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Notes from the Author

Why 3 Volumes ?

We need an informed electorate capable of playing their part in decisions concerning

International Aid. And we need to be sure that our politicians, their administrators and Aid
professionals have a much broader understanding of why things are the way they are in

Africa today.

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Modern day Africa is best viewed as if looking through a multi-tiered lens, each tier itself

made from several layers, each layer of each lens adding to the final mosaic that is each
African country.

 One tier of the multi-tiered lens formed by the legacies of the colonisation process.

e.g.

The distribution pattern and the nature of the religious adherence of missionary
stations still affect modern-day Africa. Differences between Catholicism and

Protestantism provide and the locations of those early missionary stations and the

basis for ‘a pattern of ‘highs and lows’ across a wide range of matters that affect
today’s Africa..e.g. differences in levels of educational attainment; the locations

most likely to produce African Elites, the incidence of HIV-Aids and much more.

The imposition of m’zungu values, not least in their perception of the role of women.

 A second tier arises from the lasting impact of colonial rule itself.

e.g.

The way colonial powers viewed the economic potential for each African colony pre-

determined the sort of infrastructure development (and lack of it) that followed. All

colonial powers, bent on the most cost-effective form of exploitation, based their
administration and investment in matters (e.g. infrastructure) around their

perception whether this or that part of Africa was more suitable for a plantation or
settler or peasant style economy.

The failure to build the infrastructure of a ‘nation state’ before the time of African
independence created the circumstances which allowed ‘misrule’ after independence

in countries like the DRC.

Different colonial powers adopted a different approach. But the nature of colonial

rule eroded the authority of traditional African elders and chiefs. It created new