August 2023
I. INTRODUCTION
I dedicate my thought to the readers in Africa, and to our leaders in East and Southern Africa and in Mozambique. In West Africa, they already are in their moment of truth. And truth shall set us free.
We should wake up to the fact that we are living an important moment in the world, where Africa can for the second time determine and influence world order so that we can free ourselves from the position of a dominated, exploited and poor rich continent, a poor continent, where old colonial masters can tell us who should we be dealing with, who is a good and who is a bad friend. We all hear about Wagner Group in the most negative e terms as a Russian tool. The dominant media is feeding us with the idea that Russia is the enemy. Every time they mention Wagner Group, it is to tell us that they are evil. And because it is their enemy, they want it to be our enemy also. Think for us. They conveniently go silent on Blackwater and what they did and do.
In order to characterize the current moment, I wish to discuss three world events that are shaking the world to its core. I think that Mozambique, East and Southern Africa, and Africa in general, should seize this moment and contribute to shaking the international tree properly, so that our message is clear, it is on record, and shapes the future in a manner that there should no longer be a donor country looking down on us. There is no reason why Europe or America should not come to Africa and explore resources. But there is no reason either why they should dictate the terms of that resource extraction. We should sit at the table, and make those resources work for us, a give-and-take among equal nations. Africa should no longer be a continent of young people dying in the Mediterranean out of desperation and poverty. France in particular, should not continue with its policy of making people pay for being free: Haiti, West Africa as they are now, should not be accepted.
The events I wish to discuss are: BRICS summit in August, Guinea-Mali-Burkina-Niger axis, and Ukraine
II. BRICS
There is a Conference of the BRICS in Johannesburg, South Africa (22-24 August 20023). Apart from the 5 BRICS countries, another 23 countries have applied to join, and all African countries have been invited to attend this summit. The conference has three main objectives:
To break the control of the financial international system by the West;
To lift African nations out of poverty, ending a centenary colonial system of exploitation of raw materials and cheap labour, and
To consider the request of 23 other nations to join the Group.
This is not a war against the North. It is a liberation from the position of being a meal of sorts to participating in the banquet of meals literally produced by our blood, sweat and tears. It is to seek change of the terms of trade, to overcome the era of contempt for Africa, and the end of the era of dictating what African countries should or should not do. According to Helga Zepp-LaRouche,
“Western establishments are still completely underestimating the reality that there is a powerful renaissance of the non-aligned spirit occurring right now. The countries of the Global South are determined to end colonialism for good in its new cloth, and they do not want to be drawn into a geopolitical conflict between the US and Russia, or between the US and China, with whom many of them have very beneficial economic ties," she underscored.”
Collective colonialism exercised over Africa should end. That includes ensuring the centrality of our narrative, knowing that the self-entitled western narratives will fight back, as if we were at war. Yes, we are at war, but not against the people or against any country. It is a war against poverty, neocolonialism, and against hegemonic designs of powerful countries.
At the height of the COVID pandemic, Africa was denied the opportunity to manufacture its own vaccines, while the North offered only the installation in Africa of the capacity to fill bottles with the ready-made vaccine. World Trade organization is the platform where patents are tightly protected.
For far too long, all have recognized that Africa is not represented in the UN Security Council, in the world power structure.
For long, Africa is symbolically invited to attend the World Economic Forum, but nothing is expected of it. Africa is not part of the G20 that discuss the world economy and is working towards self-appointment as the global authority on economic policy.
For long, African heads of State are invited to go listen to one President in Washington, Peking or St Petersburg. Forty-some representatives of as many sovereign countries to go listen to one other sovereign representative sitting opposite.
That is about to change, and it will require foresight and emotional intelligence to drive it because the dominant order will,
first, try to overlook it, and once it becomes impossible to ignore
it will fight it, only to realize that it is an unwinnable battle. Then
they will change gear and try to influence and if possible, capture and drive the agenda, by using soft-spoken consultancies and money.
And us: once freed, what do we do? Remember that this is like the end of slavery in the USA, where the slaves, brought in from Africa, could no longer go back (in which boats?) So, once declared freed, they realize that they do not know what to do with their freedom. So, as free labour, they remain in place and try to offer their labour to their old master, in exchange for a small payment. The master knows that without the slaves, he cannot prosper, but he continues to oppress his frere(d) manpower. And the slave, for lack of means, surrenders to the reality of lack of alternatives and offers his services to the same master, against a guaranteed shelter for his family, and some food (that he himself produces) donated back to him with arrogance and superiority. This is a blind spot we need to get our political leaders to be aware of and to know how to navigate around.
And then there is the end of the dollar world domination. It is suggested that a new financial system is necessary. We hope the Brettons Woods System group of companies (World Bank and IMF) are listening. They have been helping the rich through the instrument of loans, interest rates and ratings, heavy on the poor (risky, they say) and lenient on the rich, thus enriching those that are already rich, and impoverishing those that are dirt poor, suppressing them further into misery. Lest we should forget, these are the institutions that forced poor countries to de-industrialize. So, today, African countries are importers of second-hand everything. If we dare close our markets to the second-hand products (clothes, domestic items such as desktop computers, electro domestics, cars, etc), a trade war is declared on us. South Africa is threatened with withdrawal of the AGOA facility if it should receive Putin. So, Putin did not travel. But Russia is present. China, Russia and USA are not countries anyone can ignore! Neither can the trio afford to ignore each other.
The dollar has been overused as an instrument to punish those that do not follow the American dictat. Maybe then there really is no logical or economic basis for maintain a currency that is used to oppress other countries. We can make other free currency exchangeability arrangements without waging war on the American dollar!
With so much public discourse on the origins of the dollar supremacy, there have been calls to revert to the gold standard as a currency exchange guarantee. We wish to insert a precipitous caveat: we are all in support of using our own currencies to trade among us. If Mozambique should trade with Kenya, we can negotiate the use of either country’s currency, or more efficiently, we can negotiate a regional currency based on our own terms. There are, among others, two core issues to be cautious about as we move forward:
The gold reserve: it is also important that leaders stay away from deciding to bring back the notion of gold reserves as the guarantor of any new currency, whichever that will be. Why? Because that declaration will create a rush for the African gold reserves, ending in scramble, wars and more misery. What someone called “gold genocide” can happen in Africa.
Attempts at hijacking the process: the neocolonial project is alive, well, and full of plundered resources, and it will not sleep until it tries to take over the initiative: ECOWAS has been trying for a long time to introduce a regional currency called ECHO. First, there was that “mysterious” plane crash from Lagos to Abuja, where the experts that were going to discuss the technicalities perished. Then more recently, there is the precipitous descent of Macron to his garden in Abidjan in 2019, and together with President Ouattara, they announce the ECHO, still guaranteed by the French treasury, thus scuttling the entire project. It is postponed to 2027 now.
Remember the New International Economic Order discussed in Cancun? Remember why the Non-Aligned movement was created? Maybe BRICS is the beginning of an answer from the global South to the Northern hegemony.
In discussing French policy in Africa, I cannot avoid drawing our attention to the French behaviour with Haiti, another African country in the American side of the world.
The military take-overs, first in Guinea, then in Mali, and then in Burkina Faso, concluding (for now) with Niger, have happened with three characteristics that should interrogate us, especially those of us in parts of Africa that seem to enjoy peace. Our leaders should listen again to the speech of President Ibrahim of Burkina Faso in St Petersburg, which I make available here:
Africa should not be begging for food neither to Ukraine nor to Russia.
Next time the leaders meet, they should have a different discourse about technological transfer.
Our youth should not continue to die in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. And if the leaders do not listen, the youth will soon cross the street to the next presidential palace. He had just said these words that Niger happened the very same week. This was also the conclusion of studies made by established theorists of the notion of Social Contract: if the state does not guarantee the wellbeing of the people, as entrusted to it by the social contract, then rebelling against the representatives of that state becomes not just foreseeable, but actually legitimate.
It starts with resources sovereignty: gold, bauxite, uranium. Poverty is relative. That France is bright with lights and Niger is in the dark when the sun goes down, is something I have seen myself: I have served in Niger, and I have travelled in France. Where does all that brightness in France at night come from? Why are Europeans and Americans excited about Cabo Delgado? It is not pity for the black people being killed and being chased from their land there, it is the gas. First, they blow the Nordstream, and now they are after the Mozambique gas, they after the Nigerian gas, whose pipeline by the way, will pass through Niger to the Mediterranean coast; What are the royalties for passing through Niger?
For the uranium that costs $130/Kg in the market, France pays to Niger how much?
It is also about foreign military presence: NATO wants to continue expanding, and Europe has defined the Sahel as Continental Europe southern border! Hence the Jihadists, who did not come casually from the Middle East; they were brought through the destruction of Libya and they are being assisted to keep our countries in West Africa weak enough to need American and French support. Our brothers in West Africa have understood and have taken matters in their own hands, despite all the collaborators the neocolonial powers have cultivated: in Nigeria, in Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal and elsewhere.
First, the coups have been peaceful, with no blood shed, in any of the four countries. Secondly, these coups have engendered a lot of support from the concerned people. They are not for a military government, but certainly they are for a truly independent country, a country that can dictate the terms of trade on their own natural resources. If anyone can take them to that position, they support. The army was an instrument of opportunity.
France says: we are not withdrawing our troops from Niger because that is an illegal government. Well the new Nigerien Prime-Minister reminds France that there is in Paris an Académie de Sciences Politiques, and French politicians should know better: agreements are signed by governments yes, but they are celebrated between states. There is the power of state succession! And therefore, as an invited visitor, one cannot say “it was your late father that invited me to occupy one room in your house, so I am not leaving until your father says so. Are we to resuscitate the father, so we can be free?
Africans have disgustingly failed the peoples of these four countries:
By imposing sanctions on Niger: Agitating for war to bring back the democratically-elected: The fallacy of democracy is now used to do the bidding of colonial France and other countries that live on the perpetuation of poverty in Niger (and other African countries)! African against African to impose the interests of the same colonial power that makes these and other countries pay for deciding to be free. Guinea paid it all before and currently the CFA franc and the accord colonial keep these countries much poorer than their English-speaking counterparts by forcing them to still to-day deposit most of their revenues in the French treasury. I always thought that France should be brought to the International Criminal Court. But then, that court was not invented to serve our interests. And we are also trying to use sanctions as a weapon of relations between African countries? We should desist in Africa of talking about sanctions against each other. It is not our culture. You cut electricity to Niger, without researching the reason your grid is linked to that of Niger in the first place: it was to dissuade Niger from building a hydroelectric dam on their side of the Niger River. Where does that put our commercial ethics? Big bully, not big power.
By declaring war as the default response position. For a country renowned from its fine diplomats, in fact the finest I have worked with in the world, Nigeria is a huge deception. We want to send Haussa and Fulani soldiers to fight an army made of Haussa and Fulani? To gain what? It is not even a sound militarily strategy to give a speech that conveys the message that you already won a war that you have not even started and with an army of brother to brother.
That is to defend a colonial situation and of all countries, Nigeria should be the last to do so. Defending a colonial order is not what I expect of Nigeria. I have worked in both Nigeria and Niger, as I have worked in Niger and that was the last thing I expect of a strong intellectual and proudly African country such as Naija. And then accidentally I always wondered silently why Tinubu went for treatment to France during his presidential campaign. Buhari went to London, and I thought the language affinity and the shared colonial pasty would take Tinubu rather to the UK. It is clear now.
Freeing ourselves. You can now see the correlation between BRICS and what is happening in West Africa. I am writing from a country where there is fierce public debate about the concession of port management to a UAE company called DP World. The focus is on resource control. The transit of international goods through Dar-es-Salaam port to other Eastern and Southern African countries, including Malawi Mozambique, DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, etc are major economic stakes. One argument goes that with all these years of independence, Tanzania can do better than cede the port operations to one foreign enterprise that will put its own logistics to use and deliver itself goods. It is estimated that this will establish a foreign-owned end-to-end business model that will cut off clearing agents, truckers and others from the business. And other arguments over the legal terms of the contract. Resource sovereignty is core to the debate. So is the evolving situation in West Africa. France does not want to countenance that.
The less noisy element is the presence of American military in Niger. And by the way, having managed a foothold in Botswana, further South of the Continent, their interest in Cabo Delgado is to try and find an entry point for expanding military presence. VIGILANCIA shall be the motto.
IV. AND UKRAINE
The recent high-level African peace representation to Ukraine and Russia was laughed at from all corners, with differing arguments for the ridicule. I think that we should not laugh. We should lament that Mozambique, living just near another country that has wheat surpluses (a friendly country at that, Zimbabwe), we cannot learn from them or conjugate effort at becoming food self-sufficient. Africa is said to have 65% of all arable land in the world. Well then, why are we begging for the release of grain?
It is just normal that those countries at war, Ukraine and Russia, try to influence us. It is normal that now they see the need to open Embassies in our countries, and it is diplomatically legitimate that they do that. But they should not force us into ditching our friendships to align with their positions. The attitude of our countries towards those countries, as Mandela said in the US, should be dictated by the attitude of those countries towards us. Which European Ambassador in Kenya just this year compared Africans with monkeys? Do we think that such blurting is isolated?
Africa should stop being lectured and force-fed Western values, some with a darker ulterior objective.
V. CONCLUSION
We have two more summits this year that we should follow closely
(a) The September Climate Summit in Nairobi: it is about climate change and what the world should cooperatively do about it, and the need for a new international financial architecture, as President Ruto said. Let us be on the lookout for (i) smooth-operating Consultants that will try to hijack the initiative. And (ii) the focus on carbon credits, away from green energy. Believe you me, I am not an expert, but carbon credit is a sweet lollipop waved at our leaders, so that we can allow the rich countries to continue to pollute the planet, under the logic that the CO2 credit space the non-industrialized countries have created and continue to create, can be filled by those whose industries have always been protected, in exchange for some money. We could also bet that money will not help us, because it will be recycled between our leaders and the captains of industry in the Northern hemisphere. And they will call our leaders corrupt. Who in the end is corrupt if the money ends up in their banks? While they move towards electric cars, we are happy to receive their second-hand polluting and unsafe vehicles: a dumping ground. They dump and sweeten the dumping with a bit of money, so we can continue allowing them to dump.
(b) There is also a Summit on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in New York. Where is Africa in all of this? With so many development agencies in our countries since independence, USAID, AFD, FCDO, how come we still consume what we do not produce and produce what we do not consume? (PLO Lumumba). Development will not come from outside. That is why These SGDs come to replace the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). Affairisme, look busy and talk progressive to look the part. And these will be followed by another initiative with the next Secretary General at the United Nations.
Events are changing the world order, and they may well impact on my erstwhile employer, the United Nations. Africa, especially that part of Africa that seems peaceful, should wake up and smell the coffee, as the English saying goes. You either politely force your place and partake in the meal at the table, or you become (or remain) the meal. Decide you now, as Patrick Otieno Lumumba, Nathalie Yamb, Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao have been saying to us, to the world.
A LUTA CONTINUA
Jose Canhandula, 23 August 2023
Check my other related posts here in Portuguese and here in English, as well as one I wrote about Haiti in Portuguese here
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