1960 marked the beginning of the decade of African independence. The British crown colony Gold Coast had become independent Ghana under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah in 1957, but remained part of the British Commonwealth. In 1926 all the previous German protectorates had been taken over by the League of Nations and placed under the control of the colonial powers Britain, France and Belgium acting as mandate powers. They administered their mandate territories as integral parts of their colonial empires. After the founding of the United Nations the former German colonial territories came under UN control. It was Cameroon, my father's homeland, that was the first to gain independence, on January 1, 1960. Togo followed in April, and in June the former Belgian Congo and Rwanda and Burundi became independent.

In search of my roots, I had been interested in and reading about Africa for a long time. I observed this new development with great interest. That was also the reason for my choice of thesis topic. As I've said, there was not very much firm information available and hardly any up-to-date scholarly literature, and certainly not in German. The phrase “developing country” hadn't even been invented – hence the term “underdeveloped” in my title, which sounds discriminatory today.

But it had to be clear to any thinking person that a country without a functioning infrastructure, an established administrative machinery and a sound educational system would have problems. The prime example of this was the Belgian Congo. The country was released into a kind of political pseudo-independence. The Belgians wanted to keep all the important structures and positions in their own hands. At the point of independence there was at most a handful of native academics there, but no black senior civil servants and no black military officers, just a few sergeants. The results were catastrophic. I was able to see that for my own eyes when I visited there a year later.

The future new states should have been made ready in advance of political and economic independence. Of course the African heads of government were responsible for the way the new countries were governed, but the colonial powers that should have laid the foundations for independence also bear responsibility.