If Africa's dismal economic performance could be put down to bad choices by African leaders, then we have to ask: Why have they made them?

A key reason is that Africans and the international community have allowed them to. The former typically believed they lacked the means to change the status quo, whereas the latter have been too ready to help them for reasons ranging from self-interest to altruism and pity.

African leaders have successfully managed, with the help of donors, to externalise their problems, making them the responsibility (and apparently the fault, too) of others. In response, the donors have lacked the tools or political will to manage the relationship and their money flows according to the democratic, reform and delivery record of the recipients.

Nowhere has this been more the case than with the many so-called "fragile" or "failed" states, which have frequently abrogated the responsibility to find the resources to rebuild their countries to others, though often not the necessary authority. Too often have donors stepped, unwittingly or not, into the shoes of the state and thereby weakened the already tenuous link of accountability between the government and its people.

That African leaders have been permitted to get away with ruinous, self-interested decisions can be attributed in large part to a relative lack of democracy (or to single-party dominance) in Africa. There has been little bottom-up pressure on leadership to make better choices, notwithstanding the encouraging growth of civil society in parts of the continent over the past two decades.

This apparent passivity in the face of dire leadership can, at least in part, be attributed to culture: neo-patrimonial "big man" chieftain styles of rule, dispensing favours and using all manner of tools to bolster their rule, from traditional governance structures to kinship ties and less palpable aspects, including witchcraft and the church. The system many African leaders have preferred thrives on corruption and nepotism.

But the cultural aspect has worked both ways - an uncomfortable fact that most scholars and practitioners have not subjected to sufficient scrutiny. Whereas African leadership has lacked the commitment to popular welfare displayed by many Asian leaders, Asian societies have in turn assumed a responsibility (and suitable mind set) to fill their part of the development bargain - the Confucianism aspect so often cited but so hard to quantify in East Asia's success.

Africa's relatively low population density has also played a role. Africa has historically lacked the critical mass of skilled people to participate in development, especially required in the cities, resulting in high labour costs and low economic growth. These conditions have been exacerbated by an "urban bias" towards development choices, neglecting the rural areas. This choice was compounded (and perhaps encouraged) during the last 20 years of the 20th century.

Africa's land holding structures have also been an impediment to entrepreneurship where they have hindered the collateralisation of land value through individual ownership and mortgage schemes. There has been little interest among the leadership of many countries for reform; and quite the opposite in Zimbabwe, where land has been seized and redistributed based on political allegiances.

The top-down imposition of states and borders on Africa's rich ethnic and sectarian tapestry by colonial powers has helped to institutionalise weak governance structures. These were both formed and maintained not by raising taxes and ensuring public goods, as with European state-building for example, but by international fiat from the colonial powers, through the Organisation of African Unity, to today's public alliance with the donors who have provided the major share of many African governments' expenditure.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, bad choices have been made because better choices in the broad public interest were in very many cases not in the leaders' personal and often financial self-interest.

• Why Africa is Poor And What Africans Can Do About It is published by Penguin Books. Available at Exclusive Books for R216

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