The Horn Of Africa States: The Resources Are A Blessing And Not A Curse – OpEd

I often read that Africa’s resources are a curse to the continent and not a blessing. This is a frightening description of the resources of the continent, which puts off the African from exploiting the bounties of the land and seas and, indeed, the aerospace of the continent.

It is a large continent, the second largest in the world and the powers that be, fight over it, compete over it and scramble for its resources. The citizens of the continent are, however, scared of these bounties. Why are the natives of the continent deprived of those bounties when they can make others tap dance on air?

This is, where indeed, the first attack on the continent starts. It makes the people and leadership of the continent scared and frightened of their own resources. The continent is large and expansive, and we will only address in this article, the Horn of Africa States, which is rich and poor at the same time, a similar phenomenon for the rest of the continent.

It consists of the countries of Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Sudan, which I call the SEEDS countries. It is a vast territory of some 3.8 million square km and a population of nearly 200 million people. It is endowed with bounties of nature of almost every sort, including not only its people but also its location but which nevertheless remains a poor region despite all the wealth at its disposal.

There is always this general trend and pattern among the people of the region and propagated by the international media that it is a leadership problem, which it is not. The people are made to focus on their own leaders and not on the wealth at their feet and around them, left and right and wherever one looks at.

Leaders are the easy escape goats that are blamed for everything bad that goes on in the lands of the Horn of Africa States. It is easy because they represent obvious targets poised in prominent positions – the head of the pyramid of authority.

They, indeed, are the obvious targets like those of a shooting facility, where the target is obvious. They are easier to target and easier to blame and easier to corrupt and easier to disrupt the lives of whole populations steering them away from their real duties of governing and directed at pursuing the most unproductive of activities – political self-preservation. The populations themselves also spend their energies belittling their leaders all the time, another unproductive activity.

While they are busy working on the leaderships, the resources of the region are being stealthily taken and exploited for the benefit of others or remain untouched, and of no value for the large population of the region, which remain poor. They never have a chance to use the resources at their disposal for improving their lives and their lot.

When a leader steps into a power position, he is immediately exposed to an environment to which he is not prepared for. Many of the leaders of the region did not have the experiences of managing large corporations or large institutions or even political parties in their lives or any significant experience of any sort, for that matter.

Many of them are usually unknowns who have most often come as coup leaders. They were soldiers who are used only to ordering around or being ordered. Others were elected on ethnicity, which has nothing to do with managing people and countries, even if they have had some kind of education at whatever level. It is how governance is lost.

Leaders of people and countries should, at least, have some experience in working with other people at different levels and in various parts of the countries they are supposed to lead. They should have some exposure to managing risky propositions and know where there are pitfalls and how to maneuver through these difficult propositions. They will, no doubt, encounter so many of difficulties and, indeed, many fail, but they refuse to accept their failures and blame others - as usual – the other tribe, clan or a foreign party.

The new leaders are immediately surrounded by sycophants from the tribe or clan and others who are around to make a fast buck and pretend to be loyal. The actual curse of the resources of a country in the region starts here. It has nothing to do with the resources of the country. It is the crowning of the wrong people and putting them in command.

The tribe, the clan and the general citizen do not help either or assist the inexperienced new leader adjust himself into this new position, where his word is the last and final in a country with a population of millions of people. They often swipe out all those crucial administrators in the various departments of state who were probably put there by the previous administration or administrations and replaces with them with unqualified cronies and petty thieves, some of them family members. They, therefore, lose in one stroke the experience of many and a lot of unwritten information, but crucial for the management and governance of the state.

No wonder corruption immediately becomes the main marker of the new administration and hence the region and the continent. Whatever revenue the government receives is misappropriated for the wrong projects and wrong pockets. Wrong plans are put in place and the opposition tribes and clans do not allow a breathing space for the leadership, either!

The tug of war that starts from day one of a new administration continues until the next election or coup, at which time, either the same leader stays continuing the same mistakes of his/her previous term, or a new administration comes in, again repeating the cycle his predecessor went through.

The resources of the country remain unexploited and even if they were exploited, it was misappropriated by the wrong crowd the leaders put in place and the opposition tribes and clans continue fighting the administration until everybody is pulled down including themselves – state failure!

No resource is cursed. It is the people who are responsible and unable to exploit the resources of the lands and seas of the region and who spend their precious time and energies politicking instead of working, educating their children, putting in place the proper governance infrastructures and plans. It is just like a house on fire, where everybody is adding fuel to the fire, with no one ready to extinguish the fires.

The people do not allow any of the leaders to put in place a proper legal infrastructure where justice and fair distribution is possible. The leader spends most of his time defending himself. This weakens governance and weakens governance institutions, creating new sources of conflict in the societies of the region and individual countries.

The new leaders fail to see that they are, indeed, servants working for the people and that they are not the masters. The people and their representatives are the masters, which the leader should listen to no matter what within the bounds of the constitution in place. A leader has no right to change a constitution to make it just fitting and suitable for him. It is the main cause of he current conflicts in the region.

Many consider the resources of a country as the mineral resources or the agricultural resources only. But the location of a country or region can also be an important resource. The Horn of Africa States region, for example, is located in a geostrategically important place, which connects three continents and where some twelve per cent of the world’s trade passes through, and most of all, the source of most energy in the world – oil and gas from West Asia.

It is why there are differing groups involved in the region from major powers to regional powers to multiple NGOs and even the United Nations bodies. All have their own differing interests and hence exert some kind of power over the region, in addition to the misguided populations of the region, who are reduced to think only tribally and clannishly. The curse which got implanted becomes cancerous.

No wonder leaders abuse power in the process of defending themselves while in power. Many of them stay longer than they should normally stay and become tribal or clan kings and Sheikhs within their countries. The emphasis on the country’s development in general gets reduced to the interest of a few people who want to enrich themselves using the tribal/clan cover. The tribe and clan even become irrelevant and only become tools of defense. It is the curse of the region and not the resources.

Citizens of the countries should not spend their time only opposing whatever a leader or an authority does. At the end of the day, the country needs to be developed, and both the leaders and the populations should be participating in the process. An accountable government is only possible when there is a common goal, and citizens participate in the decision-making processes not negatively but positively. It is one of the ways to breaking the curse, which allows for a proper utilization of the resources for the benefit of all the citizens.

Leaders should allow quality administration to take hold, where the competing interests within a country can survive together. The systems should be inclusive, equitable and of course legal and subject to the rule of law. It is, indeed, the cure to the curse of resources.

We know the Horn of Africa States is a rich place but remains poor to this date, not because there are no resources. There are. But the focus of both the leaders and the citizenry is not on exploiting these resources but more on self-preservation vis a vis the other compatriot. The resources of the region are, indeed, a blessing and not a curse and the region should be able to exploit these resources together for the good of every citizen.