In Part 1, I argued that colonialism explains how Africa was put behind. I agreed with Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but questioned the indefinite use of colonialism to explain why Africa has remained behind.

The point was to keep asking what Africans have done with the political independence, resources and power they have held for more than five decades.

One reader defended Africa’s position by suggesting that secret societies, somewhere and somehow, continue to hold our leaders hostage. Others pointed to neo-colonialism.

I respect independent thinking, but I refuse to believe in myth. Let us give these readers the benefit of the doubt and ask: how does killing one’s own people, stealing their taxes and refusing to build hospitals serve a foreigner’s interest? I do not know.

The black colonialist is not simply an African leader who is corrupt or authoritarian, whether under influence or not. It is a political class that inherits the machinery of the colonial state and uses it principally for personal survival, wealth accumulation and control rather than public transformation. There is no justification for failing to serve the people — none.

Private fortunes

One of the clearest manifestations is the conversion of public resources into private fortunes. Kenya offers one of the continent’s most documented examples.

READ MORE: The Black Colonialist: Africa’s Self-Inflicted Wound – Part 1

The Ndung’u Commission, appointed to investigate the illegal or irregular allocation of public land, found a pattern of abuse involving public officials, politicians and other well-connected people. Its 2004 report examined allocations between 1962 and 2002 and, as summarised in a World Bank review, found that at least 200,000 illegal titles had been issued to alienate public land.

The World Bank review described public-land corruption as systematic and widespread. These, of course, are findings of a commission and a subsequent review, not criminal convictions of every person or institution identified in the report.

Independent Africa thus saw land, among other public assets, fall into the hands of people who were expected to transfer it from settler colonialists to oppressed communities. The same logic appears elsewhere: state contracts, mining concessions, government tenders, public corporations and natural resources can become channels through which political influence is transformed into private wealth.

Have you ever wondered why contracts concerning national resources or large tenders in Tanzania can be so difficult for the public to inspect and often escape meaningful parliamentary scrutiny? Perhaps we do not need to know what our representatives have agreed with an investor; perhaps we should simply believe them!

When the distribution of spoils goes wrong, the deals return to us as scandals. A March 2025 follow-up report by Tanzania’s National Audit Office assessed 213 recommendations from 14 performance-audit reports and found that 48 — or 22.5 per cent — had not been implemented at all. Perhaps auditing is simply a formality we are expected to ignore.

READ MORE: The Fatal Flaw of Regime Change 

The black colonialist does not need to steal the entire state. They need only make the state serve those closest to them, for control of key resources is important. The rest of the people must grapple with whatever remains.

The long office

One of Africa’s biggest political failures is the return of emperors disguised as democratic presidents. Speaking at Makerere University in 2025 on the constitutional legacy of Mwalimu Nyerere, Tanzania’s opposition leader Tundu Lissu argued that one legacy of Nyerere’s constitutional model in Tanzania and Uganda was an “imperial presidency” endowed with excessive powers.

That is Lissu’s political and constitutional interpretation, but the question it raises matters. What do unchecked heads of state do with such enormous power?

Too often, power and wealth concentrate within close circles and families. In time, leaders become unchallenged demigods who believe that the millions under their control are incapable of replacing them. Then chaos ensues.

The second characteristic of these self-made emperors is the conversion of political office into personal permanence. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979, while Omar Bongo led Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009 — about 42 years.

READ MORE: The Tanzania We Can Still Become 

Cameroon’s Paul Biya has been president since 1982 and was declared the winner of an eighth term after the 2025 election, a result disputed by opposition leaders. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni has been in power since 1986 and is still counting.

The late Robert Mugabe belongs in this conversation, as does Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who remains president of the Republic of the Congo. The circumstances differ from country to country, but the familiar pattern includes attacks on dissent, political violence, nepotism and the alteration of rules designed to limit power.

These are not merely stories about individual presidents. They reveal a deeper institutional problem: when political parties, state institutions, security structures and constitutions are organised around the permanence of one political establishment, changing government becomes extraordinarily difficult.

Instead of transferring sovereignty from colonial authorities to citizens, we handed it to a locally developed master.

Deferred futures

Every political choice has consequences for development. What could have been a new hospital, a school, or a curriculum-development initiative becomes someone’s bank account, while a potential reformer can become another casualty. These are not colonial decisions; they are our choices.

READ MORE: Gen Z vs Government: The Difficult Deal and the Potential Outcome 

Every corrupt contract is money that does not build something productive. A politically allocated piece of public land removes an asset from the public interest, and every election settled through intimidation consumes resources, trust and national harmony.

Development is postponed through incremental political choices that make the state serve power before people. Africa has made enough such decisions since independence, and the results are evident.

The black colonialist, therefore, is a political condition rather than a racial category. It is the African political actor who has inherited a system of domination and reproduced it for personal benefit.

In the next piece, I will take you through our own home: have we survived, as Nyerere said?

Festo Mulinda is a political analyst and freelance columnist focusing on international relations and geopolitics. He can be reached at mulindafesto@gmail.com or on X as @fmulinda_III. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Chanzo. If you are interested in publishing in this space, please contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com.