The idea of international development institutions such as the World Bank appropriating experienced Ghanaian personnel to help solve war-ravaged Liberia’s problems demonstrates a major shift in solving Africa’s problems. The realistic shift hails the Washington-based Ghanaian economist Dr. George Ayittey’s coinage of “African solutions to African problems.” For Ayittey, author of such world-shattering publications like “Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Development” (2004), “Africa in Chaos” (1998) and “Indigenous African Institutions” (2004), much of the solutions to Africa’s problems rest in harnessing the largely untapped African values, experiences, and history.

Ayittey’s works opened the floodgate to such insightful studies by such prominent development institutions like the World Bank (authored by the Senegalese Mamadou Dia) that concluded that Africa should go the Southeast Asian way in her development process by mixing her cultural values with colonial legacies and the enabling aspects of global development in her development process.

Such views have come about because, for long, African elites and their Western counterparts have looked to the Western world for solutions to Africa’s problems. This has come about because of the colonization of Africa by the Europeans and the ensuing heavily Western-structured education system that suppresses African values and experiences. Created through the unbalanced views of their anthropologists and Christian evangelists, the Europeans thought, wrongly, that they are more civilized than Africans and set to impose their development paradigms on Africa.

With most of these development paradigms incompatible with the African environment, long-running distortions in Africa’s development process dawn, worsened by African elites’ inability to reconstruct development paradigms rooted in African values. Such bewilderment is seen in programs of key international development institutions like the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that impose development paradigms (structural adjustment programs for example) with inbuilt Western values and experiences without considering African indigenous values, experiences and history.

After much misunderstanding, which is partly responsible for much of Africa’s crises, African elites and their Western counterparts are now thinking holistically in the continent’s development paradigms. No doubt, we see increasing application of African values to African dilemma between Liberia and Ghana via the World Bank and the United Nations. The United Nations recently appointed Ghanaian Governance and Leadership expert Prof. Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah to serve as technical advisor for Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to assist in the establishment of Liberia’s National Human Rights Commission.

Earlier, the World Bank, which had appointed former Ghanaian Finance and Economic Minister, Yaw Osafo Marfo, to help in Liberia’s budget development, had parachuted the newly elected Liberian Members of Parliament to Ghana to study practical democracy and human rights practices in action from Ghanaian parliamentarians. The idea here is that the Liberian parliamentarians would get a better sense of democracy in a Ghanaian/African environment than in a European locale, whose values and history is different from that of Liberia and Africa, as was the case earlier when African politicians were traveling up and down the Western world to understudy Western politicians.

However, African solutions for African problems does not mean there is no “personal responsibility for self-preservation” and “smacks of self-inflicted isolation.” If anything, Africa’s values have to be mixed with the enabling aspects of the global culture and the continent’s colonial legacies. In doing this, African values, which have been marginalized for long, would be made as equal partners in the value-development game and get  international respect. Africa’s values for African problems, as we are increasingly seeing in the West African problem solving bid, has not “lost its rationale,” as some wrong-headed elites are saying. By heavily appropriating the continent’s values in her development process, Africans not only see themselves as members of a larger community but also view global development process as progress being driven by their indigenous values, as the Japanese, Chinese and Malaysians have done. This will help correct many a credible view that Africa is the only area in the world where foreign development paradigms dominate her development process.

African solutions to African problems, therefore becomes a new development vision born out of Africa’s experiences, culture and history. Much of African development challenges would have been solved long time ago if African values and experiences were tapped in Africa’s progress. The prominent use of African values and experiences in solving Africa’s problems does not mean there are no criticisms by Africans and the international community about Africa’s progress regarding issues like corruption and human rights violations. Universally, the full tapping of Africa’s values to solve Africa’s problems does not mean non-cooperation in donor assistance but rather better understanding of international development efforts as the United Nations and the World Bank are doing now between Ghana and Liberia. In fact, the heavy appropriation of Africa values would not only bring international development cooperation for Africa but healthy global criticism of Africa’s progress.