ABSTRACT
Many African countries began to encounter severe economic problems. Although the external environment played a role in the continent’s economic deterioration, poorly developed and inappropriate laws and institutions adopted at independence; and the opportunistic post-independence elites who turned these governance structures into instruments of plunder for their own benefit. Europeans captured African territories through force and instituted their rule through non-democratic means. Colonialism was alien, cruel, despotic, exploitative, degradative, racist, and not accountable to the governed. Europeans captured African territories through force and instituted their rule through non-democratic means. After independence, Africans struggled with two critical issues: the choice of a political system; and development model. In the post-independence period, many African rulers, armed with the power of the one-party state and statism, engaged in policies that were supposed to improve domestic living standards. Many of the countries created a large public sector that was characterized by a bloated and parasitic bureaucracy, and a huge number of parastatal agencies.
