The solutions to Africa's problems lie in Africa, not in Live Aid concerts.

In the West, the basic economic and social unit is the individual; in Africa, it is the extended family or the collective.

Dictators cause the world’s worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

Africa is poor because she is not free.

The election of Senator Barack Obama brought jubilation across Africa, where millions celebrated him as 'one of their own.'

Across Africa there is what I call a colonialist mentality or orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in the sense that a lot of things have gone wrong in Africa in the post-colonial period. And time and time again, any time something went wrong, the leadership claims that it was never their fault.

In a banana republic, one might slip on a banana peel but things do work - now and then for the people, albeit inefficiently and unreliably.