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By Adamu B. Garba II
Executive Chairman of IPI Group Limited, Nigerian 2019/2023 presidential aspirant
After the Suez Crisis of 1956, when US President Dwight Eisenhower asked France and Britain to park and leave the African continent and grant independence to the colonially controlled states, Africa saw rapid growth of political independence from 1957 into the 1960s. However, the freedom given to Africans was mostly political, to satisfy the demand of the rising American empire against the declining French and British Colonial empires.
The economies of most of the African countries were and still are heavily controlled by the system set up during the colonial era.
The economies of these countries are heavily export-led, principally raw materials, masked in the name of earning forex, while in reality it looks more like colonial exploitation of locals than any genuine desire for African development and growth. African farms were forced to change their crop choices to export crops like cocoa, coffee and sugar, while the most important products needed for African food security, such as corn, rice, wheat and for African industrialization, like cotton and seed oils production, were discouraged.
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