In May 2000 The Economist had a magazine issue called "THe Hopeless Continent". Of course we Black people called it racist because we don't like the truth about us.

20 years later and the bad things in the articles apply very much still to Nigeria. This tells us that if we don't rearrange Nigeria, Restructure it, we will have another 20 wasted years.

Two of the articles in that issue relate truly to Africa. I will post them separately. You can get them with subscription from The Economist. They are:
* Hopeless Africa
* The Heart Of The Matter

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The HOPELESS CONTINENT
The Economist, May 13th 2000
Hopeless Africa

AT THE start of the 19th century, Freetown was remote and malarial, but also a place of hope. This settlement for destitute Africans from England and former slaves from the Americas had become the main base in west Africa for enforcing the British act that abolished the slave trade. At the start of the 21st century, Freetown symbolises failure and despair. The capital of Sierra Leone may be less brutalised than some other parts of the country, but its people are nonetheless physically and psychologically scarred by years of warfare, and this week they had to watch as foreign aid workers were pulled out. The United Nations' peacekeeping mission had degenerated into a shambles, calling into question the outside world's readiness to help end the fighting not just in Sierra Leone but in any of Africa's many dreadful wars. Indeed, since the difficulties of helping Sierra Leone seemed so intractable, and since Sierra Leone seemed to epitomise so much of the rest of Africa, it began to look as though the world might just give up on the entire continent.

It was in response to accusations of indifference towards Africa that the UN Security Council, at America's behest, started this year with a “month of Africa”. It went well. AIDS, refugees and wars were all on the agenda, and there were signs that the new concern was not just a 31-day wonder. The Clinton administration, for instance, has since pressed ahead with plans to combat AIDS, doubling its budgetary requests to Congress. Congress, for its part, is backing a bill that will ease or abolish trade restrictions for 48 African countries. The World Bank and other donors showed last month that they were ready to intensify the fight against malaria, a disease that causes misery in Africa. And the UN has gone ahead with its peacekeeping plans, sending 8,000 troops to Sierra Leone and pledging another 5,500, all being well, for Congo.

All, however, is not well. Since January, Mozambique and Madagascar have been deluged by floods, famine has started to reappear in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe has succumbed to government-sponsored thuggery, and poverty and pestilence continue unabated. Most seriously, wars still rage from north to south and east to west. No one can blame Africans for the weather, but most of the continent's shortcomings owe less to acts of God than to acts of man. These acts are not exclusively African—brutality, despotism and corruption exist everywhere—but African societies, for reasons buried in their cultures, seem especially susceptible to them (see article).

Sierra Leone manifests all the continent's worst characteristics. It is an extreme, but not untypical, example of a state with all the epiphenomena and none of the institutions of government. It has poverty and disease in abundance, and riches too: its diamonds sustain the rebels who terrorise the place. It is unusual only in its brutality: rape, cannibalism and amputation have been common, with children often among the victims. For this it can thank, above all, Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader brought into government in an ill-advised “peace” deal last July.

In itself, Sierra Leone is of no great importance. If it makes any demands on the world's attention, beyond the simple one of sympathy for its people, it is as a symbol for Africa. Yet the UN has sent troops to Sierra Leone. Mr Sankoh wants them out, so that he can plunder and torture at will. He has therefore done his best to terrify them, and their political masters, by capturing several hundred. The Security Council, meaning the great powers who can render it useful or supine, is torn by all the usual arguments. It agonises that it cannot stand idly by, as it did in Rwanda in 1994. Moreover, it cannot, after all its fine words in January, turn its back on Africa. But neither can it keep a peace that does not exist, nor intervene in every war in every corner of the globe. It must beware of mission creep, and fight only where it can win. African wars are, above all, matters for fellow Africans.

Caution versus credibility
There is merit in each of these propositions, though some of them are contradictory. Fortunately, not all. The proper course for the Security Council now is to authorise troops to snatch Mr Sankoh and put him on trial, for recent crimes if not for the ones committed before he was given an amnesty. The UN must be given enough troops, with enough equipment, training and sophisticated leadership, to quell the rebels. Realistically, that means that some of them must be first-world soldiers, drawn at least initially from the British force already there, with a mandate to fight. And once any fighting is finished, the UN must stay on in Sierra Leone, as it is staying on in the Balkans, to wage peace. In short, it must win.

It must do so, first, for the people of Sierra Leone; second, for the people of Africa; and, third, for the people of any country similarly threatened in the future, which is another way of saying for its own credibility. A Somali warlord, Muhammad Aideed, sent the Americans scuttling from Africa in 1993. If another thug can with impunity see off the entire UN, the organisation may as well go out of business. That does not mean that it should also send troops to Congo: the situation there is far more complex, and even more dangerous. But if the UN, whose recent history is littered with meaningless vows of protection in “safe” areas, is forced by the parsimony or fears of its first-world members to cut and run in Sierra Leone, warlords everywhere will take it as a licence to act at will. In Africa especially, nothing would do more to justify despair.