This is what we now call neo-colonialism the practice of using economics, globalisation, cultural imperialism and conditional aid to influence a country instead of the previous colonial methods of direct military control (imperialism) or indirect political control (hegemony). In broad terms African countries went from a long period of European rule to a brief period of self-rule only to fall back into the economic and political grasp of Europe through subversion by multilateral (financial) institutions. The famous Kikuyu anti-colonial writer and academic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o outlines in his article The Writer in a Neo-colonial State three “ages” that Africa experienced the age of colonialism, the age of independence and the age of neo-colonialism.