Liverpool

Earlier this year, I made my first visit in Liverpool in the north west of England since 1996. Quite a bit had changed since then, the waterfront for which the city is well known had seen probably the biggest development in the dozen of years that separated my two visits.

A new cruise terminal had been built at the Pier Head. A terminal for Ferries 'Cross the Mersey - to cite a 1964 song by Jerry and the Pacemakers - had stood there from before. The new cruise terminal is a floating structure as the River Mersey is tidal: the difference between the high and low tide is several metres and the current really strong as the tides come and go.

Interestingly, the terminal is only geared to handle calling cruise ships, but no turn arounds. It lacks the facilities to check in passengers and their luggage and to store them once they have been offloaded after a cruise.

It may be difficult to add these features, because next to the terminal developers have built office blocks and good quality two hotels. It seems that there is, quite simply, not enough space to accomodate cars and coaches that inevitably arrive in large numbers whenever a cruise ship is embarking or disembarking passengers at a turn around.

On a positive side, the terminal is within a comfortable walking distance from the city centre and major sights, such as the Albert Dock and its museums and galleries. A new museum is being built on the Pier Head itself, just next to the ferry terminal and the Mersey Docks and Harbours Company head office.

Talking about the Albert Dock, I dropped in at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. However, the main building of the museum now housed a museum of slavery as well. Liverpool, like many other British seaports, made money on slave trade until 1833, when the British government abolished slavery in British colonies and dependencies.

What I saw did not impress.

As I experienced it, the exhibitions and in particular some videos that formed parts of the displays, seemed to support the view that Africa's current problems are only due to ills of the past.

It is not my intention to defend slavery: you cannot defend the indefensible, a crime against humanity.

However I experienced this particular museum as an attempt to stir up emotion in visitors, particularly so as writing blocks were placed there so that visitors could express their feelings about what they saw.

What purpose does it serve to comment on what happened more than 200 years ago? As for Africa's ills, of course slavery and slave trade were human tragedies on colossal scale. But the same goes for the genocide against Jews committed by Hitler. Yet nobody is arguing that Jews have become less entrepreneurial or successful after those horrors that took place only some 65 years ago.

When it comes to Africa, it seems that in many discussions outsourcing responsibility over the persistent underperformance of large parts of that continent is not only perfectly acceptable, it is the only politically correct approach to discuss the issue in public.

Soon after the visit to Liverpool, I bought a book called "The Trouble With Africa" by Robert Calderisi, a Canadian diplomat. In brief, he argues that Africa will only stop underperforming by abandoning its victim mentality.

I agree.

My native Finland was under Swedish rule from about 1155 to 1809 and then under the rule of Russia until 1917. This is far longer than any African country was under the rule of European colonial powers, yet whatever problems there are in Finland today, people do not blame the past for them.

Furthermore, I we want to judge our predecessors by writing down our feelings after visting a place like the said museum, we should accept that future generations will pass equal judgements on us. It was Oscar Wilde who said that a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything but not the value of anything. In my opinion, that describes our time well and Wilde's words could therefore act as the basis for such judgements in the future.