George Ayittey

African history is filled with experiences of people shooting their way to power and then splintering into factions, like in Somalia and Liberia. ”

Radio is the death and life of Africa. ”

There was free trade in Africa. There was free enterprise in Africa before the colonialists came. ”

Look at the history of peace accords in Africa. They have a terrible record. They are shredded even before the ink on them is dry. ”

The reason why Botswana has done very well is because it's the only black African country which went back to its roots and built upon its own indigenous institutions. ”

In the West, the basic economic and social unit is the individual; in Africa, it is the extended family or the collective. ”

Dictators cause the world's worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris. ”

Across Africa there is what I call a colonialist mentality or orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that a lot of things have gone wrong in Africa in the post-colonial period. And time and time again, any time something went wrong, the leadership claims that it was never their fault. ”

In a banana republic, one might slip on a banana peel but things do work - now and then for the people, albeit inefficiently and unreliably. ”