THE new Chairman of the African Union (AU), President Robert Mugabe, is, arguably, one of the few African leaders that have not only taken to heart the founding fathers’ ideals on economic independence, but implemented them.
Political independence on the continent has been achieved on the bedrock of the ideals expounded by the founding fathers that include Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral among others.
However, economically, the majority of Africa has floundered as if it lacks direction with regards to economic independence.
Most African countries continue to be exploited by former colonisers that still run their economies through giant conglomerates.
But founding fathers like Nkrumah were clear with regards to the importance of economic independence.
According to Nkrumah, true peace would be achieved when African countries were firmly in control of their resources.
“As long as capitalism and imperialism go unchecked there will always be exploitation, and an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, and all the evils of imperialism and neo-colonialism which breed and sustain wars,” he said.
President Mugabe has been a vanguard of economic independence and has had to endure personal ‘detriment’ for advocating for economic freedom for his people and the peoples of Africa.
He has constantly reminded the continent on the need to be self-sufficient.
And already he is advocating the finding and implementation of ways to stop depending on financial support from the donor community, an aversion that Nkrumah had.
Nkrumah warned against dependence on capitalist global institutions such as the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and World Bank.
“By far the greatest wrong which the departing colonialists inflicted on us, and which we now continue to inflict on ourselves in our present state of disunity, was to leave us divided into economically unviable States which bear no possibility of real development,” said Nkrumah in a speech at the OAU Summit Conference, Egypt in 1964.
“We must unite for economic viability, first of all, and then to recover our mineral wealth… so that our vast resources and capacity for development will bring prosperity for us and additional benefits for the rest of the world.
“That is why I have written elsewhere that the emancipation of Africa could be the emancipation of Man.” 
Calls by President Mugabe to fight terrorism and stop the civil wars on the continent dovetail in the aspirations held by Nkrumah.
The West has covertly supported and funded some wars on the continent so that they can loot resources while Africa burns.
“African regional economic organisations will remain weak and subject to the same neo-colonialist pressures and domination, as long as they lack overall political cohesion,” said Nkrumah.
“Without political unity, African states can never commit themselves to full economic integration, which is the only productive form of integration able to develop our great resources fully for the well-being of the African people as a whole.”
What Nkrumah preached President Mugabe has already practised and Africa stands to benefit from his leadership.
He has led in the land reclamation exercise and is presently leading the indigenisation of the economy.
“We have the blessing of the wealth of our vast resources, the power of our talents and the potentialities of our people. We welcome foreign investment provided that there are no strings attached to it, and also provided that it fits in with our plans for national development,” President Mugabe has repeated again and again.
Another founding father, Julius ‘Mwalimu’ Nyerere, asserted the continent has what is needed to succeed.
“The production of wealth, whether by primitive or modern methods requires land, God has given us the land,” said Nyerere.