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The forced dispersal of millions of Africans into foreign lands created
the Black Diaspora. African slaves and their descendants carried skills
and communitarian values, cultural traditions, resiliency, and the
resistance ethos that transformed and enriched the cultures they
entered. In the Diaspora slave owners worked to alienate enslaved
Africans from their natal context by separating Africans from their
ethnic groups, giving them new names and removing cultural artifacts.
Starting in the late 1950's Africa started gaining independence in the
heyday of the cold war when the rivalries between the east and the west
defined international relations. African leaders were propped up not for
their championship of human causes, but for their loyalties to the
respective powers. In the process many leaders remained in power long
after they had lost any internal logic for existence. Independence
brought other problems. There were many states but few nations and the
nation state was a foreign political form that did not take long to
become problematic. Post-independence Africa quickly sank into
disillusionment articulated through the arts and literatures such as
protesting against neocolonial abuses and corrupt African political
systems, leaders, and military regimes. Writers like Ngugi WaThiongo and
Chinua Achebe championed human causes and the preservation of African
cultures. The debate continues to date.
The end of the cold war brought an end to superpower hegemony and with
that ended the strategic value of African countries to the remaining
superpower and the developed nations. A new international regime of free
markets and trade rules loaded heavily against less developed nations
have peripheralised Africa. Sadly at such time when Africa needed a
supremely enlightened leadership in order to face the challenges before
it, Africa has been cursed with a singularly hopeless contingent of
political leaders. Corruption and mismanagement have been rife making
Africa extremely vulnerable in the face of catastrophes such as the aids
pandemic, droughts and poverty. The paradox remains though that in the
midst of all the pain and suffering, the resilience of the African
spirit endures and Africans have confounded outsiders with their
unfailing hope in the future.
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