The winds of change are blowing throughout the world today. Institutions and powers once thought unassailable are crumbling before our eyes. Yet, while the world's attention is on events in Moscow and Berlin, enormous changes are occurring in a part of the world many would choose simply to forget: Africa.
Africa is still the continent of unimaginable human suffering: of hollow-eyed children with bellies distended from hunger, of mindless warfare conducted by would-be saviors, and of ignorance and rampant disease (today it is the scourge of AIDS). But that other uniquely African image of the posturing dictator - living lavishly at the expense of his own people while berating the imperialist, neocolonialist West for exploiting his country - is, thankfully, fast becoming a thing of the past.
Perestroika has come to Africa. Dictators are being held accountable for their actions and being shown the door, while across the continent Africans are seeking new solutions for their problems in free market economies and multiparty democracies. But the change one notices most in Africa is one of a new attitude of responsibility. Africans are no longer seeking no blame the West for their predicament.
While Africa today is indeed a legacy of its colonialist heritage, Africans know that their continent as it existed before the white man came is gone and cannot be reclaimed. What can be reclaimed is a sense of pride that comes from taking destiny in one's own hands. Today, Africans are facing their own mistakes and shortcomings and seeking to correct them. In international lending agencies, world forums like the UN, and one-on-one meetings with African leaders, the message is the same: Enough time has been wasted on the past. Now, Africa wants to be part of the emerging new world order and make its own unique contribution.
In the first part of this month's Special Report, Ghanian economist George Ayyittey paints a bleak picture of a decade of misery and failure: the 1980s. Ayittey proposes a return to Africa's cultural roots to rediscover what he believes is Africa's innate democratic impulse. And he issues a warning to the West that economic aid to Africa must be accompanied by an insistence on democratic change. True and lasting prosperity in Africa, says Ayittey, can only take seed in democratic soil.
A leading African specialist, Michael Johns, describes the tremendous economic and political changes taking place on the continent today, as Africans turn to free market economies and seek expression in multiparty democracies. Author Judith Chettle focuses on the Congo, where dramatic, peaceful change is taking place. The Hoover Institution's Peter Duignan concludes with a series of recommendations for what the West can do to encourage political and economic restructuring in Africa.
This year many African countries celebrate 30 years of independence. For them it is a sobering anniversary, a reminder of failed hopes and lost dreams. Just as Eastern Europe was a prisoner of the failed socialist ideal, so too in many ways was Africa. And as Eastern Europe is today shedding the shackles of failed economic and political system, so too is Africa.
With confrontation between East and West receding, the divisions between North and South, between rich
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