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DARKNESS AT NOONDAY: How Leadership Undermines Development in Africa by Dennis Wasikoyo
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Nuria Ranking: #97 in GovernanceIn stock
Darkness at Noonday is about the many factors played by leadership that directly/indirectly retards development in Africa. The only normal place Africa should be is prosperity based on the many resources that the continent enjoys. That isn’t the case because leadership allowed several things into the centrality of their governance that ultimately lead to Africa losing out on her own opportunities.
First the book highlights the servile nature of the African leaders that makes them bend so low to foreigners that they are easily manipulated into serving the interests of foreign countries than those of their own countries. In this sense they facilitate foreign meddling and theft of resources by their corporations. In return, these foreign powers reward African leaders with protection in power even when they are unwanted. The foreign powers also pay the leaders heavy bribes and allow them to loot while keeping the loot in their foreign banks. This becomes a dangerous cycle of African political corruption that is backed by the international financial institutions. Through this corruption, poverty is spread amongst African communities since funds for priority programs are looted to fund luxury expenses of their elites. With this form of corruption, the book highlights how leaders then feel unsafe to leave power and hence seek every means to hang on and to manage their subjects in perpetuity. They misuse their military to crush as well as entrenching tribalism and nepotism, to reward stooges and marginalize anyone they feel could challenge them. This practice is highlighted in the book how it has lead to dangerous political competition in Africa occasionally leading to bloodshed in civil wars and election related violence.
To salvage their land, the book calls on all Africans to come together, fight corruption through tech, push their leaders into accountability and observation of the laws of the land. The book puts emphasis on how Africans must stand up to foreign power meddling especially from Europe and the US because this interference bears collateral damage to all other African interests, economic, social and political. Most importantly the book calls on Africans to retake back the control of their resources because no country in the world ever made it without them first holding their own resources for their own use. Africa is no exception and the continent will never realize development in the current model where foreigners are the real owners of African resources and Africans are only but the exploited labourers extracting the same resources for foreign ventures.
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