Africa needs strong men to build strong institutions

Imported democracy, far from emancipating Africa, locks it into a vicious cycle that perpetuates its underdevelopment.

In July 2009 in Accra, Barack Obama, the first American president of African descent in modern times, delivered a speech before the Ghanaian Parliament that would resonate for decades: “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.” The room applauded. Western chancelleries rejoiced. The conditionalities of the IMF and the World Bank finally found their political catechism.

But behind the rhetorical elegance lies a conceptual trap of formidable effectiveness. For what institution in world history has emerged from a void? Which one preceded the will of a man determined to found it, to defend it, to breathe life into it?

None. Never. Nowhere. Montesquieu, in The Spirit of the Laws, states definitively: “Give me a man capable of governing, and I will create institutions for you. But do not give me institutions without men: you will only have a skeleton.”

Washington itself bears witness to this: without Alexander Hamilton, there would be no federal banking system. Without Abraham Lincoln, the Union would have fractured. Without Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal would not exist. A strong institution is always the product of a strong leader. It never precedes him. It sometimes outlives him. But it is always born from him.

Sékou Touré foresaw this as early as 1958, when he said No to De Gaulle – an act of absolute sovereignty, lauded by history, but immediately punished by Paris, which sabotaged the nascent Guinea down to the last penny. Thomas Sankara paid for it with his life in 1987, assassinated with the active complicity of the Françafrique networks for daring to build a genuinely independent Burkinabè state. The African strongman does not die of weakness. He dies of too much strength.

II. The democratic trap

The liberal democracy exported to the African continent since the........

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