Yesterday’s sentencing of the warlord-turned-Liberian-president, Charles Taylor, was a significant step forward for human rights in Africa and for humanity itself. But Taylor’s sentencing still leaves scores more African dictators, warlords and their minions running free, and rampant, with impunity for their heinous crimes.

The 64-year-old Taylor was the first former head-of-state to be convicted by an international war crimes court since World War II, and as such judges presiding over the case were without precedent.

The 50-year sentence meted down to him by the Special Court for Sierra Leone – held in Leidschendam, a suburb of The Hague, instead of in the prosecuting country for fear that the trial would destabilise the region – was deemed too lenient by human rights activists.

Prosecutors had asked for an 80-year sentence but Taylor’s lawyers urged judges to hand down a sentence that offered him some hope of release before he dies.

Although denying the request for a beefed-up sentence, judges said yesterday that Taylor was “in a class of his own” compared to others convicted by the United Nations-backed court, in that his status as a head of state put him in another category. It could also be argued that because he was a head of state, the crimes perpetrated were all the more serious. But, at any rate, it is doubtful that he would live to reach the ripe age of 114 and be released.

Yesterday’s landmark conviction was for Taylor’s role in supporting rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone who murdered and mutilated thousands during their country’s brutal civil war in return for blood diamonds. The rebels’ bloody rampage during the decade-long war ended in 2002 with more than 50,000 dead.

Judges yesterday said that he was responsible for “some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history” and as being of the “utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality.”

He was found guilty of allegations that he funnelled arms, ammunition and other supplies in return for blood diamonds mined in Sierra Leone using slave labour, which in itself led to countless innocent lives being lost or destroyed.

Crimes committed at his behest or through his funding include, according to Taylor’s prosecutors, public executions and amputations of civilians, the display of decapitated heads at checkpoints, the killing and public disembowelment of civilians whose intestines were stretched across the road to make a check point, public rapes of women and girls, and people burnt alive in their homes.

But the sad fact of the matter is that such crimes have no doubt been committed somewhere in Africa in the time that it has taken to read this single sentence. That, coupled with drought-induced famine and the natural human propensity to seek out better lives leaves little wonder as to why European Union member states received 300,000 asylum applications last year.

And in requesting an 80-year sentence, prosecutors argued that there was no reason for leniency given the extreme nature of the crimes, citing Taylor’s “greed” and “misuse of his position of power”.

And this is exactly the dilemma with delivering aid funds to many parts of Africa - it just does not get to where it is actually needed. In many countries where the aid is most needed, there is very little accountability to speak of and funds are simply pumped down a funnel straight into the pockets of corrupt officials.

A recent report showed that hundreds of millions of euros of EU aid to help the poor in Africa has been handed over without public scrutiny to banks and private equity companies and have been funnelled into tax havens.

Positively, last year the EU has announced new aid eligibility rules for developing countries that make democracy and human rights the main criteria for granting budgetary support and development aid.

Africa’s former colonial powers - such as the UK, France, Belgium and Portugal as well as later political colonisers such as the United States - depleted Africa, the richest continent in the world. And when they were done, their divide and rule template had put in place regimes that throw people into abject poverty and burden them with totalitarian dictators, merciless brutality and worse. For their sins, the EU is today the largest development donor to Africa, followed by the United States.

More aid and more accountability for that aid is fundamental in tackling at the root, the migration phenomenon that Europe has been facing for years but, at the end of the day, what is needed more is the bringing to justice of more Taylors and their minions – for it is these people who are the real cause behind the sorry state of humanity in Africa.

That, however, is a far taller order than throwing money at the problems of Africa. Where there is a will there is a way – and while the will is certainly there, it is the ways that appear to be lacking.