During the era of slave trade, tens of millions of Africans were shipped out of the continent and thereby robbing Africa of a critical factor in development, namely productive labor. It was not through the loss of productive labor, however, that slave trade participated in pressing Africa’s ‘retardation’ button with regard to development. By reducing people to tradable commodities, and by treating them as less than human beings, moreover over a long period of more than 400 years, slave trade effectively ‘eroded’ the self-esteem and self-belief of the African person, while at the same time ‘sowing’ self-doubt in him/her.
After slave trade came colonialism. The colonial discourse devalued all meaningful contributions of pre-colonial Africa, selling historical Africa as inconsequential in almost everything. To the same extent that colonialism devalued the achievements and traditions of Africans, it promoted the superiority of anything European. Through this and other means, colonization completely subdued the African mind, giving rise to inferiority tendencies that bedevil Africans up-today.
The foregoing negative belief systems hindered the African mind from growing the attitude for endogenous-led development. In illustrating the absence of this attitude in African societies, Kwesi Kwaa Prah’s wrote[1]: ‘It is the absence of cultural relevance, and the need for cultural adaptations of external inputs into African development planning, that constitute the major obstacle to success in development planning and implementation in Africa.’ Clearly, envisioning the right path out of underdevelopment for Uganda’s society, and pursing it with the required determination and persistence, is untenable without the right attitude for endogenous-led development.
[1] Prah K. K. 2011. Culture: The missing link in development planning in Africa. In Keita L. ed, Philosophy and African Development. Theory and Practice. CODESRIA, Dakar.