wonder just how great Africa could have been in the post colonial world if it had embraced the market and democracy instead of socialism?

Whilst socialism is not the primary cause of modern Africa’s problems the decision of many African leaders in the immediate post colonial period to choose socialism has gone a great way ruining this continent. Africa is a ruined continent and it was not entirely ruined by colonialism but in large part by the imposition of inappropriate and failed imported ideas such as socialism.

Croydon Constitutionalists said:

In 1960, newly independent African leaders had a choice: capitalism or socialism. Almost all of them picked socialism. A Ghanaian economist named George Ayittey spent forty years documenting what happened next. His findings are in print, and almost nobody outside Africa wants to hear them.

The reasoning in 1960 looked airtight. Colonialism had been run by Western capitalists. So capitalism was a tool of oppression. Socialism, its opposite, would be the path to liberation. Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Sékou Touré in Guinea, Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia, and Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe all reached the same conclusion through the same logic.

The logic was tidy. The results were catastrophic. In Ghana, Nkrumah’s government built 64 state enterprises before his overthrow in February 1966. Only three or four were profitable. By 1970, the Ghanaian state was setting prices on nearly 6,000 items across more than 700 product groups.

Croydon Constitutionalists added:

The argument Ayittey most wanted Africans to hear, and the one almost nobody quotes, is that socialism was never African. Pre-colonial Africa had open markets, long-distance trade, and private enterprise. Cloth-weaving, iron and gold smelting, regional commerce. Property was held by extended families and clans, not by the state.

Read the rest of this excellent article via the link below:

https://croydonconstitutionalists.uk/george-ayittey/