What Does Gaddafi’s Fall Mean for Africa?

The brutal end of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is a warning for despots who resist reforms. Too many African leaders follow the personality-based model of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah rather than the state-building model of Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, argues Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia and Makerere universities in an essay for Al Jazeera. Failure to establish sustainable institutions breeds inequality, and social breakdowns create opposition movements that seek external intervention. “The conditions making for external intervention in Africa are growing, not diminishing,” notes Mamdani. Like Gaddafi, African leaders nurture multiple partnerships with fickle nations: China’s influence in the continent is economic, while the US and other Western powers focus on security. Selective enforcement reveals political agendas, and Mamdani contends that neither the UN Security Council nor the International Criminal Court “works in the interest of creating a rule of law.” He concludes that “those interested in keeping external intervention at bay need to concentrate their attention and energies on internal reform.” – YaleGlobal