Cloud of colonialism hangs over Queen Elizabeth’s legacy in Africa:
One generation after another is inextricably wedded to the idea that she is “the Great African Presence,” a figure who can rescue Africa from being a colony of the West and turn it into a full-fledged nation.
Her words were greeted with cheers from a London audience of more than 20,000.
But as Britain’s Queen of the Commonwealth of Nations prepares to walk through Africa on Thursday, it is important to remember that the Queen is, in fact, a colonialist in many ways.
Her words were greeted with cheers from a London audience of more than 20,000 after she declared that she would “stand beside the women of Africa to say that African girls have the right to go to school, stay in school, achieve as much as their male counterparts.”
Her words were greeted with cheers from a London audience of more than 20,000 after she declared that she would “stand beside the women of Africa to say that African girls have the right to go to school, stay in school, achieve as much as their male counterparts.”
Now they should — for a long time.
This is not, of course, the first time that the idea of using the Queen to project the idea of “Africa’s women” has been trotted out as the ultimate justification for a policy that has done more harm than good.
In 1966, Ghana’s Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah spoke at a Queen’s Speech to announce a policy to encourage women to attend school.
In 1986, the African Women’s Development and Communication Associations were formed by the women who were the first-ever African women to attend Parliament; they asked for the Queen to be represented at their maiden conference and asked for her to be made a member of the organization.
In 1994, when President Félix Houphouët-Boigny was invited to be the guest speaker at the UNGA, his hostess, a Kenyan nun, was overheard to say that “her country needs a strong man to lead it.”
In 2003