Dinner yesterday with an interesting cross-section of Ghanaians and ex-pats, long discussion about development (or lack thereof). One comment highlighted an interesting point: In African developing countries, there is a far greater language barrier between the highly-educated class and non-educated (legacy of colonialism and multiplicity of local ethnic languages) than elsewhere. As a result, getting an education cleaves you from your roots/society…if you go to university, you enter a new class of people and are separated from your background. So it's not surprising that the ruling classes, insofar as they are the most educated, don't serve their people (no sense of solidarity to inspire noblesse oblige or similar civic duty).
That said, it's not like the 'men of the people' (zuma, imin) rulers have a good track record of serving society. And, furthermore, serving "society" could mean just serving your family / tribe rather than the nation, so -- on second thought -- it's probably stretching things to read development implications into the language/education barrier.
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