By Yohannes Habteselassie Adhanom
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere had said at the Municipality Hall of Asmara, the capital city of Eritrea, in 1997 that African countries have only each other for company – to survive and develop.
He said this after explaining that the West and the East have their own goals in which the African people don't figure.
He argued that Africans, therefore, have to depend on each other, because that is the only and best choice they have.
The idea of a united Africa rests entirely on the effectiveness of the process that seeks to make this a reality.
African unity can be achieved only if the 54 countries that make up the continent internally enable their electorate to participate in the overall development of each nation.
African countries can then work on forging mutually beneficial unity, one that makes each constituent stronger and a contributor to the ultimate goal of a peaceful world.
There are some initial processes in areas of economic relationships and some regional defence alliances that can help reach the goal.
Political maladies
But the fundamental lynchpin for genuine union is when the nations that form Africa make real internal progress in each nation a mandatory priority.
Sound economy, healthy political governance and a content population to name the pertinent ones.
The process and the purpose of African union matters to the people of Africa. This should be the credo of all Africans.
But the desire of individual leaders should not be the only basis for the union of African countries. It should be understood and accepted by the African people.
The purpose and the process should be propagated to all Africans in the continent. It should be debated and understood to enable them to see what it would require them to do in their respective countries first to attempt at a real effective African union.
The European Union could serve as an example. A union of capitalist countries who still have a long way to perfect it. It took years to form and still needs a lot of hard work and trust to maintain and improve.
Most African countries suffer from economic and political maladies. Their politics affects their economies and the social development of their people.
Institution of governance and civic organizations are weak or at times completely non-existent. Why these problems subsist is a pertinent question to ask.
The answer may vary taking each nation separately. But one fundamental problem all nations share with no exception is the lack of hardcore representative governance in practice that bases itself to serve the people and the people alone.
Selfless leaders could serve as examples, by enabling the management of the natural resources and manpower of the country be to the benefit of the people, by fully enabling the people to participate in all facets of development and making education, health and public well-being a priority.
The peace that Nyerere saw prevail in the horn after Eritrea's 30-year war for liberation from Ethiopian colonial annexation gave him hope for a peaceful Africa.
One of the other noteworthy points he made, among many others, at Asmara in 1997 was that his staying in power in Tanzania for 23 years was not right.
Nyerere was emphasising in no uncertain manner that leaders shouldn't stay in office for that long.
One of the prevalent maladies of many leaders in Africa that causes stagnation in the developmental processes of a country is their apparent reluctance to embrace change.
Life, governments and everything else are subject to change, but not to many African leaders, all of whom seem to forget that there are many others like them with newer, much better ideas in improving their compatriots' lives for the better.
Many prominent leaders have called for African unity over the past decades, and the idea lingers. The African Union is somewhat of a start, albeit one that has very little to show for itself because the groundwork each country must do has not been accomplished.
So, what is the primary failing of most African nations? Lack of just and representative governance. African countries lack practical people-centred institutions and laws.
The West chooses to call pre-colonial African laws "customary laws" to make them look like a lower-ranked set of laws compared to theirs. But laws are laws.
Masses appointing aides
The laws that laid down the fundamental legal principles of governance that existed in the 13th to 19th centuries in Eritrea are a case in point.
In the northern part of Eritrea, the Sebderat people had a system of governance that can be of great value in effective representative governance in present-day Africa.
The advisors to the elected chief were picked and removed only by the electorate. This system helped the people control the chief, because the advisors couldn't be removed by the latter.
This curtailed the potential for the chief to get "yes men" and run a rotten dictatorship.
Examples that can help structure laws and create the uniqueness in Africa are rife in every corner of the continent. Coupled with native knowledge, using local languages to understand legal principles of governance and other arts could be beneficial.
The need to elevate public knowledge using their language and old indigenous ancestral laws makes principles easier to understand, follow and build upon. But that doesn't signify that the learning of other popular languages is unimportant.
The only reason the native language is important is that people understand basic philosophy, law, art etc. better in their native languages than a foreign tongue.
It is a fact that Africa has been advancing at a very slow pace, albeit with the potential to go faster and alleviate the economic misery of most Africans. After all, the continent is rich in human and natural resources.
Making effective education mandatory, safeguarding a free press and ensuring public health can save African nations from falling prey to destructive foreign interventions and conspiracies, as has been the case on many occasions in the not-too-distant past.
An informed electorate can always safeguard the peace of the nation, no matter what happens in or outside it.
It is better to die for the cause of freedom of the African people like Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara and Hamid Idris Awate did, to name a few, than to perish on a pedestal of lies by constantly cheating the people with hollow promises and deprive them of their basic rights.
African youth should be able to play a historic part in each of their countries in this information age, which is being acknowledged rightly so as "surveillance capitalism".
The potential to develop in a healthy and expeditious way by safeguarding its people's health, happiness, environment and pace of development for Africa is worth building on.
The author, Yohannes Habteselassie Adhanom, is an Eritrean writer and legal historian.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT Afrika.
