Africa has just secured its free-trading future. After the west African nation The Gambia ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in April, the twenty-two-nation threshold needed for the trade pact to come into effect has now been reached. This is great news for Africa, because not only will a continent-wide free-trade area boost the region’s economy, but the AfCFTA represents an important ideological shift away from the socialist tendencies that have haunted much of the continent since its independence.
Unfortunately, most African nations fully embraced the socialist economic model when they were freed from their colonial rulers. As the president of the Free Africa Foundation George Ayittey notes, “capitalism was identified with colonialism, and since the latter was evil and exploitative, so too was the former.” Quite simply, socialism “was advocated as the only road to Africa’s prosperity.”
Africa’s socialist experiment started in 1957, when Ghana became the first nation on the continent to be granted their independence….
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