{Is democracy inherently a good thing? And do democratic institutions facilitate economic development? Is democracy universal or should it be universal? The recent concluded summit in the Rwandan Capital Kigali was a milestone and a breaking ground for the transformation of Africa from a peasantry society to a modern industrial one. }

The summit was chaired by the host the Rwandan leader and other seven African heads of state namely President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (Mali), Salva Kiir Mayardit (South Sudan), Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya), Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Paul Kagame of Rwanda who one by one said that Africa should leverage the ICT to spur a pro-poor, sustainable growth.

The Rwandan leader who inherited a country that was considered a failed state by the world has transformed the tiny East African country from an aid recipient to a modern self sufficient country. But what magic has the Rwandan leader used that many African leaders have failed to discover? The problems of Africa are a combination of both exogenous and endogenous factors.

I will endeavor to highlight on some of the factors that have been stagnating the African development Enterprise: the colonial legacy, social pluralism and its centrifugal tendencies, corruption of leaders, poor labor disciplines, lack of entrepreneur skills, poor planning and incompetent management, inappropriate policies, the stifling of market mechanisms, low levels of technical assistance, the limited in flow of foreign capital investment, falling commodity prices and unfavorable terms of trade by the reach countries, and low levels of saving and investment.

Rwanda has not withered in all the above mentioned storms and has emerged head upright and has been labeled a success story not only in the region but on the international plane. The problem of Africa for all the decades since independence has been the political mismanagement which has been the catalyst of all other factors to thrive and impede the developmental policies. I will therefore argue that the African development by all indications has been impeded by bad governance. It is in this regard that the Rwandan leader was quick to discover the chronic cancer for development and with sufficient dose it was cured.

In what follows I will consider the relevant factors that have been considered the precursor of slow or no development of Africa. The political legacy of colonialism: to understand this phenomenon, one must begin with colonialism and its political legacy; it is worth noting that apart from Ethiopia and Liberia which had been the sanctuary of the freed slaves from the United States in 1847, the rest of Africa was under the supervision of the imperialist’s .Indeed, Rwanda despite being the trustee of the Belgian government under the UN Mandate, the Belgian government introduced the catastrophic policies not only in what was Ruanda-Urundi but also Congo Leopoldville.

As I have mentioned above the colonial power was not only absolute but also arbitrary. For instance the colonial governments made the colonies produce the commodities they needed not what the colonies needed. When the Gold Coast (Ghana) was colonized it did not produce Cocoa. The colonial government decided that the country was suitable ground for growing cocoa and was fully introduced. In 1865 the country started exporting cocoa and by 1901 the country was the leading exporter of cocoa in the World. In Rwanda the colonial masters created social classes based on the wealth which were later used as the defining classes of the Rwandan society These new invention of the social classes were not only detrimental but also catastrophic which later metamorphosed into genocide of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, the colonial legacy is still haunting Africa, for instance Africa is still lectured on democracy of the so called international standards yet the so called scales of the standards are not the same. Rwanda at 26,338 square kilometers (10,169 sq mi), it is comparable in size to Haiti or the state of Maryland in the United States, has more than ten (10) political parties and is lectured to have the same standards of the United States with two political parties and not only the half the size of Africa but also the richest and most powerful on this planet Earth. I will argue that Rwanda and other African countries should consolidate the development achieved and develop their own model of democracy based on the needs of their own people not the uneven international standards controlled by the remote control from, Washington, London and Paris.

Author: Frank Mwine LLB, LLM, PhD Candidate and Researcher in International Law