Some African countries 'not viable', Mo Ibrahim says

[T_i_B]

Source: Daily Telegraph

One month after the £3million African leadership award in his name failed to name a winner due to lack of suitable recipients, the British-Sudanese mobile phone billionaire said bad leadership, and the fragmentation of the continent into small and economically isolated countries meant that Africa could not survive as it was.

Mr Ibrahim told a conference on good governance in Tanzania on Saturday: "We need scale and we need that now - not tomorrow, the next year or the year after".

Speaking to an audience that included Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, Mr Ibrahim juxtaposed the power of tiny African countries with few resources with some of the world's powerhouse economies. "Who are we to think that we can have 53 tiny little countries and be ready to compete with China, India, Europe, the Americans? It is a fallacy."

Rather than arguing for the re-drawing of political boundaries in Africa, however, Mr Ibrahim advocated faster economic integration in the continent. "Intra-African trade represents from 4 per cent to 5 per cent of our international trade. Why? This is unacceptable, unviable, and people need to stand up and say this," he said.


Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/6588919/Some-African-countries-not-viable-Mo-Ibrahim-says.html

[Soylent Brice]

1. hmm...

[Demeter]

2. DOUBLE HMMMM

Far be it from me to point out that Africzan people have never had the option of choosing their governments, their borders, the allocation of their resources, or their affiliations (tribe, nation, etc) and allies. Let alone their priorities.

Oh, there have been some sham elections, and some accidents of birth. But the story has been conquest and exploitation from abroad, colonial, corporate, and most damnably, religious, since at least the time of the Romans, and especially the 19th and 20th centuries to the present.

So, who shall tell the Muslims, Catholics, Baptists and Episcopalians, the oil, gold and diamond companies, the agribusiness, the Chinese, Indian and Anglo-descendants to get out?

Well, perhaps the native-born could stay, if they renounce their ancestral ties...

And as for having this would-be corporate fascist sort it all out, I think that's the last thing Africa needs.

[HamdenRice]

3. He's right and most of the decent African leaders realize this and are working for change

The best example is the Southern African Development Community, which is turning South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia into, more or less, one integrated economy.

West Africa has ECOWAS -- the Economic Community of West Africa, but it is plagued by the fact that its economic powerhouse, Nigeria, is itself unstable. Sadly, many very stable West African countries have become unstable, despite the tremendous natural resources and a fairly well educated citizenry.

East Africa also is progressing toward unification with Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as the core.

I suspect that rather than all of Africa uniting at once, these three cores will slowly expand and subsume most of the continent.

It's worth noting that many of the CIA and British intelligence overthrows of governments in the 60s were aimed at thwarting African integration -- beginning with Kwame Nkrumah's attempts to negotiate a "United States of Africa" and his overthrow by military officers trained in Britain at Sandhurst.

The most hopeful thing about African integration is that for reasons that are beyond me, the major powers no longer are so deadset against integration that they will kill leaders and overthrow governments to prevent it.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

4. Right... Nkrumah trying to make himself president for life had nothing to do with it

Come 1966 Nkrumah had alienated the entire country, his overthrow or assassination was inevitable. The guy was every bit as narcissistic and stupid as George W. Bush.