A recent lecture by Prof P.L.O Lumumba, a pan-Africanist and activist, to students at the Kenya Methodist University (KeMU) clearly illustrated the tragedy of Africa – its leaders. “You’re the young suckers that grow when the old banana dies. The tragedy in most of Africa, particularly in the political arena, is that the old bananas refuse to die with the consequence that you turn up to be 50 [years old] and you’re still told you’re leaders of tomorrow,” Prof Lumumba told his young audience, highlighting: “That is still part of the problem of the continent of Africa.”
“And we have had in the recent past, leaders who have remained in power for a very long time,” Prof Lumumba bemoaned, citing: “Paul Biya of Cameroon, now at age 91,” and “Nguema of Equatorial Guinea.”
For the youth of Africa to change the status quo, Lumumba admitted: “It’s not going to be easy.”
To him, “It is the duty of every young man to be angry” with the African society bequeathed to them, stressing: “Today, we live in a country where there is the need for anger. We live in a country where people reap where they have not sown. We live in a country where thieves are celebrated, where thieves are canonised and good people are demonised. That is the country and the continent on which we live.”
The tragedy of Africa, Lumumba went on, is even worsened by the fact that the continent’s leaders don’t even realise that they’ve been programmed by the hitherto colonial elements, to act exactly in the way they are.
“A friend of mine was telling me – he’s a white South African – he told me: ‘What we [white people] did in many African countries is that we gave you [Africans] the crown without the jewel and we gave you a toy called politics; that is what you play with. You love to be called presidents, you love to be called ministers – with motorcades –but we [white people] control the economy, where it matters most. You [Africans] fight on the basis of tribe and religion in pursuit of those political offices but we control you,’” he quoted.
“And they are right!” Lumumba agreed, noting that Africans love to flaunt the tools with which they are being controlled oblivious of the fact that they own nothing. ‘I’m on Instagram, I’m on WhatsApp. Don’t use WhatsApp, use Signal. If you use Signal, they will not catch you.’ Who told you?” he wondered. “You [Africans] control nothing. Today, if the owners of WhatsApp in the United States of America decide to take it out, you’re back to the Stone Age. You own nothing. Today we have Starlink with Elon Musk. If he takes it away, you’re nothing. Africa owns nothing. Zero. You’re an expert [at] zero.”
To a large extent, Lumumba is right. Africa has so much in natural resources – gold, bauxite, timber, lithium, diamond, arable land, water resources, diverse peoples and cultures – yet the continent owns nothing, thanks to bad leaders who have virtually given it all away to foreign transnationals for a pittance in exchange for corruption-fuelled grandiosity for them and their families.
These ‘Old Bananas’ have been nothing but a drain on Africa’s resources. They have been conduits for the rape of the continent and yet refuse to leave the scene for salvaging to take place.
A quintessential example is Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea who has ruled the tiny oil-rich nation for 45 years since 1979). OkayAfrica ranks him as the longest-serving president in the whole world currently.
Under his leadership, corruption has held sway in Equatorial Guinea and it’s all been a family affair. In 2021, for instance, Teodorin Obiang, his heir-apparent eldest son and vice president, was convicted by the French courts for embezzling over €150 million (around $174 million) of public funds, according to Human Rights Watch and Transparency.org. These funds were used to purchase luxury assets, including a mansion on Avenue Foch in Paris, high-end cars, and luxury goods. The court ordered the confiscation of his assets in France, including a €30 million mansion. In 2014, a U.S. court, according to Justice.gov, settled a civil forfeiture case against Teodorin Obiang, seizing more than $30 million in assets. These included a $30 million Malibu mansion, a Ferrari, and valuable Michael Jackson memorabilia. Despite his official salary of less than $100,000, Teodorin accumulated over $300 million in assets through corruption, bribery, and extortion. And then in 2016, Swiss authorities seized a $100 million yacht and 25 luxury cars from Teodorin Obiang. This followed investigations into how he had laundered money from public coffers into these extravagant purchases. With a current population of 1,906,437 and a median age of 20.9 years, according to Worldometer, Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who is 82 years old, has spent more than half of his life ruling over a country with a youthful population who have neither heard of nor seen any other leader apart from him throughout their whole lives.
Per Worldometer statistics, Equatorial Guinea holds 1,100,000,000 barrels of proven oil reserves as of 2016. The country ranks 39th in the world in terms of oil and accounts for about 0.1% of the world’s total oil reserves of 1,650,585,140,000 barrels with proven reserves equivalent to 579.6 times its annual consumption. This means that, without net exports, there would be about 580 years of oil left at current consumption levels excluding unproven reserves.
This little country is the third richest country in Africa courtesy of its oil with a per capita income of $8,462.30, according to borgenproject.org. Ironically, it is estimated that some 70 per cent of Equatoguineans live in poverty. It has one of the highest poverty and child poverty rates in the whole world, as the majority of the population is under 18 years old.
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo may hold the title of ‘longest-serving’ president in the world but he is certainly not the oldest and that is not surprising at all considering we are talking about Africa. That infamous title goes to Cameroon’s 91-year-old Paul Biya, who has been president since 1982 and seems unstoppable despite his frailty and health concerns. Arise News cited reports from The EastAfrican suggesting Biya has confirmed he will run in the country’s 2025 elections. He will be 93 by then. He is the world’s second-longest-serving elected leader of a country.
With a current population of 29,352,649 as of October 2024, Cameroon has a median age of 17.9 years. The country holds 200,000,000 barrels of proven oil reserves as of 2016, ranking 55th in the world and accounting for about 0.0% of the world’s total oil reserves of 1,650,585,140,000 barrels (Worldometer). It has proven reserves equivalent to 13.7 times its annual consumption. This means that, without net exports, there would be about 14 years of oil left at current consumption levels excluding unproven reserves. Numbers from the World Bank sourced by Tradingeconomics.com indicate that the Gross Domestic Product per capita in Cameroon was last recorded at 1461.02 US dollars in 2023. The GDP per Capita in Cameroon is equivalent to 12 per cent of the world’s average. It averaged 1236.85 USD from 1960 until 2023, reaching an all-time high of 1833.42 USD in 1986 and a record low of 860.41 USD in 1967. Yet, as of 2021, Cameroon’s poverty rate was 76.00%, a 1.2% increase from 2014, according to Macrotrends.net.
According to Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Biya lavishes his country’s wealth on himself through expensive travels abroad where he stays in the most expensive hotels and places. In February 2018, this is what the OCCRP published about Biya’s numerous travels:
‘He does not travel alone. His wife Chantal, renowned for her gravity-defying hairdos, accompanies him on nearly every trip, as does an entourage of up to 50 people that includes ministers, bodyguards, butlers, and various other staff.
One of Biya’s closest confidants, Joseph Fouda, a military officer and special advisor, has accompanied him on at least 86 trips, amounting to more than three years of travel since 1993. He prefers a room on a top floor of the Intercontinental. Another close confidant, Martin Belinga Eboutou, 78, has spent nearly three years travelling with the president starting in 1987, when he was Cameroon’s ambassador to Morocco. Eboutou soon became a fixture on Biya’s journeys as his chief of protocol, and later as director of the president’s Civil Cabinet.
According to reporters’ conservative calculations — based on publicly available hotel room prices and a compilation of entourage lists — the total hotel bill of Biya and his colleagues for one stay at Intercontinental, adds up to around $40,000 per day. At that rate, the cost of all of the president’s private trips (1,645 days in total) would add up to about $65 million since he came to power — and that’s not counting food, entertainment, and the rental of a private plane. The president’s office did not comment on this issue.’
So, while the ordinary Cameroonian wallows in poverty, Biya and his family as well as his close entourage lavish in extravagance and opulence.
One can see the harm Biya and Teodoro have done to their nations but they are not the only ‘old bananas’ refusing to ‘die’ – not in the literal sense but in terms of leaving the scene for the ‘young banana suckers’, as Prof Lumumba describes the youth of Africa. There is Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was leader from 1979 to 1992 and then returned in 1997 to present. He is most likely to run for another re-election in 2026, as presidential term limits in his country have been scrapped under him. Similarly, you have Uganda’s 80-year-old Yoweri Museveni who has been president since 1986 and counting; Eritrea’s 78-year-old Isaias Afwerki who has been in office since 1993; Djibouti’s 76-year-old Ismail Omar Guelleh, who has been president since 1999 and Rwanda’s 66-year-old Paul Kagame, who has been in power since 2000 and could be at the helm of affairs until 2034 due to some controversial constitutional amendments.
So, yes, the ‘old bananas’ have amply demonstrated their desire to be ‘presidents for life’ even though they are leading countries with mostly youthful populations. Like Ghanaian economist and educationist Stephen Adei said some time ago, “Leadership is cause, everything else is effect.” In Prof Adei’s view, “Leadership is the ability to influence others towards achieving a goal that will benefit a community, an organisation, and a nation as a whole.” Therefore, he noted, “A leader sets goals, communicates the goals clearly to followers, sets conditions for achieving the goals, guides followers towards achieving the set goals and increases the morale of followers through motivation. A leader also sets values underlying the operations that are geared towards achieving the set goals. I think a good leader should have the following qualities. A leader should be ethical. An ethical leader … does the right thing when no one is watching. S/he sees moral issues in decisions and situations.”
Conclusion
Prof Lumumba’s statement is well noting because it is a warning and exemplifies what could lead to a major security challenge across Africa in the future. While in most nations, the experience of the old and the strength of the young blend to develop it, the same cannot be said of African countries. It is, therefore, obvious why Africa is where it is today. A bad ‘cause’ cannot produce a good ‘effect.’ Leaders without ethics cannot make ethical decisions that engender prospects for the benefit of their entire nations. The goals they set are ones meant for the good of just themselves and their small circles and never for the benefit of the entire country. The only influence they have on the people they govern is a bad one. They are a bad example and, so, the people also copy the ‘tragedy’ by being corrupt, evil and heartless since that is the example their leaders have set for them. So, when the ‘old bananas’ finally ‘die’ the ‘young suckers’, who have seen and known nothing but unethical, heartless and corrupt leadership, will struggle to unlearn these vices and are more likely than not to follow the bad example set by their forebears, thus, trapping the continent in a never-ending vicious cycle of bad leadership until a revolutionary generation emerges to break the generational curse.
