Britain is following in the footsteps of Africa’s former failed states

Kenya

  ‘In the past months the people of Uganda have been following with sorrow the alarming economic crisis befalling on Britain,’ Uganda’s President Idi Amin telegrammed the Queen in 1973. ‘The sad fact is that it is the ordinary British citizen who is suffering the most… I’m sending a cargo ship full of bananas.’ Back then Fleet Street hooted with laughter at this African buffoon trying to patronise the United Kingdom and its leaders. Yet I wonder what Idi Amin would be able to say about Britain and its leaders today. When I first started out as an FT

Many African political systems today would never tolerate the things that are going on in Britain

stringer in Dar es Salaam in the 1980s, we all knew that independence from foreign rule was the most cherished goal for every African, even if, in the short term, people had to suffer for their freedom.