I take things as I find them, Africa is a hole now because of the way it is being run, and it is being run by Africans. I can't change the past, so I am not overly worried about it, in any case your charactarisation is crude - in many places in Africa (i.e. S. Africa) educational standards are actually falling under the post-colonial system, and law and order are deteriorating.
This particlar African president was so oppressed he went to university in Paris, but his children's generation are so free they all live in huts and are menaced by bandits.
Centuries? Most brutality was after the Worls Wars when the system began to break down.