Description: Slavery and colonialism warped Africa's trajectory of development.

Transcript:

Africans must take responsibility for the problems they are facing. It has been 50 years since Ghana’s independence in 1957. It has been 27 years since the independence of Zimbabwe. It has been 13 years since the independence of South Africa. So whatever is happening in Africa, we as Africans must take responsibility for our circumstances. There has been a major failure around vision in Africa – political vision and economic vision. There has been major failure around leadership – political leadership and economic leadership. So Africans . . . We Africans are guilty as charged in terms of failure. Having said that, prior to our independence, and even after our independence, there have been external factors that have made our existence and our development very problematic. Before independence, ________ slavery and the slave triangle. That distorted the history and trajectory of Africa’s development. After slavery, the project of colonialism. That, again, disturbed and changed the history and trajectory of African development. Okay? And then we fought wars and struggles of independence and anti-colonialism. We managed to get our independence. After that independence, there still were elements of neo-colonialism and external factors, external corporations, external governments that were involved in a negative way in our economic operations. In terms of manipulation of the economy, ownership of the industries without actually cultivating and building infrastructure and so on and so forth, promoting civil wars. Western powers were involved in pitting one ethnic group against another. Western powers and companies in Africa were involved – are involved in using ethnic conflicts to get access to diamonds, access to oil, and so on and so forth. So these are some of the forces that have led to our challenges in Africa – slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and sheer greed.

Recorded On: 7/5/07

Description: Hirsi Ali recalls the promise of African liberation and the disappointment of backsliding.

Transcript: I was born at a time, say, about a decade after the independence of Somalia. What I have always carried with me around that time is the impression of my parents and their generation, which was, "Finally we’re free from the colonial yoke. We can determine our own destiny. We’re going to have our own nation, our own flag, our own parliament, our own army. There will be no pressure from outside." There was that. And I was born in 1969 on the 13th of November, and just the month before that on the 21st of October there was a military coup; which means for that generation in Somalia that looked so much forward to independence, in less than 10 years that dream of freedom was thwarted and disappointed. And that’s one part that I carry with me. The second part that I carry is I grew up with the vocabulary of freedom, and shape your own destiny and that kind of thing. That was on a national basis, but it affected me individually as well. And also my father was thrown into jail, which made my future and that of my brother, and sister, and other half sisters different from children whose fathers were killed, or whose parents were killed, or who went into exile immediately. My father escaped from jail and became a part of the opposition – Somali opposition – in Ethiopia. And finally when he escaped jail, he went to Saudi Arabia, my mother went to Saudi Arabia and we ended up there. And I’ve always had the pull on the one had towards the west representing my father. He was educated in Italy and here in the United States, and he was all about individual freedoms and democracy and that kind of thing . . . sort of modernity. And my mother, who after she had left her nomadic life at the age of 19, had gone to . . . was very much influenced by the Arab-Islamic way of life. And going to Saudi Arabia, for her, was getting as close as possible to Allah, and the prophet, and the holy house and so on. And she was very happy that one year that we were there in Saudi Arabia. So that is as far as surroundings shape.

Recorded on: 8/15/07