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A Politically Fragmented Continent

The talk of aid is a lot of hot air. Aid has never developed a single African country to the stage of social transformation. Aid helped India. This was, however, because India was at the same time, busy building an integrated national economy. India also has a huge internal market of one billion people, which enabled it to become an industrial power within one generation.
Through the World Trade Organization, Africa must demand the ending of protectionism in Europe. In particular, trade in agricultural products must be free. Of the $1.2 trillion that was used on agricultural products worldwide, only $13 billion (1 %) came to Africa. If Africa cannot earn money from agriculturally based products, from which other source will it be able to earn money?
Markets access for agriculture-based products is a must for African countries. The Europeans should not continue with the tranquillizers of "aid". Aid without trade is a lullaby-a song you sing to children to get them to sleep. Africans must stop being children. It is trade access to the huge American market that enabled Singapore, Thailand and South Korea to transform from developing to developed countries.
You cannot, however trade if you cannot bargain. You cannot bargain if you are too small or if you are not in a strategic area. The South East Asian countries were accorded trading opportunities by the U.S because they were frontline states in the anti¬communism struggle. African countries could not benefit from that phenomenon. At the same time they are not big like China to negotiate from a position of strength. Although Africa is almost four times the size of China in land area, Africa, with 53 states, is the most politically fragmented continent in the World...

By President Museveni New African, November 2003, n° 423, p. 15