Where I come from in East Africa, we have a saying: "A fool at 40 is a fool forever", and most African countries have now been independent for over 40 years.
Most are blessed with all the elements to help compete on a global stage - abundant natural resources, a young population and the climate and conditions to be a major agricultural force.
And yet today, my continent, which is home to 10% of the world's population, represents just 1% of global trade. I have no doubt we have to take responsibility for our failures. We can't afford to keep playing the blame game.
But when 50 years of foreign aid has failed to lift Africa out of poverty, could corruption be the reason?
Could that really be all there is to it?
Causes of corruption
The symptoms of corruption are easy to spot.
Teachers demand bribes from their students because they cannot get by on their wages. Government officials, doctors and nurses steal drugs meant for their patients to sell on the black market. African leaders have property portfolios across the globe, while their citizens live on $1 a day or less.
It is in the classroom that many get their first taste of corruption
But searching for the causes, I had to ask myself some difficult questions.
People often say a nation gets the government it deserves. And we Africans have certainly made some bad choices in terms of leaders, but all too often Western aid has ended up bankrolling them.
Aid has offered legitimacy to corrupt and autocratic regimes, allowing them to hang on to power even when they have lost popularity with their own citizens.
Many sub-Saharan African countries have had high levels of aid dependence - in excess of 10% of gross domestic product, or half of government spending - for decades.
When half the government budget comes from aid, African leaders find themselves less inclined to tax their citizens.
As a result, governments that are highly dependent on aid pay too much attention to donors and too little to the actual needs of their own citizens.
And unfortunately donors have their own objectives which are not always the same as the citizens of African countries.
Rewarding failure
Building new schools and clinics in record numbers looks good on paper and makes politicians look good in front of voters back home. But when these clinics lack the most basic facilities and there are not enough teachers in the classroom, it is the ordinary Africans who get a raw deal.
Another criticism of aid increasingly voiced by Africans, but rarely heard in the West is that it sponsors failure, but rarely rewards success.
One fifth of children in Sierra Leone will not see their fifth birthday
Graduates lost
Small African producers also have to compete with heavily subsided products from Europe and North America.
And in the labour ward mothers and their newborns are often without a bed
Tanzania cotton industry is capable of exporting almost half a million bales per year, but so far in 2008 the country has only managed 160,000 bales.
High government subsidies for North American cotton farmers prevent Ugandan producers from offering competitive prices in international markets.
In their glossy pamphlets and on the pages of their high-spec websites, donors tend to wax lyrical about the importance of trade to Africa's future, yet very little progress has been made on opening up international markets. African producers still represent just 1% of global trade.
And at least 70,000 skilled graduates abandon the continent every year, often trained by Western aid, but unable to stay in the market because salaries are so low.
Until these gifted and enterprising people can be attracted to return, most of the world's peacekeeping efforts, on the continent, and certainly most of its aid, will have little effect.
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