East Africa: Not a lot to show for a half century

Joachim Buwembo

The East African (Kenya)

East Africa is turning 50, and it’s not a very happy birthday, said Joachim Buwembo. Tanzania marked 50 years of independence this year, while Uganda will have its golden jubilee next year and Kenya the year after. Each of us inherited “an efficient administration and decent infrastructure” from our former colonial masters, and what did we do with these assets?

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All three countries are still in the lowest tier on the U.N.’s Human Development Index, which measures standards of living. Other countries our age are doing much better. Israel, which turned 50 just a decade ago, “started off with nothing but a patch of desert, no oil, and hostile neighbors.” Now it has the world’s most efficient agriculture sector and several elite universities. India, which got its independence around the same time, is now a growth machine and a leader in the electric car industry.

Of course, there’s one thing we Africans are better at: coming up with excuses. We can “list a hundred reasons” why the odds were stacked against us, why circumstances prevented us from doing what India and Israel did, and why it’s everyone else’s fault that we lag so far behind. The sad truth, though, is that “African children can’t eat our excuses, however clever and convincing they sound.”