Since its creation in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has worked to bring the perpetrators of some of the most serious crimes to justice. The ICC is currently working its way through five criminal cases in five countries, all African. Ronald Elly Wanda argues that the court’s system of trial and justice doesn’t fit in with traditional African legal systems based in culture, history and community. After years of colonisation by European nations, Africa has become wrought with poverty and illiteracy, leaving the continent in no condition to adhere to international legal standards, writes Wanda. He additionally argues that strong ties to the European community and a tendency to ignore war crimes outside of Africa are further evidence that the resolution of African conflict is better left to African legal systems.

cc Dambisa Moyo’s argument that aid is detrimental to Africa’s development has made her a star on the literary and academic circuit, writes Ronald Elly Wanda, but it isn’t true. Moyo’s recent book Dead Aid, Wanda says, makes no ‘correlation between Africa’s development and its accompanying social and historical conditions’ nor does it explore the possibility that ‘exogenous factors have and continue to hamper development in Africa’. If Moyo’s argument that Africa’s culture of dependency is to blame for its woes was true, writes Wanda, the economies of countries which have received virtually no foreign aid – such as Eritrea, Mauritania and Somalia – should have improved notably, which is not the case. The real problem, Wanda argues, is not aid itself but the way in which it is structured and delivered.

Lamenting the thin supply of organic African critical and theoretical thinking about the continent, Ronald Elly Wanda argues for the place of African writers in addressing an ‘imposed history’. In light of the understandable tendency of much of the continent’s people to identify more with their own local groups than distant, largely exploitative nation-states, Wanda argues for the need for greater regionalisation as a route towards true independence from colonialism. Underlining the importance of African writers addressing African themes, the author contends that uncovering a genuine spirit of renaissance will only occur when the promotion of African intellectualism is truly normalised.