#NextTime

Colonization is the best thing to ever happen to Africa. For all its historical complexities, colonization laid the structural, technological, and administrative foundations for a modern Africa. Decades of post-colonial native governance have since turned into a systematic masterclass in institutional decay, a literal drive back in standards and conditions to the state the continent was in when the boats first arrived: a dark continent with no electricity, no water systems, no proper hospitals, no standard schools, and no proper roads. The best days of Africa were neither pre-colonial nor post-colonial; they were the colonial days. This is a cold reality written in crumbling infrastructure and dry taps. When you watch the African political class, it becomes clear that these people were never going to invent anything important or build anything sustainable. Africa was destined to remain light-years behind the rest of the civilized world, but colonization covered that gap and reduced the difference. We have a political class that can watch paved roads turn to literal dust and public water grids dry up without feeling a single shred of accountability. They rule over forgotten villages that lack internet, healthcare, schools, or basic commerce. If modern regimes lack the basic engineering competence to maintain what was handed to them, they were never going to build a functional civilization from scratch. Independence did not deliver enlightened progress; it birthed a regressive, centralized "African Kings" mentality. Life presidencies, rigged elections, and the routine abuse of citizens have replaced actual statecraft. When wealth and luxury are strictly preserved for the rulers, as is typical of this mindset, nothing remains to save the general population. The very system that historically enslaved Black people has its DNA deeply embedded in post-colonial Africa; it is a system too tribalistic and divided for actual progress. National flags and state architecture are what ultimately anchored Africa into a position of order and proper civilization. Historically and contemporarily, significant life-altering systems built in North Africa were never meant to benefit everyone. The Arab slave trade peaked intensely, and while the rest of the world stopped slavery and human trafficking, it continued in these regions. Figures like Muammar Gaddafi continued human trafficking and the enslavement of Black people. Domestically, the destruction is undeniable. Robert Mugabe killed more Zimbabweans than any colonial figure in Zimbabwe. Jacob Zuma looted more from South Africa than any colonial power in South Africa. The same applies to bad presidents like Cameroon's Paul Biya, who loathes Africa and chooses to reside in France, and Teodoro Obiang, who ruins his country solely for his own ego. Meanwhile, the Sahel region experiences war after war and coup after coup with no stability whatsoever; their peak intellectual reasoning begins and ends with camouflage uniforms and red berets. The current political culture actively fights innovation, rejects the strict meritocracy of free markets, and remains stuck in a parasitic, short-sighted dependency on foreign aid instead of thinking generationally. The foreign policy of these states is equally self-destructive. Leaders childishly project an isolationist posture, telling Western nations to "keep their England," while simultaneously signing away strategic national assets to predatory exploitation from the East. A continent cannot build a competitive tech sector or an advanced economy when it refuses to invest in internal science, technology, and manufacturing. How was Africa ever going to build tech on its own? If the foundational systems have completely collapsed, the blame belongs entirely to the native leadership that prioritized elite enrichment over national survival. It is not racism; it is the hard truth backed by facts and data.