A book review from The Movie Snob:

The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair, by Martin Meredith (2005). I have represented a few clients from Africa, so when I saw a good review of this book I decided to tackle its 688 daunting pages. It is further subtitled “A History of Fifty Years of Independence,” which tells you the scope of the book—it is a broad-brush history of Africa since the 1950’s, when the great majority of the continent was still under colonial rule. Meredith does not discuss every country’s experience, but he does cover quite a few of them, and the implication is that their experiences are typical of the rest. The book is well-written and reads easily, but its tale is one of almost uninterrupted decline and misery. Some chapters and episodes stand out, such as the end of apartheid in South Africa and the genocides in Rwanda and Sudan. Mostly, though, the countries endure an endless cycle of smaller-scale violence and corrupt, dictatorial rule. I flagged a few remarkable facts along the way:

—When the president of the country of Senegal voluntarily resigned in 1980, he was the first African leader since independence to give up power voluntarily.

—In 1995, ten African countries had 25 or fewer fully qualified accountants in the entire public sector.

—When the military ruler of the country of Benin stood for an election in 1991 and lost, Benin became the first African state in which the military was forced from power by civilians, and the first in which an incumbent president was defeated at the polls.

—When the president of Senegal accepted defeat in an election in 2000, he was only the fourth African president to do so in 40 years.

As Meredith sums up in his conclusion, corruption, dictatorship, and civil war have been the norm in Africa since the colonial powers left. The developed countries have contributed massive aid, to seemingly little effect. He also points out, however, that the developed countries have often not followed through on pledges of assistance, and they have largely destroyed African agriculture by so richly subsidizing their own domestic agriculture that African farmers cannot compete. As result, a continent containing 880 million people, or 13.5% of the world’s total, produces 1.3% of the world’s GDP. He singles out exactly two countries (South Africa and Botswana) as having had “wise or competent leadership.” Otherwise, the continent suffers from “a crisis of such magnitude that it goes beyond the reach of foreseeable solutions.” The book is excellent, but it gives almost no reason for hope.