The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence
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University
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Book review
Introduction
Martin Meredith’s book The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence is a reliable book on contemporary Africa. Meredith gave a chronological proceeding of the events from the misdeeds during the colonial era to the independence optimism. Different authors have attempted to give their full accounts of both pre and post-colonial regimes in African countries, and Meredith is one such author. He reveals errors committed between 1960 and 1970, as well as the consequential decay and current drift. Meredith covered a wide context of African history. Even though his book appears non-discursive, he has pointed out that post independence Africa is a victim of political elites’ poor leadership and their interest to fill their pockets. This paper seeks to give a critical review of Martin Meredith’s book The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence.
Meredith did a good write on the colonial period in Africa. I like the way he points out political elites in Africa as the source of challenges facing African people. He portrays them as people who have failed to promote economic development. He has also extensively covered African episodes that reveal the continent’s ills. Most of these ills are known to African people. However, the ill-informed account does not trade in sensationalism, and does not fall prey to the glib pessimism in the majority of African coverage. In his work, Meredith appears to be forthright concerning his experiences and the things he considers failures of most African leaders. On my own critical analysis, Meredith’s book is a damning story (Meredith, 2011).
The book provides a stupendous survey of the frequent wars and the African brutal dictators that have weighed down Africa since independence. He has given a critical African history for the past fifty years. On Meredith’s account of African history, most of the countries in Africa got their independence in the wake of 1950s from their colonizers. However, he argues that the past fifty years has only illustrated a meaningless independence concept for a better part of the continent. He adds that African continent has continually faced more challenges from the North to the South more than it did before their period of independence (Meredith, 2011). I disagree, I think Meredith still views the problems and challenges from the mentality of the colonizer, and is an alien to Africa continent. According to my review, Martin Meredith has done a great job in critically analyzing and explaining exploration of African economy after the 50s. He still utilizes mechanisms of blaming regimes of African dictatorships for the challenges brought about by colonization. I think Meredith missed a point. He failed to understand the people whom these militaristic and dictatorial regimes supported, and the conditions they were given (Meredith, 2008).
Critically, I think Meredith’s account is as good African history as the sense of “old school” could provide. He has not given a current historical view of the African situation. For example, the earlier histories of Europe only included the deeds of heroes, kings, and warriors. Meredith has done a similar job (Meredith, 2005). He has failed to convey any point concerning the day to day life experiences of the common people: ordinary Africans. He has given a critical history of the movers and shakers in Africa. Meredith has not attempted to redefine his way of writing history by including the experiences and actions of people who are not in power. This is a setback to Martin Meredith’s book.
I must give it to him that every happening in every decade of the 20th century is well covered. However, there is a little or thin coverage of the past 10 years (Fage, Oliver & Roberts, 1995). Even though he did a critical history of Africa by exposing corrupt dictators, Meredith has not done any analysis to explain the cause of the happenings over the past 50 years. He has failed to explain why corrupt leaders continuous gain power, and why violence has persisted from the past. I think Meredith intended to report and to avoid any form of politics. However, he mentions some selected aspects of history of Africa and avoided others. I think he has failed to give a detailed exploration of the origin and roots of this African nightmare (Fage, Oliver & Roberts, 1995).
The author did not master the African colonial mentality well. He ought to have analyzed the role of Congo’s Patrick Lumumba or Ghana’s Kwameh Nkrumah in the African liberation of struggle. Independence in Africa is a de facto independence. This is because the West of Europe never really left Africa. Dependency in Africa was created by colonizers or the regime of colonialism. This was seen in many cases such as West Africa to the United States and Britain, or North Africa to France. Therefore, I think Meredith failed to consider the basic facts of political, social, and economic conditions of African continent (Parker, Rathbone & MyiLibrary., 2007). Meredith displays Kwameh Nkrumah as a common leader in Africa with negative effect on the continent. His colonialist approach is evident in his account on Kwameh Nkrumah. In contrary to Meredith’s point of view, quite a number of scholars and Africans believe in Kwameh Nkrumah as a great and good leader in the...