Link: http://cadtm.org/New-capitalist-domination-and
The decolonization that began in the 1940s was
essentially a passage towards neocolonialism, a mutation of the former
colonies, a reconfiguration of the mechanisms of domination and exploitation by
both the former colonial powers and other capitalists of the centre. It was
necessary to adapt to the new balance of
power on the international stage (the new economic-military hierarchy, the
“Cold War”) in both the colonial metropolises and the colonial territories.
Three or four decades later, the disappearance of the so-called “communist”
camp gave rise to a restructuring of the world order based on the dynamic of
the neoliberalisation of capitalism that had been set in motion in the late
1970s and early 1980s. It is characterized by a permanent strengthening of the
global hold of capital on the world (globalization) and a dynamic of abolition
of the “private estate” (concerning the former French colonies), the “backyard”
(Latin America for the United States), etc., which were said to limit the free
movement of capital, hitherto considered as an intrusion.
In this second decade of
the twenty-first century there is a circulation of capital whose complexity is
incomparably greater than that of the “age of empires”. Private capital from
certain former colonial territories also participates in it, in a combined and
uneven fashion. In some cases, this goes so far as to shake up the hierarchy
inherited from the twentieth century. A change that even leads some people to
speak of, or to fear already, an “imperialism in reverse” |1|
supposedly resulting from the exponential growth of the GDPof some former economies of peripheral
capitalism, or of the former so-called communist world? These economies are
characterized as emergent, with a focus on China – which has already emerged,
and even become the biggest economy in the world (in terms of GDP expressed in
purchasing power parity), with increasing investment in Europe and the
USA. |2| As
for the present economic dynamism in Africa, some people do not hesitate to
speak of a “time of Africa” – that is coming |3|,
or indeed is already there. |4|
And, along the lines of
the so-called “imperialism in reverse”, one observer who is very well-informed
about the economic-political-military intrigues between France and Africa
(reduced to its “sub-Saharan” part), seems to have identified a premonitory
sign, speaking of an alleged inversion that is turning Françafrique into
“Africafrance”. |5|
But the demonstration is rather superficial, whereas what is quite evident is a
“redeployment of French imperialism” |6| in
Africa. Africa is continuing its (capitalist) social-historical vocation to be
a field of economic competition for the old and new powers of economic
globalization, especially with regard to the supply of raw materials, even
though there is now the participation of private African capital in the
circuits of neoliberal globalization. There is an activism of these powers
which is also expressed militarily, to a greater extent than before, under the
banner of the “war against terrorism”, “to counter the threatening chaos” - to
paraphrase the ideologue of humanitarian imperialism, Robert D. Kaplan |7| So
even though it has not exhausted the forms of domination of capital in African
societies, imperialism is an undeniable reality in Africa today, even beyond
the economic and military dimensions, as we will try to demonstrate later on.
Ceding
the sovereignty of African states
The African economy of
today is no longer the one written about by Lenin. It is no longer made up of a
collection of colonial territories, but almost entirely of formally sovereign
states, with which non-African states, including former colonial powers, are
supposed to have relations of cooperation or partnership, respecting
international commitments. However, this sovereignty is quite relative, weighed
down by the persistent dynamic of neocolonialism. The mechanisms of
subordinating dependence on foreign capital, export of raw materials, importing
of manufactured goods from the former colonial metropolis and from other
economic powers have not disappeared. They have been adapted to the dynamics of
the unequal global order. That is what is demonstrated by the supposed African
economic prowess today, celebrated almost everywhere: the constant average
growth of its GDP for a decade, at around 5 per cent, which is above the world
average and which, moreover, proved to be resilient following the outbreak of
the crisis in the capitalist economies of the centre in 2008, after just a
slight decline in 2009. The financial sector was able on the whole to remain
steady, despite the South African situation (the country most affected by the
crisis).
Far from being the proof
of an endogenous economic dynamic, it was rather the manifestation of the
dominance of foreign capital. The growth in question was mainly driven by the
oil and mining sectors - where new deposits are being discovered, a factor of
more extractive activity - whose main assets are, except for South African
mining capital, those of “Western” transnationals (the North American and
European oil and mining companies). These transnationals, supported by “their”
states, act in a context of so-called free competition (also with the
possibility of partnership) and no longer in a situation of neo-colonial
monopoly – long held, for example, by the French oil company Elf (absorbed by
Total) in Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon. This growth is also driven by exports of
other raw materials (often the same since colonial times) in non-mining- or
oil-based economies, where are active, for example, American and European
agribusiness giants – Cargill, Archer Daniel Midland (ADM), Louis Dreyfus, etc.
Transnationals are also attracted by Africa’s world leadership in return on
investments, realization of superprofits and easy “illicit outflow of money”
(made from plunder of resources, tax evasion, etc.): $528 billion flowed out of
sub-Saharan Africa between 2003 and 2012 |8|,
an annual average of 5.5 percent of GDP, the highest in the world. |9|
This situation is a
consequence of the exogenous reorganization, from the 1980s onwards, of African
economies through the neoliberal structural adjustment programmes, including the “reform”
of investment and labour codes. The IMF and the World Bankimposed
them on the states of traditional peripheral capitalism, those who were victims
of an indebtedness promoted by the World Bank (the solution to the abundance of
petrodollars) from 1980 on. Given the relationships of forces within these very
hierarchical multilateral institutions and the specific weight of American
economic interests in the decision to restructure the world economy, growth in
Africa today comes principally from submission to (or execution of a project
of) the American establishment, shared within the Trilateral Commission by the
other bourgeoisies of the capitalist centre which are subordinate to it or
indeed those which appear to be adversaries. |10|
Placed in a situation of
suffocating financial dependence, African states have been forced into a
partial ceding of sovereignty, which was already relative under classical
neo-colonial domination. They are thus regularly subject to the missi dominici
[envoys of the ruler] of capital, of the international financial institutions
that organize the appropriation by capital of the European and North American
powers (the “strategic investors”) of former African state enterprises
considered to be the most profitable, as part of the Washington Consensus. A
rather unique medical treatment that is more interested in healthy people and
abandons the “lame ducks”. It is a new “civilizing” dispossession, integrating
these societies into the neoliberal phase of capitalist civilization, as
colonization had done in the phase known also as that of the decline of
classical liberalism.
The repayment of
external debt still represents – through interest payments
– a considerable drain from which international finance capital benefits. Thus,
in 2004,UNCTAD could
scarcely hide its emotion when it noted what had been ceaselessly denounced by
the networks for the cancellation of the debt of the Third World: “A quick look
at the debt of Africa shows that the continent received some $540 billion in
loans and paid back some $550 billion in principal and interest between 1970
and 2002. Yet the outstanding debt remained $295 billion.
“For its part,
sub-Saharan Africa received $294 billion in disbursements, paid back $268
billion in respect of debt service,
but retains an active debt of some $210 billion [...]. Without taking account
of interest and interest on arrears, the repayment of the outstanding debt
would represent a reverse transfer of resources.” |11|
This is a drain that is taking place in the sub-region with the highest
proportion of poor in the world. The alleged present economic performance has
facilitated another round of public debt (on the international financial
markets), which is already alarming.
The apparent mark of
generosity towards the countries characterized as “heavily indebted” – debt
relief or cancellation – has more to do with a “favour” supported by some
influential shareholder of the World Bank or the IMF who has something to gain
from it. A negative demonstration of this was provided by the pressure exerted,
a few years ago, on the Congolese government of Joseph Kabila to get him to
revise downward the terms of a contract that was considered to have granted too
privileged a position to China. If the government of Kinshasa had proved too
stubborn, the international financial institutions would have prevented the
promised cancellation of a significant part of the bilateral debt of the
Democratic Republic of Congo by the Paris Club.
The blackmail worked, the contract was revised downward. The scope of the
capitalist partnership between China and DR Congo was thus defined by the
traditional principal shareholders of the international financial institutions
which had their eyes on its natural resources.
Since domination is most
effective when it is coated with a “nationalist” varnish, the African relay of
this power of international finance capital over countries is provided by the
African Development Bank (AfDB), the principal regional financial institution,
supervisor of the New Economic Partnership for Africa (NEPAD) of the African
Union, which is meant to organize the economic development of this region. In
this financial institution, presented as pan-African, 78 countries participate,
including 25 non-African, among which five members of the G7 (Germany, Canada,
USA, France, Japan) own 25 per cent of the capital. This high degree of
participation – to which should be added that of the two other G7 members,
other European countries (the Swiss Confederation...) and so-called emerging
powers – provides the power to subordinate its programmes to the major
interests of the traditional powers. Thus, it is almost impossible to
distinguish the AfDB recommendations from those of the Bretton Woods
institutions where the domination of the traditional imperialist powers, the US
in the lead, is maintained.
“Public aid for
development” gives an air of generosity to this system of the organized
dependency of African societies, whereas the Committee for the Abolition of the
Third World Debt (CADTM) poses the question: “In 2012, the repatriation of
profits from the most impoverished region of the world accounted for 5 per cent
of its GDP, against one per cent for public aid for development. In this
context, it is worth asking: who is helping whom?” |12|
The European Union: new
forms of “lion’s share” partnership
As regards much of
Africa, this supposed generosity also involves so-called preferential
agreements, such as the agreements between the countries defined as African,
Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) on the one hand and the European Economic
Community, later the European Union, on the other. These agreements – of Yaoundé,
Cotonou and Lomé - enabled Europe to acquire products at the prices that it
determined it and to maintain these economies in the export of unprocessed
products, marked by specialization or colonial monoculture.
It is this situation of
preferential dependence that the European Union decided in 2002 to adapt to the
neoliberal era, by making it worse, through the establishment of free trade
areas called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The African countries
concerned (leaving out those of North Africa) were supposed to sign them after
five years of “negotiations”, in conformity with the derogation granted by the WTO. This partnership reserved the lion’s
share for the EU, to such an extent that on the eve of the Second Africa-Europe
Summit (in Lisbon, December 2007), six weeks away from the first deadline, the
liberal economist and president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, considered it impossible
to sign: “It is a question of survival for our peoples and our economies, which
are already in great difficulty [...] If Europe no longer has anything more
than the straightjacket of the EPAs to offer us, we can ask ourselves whether
imagination and creativity have not broken down in Brussels.” |13|
The resistance of African states and sub-regional blocs lasted until 2014, the
final deadline for ratification.
The fact of having
maintained Africa for five decades in a situation of strong dependence on the
export of primary products had given the EU enough power to set the rules of
the game. It was able to impose negotiating with sub-regional integration
groups (which are quite dependent on EU financial contributions), whose profile
suited it, rather than with the African Union, according to the classic
principle of divide and rule; it was also able to create divisions according to
the degree of dependence of each “national” economy on exporting to the
European market its flowers, bananas, cocoa, cotton, etc. Helped along by EU
blackmail and promises, true or false, the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS), the South African Development Community (SADC) - with special
arrangements for South Africa – and the East African Community (EAC) had, in
2014, ended up by ratifying an agreement that was “medieval” according to the
Network of Peasant Organizations and Agricultural Producers (ROPPA) of West
Africa.
The African countries
concerned thus unleashed a process of liberalization, between 75 and 80 per
cent, of their markets for goods from the EU, spread over a period, depending
on the sub-regions, of between 20 and 25 years; without any system of
“financial compensation” |14|.
In exchange, these African economies will be free to export 100 per cent of
their goods to the European Union.
But, with the exception
of the South African economy, this will principally concern what in agriculture
cannot be produced in Europe, so it will not be in competition with European
production. The competition that African goods will face on the European market
is with similar imports from Latin America and Asia – among which those from
the colonies/neo-colonies of the EU (overseas countries and territories, ultra-peripheral
regions) which make, for example, France a big producer of pineapples, bananas
and sugar cane. |15|
The competition between dominated economies of the former Third World thus
enables the EU to import tropical products at the lowest possible prices.
On the other hand, with
the – transient? – exception of certain products defined as sensitive (meat,
cereals, pasta, frozen chicken, paint, etc., depending on the sub-regions),
whose free entry into Africa would be utterly disastrous for African public
finances and for a large part of small local production, EU goods will compete
with African goods. This is a real competition between unequals, as part of an
alleged partnership “of equals”.
With the exception of
goods coming from South Africa - with which the EU has established measures of
protection, reciprocal tariff quotas, which are also unequal (105 South African
products are protected, as against 251 European products) – African goods of a
kind that are already produced in Europe have very little chance of being
competitive there. They will not even be competitive in local and sub-regional
African markets, given the great weakness of intra-African trade, because
nearly 90 per cent of Africa’s trade is with the rest of the world.
Neoliberalism promised,
however, to rectify this weakness through a dynamic of regional and continental
economic integration. But the “negotiation” of the EPAs has compromised it.
This was too serious a matter for the European Union to be dealt with by the
African Union: “In Africa-EU relations, the EPAs are notably absent from
official EU-AU meetings and structures. The EU denied that the SCAU partnership
[Common Africa-EU Strategy] on trade, regional integration and infrastructure
should cover the EPAs, whereas these latter agreements have always haunted
relations between the two continents.” |16|
The EU, which is proud of contributing to African integration, has thus, while
funding it, clearly undermined the realization of even just an autonomous
bourgeois African Union.
Hence the opposition
that exists to EPAs, not only from organizations of peasant agricultural
production and “civil society” but also from certain pan-African organizations
of capital, such as the African Industrial Association (AIA). The Association
of Ghana Industries (AGI) found itself fractured between exporters of tropical
products and producers competing with goods imported from the EU. In fact,
through the EPAs, the EU has actually organized the suffocation of African
industrial capital to the benefit of European transnational exporters.
According to the AIA, “Given the fragility of African economies, the
inappropriateness of free trade can be in little doubt. Many industries in this
region are scarcely emerging. The opening that is advocated will condemn Africa
irreparably to remain a trading post for imports... “ |17|.
We can almost hear Marx saying: “Every time that Ireland was on the point of
developing on the industrial level, it was crushed and reconverted into a
purely agricultural country.” |18|
Over the last few years
we have not only seen the growth of African GDP and the multiplication of the
number of its millionaires and billionaires, but also, apparently
paradoxically, its “deindustrialization” following the structural adjustment
programmes. |19|.
This also seems to be
the true spirit of the “Brussels Consensus” that the EU offered Africa at the
summit in April 2014. One of the tasks that the EU has set itself is to
“accompany the private sector in the conquest of markets in Africa”. Valued at
“$600 billion in 2013”, these markets are “estimated at $1,000 billion in
2020”. |20|
The economic dynamism in Africa is also celebrated today for is supposedly
massive production of consumers of goods from the transnationals, - the
so-called boom of the African middle class. |21|Constructed
for the consolidation of the rule of capital over the peoples of Europe and the
acquisition of a greater margin of autonomy with regard to American capital in
international competition, the EU is confirming its active role in
strengthening the hold of its capital over African societies.
Redeployment
of two former colonial powers
In this new scramble for
Africa, some countries are pursuing their imperialist tradition ndividually,
determined to “take greater advantage of the colonial legacy.” |22| For example, in December 2013 France
published a report |23|
expressing, more openly than before, the need for an imperialist redeployment.
The Védrine Report affirms its determination to re-conquer influence (from
economic to cultural) that has been reduced by free trade, American
expansionism and the breakthrough of new powers – especially China. Thus France
is determined to go beyond what has been done by the French Development Agency
(AFD), the coordinating body of French neo-colonialism in Africa. This has not
failed to activate the Council of French Investors in Africa (CIFA), and the
Africa section of the Movement of Enterprises of France (Medef International).
In this perspective, the Francophonie (association of French-speaking
countries) summit held in Dakar in December 2014 was followed by the First
Economic Forum of Francophonie. Continuity can be established with the
Franco-African Forum for Shared Growth, held in Paris in February 2015 and
clearly assuming affiliation with the Védrine Report. The Medef was the
co-organizer.
For its part, the United
Kingdom, much less criticized in Africa than is France, has shown that it is
not uninterested. Although most publicity has been given to Chinese economic
activism in Africa over the last decade, it turns out that from 2003 to 2012,
it was the United Kingdom’s capital that was in the lead concerning mergers and
acquisitions ($30.503 billion, 437 transactions), followed closely by France
($30.472 billion, 141 transactions), China occupied third place ($20.781
billion, 49 transactions 49). |24|
Christian Aid noted in 2007 that in terms of financial flows between the UK and
sub-Saharan Africa, the UK sent, from July 2005 to July 2006, £17 billion to
sub-Saharan Africa and received in return £27 billion, of which £17 billion
came from capital flight. |25|
Who is helping whom?
The Department for
International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom currently expends more
energy and uses up more paper to spread the gospel that happiness can only be
brought by private capital to the poor in underdeveloped capitalist societies
in general, African in this case. It is concern for the poor in Africa, rather
than considerations of profit,
which is supposed to have motivated the establishment by Tony Blair of the
Commission for Africa, which produced in 2005 the report Our Common Interest. |26|
The common interest in question is that of British public authorities and
private capital, and indeed of the new African capitalists. Did not Tony Blair
cover up the corrupt practices of the arms dealer BAE System, one of whose
victims was Tanzania? |27|
Greater government
support to British private capital was subsequently particularly justified in
2011 by DFID in “The engine of development: the private sector and prosperity
for poor people”. |28|
To the delight of Business Action for Africa (BAA), DFID is active in
supporting British transnationals operating in Africa, such as Unilever (where
former British ministers are recycled), Diageo (recently taken to court for
payment of bribes in Asia), Rio Tinto (already accused of complicity in war
crimes and genocide in Papua New Guinea and exposed by farmers and
environmental associations in Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia... ), Shell
(accused of complicity in the repression of the Ogonis and of falsification of
information on oil pollution in Nigeria). It is no surprise that the behaviour
of these British transnationals (including Lonmin, responsible for the crime of
Marikana) remains marked by a certain neo-colonial spirit:
“None of the British
mining companies working in Sierra Leone has complied with the 2009 law on
mines, established with international support to ensure that foreign mining
companies operate in a responsible fashion (...) The arguments of these
companies concerning tax evasion are both obsolete and invalid.” |29| A
spokesperson of the Ghana Energy Commission also expressed this quite clearly:”
I believe that they think that this is Africa, so they can get away with
it.” |30|
In
the dynamic of the “new American century”
Having defined the
twenty-first century as “the new American century”, US imperialism has
obviously included the economic conquest of Africa. President Bush senior had
announced it |31|
and it became more visible with the adoption under Bill Clinton, in 2000, of
the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This is a law whose existence
cannot be understood without taking into account the creation in 1992-1993, of
the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) by the principal American transnationals
– at present 180 enterprises, representing at least 85 per cent of American
private investment in Africa, accompanied by some African enterprises: Dangote
Group, Ethiopian Airlines, Heirs Holdings, Telkom SA - with the blessing of the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The AGOA is a
version of a preferential market, supposed to increase American investment in
Africa and allow free access to the US market of goods produced in Africa ...
to the exclusion of agricultural products! This makes it a restricted opening
because of the importance of agricultural production in Africa’s economic
activity. Even though Obama has said that “we have no need of Africa’s energy
resources” |32|, as far as imports are concerned, the AGOA
remains primarily focused on hydrocarbons (around 90 per cent), followed by
textiles and clothing. This law provides for unilateral sanctions against any
African “partner” which contravenes so-called “American values”. Even the
licensed ideologues of free trade have not hesitated to characterize it as “an
American Trojan horse in Africa”. |33|
Faithfully following the
Clinton administration on this question, the administration of George W. Bush
reinforced the system with the creation of the Millennium Challenge Account,
another instrument of “aid” to Third World countries. Access to this
“generosity” is conditioned by the adoption of the guidelines of the US
administration. |34|.
The liaison between this public instrument and private American capital is
mainly provided by USAID. The Obama era is continuing this tradition.
As regards mergers and
acquisitions, according to the firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the United
States only occupied fifth place (with $12.08 billion and 209 transactions in
mergers and acquisitions, North Africa included) during the decade 2003-2012,
even coming after an emerging economic power, India , in fourth place with
$15.11 billion and 133 transactions. The leadership in commercial partnership
with Africa, previously held by the United States, was snatched in 2009 by
China. The fact remains that in terms of stocks of foreign direct investment
(FDI), the United States retains leadership, with $61.4 billion in 2012 against
$27.7 billion for China. The United Kingdom and France, each have more than
twice the Chinese stock of FDI (respectively $57.9 and $58.9 billion).
With such a stock of
FDI, American transnationals are characterized, like their French and British
peers, by having a certain influence on the national policies of African
countries, especially in the former British colonies, helped by the fact that
they speak English. We know the classic case of Firestone in Liberia |35|
which has since 1929 overexploited the local workforce, local land (rubber
plantations) and subordinated the Liberian government, which is in a position
of quasi-protectorate. |36|.
Let us recall the case of Chevron, whose maritime and air navigation equipment
was placed in the 1990s at the disposal of the Nigerian Army for its murderous
expeditions against the Ijaw and Ogoni peoples who were demanding social
justice in the Niger oil delta.
Although the image of
Coca-Cola (considered to be the largest private employer in Africa, with about
70,000 employees spread over 160 factories), is not as tainted in Africa as it
is in Colombia and India, this American transnational is a strong supporter of
the autocrat of Swaziland, King Mswati III. It is in this absolute monarchy
that it has established African production of the concentrate of its eponymous
drink “because of the favourable tax arrangements that the regime guarantees and
the abundance of cheap labour and raw sugar (...). However, the real problem is
that Coca-Cola is probably in Swaziland because it is a dictatorship that
oppresses the unions and the population, which makes it possible to keep wages
low.” |37|
People talk about the “Cocacolonisation of Swaziland” because according to some
estimates Coca-Cola contributes up to 40 per cent of its GDP. This explains
why, until very recently, Swazi activists for human rights and freedoms were
almost completely ignored by the US administration.
To assert its global
leadership |38|,
the US government in its turn initiated in August 2014 a summit with African
states, devoted to economic partnership with Africa, beyond the AGOA.
Investment of $33 billion in the near future was announced to the African leaders
who had been invited to Washington. Stephen Hayes, CEO of CCA, who had
complained of insufficient US dynamism in supporting American private
investment in Africa |39|,
was delighted. This speaks volumes about the need for transnationals which are
still identified with the Stars and Stripes to have a state at their service,
as on the occasion of an official ceremony in Equatorial Guinea where “American
flags [...] were worn by a delegation of Mobil Equatorial Guinea, a subsidiary
of ExxonMobil [...] Then came the delegations with placards announcing
Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, Marathon Oil.” |40|
A
“green revolution” by “philanthrocapitalism”
This culture of
influence over the destiny of African states and societies, which is inherent
to the expansion of transnational firms, is quite clear on the vital issue of
agriculture, where the global leadership of American firms is undeniable.
Together with USAID, in 2006, the “philanthropic” foundations created the
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). |41|
Paved with good intentions – as was the Green Revolution initiated by the Ford
and Rockefeller foundations in the 1950s in Latin America and especially in
Asia, with the painful results that we know – this new version is the
neoliberal Trojan horse of biotech agribusiness (Monsanto, Pioneer, Dupont,
etc.). |42|
What is taking place is
an operation to impose genetically modified seeds. The philanthropy of the
Gates Foundation - which has spent “$120 million for the development of crops
in Africa, including specific subsidies for the development of GM crops” |43| –
is only apparent, because it is a shareholder in Monsanto. Guided by
profitability |44|
this “philanthrocapitalist” foundation lobbied African parliaments to get them
to enact laws favourable to the cultivation of genetically modified
seeds |45|,
to which the legislation of the vast majority of African countries still
represents an obstacle.
Among the latest
offensives of the seed lobby in
Africa is the one conducted in Ghana. Subject to financial difficulties for at
least two years, the Ghanaian government was about to give in to pressure for
the adoption of the Plant Breeders’ Bill. This law, favourable to the use of
genetically modified seeds at the expense of traditional sowing practices, has
for the moment been countered by mobilizations against it, including an
international information campaign. The financial pressure appears quite
clearly in an article that reports the crude blackmail of the American Embassy
and USAID on the Ghanaian finance minister concerning a five-year assistance
programme |46|.
The Ghanaian government is in a dilemma: give in to the financial blackmail of
the United States by adopting the law (public debt is still rising in 2015) or
listen to food sovereignty activists who are also opinion leaders. Following on
Obama’s visit, Kenya has announced the lifting of its ban on GMOs.
National parliaments are
called upon to legislate in favour of the interests of transnationals against
food sovereignty and justice. This is called “knowing how to attract
investors.” The spectre of a fairly effective campaign in Europe and the United
States against the consumption of products containing GMOs (which has, for
example, already convinced the fast-food chain Chipotle in the US) increases
the interest of agribusiness for Africa, where the expansion of large retail
chains selling food products is underway.
As a contribution to the
realization of this “progress” of African agriculture, the AfDB placed itself
in the front rank of the promoters of the “green revolution” by calling for the
use of genetically modified seeds “to improve African agricultural
productivity”. In this it joined with the first president – now honorary
president – of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Kofi
Annan, who owed his position as Secretary General of the United Nations to his
servility to American interests. Those who bleed the peoples dry always find African
lackeys |47|.
It is no surprise that the AfDB, this so-called pan-African financial institution,
has chosen to take into account neither the opinions of small farmers’
organizations nor the studies published in recent years which argue that
African peasant agriculture does not need these genetically modified seeds to
achieve food self-sufficiency |48|.
It is no longer just a question of the subtle imposition of foods that are
exotic from the point of view of African societies, as a certain kind of food
aid has done traditionally, but of control over the production of staple foods
of the local diet.
We cannot insult the
technocrats of the AfDB by believing that they are ignorant of the fact that
this “green revolution” cannot be realized without taking over land and even
sources of water. One of the most recent cases of dispossession is the
expulsion by the authorities of the state of Taraba (in Nigeria) the local
small peasantry in order to enable the American company Dominion Farms to enjoy
30,000 hectares for rice cultivation. Dominion Farms had already become
celebrated in Kenya for a similar kind of misdeed. These peasants (adults and
school-age children) will be forced to become super-exploited agricultural
workers or to swell the population of the shanty-towns. In this case, their
pauperization will serves the NGO programmes aimed at combating “extreme
poverty” and the jobs they provide for missionaries of humanitarian subordination
of the local population, created in the United States and Africa, co-financed
or supported by USAID. Given the “sensitive” character of Taraba, it is not
excluded that the criminal group Boko Haram will make recruits there, if it
survives the present sub-regional offensive. Beyond Nigeria, the “green
revolution” will increase the number of deaths among migrants in the Sahara or
in the Mediterranean.
Emergence
of new powers and Africa
The big novelty in this
new scramble for Africa is the activism of emerging economic powers, especially
China (which is rather “emerged”), which is proving to be a catalyst for the
present dynamism of the traditional imperialist powers. These emerged and
emerging capitalist powers have the particularity of being located in Asia and
Latin America and even in Africa (South Africa). In other words in the former
“Third World” or “South”. As they rise they are no exception to what is
virtually the rule of exploiting Africa.
Without possessing the
same dynamism as Chinese capital, Indian capital (oil, mining, industrial and
agricultural investments, mobile telephones, manufactured food products, social
services etc.) is also expanding in Africa, based on a long history of post
-colonial relationships (non-alignment) and the existence of a large African
population of Indian descent in East and Southern Africa (from Mauritius to
Kenya, and including South Africa). But its largest trading partner – 25 per
cent — is Nigeria.
Just as Brazilian
capital (oil and gas sector, construction, agribusiness, export of machinery,
food products, etc.) is favoured by the fact that part of its population is of
African descent (though it suffers considerable discrimination) |49|
and by the language it shares with former Portuguese colonies in Africa (Angola
is the main destination for Brazilian firms in Africa).
We should also take
note, although they are less talked about than the others, of the investments
(oil, forestry, agribusiness) from Malaysia – which was in 2012 the leading
source of FDI in Africa coming from the South. The common Muslim religious
identity with a large part of Africa is not unconnected with the development of
capital from the Gulf oil monarchies (financial sector, oil, agribusiness,
etc.). Because of its Euro-Asian character and its history as the former
metropolis of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey also seems determined to increase its
economic presence in Africa, below the northern sub-region. That makes quite a
lot of people for the African “cake”.
One effect of this
activism of emerging economic powers is the great attention paid to Africa
today by the academic-media complex of traditional central capitalism, in the
name of a supposed concern for the protection of its natural resources from
predators and other such fairy stories that could compromise its march (already
fifty years old but still “plodding along”) towards development. These
enunciations of predatory behaviour or fraud on the part of new economic powers
are reminiscent of one of the justifications for the colonization of East
African societies at the end of the nineteenth century: the need to protect
them from the slave trade that was at that time operated by Arab and Swahili
(products of a very ancient Arab-Bantu miscegenation) traders. In the same way,
in this twenty-first century, African economies need protection from these new
pretenders to the rank of capitalist power, principally from China, occupying
and accepting the leading position in this tri-continental “flight of wild
geese”. |50|
It goes without saying
that this new capitalist wave has not failed to disturb the logic of the
Washington Consensus, which may be opposed by a sort of Beijing Consensus.
According to the Sinologist Arif Dirlik, “the term derives its meaning and its
charm not from a coherent economic or political position, but because it
suggests a pole in the global political economy that can serve to bring
together those who are opposed to the imperialism of Washington”. |51|
As for the chief economist of the AfDB, he defines it as “an approach in which
the development of the private sector and economic growth play a central role
and in which investors do not interfere in the internal governance of countries
in Africa”. |52|
China does not exploit issues of “human rights” or “democracy”. The development
of Chinese capitalism is described by what an official cultural approach has
called “conformity with Asian values”, characterized, among other things, by
the conception that (so-called Western) democracy is not a sine qua non of
capitalist performance.
This result of supposed
Asian pragmatism causes great concern among the traditionally dominant powers
in Africa because the African “elite” often now turns towards China. This fear
is quite clearly expressed by France, complaining about the decline in its
market share in Africa, which has gone from 10 per cent to about 5 per cent in
a decade |53|,
as well as by President Obama and former US Secretary of State and possible
future president, Hillary Clinton, who constantly warn Africa against the
harmfulness of the investments of the emerging powers.
Chinese investments are
targeted and even characterized as neocolonialism, as imperialism. This
accusation was relayed in Africa by, for example, one of the advocates of an
African capitalist road, who was then director of the Central Bank of
Nigeria, and who is at present Emir of Kano State (part of the Federal Republic
of Nigeria) and chairman of the Board of the Nigerian subsidiary (Black Rhino)
of the US investment fundBlackstone,
Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi: “China takes our raw materials and provides us with
manufactured goods. This was also the essence of colonialism [...] Africa has
willingly opened up now to a new form of imperialism.” |54| The reiteration of this accusation has
now provoked responses from Chinese officials. Following on China’s Foreign
Minister, who stated that “the United States must be objective and rational
about Chinese investment in Africa” |55|,
Prime Minister Li Keqiang offered reassurance before his African tour in 2014:
“I would say to my African friends, with all my sincerity, that China has no
intention of acting in an imperialist way, as some countries have done before.
Colonialism must belong to the past.”
Chinese
imperialism in Africa?
In order to scale the
heights of the global economy |56|,
China has had to obtain its energy and mineral resources from abroad. Without
trying to be originaI, it has also turned to Africa |57|.
Its imports of raw materials are accompanied by loans on easy terms (which
enable some countries, such as Angola, to loosen or circumvent the hold of the
IMF and the World Bank), and by exports of goods (more adapted to the
purchasing power of the poor in Africa), of expertise (in terms of
construction, for example), of public infrastructure (hospitals, schools etc.)
of which there was a great lack during the decades of “cooperation” and “aid to
development” from the traditional capitalist powers, and investments in the
industrial, financial, agricultural, etc., sectors. Despite a few passing
disputes of some Chinese capital with for example, the governments of Chad and
Zambia, the People’s Republic of China has managed to make Taiwan lose almost
all its African allies, with the exception of Burkina Faso, Sao Tome and
Principe and Swaziland, whereas Taiwan could still count on a dozen countries
in the 1990s. China conditions its cooperation on respect for the principle of
one China...
African countries seem
to draw a certain benefit from the “South-South” wrapping of cooperation with
China, from its (relative) good financial health, the dynamism of its public
and private companies, etc. The supposed solidarity towards fraternal countries
of the South favours greater autonomy of neocolonial African states with regard
to the traditional powers. They are faced with a dynamic that they cannot
control and with a dilemma: to maintain the traditional type of relationships
would be tantamount to encouraging the African preference for the new powers,
but to contribute in competition with China, or indeed in collaboration with
it |58|,
to the capitalist development of Africa runs the risk of finding themselves
confronted by some emerging African economies that will cause further
overproduction on the world market. Following the example of China’s emergence
and expansion into the traditional centre of capital |59|,
which gave rise to the idea of “imperialism in reverse”. |60|
China’s “solidarity” is
not provided at the expense of the accumulation of its power or its
participation in a good position in the hierarchy of world capitalism.
Competition in Africa between China |61|
and the transnationals that are rooted in the traditional powers is also
accompanied by Chinese participation in the multilateral hierarchical
structures set up by traditional imperialism, such as the international
financial institutions and their regional relay, the AfDB. China has not really
changed the rules of these institutions |62|,
which it wants to use as much as possible (of about $150 billion of Chinese
investments in Africa between 2006 and 2014, nearly 10 per cent were in the
financial sector). It participates in the form of both public and private
capital, |63|
in the consolidation of capitalism in Africa. Its demand for raw materials
increases the dependence of African states on extractive industries and
undermines the conservation underground of oil resources that is demanded by
the fight against climate change.
China’s participation in
the industrialization of Africa – absent from the agenda of the traditional
powers since the era of colonial imperialism – principally concerns the
creation of free zones (“special economic zones” or “zones of economic and
trade cooperation”), as is the case in Egypt, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Nigeria and
Zambia. In other words, a classic case of delocalization, essentially motivated
by the rate of profit: for example, Ethiopian labour is cheaper or more
productive of surplus value than Chinese labour, which has become more and more
demanding. The Chinese state has chosen to set the Chinese and Ethiopian
proletariats in competition with each other, to the detriment of the former.
Note that one of the “murderers of ready-to-wear” |64|,
the Swedish company Hennes and Mauritz (H & M) has also shown interest in
the low price of the labour force in Ethiopia’s workshops |65|.
So other free zones are projected. Moreover, it would also be surprising if the
particular contribution of China to the industrialization of Africa were any
cleaner than it is in China, considering that ecology is also one of the last
things on African leaders’ minds.
Some of the transport
infrastructure built by China can be explained by these delocalizations. For
example, the electric railway from Djibouti to Ethiopia accompanied the recent
loss of control over the port of Djibouti by Dubai Ports World, to the benefit
of the Chinese Merchant Group International (No. 1 in this sector in China).
Chinese capital is also
prominently involved in the fight against the small African agricultural
peasantry – the seizure of community-owned agricultural land and its conversion
into “vacant land” by national authorities. Fewer independent small peasants, a
few more proletarians and lumpen-proletarians who can be joined by those who
have suffered the destruction of their activities by the competition deployed
against the small local production of other economic sectors by cheap products
“Made in China”.
The South-South
neoliberal superprofits realized by Chinese firms are repatriated, partially
opaquely, to be re-injected into the circuits of reproduction. Some of the
practices of Chinese private capital, especially in southern Africa, are no
different from the French-African trafficking, |66|
thus coming to resemble a “Chinafrica”.
The African partner
states, despite a few skirmishes (Chad, Zambia ...), are not willing to cross
this power. Quite to the contrary, the financial strength of the yuan even
pushes some countries (South Africa, Ghana, Mauritius, Nigeria, etc.) to use it
already as an international currency alongside the dollar, euro, etc. An
acquisition of Chinese power in Africa that some people consider soft,
preferring not to look at reality...
Admittedly it is no
longer the former “transformation of Africa into a kind of commercial warren
for hunting black people” that contributed to the “genesis of industrial
capital” (Marx), nor the military conquest, followed by the administration and
exploitation of the territories, that was characteristic of the colonial
imperialism of the late nineteenth century. This is a new form, adapted to the
neoliberal era, with the memory of this common past as differentiator in
inter-capitalist competition. Generally speaking, the fact of belonging to
societies having been victims of Western colonialism or neo-colonialism does
not prevent the capital of emerging powers from imitating the practices of
transnationals whose roots are in the imperialist West. This is demonstrated by
the Brazilian |67|,
Indian |68| ,
Indonesian, etc., agrarian and mining capital that is involved in the dispossession
of rural populations from their land and the super-exploitation of the labour
force, with the complicity of African states seeking foreign direct investment,
which is supposed to help them embark on the path of emergence.
In fact, the framework
of South-South relations remains hierarchical: the investments of the emerging
powers of Asia and Latin America in Africa are nowhere near those made in the
opposite direction, despite the growth of the latter. In China, “African direct
investment [...] was thus established at $14.24 billion at the end of 2012, up
44 per cent compared to 2009” |69|,
while in India it is a case of “$170 million accumulated between 2000 and 2010
“ |70|
This is especially due to South African capital, with at the end of 2013, 36
companies in China against 72 Chinese companies in South Africa, and 54 in
India against 115 Indian companies in South Africa. Nevertheless, without the
South African economy being comparable to the Russian or even Brazilian ones,
there are 25 South African companies in Brazil and 12 in Russia, as against
respectively 4 Brazilian and 12 Russian companies in South Africa. |71|
Pan-Africanism…
hierarchical like capitalism
The sub-imperialist,
sub-regional culture, (from Lesotho to Angola at war), of South African capital
at the time of constitutional apartheid did not disappear with the end of this
regime. It has adapted to the new post-apartheid situation – of which it is,
moreover, one of the factors. For example, the South African mobile telephone
transnational MTN is accused, like Coca-Cola, of supporting the Swazi regime,
in exchange for reduced exposure to competition – the Swazi autocrat, Mswati
III, is a shareholder (with 10 per cent) of the local subsidiary. The South
African post-apartheid state serves the expansion of “national” capital in Africa
better than its predecessors did. Pan-Africanism is thus, for the South African
ruling class, a regional version of hierarchical South-South relations, the aim
being to get a better place in hierarchical world capitalism. The NEPAD was for
Thabo Mbeki (Vice-President under Mandela, then President) the economic
instrument of this African Renaissance under South African economic hegemony.
All the more so because thanks to Black Economic Empowerment (supported by big
white South African capitalists) we have seen the emergence of big black
capitalists who can serve as ambassadors of South African capital, which is
also accused of “systematic internal looting of Africa” |72|.
Angolan capital - with
its double-digit growth of GDP (mainly based on extractive industries) for
almost two decades - has also tried to expand, beyond the enclave of Cabinda,
with what was considered to be the beginning of the vassalisation of
Guinea-Bissau: the establishment of a joint venture for the exploitation of
bauxite, between Bauxite Angola (linked to the state) and the Guinea-Bissau
state, with a distribution of shares of respectively 90 per cent and 10 per
cent. This unequal partnership was accompanied by the project of construction
by Angola of port infrastructure in Buba (Guinea-Bissau). In the background of
this deal there was the presence of the Angolan military in the framework of a
mission of the Community of Portuguese-Language Countries (CPLP) and the Peace
Council of the African Union. Angola, based on oil and mining (diamonds,
bauxite, etc.), regards itself as the leader of the CPLP in Africa and does not
hide its claims to leadership in sub-Saharan Africa, alongside South Africa and
Nigeria, or even in competition with them. Moreover, its public and private
capital are already in Portugal, the former colonial power, in a position of
being key shareholders in strategic companies (banks, telecoms, etc.), with
acquisitions in real estate, the press etc. This metropolitan expansion is
already generating comments about “imperialism in reverse”: “The influx of
Angolan capital has triggered ‘the most important transformation of the
strategic sectors of the Portuguese economy since the wave of privatizations of
the 1990s’ estimates Jorge Costa, a leader of the anti-liberal Left Bloc party
and co-author of a book entitled ‘Portugal’s Angolan Masters’“ |73|.
But although Angolan capital is the first of a former African colony to impose
itself now on its former metropolis, “the whole of the positions of the former
colony in Portuguese equity amounts
to 2.8 billion euros, 3.8 per cent of the share market in Lisbon |74|
in 2013. Is this enough to talk about an “imperialism in reverse”, symbolized
by Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the Angolan president and leader of the
African billionaires?
In recent years, Forbes,
Venture Africa, and other such publications have published the list of African
billionaires, a list which is taken up, not without a certain pride, in many of
the online pan-African newspapers: “The second edition of the ranking of the
richest Africans which is published by Venture Africa showed that Africa has in
2014, 55 billionaires (in dollars), whose global fortune has increased by 12.4
per cent between 2013 and 2014, going from $143.2 billion to $161.75
billion.” |75|
In fact, from 2009 to 2015 forty multimillionaires became rich enough to join
the eight African billionaires of 2009 (the thieving politicians, who are more
than ever the rule in neoliberal Africa, are not counted).
This African bourgeoisie
of new multimillionaires and billionaires is making significant investments on
the national and regional (from Cairo to Mauritius) levels, and even outside
Africa: “Between 2007 and 2012, during the worst recession of the global
economy in Europe, African investments [there] grew sevenfold, reaching 77 billion
euros “ |76|.
The principle of its development was inscribed in the software of the
Washington Consensus: in the cult of private capital over which the Bretton
Woods institutions officiate, the participation of domestic private capital is
also praised. From South-South relationships, just as from North-South
relations, it expects only a position considered as deserved in the race for
capitalist accumulation, not wishing, for example, the EPAs to stifle it.
New
rich and more poor
This rise in economic
power of some southern economies, perturbing the traditional North-South
hierarchy, is no exception to a certain third-worldist tradition: the discourse
about building solidarity or South-South trade - against unequal North-South
relations – is often accompanied by hiding from view the inequalities and
social injustices internal to each country, the antagonisms between social
classes, which are often dealt with in the most repressive fashion. Because we
can speak of African leadership in the realm of social inequality: “Concerning
wealth, the most glaring inequalities are present in sub-Saharan Africa (37 per
cent) and South Asia (25 per cent). [...] Income inequality has diminished in
Latin America and the Caribbean but seems to have increased in South Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa.” |77|
These inequalities result from the looting of national resources, from favours
received through acquaintance with the political authorities - obvious enough
concerning someone like Isabel Dos Santos and the multimillionaires or
billionaires of Black Economic Empowerment in South Africa – which are at
present part of the group of the most unequal societies in the world.
According to US
diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, the businesses of the leader of the
African billionaires, the Nigerian Aliko Dangote, also flourish thanks to these
acquaintanceships among the political leaders. According to the Consul General
at the time, Brian Browne: “For his supporters, he symbolizes that Nigerians
can do better than barter and trade. For his detractors, he is a predator who
uses connections in the corrupt milieu of economic policy to tip the balance in
his favour and remove potential competition. The truth lies somewhere between
these two caricatures. Dangote is part of the inner circle of business advisors
of President Obasanjo. It is no coincidence that many products prohibited from
being imported into Nigeria are among those in which Dangote has major
interests.” |78|
There is nothing really new compared to the American robber barons of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century. Dangote also illustrates the cynicism
of African capitalists, including in their continental expansion: “Since we
arrived in this company in December 2014, we receive our salaries more than 20
days after the end of the month and we are constantly in fear of not receiving
our monthly salaries. After five months of working in the factory, we have
still not received our contracts, despite several approaches to the work
inspection. Therefore, we do not have any of our social rights, regulated by
Senegalese law”, workers of his cement works at Pout in Senegal recently
complained |79|.
Respect for workers’ rights, even reduced to almost nothing, is not a feature
of neoliberal capitalism. Furthermore, the environmental problems, particularly
related to water, posed by this cement works are not viewed in any other way
than that of an online newspaper of the young African intelligentsia
(Terangaweb, “L’Afrique des idées”), which considers Dangote with some
admiration as the “archetype of the new titans of African capitalism”. |80|
Dangote, like his
fellow-capitalists, African and non-African, benefits from labour markets that
have been seriously deregulated by structural adjustment programmes. This
contributes to the “leadership” of so-called sub-Saharan Africa concerning jobs
that can be described as vulnerable or not decent, with survival wages |81|
and workers who are poor. They also benefit from the virtual absence of
environmental protection.
Old and new military presences
The imperialist
domination of African societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries was not initially manifested by an influx of capital but by the
exercise of force, by military conquest. Today also, this military dimension
distinguishes the emergence of new capitalist powers from traditional
imperialist practices.
Among the traditional
imperialist powers, it is France that has maintained a permanent military
presence in the former colonies, after the massive decolonization of the early
1960s. |82|
This military presence has accompanied the preservation of its hegemony in its
former sub-Saharan colonies. |83|
It was even capable of promoting the expansion of its sphere of influence
beyond its former colonial empire, by its interference in the Biafra war in
Nigeria |84|
to break up this big state, which economically dominated his own country in
West Africa. A few years earlier, it was the neocolonial regime in Brazzaville
which had played the role of zealous imperialist relay in the secession of
Katanga, against the regime of Lumumba. It was necessary to split up the very
rich Congo-Leopoldville, which was moreover too imposing from a geographical
point of view in a central Africa made up of former French colonies. Those who
talk about Africafrance seem to forget that De Gaulle took into account the
pressure from Houphouët-Boigny, the African godfather of Françafrique
(supported by Foccart and Co, who were the interface between the two
motivations).]]. France had found it useful to restructure in the post-Cold War
context of the neoliberalisation of capitalism by reducing the number of bases
and troops stationed in Africa. A certain emphasis was put on training
dependent African armies. This could also be shared by the European Union
building its intervention force (EUFOR), which was moreover to be found under
French leadership in DR Congo, Chad and the Central African Republic (long
before Sangaris). In recognition of its African tradition, the French army was
also associated with some of the exercises that the US army organized from the
1990s with African armies, a sign of its post-Cold War interest in Africa (even
though the expression of this interest had been attenuated by the spectacular
failure of the intervention in Somalia — Provide Relief, then Restore Hope,
1992-1994).
The military superpower,
present in Diego Garcia, one of its main bases outside the United States,
already enjoyed the possibility of using some military facilities, such as the
air base of Thebephatshwa (Botswana), built with American aid at the moment of
the metamorphosis of the big South African ally (the end of apartheid was
supposed to lead to the power of “the communists of the ANC”). Today, the US army,
equipped in 2007 with a US Army Command for Africa (AFRICOM), has become the
principal foreign army present in Africa: in addition to Diego Garcia, it has,
since 2002, a base in Djibouti, at the Lemonnier (formerly French) camp for the
Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA, integrated into AFRICOM)
and a discreet (often secret) presence in some forty African countries |85|.
This ubiquity serves as compensation for the failed attempt to install in
Africa the headquarters of AFRICOM – installed by default in Stuttgart, with
extensions in Spain, Italy and Portugal – whose official justification, the
“war against terrorism”, barely conceals economic interests and objectives,
concerning oil in particular.
With its coarse
arrogance, the United States took advantage of the fight against Ebola in West
Africa to promote AFRICOM by sending three thousand soldiers to Liberia. This
operation of “winning hearts and minds” by military humanism, from which the
United States seemed to expect President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson (whose readiness
to host the headquarters of AFRICOM, in 2007, was thwarted by the AU) to take
the opportunity to obtain an extension of the US military presence – as did
Michel Martelly after the earthquake in Haiti.
The military pivot to
Asia will in no way affect AFRICOM, whose creation also influenced the
impossibility of implementing the old project of creating a pan-African army,
relaunched in 1994 and incorporated as African Standby Force, into the
programme of the African Union. Because while proclaiming its opposition to the
installation of new foreign military bases in Africa, the African Union counted
on the financial support of the United States and the European Union for the
organization of this army, which was supposed to enable to Africa resolve
itself its security problems. The interventions of extra-African armies, making
Africa a terrain of experimentation and publicity of their new instruments of
death, as well as a market for mercenary firms, would lose all purpose. The
failure of this pan-African military project partly explains the amateurish
conduct of African armies in Somalia, and the French military intervention in
Mali (did the Serval operation help to sell, finally, the Rafale?) and in the
Central African Republic. Imperialist interventions were dressed up as
humanism, thanks to a gross manipulation of the United Nations Security
Council, while the situation in Mali |86|
results not only from the persistence of neocolonialism in that country, but
also from the chaotic situation created in Libya by the
NATO intervention, which blocked the mediation of the African
Union.
Taking advantage of some
positive appreciations of its military interventionism (final assault on the
palace of Laurent Gbagbo in order to install Alassane Ouattara, Serval,
Sangaris), France took the opportunity to proceed to a new restructuring of its
military presence. It will in future be more present, mixing cooperation and competition
with the United States, whose deployment is accompanied by recognition of
French expertise in the region. The coexistence of a French base and a US base
in Djibouti symbolizes this.
The strategic site of
Djibouti has become emblematic of the new military interest of the economic
powers for Africa. The protection of the Gulf of Aden, frequented by tankers,
is transforming Djibouti into a military hub in defiance of the principle of
the African Union on the non-permanent stationing of foreign armies. To the
American and French armies have been added Japanese (in 2011) and Italian bases
(by the 2012 Agreement). China has just obtained the installation of a military
base, while Russia and Canada |87|
are also negotiating to install bases and Spanish and German troops are also
present, without having permanent bases.
The Japanese army
[Japanese fishing vessels gleefully plundered the fish in Somali territorial
waters before the current wave of piracy, which is the result, among other
things, of the plunder and pollution of Somali waters.] has 600 soldiers in its
base in Djibouti and spends $30 million in rent. It is an army that is
undergoing profound changes, characterized principally by the return to a
“normal” army of an economic power. |88|
The present Prime Minister Shinzo Abe does not hide his nostalgia for Japanese
militarism, while maintaining Japanese subordination to American leadership.
China has begun to break
with a certain restraint. The Chinese military wants to be present in Africa
independently of UN missions (DR Congo, South Sudan) or in a different way from
the support, little covered by the media, to the coalition to “fight against
terrorism” in Mali. Thus it has obtained the installation in the near future of
a military base in Djibouti. A presence that is probably felt to be justified,
over and above African issues, as a response to tensions in the South China
Sea: “Beijing is forging its future ability to impede surgically and
strategically military containment by the United States”. |89|
There is also a question of a military base in the port of Walvis Bay in
Namibia. This is making the military component of China-Africa cooperation
increasingly important. Chinese arms sales are not subject to the duplicity of
the other champions, which are skilled in imposing embargoes. Even Gabon, the
fief of the French army, conducts military exercises with China. In military
matters, even more than in economic ones, Chinese leadership in these
South-South relations is obvious. But for now, unlike what is happening in the
South China Sea between China and the United States, there are not (yet?) in
Africa military tensions between the traditional powers and those that are
called emerging ones.
There is one exception:
the South African army found itself in a situation of competition with the
French army in the Central African Republic of François Bozizé. |90|
By virtue of a military partnership, the South African army had been sent to
support this tottering regime, which had lost the support of France. It was
also there to secure the interests of South African capital. South African
soldiers were killed by the Central African rebellion, which eventually toppled
the regime of Bozizé. The French army has regained its dominant position with
Operation Sangaris.
Ideology
(even more) dominant
The present dynamism of
extra-African capital in Africa is not accompanied only by military activism on
the part of traditional and emerging powers. There is the ideological or
cultural dimension, a factor of consent, a mainstay of Gramscian hegemony.
There too neoliberalism has changed the rules of domination.
In colonial times and
during the first two postcolonial decades, Africa did not escape the global
intellectual ferment, characterized by a dynamic reflexive critique of
imperialism and capitalism, sometimes articulated with political practice.
Although African intellectuals of the neo-colonial camp, including those who
were “apolitical”, were the most numerous, one could speak of pluralism
expressed locally (when the regimes tolerated it) or in exile.
That has no longer been
quite the case since the late 1980s, with the backlash that had begun during
the previous decade, which promoted the integration of many anti-imperialists
and anti-capitalists into power structures, at a national level or in
international organizations. Working in these institutions ultimately led to
their transformation into careerists. The failure of the so-called communist
bloc, which had become indisputable, just at the time when neoliberal
structural adjustment was being increased in Africa, worsened the situation by
increasing the deficit in the plurality of socio-political ideals.
The wind of
“democratization” consolidated the hegemony of capitalist values in Africa. The
challenge to structural adjustment was stifled in the sovereign national
conferences and other procedures for political reforms. The objective was to
set the market economy in stone. It was the World Bank which organized the
fight against extreme poverty — produced by the programmes it imposed along
with the IMF — with the help of UN agencies, development NGOs, charities,
etc. |91|.
Neoliberal globalization was supposed to make happy the poverty-stricken people
it produced: from extreme poverty, they would move on to poverty, not by the
development of a “social state” or “welfare state”, of which some African
societies had experienced an underdeveloped version for about two decades, but
by the development of the private sector.
It is also the philanthropic
foundations (“philanthrocapitalism”) that are expected to save the world by
solving the great social problems of humanity. This supposed generosity,
fiscally beneficial to the donors, is part of the spread of the one-way thought
of the Washington Consensus. The richest people in the world, Bill and Melinda
Gates (of the Gates Foundation), are shown flying to the rescue of Africans
suffering from AIDS, subordinating the World Health Organization (WHO) to their
interests |92|.
African children go to school thanks to some stars of show business, with whom
Africans of the Africa Progress Panel pose for a photo, looking honoured. Such
are the realities of the subordination of the public to the private, while
public money is stolen by the rulers. By supporting, together with the
chancelleries of central capitalism, certain organizations or movements of defence
of human rights and freedoms, this philanthrocapitalism effortlessly imposes
limits on the perspectives of emancipation as well as on criticism of local
situations and of the countries where the sponsoring foundations are based.
The African employees of
the George Soros’s Open Society must not go any further than his superficial
critique of capitalism |93|
and it goes without saying that participation in land grabbing and exploitation
of workers is not considered to be violence against human beings. A leader of
the Senegalese movement “We’ve had enough” [“Y’en a marre”] (which played a
major role in the mobilization against the attempt of Abdoulaye Wade to have a
third term of office and for “democratic change”) has justified collaboration
with George Soros |94|,
after having supported the presidential campaign of the liberal billionaire
Macky Sall, and sung the praises of Obama (“a likeable and attentive president,
who showed himself to be very pragmatic” |95|:
“‘We’ve had enough‘ depends neither on Marxism nor capitalism nor communism; we
are not dependent on anyone and we want to create a philosophy of citizens’
action that is based on African values and on our socio-cultural realities. So
people who do not grasp that find it disturbing, but they are free to think
what they want.” |96| This kind of ideological mishmash is in the
air of our times. The situation is no different on the part of the leaders of
the “Citizens’ Broom” [Balai citoyen] (one of the main collective players in
driving out Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso) and other similar movements
elsewhere in Africa. Some critics of African states regard them as “the new
‘sharpshooters’ of imperialism in Africa” as “niggers in the service of the
empire” |97|
The superficial
conception of democracy that prevails in these African movements also reflects
the control over African graduates by imperialism in the form of academic scholarships
and teaching posts. The United States attracts more African graduates through,
for example, the Partnership for African Universities, launched in Dakar in
2000 and principally under the responsibility of the Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur
and Rockefeller Foundations. A decade later, African intellectuals are asking
for more “partnerships” of African universities with the American
foundations |98|
that are major actors of the new organization of higher education, hostile to
the acquisition of critical thinking, which had carved out a small place for
itself in some universities. Agronomic research laboratories are increasingly
subordinated to being financed by agribusiness. Reflections on society are
increasingly appreciated according to the paradigms promoted by a few think
tanks and dominating the journals which have become most influential. An African
economist who makes no claim to be revolutionary complained a few years ago:
“We are in situations characterized by the absence of discussion of
macroeconomic paradigms and by improvisation faced with social challenges.
African university teachers, at least in French-speaking Africa, which is what
I know about, absolutely do not discuss paradigms. There is not, at the present
time, any debate on economics [...] Those who are at the head of institutions
do not engage in profound theoretical reflection and those in universities have
no grasp of reality. [...] Dissent comes at a price, and that is why orthodoxy
is so little challenged. We are in a logic where people have to make a living
and are just sucked into the system.” |99|.
In this respect, the emerging powers content themselves with rivalry in the
provision of scholarships, led by China, but without being prepared to match
the former colonial powers.
Among the means of the
influence of imperialism and neocolonialism during his time, Kwame Nkrumah
included Hollywood, a symbol of the “cultural industries” which propagate the
“American way of life”. He wrote: “Even the Hollywood scenarios are weapons.
You only have to listen to the applause of African spectators when Hollywood
heroes massacre Indians or Asians to realize the power of such means.” This
power of the imperialist cultural industries has increased exponentially,
including in the form of local adaptations: the Chinese TV channel CCTV
installed in Nairobi |100|,
the soap operas, the films from Bollywood and Nollywood...
However, for Nkrumah,
one of the “most insidious methods used by neocolonialism is perhaps
evangelism. Following on the liberation movement, we have seen a veritable
tidal wave of religious sects, a big majority of them American”. |101|
This process intensified from the 1980s and 1990s onward, as a “spiritual
aroma” of the social consequences of the debt crisis and the “remedies” of the
Bretton Woods institutions. The expansion of revivalist and Pentecostal
churches is quite obviously accompanied by the central role accorded to the
money spent from the colossal fortunes of pastors, who are disciples of God and
Mammon at the same time.
Faced with this
ascendancy of capitalist imperialism, now reinforced by the emerging capitalist
powers, accomplices and competitors of the traditional imperialism, as well as
by the growth of African capitalism, the African peoples, exploited and
oppressed, are not, in spite of everything, resigned to subjugation. As
evidenced by the struggles that are conducted here and there, in that part of
the world: against exploitation of human beings and ecocide by oil and mining
transnationals |102|;
against the expropriation of common land and the imposition of enslaving seeds;
against the injustices and inequalities reproduced by alternating cliques of
thieving rulers, actors of African capitalism; against discrimination against
the poor in access to higher education and health care; against the deadly
political manipulation of ethnic, racial and religious identities; against
oppression based on neocolonial and obscurantist conceptions of “African
traditions”, etc. These are struggles that all too often the neocolonial
system, serving the capitalist bloc (traditional imperialism, emerging powers,
African capital) manages to isolate from each other, on both the local and
pan-African, or even extra-African and international levels, manages to contain
and direct them according to its interests. Without building and consolidating
popular solidarity and convergences in the struggles against the various
tentacles of the capitalist octopus in Africa, in other words a pan-African
anti-capitalist dynamic, there will be no emancipation of the exploited and
oppressed people of Africa and no participation by them in the construction of
a humanity where people will live well.
Footnotes
|1| Pierre Dockès, “Mondialisation et “impérialisme à
l’envers”,” in Wladimir Andreff (ed.), La mondialisation, stade suprême du
capitalisme? - en hommage à Charles Albert Michalet, Nanterre, Presses
universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2013, pp. 129-151, available online.
|2| Maintaining the status of China as an emerging capitalist
power comes from the ideology according to which a capitalist power is free of
pockets of underdevelopment, whereas very uneven but combined development is a
constant feature of American society, making “Indian” reservations, the Black
ghettos and Beverly Hills coexist in the same nation.
|3| Achille Mbembe (interview with Valérie Marin La Meslée),
“Mbembé: ‘Le temps de l’Afrique viendra’ ”.
|4| Nelson Mandela “Africa’s Time has Come: The role of the
United States In Aid and Development Efforts”, paper for the Brookings Institution,
May 16, 2005.
|5| Antoine Glaser, Africafrance: quand les dirigeants
africains deviennent les maîtres du jeu, Paris, Fayard, February 2014.
|6| Jean Batou, “The redeployment of French imperialism in
Africa and the humanitarian daze of the left”, International Viewpoint,
September 2014.
|7| Robert D. Kaplan, “Coming Anarchy”, Atlantic Monthly,
February 1994.
|8| Dev Kar and Joseph Spaniers, Global Finance Integrity,
Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2003-2012, Global Integrity,
Washington DC, December 2014. See also: James K. Boyce, Léonce Ndikumana, Is
Africa a Net Creditor? New Estimates of Capital Flight from Severely Indebted
Sub-Saharan African Countries, 1970-1996, Working Paper Series No. 5.
|9| The countries of traditional central capitalism which
pretend to be virtuous do not seem willing actually to fight this scourge, as
they have proven recently in Addis Ababa, where the states of peripheral
capitalism proposed establishing “new global tax norms. But the rich countries
refused their proposal for an international tax organization under the auspices
of the UN,” “A Addis Ababa, la lutte contre l’évasion fiscale des
multinationales divise” Agência Angola Press, July 14, 2015.
|10| Irving Kristol (ideologue and co-founder of
neoconservatism) stated in 1997: “No European country can – or really wants to
– have its own foreign policy. There are not even any signs that European
nations want a European foreign policy independent of the United States. They
are dependent nations, even though they have wide local autonomy. The term
‘empire’ describes this mixture of dependency and autonomy.” “The Emerging
American Imperium” Wall Street Journal, August 18, 1997.
|11| UNCTAD, Economic Development in Africa -
Debt Sustainability: Oasis or Mirage?, Geneva, 2004, pp. 9 and 11. In 2013, the
stock of sub-Saharan African external debt was still $367.5 billion, according
to the 2015 edition of the International Debt Statistics of the World Bank, p.
27.
|12| Pierre Gottiniaux, Daniel Munevar, Antonio
Sanabria and Eric Toussaint, Les chiffres de la dette 2015 CADTM, p. 50. See
also Health Poverty Action et al, Honest Accounts? The true history of Africa’s
billion dollar Losses, July 2014.
|13| Abdoulaye Wade, “Europe-Afrique: la
coopération en panne,” Passserelles, November-December 2007, p. 2.
|14| Isabelle Ramdoo, Accords de partenariat
CEDEAO et SADC. Une analyse comparative, European Centre for Development Policy
Management, Discussion Paper No. 165, September 2014, p. vii.
|15| A colonialism/neocolonialism that is shown
by the customs/trade agreements to which are subject metropolitan imports of
production that is overseas yet “national”. The countries concerned are: Spain,
France, Holland, Portugal, the United Kingdom and Denmark (with Greenland).
|16| James Mackie, Anna Rosengren, Quentin de
Roquefeuil et Nicola Tissi, « En route vers le Sommet de 2014. Enjeux pour les
relations Afrique-UE en 2013 », Aperçu des politiques et de leur gestion N° 4,
January 2013, p. 9,
|17| AIA, “ L’Association Industrielle Africaine
s’oppose à la conclusion des Accords de Partenariat Économique”, April 24,
2007.
|18| Karl Marx, “Aperçu d’un rapport sur la
question irlandaise à l’Association d’éducation communiste des travailleurs
allemands de Londres”, quoted by Jean Batou, “Accumulation par dépossession et
luttes anticapitalistes : une perspective historique longue”.
|19| UNCTAD, “Economic development in Africa.
From Adjustment to Poverty Reduction: What’s new?”, Geneva 2002. See also
Clémence Vergne, “L’Afrique subsaharienne peut-elle converger sans usines ?” Le
Monde, July 24,2015.
|20| Bruno Alomar et Thierno Seydou Diop,
“Refonder la relation Afrique-Europe autour de l’économie”.
|21| Jean Nanga, “Quel boom des classes moyennes
en Afrique ?”, CADTM, December 24, 2014.
|22| Jean Batou, op. cit.
|23| Hubert Védrine, Lionel Zinsou, Tidjane
Thiam, Jean-Michel Severino, Hakim El Karoui (rapporteurs), Un partenariat pour
l’avenir : 15 propositions pour une nouvelle dynamique économique entre
l’Afrique et la France, Ministère de l’Économie et des Finances (France),
December 2013. See the analysis of this report made by Jean Batou, op. cit.
|24| Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, A decade of
growth. Foreign investment in Africa, July 2013. In 2013, the British
investment was $4.6 billion, according to the Ernst & Young 2014 Africa
Attractiveness Survey.
|25| “UK profits from sub-Saharan Africa despite
aid and debt pledges” July 5, 2006, referenced here, the Christian Aid link is
no longer active.
|26| The former British prime minister is
currently one of the so-called consultants or advisers who defraud African
states by being paid a fortune in exchange for a worsening of their dependence
on imperialist capital rather than economic sovereignty.
|27| David Leigh and Rob Evans, “BAE corruption
investigation switches to Tanzania”, The Guardian, April 12, 2008.
|28| Available here. The 2010 Report of Business
Action for Africa “Business partnerships for development in Africa. Redrawing the
boundaries of possibility”, published with the Corporate Social Responsibility
Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School) describes the situation before this public
recognition of the subordination of the DFID. Concerning the relationship
between the DFID and the British NGO, cf. Tina Wallace, “NGO Dilemmas: Trojan
Horse for Global neoliberalism?” Socialist Register 2004, p. 202-219.
|29| Isabella Mosselmans, “British mining
companies’ exploitation of Sierra Leone”, Africa at LSE, December 23, 2013. See
also: Sam Jones, “£600m of UK aid fuelling corporate scramble for Africa,
claims critics”, The Guardian, April 1, 2014.
|30| Afua Hirsch, “Ghana accuses UK recycling
firm Environcom of illegal fridge imports”, The Guardian, November 4, 2013.
|31| National Security Review 30: “American
Policy Toward Africa in the 1990s (NSR30)”, 1992. Available on the website of
the Bush [senior] Library.
|32| Quoted in La Tribune
|33| Jagdish Bhagwati and A. Panagariya, “A
Trojan Horse for Africa”, quote from the Financial Times, June 29, 2000,
available at:.
|34| “L’aide du Compte du millénaire sera
réservée aux pays responsables”, Washington File, March 2003.
|35| Firestone was acquired in 1988 by the world
leader in tyres, the Japanese company Bridgestone. The Liberian plantations
were part of the patrimony of the American multinational. But the acquisition
by the Japanese multinational does not prevent the Firestone Natural Rubber
Company to be part of the US Corporate Council on Africa (CCA).
|36| W.E. Burghardt Du Bois made it a model of
contempt for the national sovereignty of an African country by a capitalist
enterprise supported by its country of origin (“Liberia, the League and the
United States”, Foreign Affairs, July, 1933). Bridgestone continued the
tradition of Firestone in Liberia, hence a complaint about working conditions
of virtual slavery in its plantations that were “made secure” by a private
security firm (Robtel Neejai Pailey, “Visage moderne de l’esclavage au Libéria
“, Pambazuka, August 2, 2006 ) and a denunciation of the new concession
(“Recommendations for future concession contract negotiations drawn from the
amended Firestone contract”, December 2008.)
|37| Peter Kenworthy, “Living on the Coke side
of life in Swaziland”, Pambazuka News, 22 June, 2011; “Coca-Cola ‘supports
Swazi dictator’”, Swaziland Newsletter, January 3, 2012. For a brief summary of
the practices of Coca-Cola, cf. Heather Gray, “Coca-Cola and its egregious
history”, Counterpunch, August 29-31, 2014.
|38| According to a national security adviser to
Obama, “If the United States does not impose itself as the leader in Africa, we
will fall behind in a very important region of the world” (quoted in Zcomm,,
June 29, 2013).
|39| “S. Hayes, Senate Subcommittee testimony on
China in Africa”, November 2, 2011.
|40| Peter Maass, “A Touch of Crude”, Mother
Jones, January/February 2005.
|41| Matthew Bishop (The Economist) and Michael
Green published in 2009 Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World.
Cf. Philanthropic Intelligence, “Philanthrocapitalism 2012 - a conversation
with Matthew Bishop” ,June 2012.
|42| Cf. Mittal with Melissa Moore, Voices from
Africa. African Farmers and Environmentalists speak out against a new green
revolution in Africa, The Oakland Institute, 2009.
|43| Les Amis de la Terre, Afrique: Terre(s) de
toutes les convoitises. Ampleur et conséquences de l’accaparement des terres
pour produire des agrocarburants, June 2010, p. 13
|44| Alex Park and Jaeah Lee, “The Gates
Foundation’s Hyprocritical Investments”, Mother Jones, December 6, 2013. The
Gates Foundation is the sponsor of the online editions of the (centre-left?)
daily The Guardian (where you can read the editorial entitled “There is no
choice: we must grow genetically modified crops now”, 16 March 2014) as well as
of articles on Africa in its French alter ego Le Monde (along with the World
Bank, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa of George Soros and the
French Development Agency).
|45| AFSA and GRAIN, “Remise en cause des lois
foncières et semencières. Qui tire les ficelles des changements en Afrique ?”.
» January 2015. See also the diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks, such as
#05ROME2543, #08Pretoria2707, #04Accra1543, # 10ADDISABABA
|46| “Ghana can choose or reject GMOs - US
Embassy”, December 16,2013. See also the file concerning Nigeria on the site of
the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF): “Not on Our Plates. Why Nigeria
does not need GM food”, Benin City, July 2014.
|47| Aimé Césaire: “We must not forget how
Africa was. As in all countries, there were rulers and ruled. There was a
ruling class or a small ruling clique and then there were the people. There was
a priest, his family and there were merchants. They engaged in trade. And what
were they selling? They were selling Negroes because [that was] the only
product that interested the Europeans. They sold Negroes as they could have
sold oxen or cows. What interested the Europeans was not oil, but workers! ...
Of course, we must not exaggerate. The Negro leaders sold Africans because
there were customers, that is what the Whites were asking for and that was all
there was: we cannot deny that there was African involvement, but it was not
what people think. It was not [the involvement of] the African people, but of
the rulers eager for profit and money.” Interview with Aimé Césaire by Buata
Malela (Fort-de-France, December 2004), in Revue Latitudes noires 2003-2004:
“Panafricanisme: Piège post-colonial construction identitaire non blanche”(pp.
37-41), p. 38 for the quotation.
|48| Cf. Coalition pour la protection du
patrimoine génétique africain (COPAGEN), “Non! L’Afrique n’a pas besoin des
OGM”, August 30, 2013.
|49| Cf.Pambazuka News, (November 2013 - January
2014) devoted to race relations in Brazil
|50| Kiyoshi Kojima, “The ‘flying geese’ model
of Asian economic development: origin, theoretical extensions, and regional
policy implications”, Journal of Asian Economics, 11 (2000), p. 375-401.
|51| Arik Dirlif, “Beijing Consensus: Beijing
‘Gongshi’. Who Recognizes Whom and to What End”.
|52| Mthuli Ncube, “Avant-propos” to Richard
Schiere, Léonce Ndikumana and Peter Walkenhorst (eds.), La Chine et l’Afrique :
un nouveau partenariat pour le développement ?, Groupe de la Banque africaine
de développement, Tunis, 2011, p. III.
|53| A decline that is contested by the
co-editor of the Védrine Report, the Beninese-French Lionel Zinsou, recently
appointed Prime Minister of Benin, who notes rather “an increase in trade
figures between France and Africa to the tune of 20 per cent over the last 10
years.” See Awa Diallo, “Lionel Zinsou et Guy Gweth: le choc des Afriques”,
Financial Afrik, February 9, 2015.
|54| Financial Times, March 11, 2013.
|55| Statement attributed to the spokesperson of
the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which serves as title of a dispatch from Xinhu,
August 7, 2014.
|56| China represents 16.5 per cent of world GDP
at purchasing power parity, PPP, against 16.3 per cent for the United States in
2014, according to the IMF.
|57| China’s economic expansion in the former
Third World outside Asia also concerns Latin America, see CEPAL, Primer Foro de
la Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y caibeños y (CELAC) y China,
Santiago, January 2015
|58| He Wenping, “African Integration: A New
Opportunity for China-US Cooperation”, China-US Focus, March 19, 2015.
|59| “European direct investment in China has
declined considerably, amounting to 9.14 billion euros in 2014, as against 17.1
billion euros in 2013, while Chinese direct investment in Europe increased from
5.5 billion euros in 2013 to 12.1 billion in 2014, Xinhua “The EU Ambassador to
China insists on the investment sector in Sino-European cooperation”, March 7,
2015. Europe has been described by the French business newspaper Les Echos as
“the new Eldorado for Chinese investors. France is perhaps the country that
benefits most from this wave of Chinese investors,”August 28,2014. As for
Chinese investment in the US, it amounted to $14 billion in 2013, twice as much
as in 2012.
|60| “It will now be in the order of things for
Chinese investments abroad to surpass foreign investment in China,” according
to the spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce La Tribune, August 18,
2014.
|61| According to Thierry Pairault, “over 80 per
cent of FDI [Chinese, in Africa] is made by companies under direct supervision
of the central government and their subsidiaries,” which have, however,
relative autonomy. (“Les entreprises chinoises sous la tutelle directe du
gouvernement illustrées par leur investissement en Afrique”, Revue de la
régulation, 13, 1st semester 2013.
|62| The inability to change the said rules may
be one of the explanations for the Chinese initiative of the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), launched in October 2014 – by early
April 2015, fifty countries had joined, including ten from Europe – which is
considered to be a rival to the institutions under American hegemony, something
that the Chinese authorities deny. The principal traditional allies of the
United States – Germany, Australia, France, Italy, the UK and Switzerland –
rushed to join when the Chinese took this initiative, going against US attempts
to derail it. South Korea seems to be in the process of joining, although that
seems impossible for Japan. In late August 2015, only two African countries
(Egypt and South Africa) had joined. As for the evolution of the project the
Bank of the BRICS, cf. Patrick Bond, “BRICS bankers confirm they will undergird
– not undermine - Western financial decadence”, Pambazuka News, July 15, 2015.
|63| Just as shareholders of transnational firms
that are defined as French, German or from other Western countries are often of
different nationalities, including Chinese, some transnationals defined as
Chinese also have shareholders of nationalities other than Chinese. For
example, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the leading
Chinese bank, has among other shareholders Allianz, American Express and
Goldman Sachs.
|64| Olivier Cyran, “Au Bangladesh, les
meurtriers du prêt-à-porter”, Le Monde diplomatique, June 2013.
|65| Jens Hansegard and Heidi Vogt, “H & M
Looks to Source Clothing From Ethiopia”, Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2013.
|66| Khadija Sharife, “Disappearing Diamonds”,
100Reporters. See also: “The Queensway syndicate and the Africa trade”, The
Economist, August 13, 2011, and the interview with J.R. Maley, “Sam Pa: la face
sombre de la Chinafrique”, Le Monde Afrique, June 2, 2015.
|67| Judith Marshall, “Brazil’s mining giant
Vale: behind the image of South-South solidarity”, Tensões Mundiales,
Fortaleza, vol. 10, No. 18-19, 2014, p. 205-230.
|68| “India, for example, is investing heavily
in mobile telephones, financial services and information technology. But it is
doing it in a traditional fashion, whereas China is acting in an unorthodox
way”, “L’Afrique au rythme de l’économie mondiale : entrevue avec Mthuli Ncube,
vice-président of the African Development Group”
|69| Xinhua, “Livre blanc : les investissements
chinois en Afrique subsaharienne augmentent de 20,5% par an”, August 29, 2013.
|70| ChineInde/Ma Padioleau, “L’Afrique, une
priorité pour l’Inde”.
|71| Stephen Gelb, “South Africa’s Foreign
Direct Investment Links with the BRIC Countries”, World Trade Institute-Mandela
Institute Working Paper, September 2014.
|72| Patrick Bond, “Foreign investment retreat
from Africa: Gaming, naming and shaming ‘licit financial flows’“, Links, August
10, 2015, with a map showing that only Algeria, Libya and Tunisia do not have
investments by the top ten companies in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
|73| Thomas Cabral and Estelle Maussion, “Isabel
dos Santos, figurehead of Angolan investments in Portugal”, AEM-AFP, June 24,
2015.
|74| AGEFI “Recapitalisation par les colonies”,
October 18, 2013.
|75| Agence Ecofin, “La fortune cumulée des 55
milliardaires africains dépasse le PIB de la CEMAC et de l’UEMOA”, November 17,
2014.
|76| PANA, “L’UE nie avoir perdu le commerce
africain et la bataille des investissements”, March 31, 2014.
|77| UNDP, Human Development Report 2014.
Sustaining Human Progress: reduce vulnerabilities and build resilience, August
31, 2014.
|78| 05LAGOS362 Cable, “Aliko Dangote and Why
You Should Know About Him”, March 7, 2005. A later cable (07ABUJA1658,
“Northern Rulers is Yar’Adua’s Initial Strategies”, August 2, 2007.) states
that “Dangote and Obasanjo were both part of the consortium that bought Port
Harcourt and the Kaduna Refineries.” Olusegun Obasanjo was the head of one of
the military juntas that ruled Nigeria from 1976 to 1979 and then the country’s
elected president from 1999 to 2007.
|79| Adama Anouchka Ba, “Pout : Les travailleurs
de la cimenterie Dangote étalent leurs maux et observent un arrêt de travail”,
Seneweb, April 16, 2015.
|80| Jacques Leroueil, “Les nouveaux
milliardaires africains”, Terangaweb.
|81| See the report of the International Labour
Organization, Global Employment Trends 2013. “Recovering from a second jobs
dip”, Geneva, 2013, p. 90-95.
|82| The decolonization of the early 1960s
concerned less than half the colonies (British, Spanish, French, Portuguese) in
Africa. The accession to independence continued over the following decades.
|83| The military cooperation of Britain with
most of its former colonies was quite active, with the exception of Tanzania
under Nyerere, but without troops being stationed, despite defence agreements
with Kenya and with Zambia (until 1968), for example. At present, British
soldiers (a few dozen in each case) are permanently stationed at Diego Garcia
(British Indian Ocean Territory, where the entire population was deported to
Mauritius and the Seychelles and the United Kingdom leased the island to the US
for the installation of a military base), in Kenya and in Sierra Leone.
|84| Behind France’s interference in Nigeria
alongside the Biafran secessionists, there was both interest in oil on the part
of Elf-Erap and the desire of Houphouët-Boigny (president of Ivory Coast
1960-1993).
|85| Nick Turse, “The Pivot to Africa. The
startling size, scope and growth of US military operations on the African
continent”, TomDispatch.com, September 5, 2013.
|86| Jean Nanga, “A neo-colonial intervention
under French leadership”, International Viewpoint, March 2013.
|87| Canada, whose economic crimes still enjoy
some discretion from the media (Alain Deneault, with Delphine Abadie and
William Sacher, Noir Canada. Pillage, corruption et criminalité en Afrique,
Montreal, Écosociété, 2008) has been seeking a base in Djibouti and in Sénégal
(Ameth Lo, “Projet de base militaire canadien au Sénéegal: enjeux et
perspectives”, Pambazuka News, November 22, 2011. Troops from Pakistan,
Malaysia and Singapore are also in the region.
|88| Lawrence Repeta, “Japan’s Proposed National
Security Legislation - Will This Be the End of Article 9?”, The Asia-Pacific
Journal Vol. 3, Issue. 24, No. 3, June 22, 2015.
|89| Alfred McCoy, “The Geopolitics of America’s
Global Decline. Washington Versus China in the Twenty-First Century”,
TomDispatch.com, June 7, 2015.
|90| Jean Nanga, “Les non-dits de l’intervention
militaire française”, Inprecor, No 601/602, January-February 2014.
|91| On pressure from donors, cf. Sally Reith,
“Money power, and donor-NGO partnerships”, Development in Practice, Vol. 20,
Number 3, May 2010, p. 446-455.
|92| Anne-Emanuelle Birn, “Philanthrocapitalism,
past and present: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the
setting(s) of the international/global health agenda,”, Hypothesis Vol. 12 No.
1.
|93| George Soros, “The Capitalist Threat”, The
Atlantic Online, February 1997. As Slavoj Zizek put it very well: “He embodies
a fierce financial exploitation combined with its own antagonist: a
humanitarian concern about the catastrophic social consequences of an unbridled
market economy. The daily routine of someone like Soros is fraud personified,”
(“Les faux ennemis du progrès”, Courrier International, December 6, 2006).
|94| Alerte Info, “Le mouvement “Y’en a marre”
n’est pas manipulable, selon son coordonnateur”, ITW, May 5, 2015.
|95| Sabine Cessou “Sénégal : Pour Fadel Barro,
du mouvement Y’en a marre, ‘Obama est un président sympa et attentif’”, RFI,
June 29, 2013.
|96| Alerte Info, idem.
|97| Cf. Fode Roland Diagne, “Les nouveaux
“Tirailleurs” de l’impérialisme en Afrique”, l’Autre Afrique April 3, 2015;
Jean-Pierre Mbelu, “Les jeunes congolais “pro-démocratie” achetés par le
dollar”, Ingeta, April 23, 2015.
|98| Cf. Maimouna Barro, “Development Aid and
Higher Education in Africa: The Need for More Effective Partnerships between
African Universities and Major American Foundations” CODESRIA Bulletin, No. 1
& 2, 2012, p. 20-29.
|99| Kako Nubukpo, “L’Afrique malade de ses
économistes”, Alternatives économiques, September 21, 2011
|100| The Chinese ruling classes are more in a
dynamic of imitation than one of creating other “ways of life”, despite the
policy of expansion of Confucius centres.
|101| Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism, The Last
Stage of Imperialism, London, Nelson, 1965, chapter 18.
|102| See, for example, the recent appeal,
launched on August 9, 2015 by a score of organizations of civil society and
social movements in Africa: “African Civil Society Says No to Mining - Yes to
Life”
No comments:
Post a Comment