Three Liberations: Why Africa Must Reject Victimhood Culture, Tame Demography, and Privatize Failure -By Basi Hafiz (Basi Abbakar Hafiz Abdelshafi)

For the African continent, the time has come to renounce the most dangerous narrative of the postcolonial era: the ideology of victimhood. What long served as a moral shield has today turned into chains that we, against all common sense, continue to forge with our own hands. The first and most crucial task for our states is to dismantle this system of infantilization, where historical trauma becomes a universal excuse for present-day failures.

As long as elites and governments build identity on permanent resentment toward the colonizer, they inevitably absolve themselves of responsibility for the real state of affairs. Within this logic, corruption, hunger, and devastation are written off as “the legacy of colonialism.” But does such an approach allow us to move forward? History knows no precedent of a nation achieving greatness while remaining fixated on its trauma.

After the Second World War, Germany lay in ruins, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been reduced to ashes. Yet Berlin and Tokyo did not wait for reparations before beginning their rebirth. The Germans built a social market economy in which work and innovation became the measure of success. The Japanese achieved an “economic miracle” by radically reforming governance and corporate culture. By the 1960s, they had become global giants. They were united by one thing: the refusal to play the role of eternal victim and the readiness to take history into their own hands.

Africa needs a moratorium on the automatic blaming of the West for all its woes. Yes, neocolonialism is real: debt traps set by international financial institutions, predatory resource contracts, and cultural imperialism have not gone away. However, this mechanism operates only where local elites willingly act as its agents. One cannot attribute to a “white conspiracy” a situation where in countries rich in oil and gold the elites wallow in luxury while the people starve. Corruption, clan politics, and weak institutions are the choice of today’s rulers who hide behind the phantom of the past.

Rejecting the victimhood narrative is an act of political courage. It requires acknowledging that our failures lie on our own conscience. Only by passing through this “lustration of responsibility” can we begin to build. We need nationwide campaigns to reboot our mindset: schools should teach not only the history of the slave trade but also the greatness of Kush, Kemet, Great Zimbabwe, the empires of Mali, Ghana, and Songhai, among others. Parliaments should introduce an unwritten ban on guilt mongering rhetoric and replace it with reports on real reforms.

Demographic discipline as an imperative
A break with the mentality of victimhood alone is not enough, however. The second step must be to recognize a harsh reality: uncontrolled demographic growth strangles the economy at its roots. As long as fertility rates in Tropical Africa remain among the highest in the world (on average 4–6 children per woman), any economic gains will inevitably be “eaten up” by population growth.

Per capita GDP growth becomes a mathematical fiction if the population doubles every 25 years. Nigeria provides a vivid example: from 2000 to 2025 its population grew from 123 to 230 million people, while real per capita GDP barely moved off dead center. By contrast, China lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty precisely through a strict policy that reduced fertility from 6 to 1.5 children per woman. India, our “developingworld brother,” invested in girls’ education and access to contraception, cutting fertility from 5.9 in the 1960s to 2 today. Africa, by contrast, risks remaining a continent that produces armies of youth with no future.

Governments need not abstract rhetoric about public health but concrete policy. First, universal access to contraception without stigma, as in Rwanda, where fertility fell from 6.1 in 2000 to 3.9 today. Second, raising the legal age of marriage to 18, which will deal a blow to the practice of marrying off child brides. Third, and most importantly, total education for girls. Each additional year of schooling reduces fertility by 10%, according to World Bank data. An educated woman means not only fewer children but also higher quality human capital.

Without this, industrialization remains a myth. The labor market will be flooded with an excess of unskilled youth who become easy prey for jihadists in the Sahel or for criminal networks. Demographic discipline is not an imposed Western imperialism but an inherently African wisdom. Our ancestors in the Songhai Empire controlled population growth so that the land could feed everyone. Today this is a question of survival.

Privatizing failure
The third blow to the shackles of stagnation must be the privatization of failure. In far too many African states, power is perceived not as a servant of the people but as the main brake on development. It is time to abandon the fetishization of the state. In those areas where it is failing—electricity, water supply, security—its functions must be transferred to the private sector, municipalities, and cooperatives, of course under strict oversight but without illusions about “state omnipotence.”

Recall Kenya in the 1970s: the state monopoly on grain led to hunger despite the existence of harvests. The state turns into a parasite when it acts simultaneously as player, judge, and sole distributor of resources. The neoliberal Washington Consensus of the 1980s was imposed from outside and produced legalized corruption, but this is not a verdict on the market as such. It is a lesson: the market works if it is not strangled by bureaucracy.

We have successful examples before our eyes. In Ghana, private telecommunications companies (MTN, Vodafone) achieved 90% mobile coverage in ten years—whereas a state monopoly would have been digging trenches for decades. In Rwanda, farmers’ cooperatives export coffee more efficiently than bureaucratic structures. In Nigeria, where private solar panels operate, there is light; where the state remains in control, there is darkness.

Radical but simple steps are needed:
First: If the state fails to provide electricity or water, it must transfer these functions to private operators on the basis of clear KPIs.

Second: Transfer certain law enforcement functions to community structures while maintaining state supervision and control.

Third: The state must not engage in trade or resource extraction. Its role is regulation and fair taxation. Punishment for corruption must be inevitable, up to and including full confiscation of assets.
This is not blind privatization for the sake of ideology but pragmatism. The market is a tool, like a machete in a warrior’s hand.

Africa stands on the threshold of a choice. We can go on picking at old wounds, clinging to the victimhood narrative, suffocating in the grip of demographic pressure, and watching the paralysis of state monopolies. Or we can show courage: accept responsibility for our own past and future, introduce demographic discipline, and place the economy in the hands of those who know how to run it. A wound heals when you stop picking at it. It is time to renounce victimhood and reclaim true strength.