Botswana is an enduring economic success story set against Africa’s economic graveyard of collapsed economies, failed states, and dysfunctional governments. Its president, Festus Mogae, is among the few exemplary leaders in post-colonial Africa. In February 2008, he will be retiring– a rarity in Africa. However, his article (“A Crisis of Image: Achieving Africa’s Potential,” Summer 2007) was a stunner. It serves up the same old canard: “Negative” portrayal of Africa as a region of “conflict and crisis” by the international media hinders Africa’s development. The article ignored the real cause of these conflicts and crises: the adamant refusal of African leaders to relinquish or share political power. Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire and other countries would all have been saved had their respective leaders been willing to step down or share political power. Current examples are Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Mugabe’s intransigence has created a mammoth crisis that has caused more than US$40 billion in economic damage to the economies of southern Africa. Instead of blaming the international community for not responding to Botswana’s impressive economic performance, President Mogae should be looking to the electrified fence Botswana has erected along its border with Zimbabwe, to keep the latter’s refugees out.

Since 1960, there have been 204 African heads of state. Of this lot, fewer than 20 can be described as “exemplary leaders.” The rest—over 90 percent—were utter failures. A scathing editorial in the Ghanaian newspaper The Independent wrote that, “Africa today is politically independent and can be said to have come of age but apart from Thabo Mbeki and Yoweri Museveni, we are sorry to openly admit that most of our leaders in Africa are power-loving politicians, who in uniform or out of uniform, represent no good for the welfare of our people.” These are harsh words to use on men and women who may mean well but lack the necessary vision and direction to uplift the status of their people.

In May 2002, African children attending the UN Children’s Summit in New York, leveled criticism at leaders for failing to improve their education and health. “You get loans that will be paid in 20 to 30 years...and we have nothing to pay them with, because when you get the money, you embezzle it, you eat it,” said 12-year-old Joseph Tamale from Uganda.

When these leaders met in Accra, Ghana in July 2007 for the African Union (AU) Summit, Africans expected them to resolve burning crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur (Sudan), Somalia, and Zimbabwe, among others. Instead, they offered grandiloquent pronouncements on the “United States of Africa.”

“Africa is suffering a crisis of leadership,” said a frustrated Alpha Oumar Konare, who chairs the AU Commission. Even before the AU Summit started, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who was the architect of the AU, dismissed the AU as a failure in a June 26 speech in Conakry, Guinea. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, one of the founders of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) said, “NEPAD was a waste of time and money which had failed to produce concrete results.” Moreover, according to a 2007 article from the Mail and Guardian, a report by the AU’s own financial experts showed that only 7 of the 53 member states had paid their dues to the AU.

The international community won’t take Africa seriously until its leaders take themselves seriously. As President Mogae concluded: “It is Africa’s own responsibility to achieve her full potential.” Hopefully, African leaders who have placed so much of their faith in China, will listen.