We lowered the flag, but never cut the chain

Six decades after independence, Africa remains bound by economic subjugation, political dependency and a colonised mind

By Simon Juma

On 12 December 1963, Jomo Kenyatta watched the Union Jack descend at Uhuru Gardens as thousands wept with joy. They believed the coloniser had gone home. Sixty years on, walk through Nairobi, Kisumu or Kinshasa and a harder truth confronts you. The flag changed. The chain did not.

The heaviest chain is economic. The Democratic Republic of Congo holds over 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt, powering every smartphone on earth. Congolese children dig it for two dollars a day while American and Belgian companies ship it abroad for processing. Congo is inside your phone. Your phone has given Congo nothing.

Kenya tells the same story. Mothers in Kericho pick tea shipped raw to London, repackaged as “English Breakfast Tea” and sold back to Kenyans at five times the price. Coffee grown in Murang’a is priced in New York. We export raw materials and import finished poverty. That is not independence. It is economic colonialism with a cleaner uniform.

The political chain is equally stubborn. Across Africa, the newly sworn-in president’s first foreign visit is rarely to Dar es Salaam. It is to Washington or London — because every leader privately understands where actual approval resides.

The most dangerous chain, however, binds the mind. We were taught to see ourselves through the coloniser’s eyes. Many never stopped.

Real independence will not arrive by lowering another flag. It will come when Africa processes its own resources, trades within itself and governs without foreign permission.

The coloniser left State House. He is still in our mines, our banks and our heads. The real Uhuru remains unfinished — and it is this generation’s fight to complete it.

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