Tag: Africa
-
Russia and Iran are working on an infrastructure expansion program that would vastly increase their inland trade ties, including a substantial investment in the Volga-Don route connecting the Sea of Azov with the Caspian.
The tiny but strategic Volga-Don Canal connects up the two river systems with a 63-mile waterway, allowing small freighters to navigate between the Caspian and the Sea of Azov (and onwards to the high seas). A series of 13 locks carry marine traffic up and over the gentle rise between the two waterways. The Soviet Volga-Don-class freighters, built precisely for the canal’s dimensions, are an icon of Russia’s inland trade. However, these ships are limited to a draft of 12 feet and a maximum load of about 5,000 tonnes (and just 3,000 tonnes in some shallow sections of the Volga and Don. Wintertime navigation usually ends in December when the canal freezes over.
This is limiting for the burgeoning trade between Russia and Iran, which connects in part via a trans-Caspian route. Russia plans to spend $1 billion improving inland connections to the Caspian, including removing impediments to shipping on the Volga-Don complex. Shipping between the mouth of the Volga and Iranian ports at the southern end of the Caspian is increasing in volume, according to Bloomberg, and Russia’s inland waterway network feeds this growing trade.
A share of the $5 billion-a-year trade between the two nations is believe to be in the form of armaments. Iran is supplying the government of Russia with hundreds of so-called “suicide” drones, which Russian forces are using en masse to target Ukraine’s power infrastructure just as the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In return for this simple but much-desired technology, Russia is believed to be supplying Iran with some of its best military systems, including helicopters and potentially the next-generation Su-35 fighter, according to U.S. defense officials. American intelligence believes that Iran has also asked for extra Russian help with its nuclear program, and it is unclear whether the aid would be for strictly civilian purposes.
In addition to boosting sanctions-proof trade and arms shipping, another major goal of the partnership is to create a Russia-India-Africa trade corridor that fully bypasses Europe.
The International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) connects the Russian heartland with India by way of the Don, the Volga, the Caspian Sea and an intermodal transfer over the Iranian rail network. (A rail-only variant of this route passes through Azerbaijan, bypassing the Caspian.) Iranian shipping company IRISL announced the completion of its first cargo ever on this corridor in June 2022, and Iran’s government is investing heavily in its rail system to increase capacity.
As a sign of the times, IRISL recently announced that it would put $10 million into terminal improvements at the port of Astrakhan, on the Russian side of the Caspian Sea. The investment is partly funded by Russian loans and is aimed at strengthening the INSTC.
However, for the corridor to truly take off, Iran may have to take steps to make its financial system easier to navigate for shipping.
Dozens of ships carrying Iran-bound agricultural cargoes are stuck at anchor in the Persian Gulf, delayed by heavy Western sanctions on Iranian financial institutions. With no reliable way to pay for delivery, the much-needed food is stuck aboard ship, awaiting a solution to Iran’s banking difficulties.
-
Historical records and evidence shows that Islam and Christianity played an important role in enslaving Africans. The Arab-controlled Trans-Saharan slave trade, which was underpinned by Islam, helped to institutionalize slave trading on the continent.
And during the age of exploration, European Christians who approached the continent via the north witnessed caravans loaded with Africans en-route to the Middle East which lead them to assume that African enslavement was inherent in the continent. As long as the European explorers were concern, the bible was not only regarded as infallible, it was also their primary reference book. The answers to explain differences in ethnicity, culture, and slavery were found in Genesis 9: 24-27, which appeared to suggest that the differences were as a result of sin.
In this passage, Africans were fallaciously told
to be the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, who was cursed by his father after looking at his naked form. Moreover, in Genesis 10, the Table of Nations describes the origins of the different races and reveals that one of the descendants of Ham is Cush, and that the Cushites were people associated with the Nile region of North Africa.
In time, the European connection between sin, slavery, skin colour and beliefs would condemn Africans in totality. In the bible, physical or spiritual slavery is often a consequence of sinful actions, while darkness or blackness(skin colour) is associated with evil. Therefore Africans were considered heathens and evils, bereft of Christianity.
Scholars now suggest that Christianity had reached Africa by the early second century AD and that the Christian communities in North Africa were among the earliest in the world.But Europeans refused to acknowledge African Christianity as genuine, because it appeared irreconcilable with the continent’s cultural context.
The emergence of colonies in the Americas and the need to find labourers saw Europeans turn their attention towards Africa, with some arguing that the Transatlantic Slave Trade would enable Africans, especially the enforced African muslims to come into contact with Christianity and civilisation in the Americas – albeit as slaves.
It was even argued that the favourable trade winds from Africa to the Americas were evidence of a providential design.Religion was also a driving force for slavery in the Americas. Once enslaved, Africans were taken to their places of labour, where they were subjected to various processes to make them more compliant to slavery. Christianitsation was part of this process.
Ironically, although evangelisation was one of the justifications for enslaving Africans, very little missionary work took place during the early years. Basically, religion was just in the way of a money-making, because it took enslaved Africans away from their home. It also taught them potentially subversive ideas and made it hard to justify their cruel mistreatment by fellow Christians.
Nonetheless, some clergy tried to push the idea that it was possible to be a ‘good slave and Christian’, using St Paul’s ‘Epistles’ as justification, which called for slaves to ‘obey their masters’ and his writings that appeared to suggest it was commendable for enslaved Christians to suffer at the hands of cruel masters (1 Peter 2: 18-25).
Meanwhile all evangelicals were interested in the physical as well as spiritual condition of enslaved Africans rather than the abolition, freedom and repatriation of enslaved Africans back home.
But practical or rather charadious evangelical abolition work began with the Anglican Granville Sharp in the mid 1760s, when he fought for the freedom of a young African, Jonathan Strong. Sharp rose to national prominence during the landmark Somerset Case of 1772, which determined the status of slavery in Britain.Sharp would later join up with the Quakers to establish the first recognized anti-slavery movement in Britain, in 1787. By this time, other Anglicans such as Thomas Clarkson had entered the fray.
Its laudable to note that there were no single Christian or Muslim saint with regards to slavery. It can be argued that both evil and inhumane characteristics co-existed within both religion, denomination and individuals alike, demonstrating the idiosyncrasies, aims and inconsistencies of the white race.
For instance, the Quakers have been described as the ‘good guys’, yet their links to slavery included the infamous David and Alexander of Barclays Bank fame, Francis Baring of Barings Bank and the Quaker merchant Robert King who was Olaudah Equiano’s last owner. Even at the height of their anti-slavery activity and end of slavery, many Quaker meeting houses refused to accept Africans into their congregations.
This was also the situation with the other denominations.The Church of England had links to slavery through United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG) missionary organizations, which had plantations in Barbados. The bishop of Exeter personally owned slaves.
Anglicans involved in slavery often poured their ill-gotten gains into church coffers. And in cities with strong links to the slave trade, such as Bristol, the church bells were peeled when Wilberforce’s anti-slave trade bills were defeated in parliament.One of the most common conceptions and facts about Christianity was that it turned Africans into servile slaves. A more accurate reading suggests that Africans were enforced to accept Christianity and incorporate some aspect in keeping with their traditional belief systems.
Other Africans withstood centuries of slavery and missionary influence to practice traditional beliefs that thrived despite attempts by the respective authorities to stamp them out.
Meanwhile adherents of African traditional faced restrictions on their ability to practice their African tradition openly. When Nonconformist missionaries stepped up attempts to evangelize Africans during the late 18th century, it was noted that African traditionalist still held on to their tradition as opposed to Christianity.
The Africans who where enforced to Christianity identified closely with the bible’s fallacious take on freedom, equality and justice, especially in drawing parallels between their own situation and that of the Hebrew people in Exodus. Indeed, such was the potency of this Old Testament story that many clergymen were instructed to avoid it in their bible lessons.
But for Africans it demonstrated that God was on the side of the oppressed and would send a Moses to free them. It was ironic to note that for the religiously enslaved Africans, the two continent of the Americas represented the biblical Egypt or Babylon a place from which to escape, whilst for the persecuted European Christians it was seen as the Promised Land.
Finally the relationship between the Christian Church, Islam and the slave trade reveals both shocking complicity and enlightened Africans. The question now is, how should Africans come to terms with this brutal and inhumane facet of its history?
By Ejike Iloduba.
-ejikeiloduba@gmail.com
-Pan African researcher, writer and founder of Pan African Liberation Movement[PALM]. -
The Rwanda deportation scheme might be legal, but it remains deeply shameful
Britain’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda has got the go-ahead just as the African country edges towards ‘pariah state’ territory
So the game is on, once again. Six months after a last-minute intervention by the European court of human rights prevented a flight carrying seven migrants from taking off for Kigali, the Home Office’s Rwanda asylum-processing deal is back in play, thanks to today’s ruling in favour of the scheme by Lord Justice Lewis and Mr Justice Swift.
A summer of political turmoil – which saw the exits of both the scheme’s originator, Priti Patel, and its enthusiastic supporter Boris Johnson – had offered the government a precious chance to shelve the policy, which even some Conservative stalwarts regard as morally distasteful and legally questionable.
A less hardline home secretary than Suella Braverman would have leapt at the chance. Whatever one thinks of the final ruling, the process of judicial review played its intended role, making public confidential material that was extremely awkward for a rightwing government intent on dispatching migrants out of sight and out of mind.
The various NGOs challenging the legality of the scheme learned, for example, that Home Office staff advised Patel early on that there was a “very high” risk of fraud after £120m was donated to Rwanda to fund the scheme – money paid out before a single migrant had landed in Kigali.
A previous British high commissioner to Kigali had, it also turned out, alerted Patel to the fact that refugee camps in Rwanda were used as recruitment hubs for Rwandan military operations inside neighbouring countries. Presciently, she was told that signing an asylum deal with President Paul Kagame would make it impossible in future to voice concerns about his human rights abuses both at home and abroad.
So the opportunity for Braverman to consign her predecessor’s idea to history was always there. Instead, seemingly bent on making Patel appear a soft touch, she doubled down, telling the Conservative party conference it was her “dream” to see a plane taking off for Rwanda.
Her colleagues have rallied round. Andrew Mitchell, who once tartly informed the House of Commons it would be cheaper to house asylum seekers at the Ritz, has watered down his rhetoric, no doubt aware that his new role as development secretary requires working alongside Braverman at the cabinet table.
Such dogged determination is explained by the flow of “small boats” across the Channel, with all their tragic human consequences. For a Conservative party that terms this an “invasion”, something, anything, has to be done, and if repressive, desperately poor Rwanda is an obviously inappropriate place to send migrants, then all the better, since the main aim is deterrence.
The deep paradox is that this asylum scheme is getting the nod in Britain just as Rwanda’s militaristic adventurism is edging the central African nation into “pariah state” territory as far as Kagame’s traditional western ally, the US, is concerned.
Ever since March, when a once-dormant rebel movement known as the M23 became active again at the border between Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Washington has been pressuring Rwanda to end its support for the group, which is made up of members of Kagame’s Tutsi ethnic community. Kagame denies responsibility for the M23, describing it as “Congo’s problem”, while pointing to Congolese collaboration with an extremist Hutu militia. But in the eyes of Rwandan former army personnel, the M23 is a de facto branch of the Rwandan army, an expression of Kagame’s determination to show his regional rivals who calls the shots in Africa’s Great Lakes region. “We created it and we command it,” one former officer told me.The M23 is now 20km from the key Congolese city of Goma and the fighting has internally displaced nearly 400,000 people – ah, the irony of sending migrants to a country so adept at creating refugees. In a recent massacre, which went barely reported in the British media, 131 villagers were murdered by M23 fighters.
Washington, which had hoped to call in future on Rwandan forces to counter the jihadist threat bubbling up across Africa, is dismayed by Kagame’s persistent destabilisation of his own back yard. Nor does it take kindly to Kagame’s continuing imprisonment of the former hotel manager-turned-politician Paul Rusesabagina, a US citizen it deems “wrongfully detained”.
At a US-Africa summit in Washington attended by nearly 50 African leaders last week, Kagame failed to win a bilateral meeting with Joe Biden. The US president instead held a tete-a-tete with the DRC’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, who recently contemptuously slammed Kagame as “a specialist in wars”.
Having walked down hundreds of red carpets and been courted by endless admiring celebrities, Kagame is unaccustomed to such treatment. Smarting at the snub, he boycotted the summit’s final group photo.
History shows that Kagame, whose government relies on foreign aid for an astonishing 74% of its annual expenditure, backs off smartly when confronted by donors working in concert. In 2012, when the M23 was on the point of capturing Goma, western donors cut aid to Rwanda, and the rebel group promptly withdrew.
This time, Britain’s deal with Kigali makes a united donor front impossible. At the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, officials have already noted the tactful silence now adopted over Rwanda’s human rights abuses.
If the Home Office – as seems all too likely – starts up deportations to Kigali, Britain will be going out on a limb. It may well win the admiration of the government in Denmark, mulling over a similar scheme, but it will have further alienated officials in Washington already inclined, since Brexit, to regard the UK as both a diplomatic and strategic irrelevance.
What are the scheme’s chances of working? The promised deterrent effect has shown no sign of materialising among those waiting in Calais, although the scheme’s supporters would no doubt argue that will change once deportations become a reality.
But it’s worth remembering what happened to a similar scheme signed between Rwanda and Israel. About 4,000 migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan who had crossed the Sinai peninsula were deported to Kigali between 2014 and 2017, only for most to be driven to the border with Uganda, where they were dumped. The vast majority left Rwanda almost immediately, and the scheme was abandoned after a public outcry in Israel.
This ruling will go to appeal. As she celebrates today’s victory, Braverman should be mindful of a fundamental point. High court judges only tell governments what they are allowed to do, not what they should do. And in the eyes of many in her own party, and the country as a whole, while this deal has just been ruled to be legal, it’s also deeply shameful.
-
African, Arab or Amazigh? Morocco’s identity crisis
It is fair to say that the World Cup in Qatar this year has been defined by controversy like no other tournament before.
From the controversial decision to grant Qatar the privilege of hosting the event despite its poor human rights record to the very last moment when the Emir of Qatar put an Arab cloak on the shoulders of the Argentinian football legend, Lionel Messi, as he was about to lift the trophy on Sunday.
But there is one controversy that attracted little or no attention outside North Africa. It started with the simple question: how do you describe the Moroccan team, the Atlas Lions, which stunned the whole world by its sterling performance – defying the odds to beat heavyweights such as Spain and Portugal? The “first Arab” or “African” team to reach the semi-final?
Culturally many Moroccans see themselves more as Arabs than Africans – and some sub-Saharan Africans in Morocco complain that racist attitudes are never far from the surface.
But comments by Moroccan winger Sofiane Boufal after their World Cup victory over Spain brought the debate about the country’s continental identity to the fore. He thanked “all Moroccans all over the world for their support, to all Arab people, and to all Muslim people. This win belongs to you.”
After a social media backlash, he took to Instagram to apologise for not mentioning the African continent’s backing of the team – expressed at one stage by Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari when he said Morocco had “made the entire continent proud with their grit and dexterity”.
Chastened, Boufal posted: “I also dedicate the victory to you of course. We are proud to represent all our brothers on the continent. TOGETHER.”
The furore reflects recent efforts by the monarch to encourage closer ties with the rest of the African continent. “Africa is my home, and I am coming back home,” King Mohammed VI said in 2017 as Morocco was re-admitted to the Africa Union after a 30-year absence in a row over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. This rapprochement has allowed business links to flourish, especially with West Africa.
But Morocco is also a member of the Arab League – so officially belongs to both cultural spheres.
While the adjective “African” to describe Morocco is a geographical fact, the use of “Arab” has also alienated many Moroccans who do not identify as such.
Morocco has a substantial population of Berbers, or Amazigh as they prefer to be called – some estimates put it at nearly 40% of the country’s population of more than 34 million. One major Amazigh language – Tamazight – is now recognised as an official language alongside Arabic.
But this was a controversy long time in the making. Immediately after Qatar was awarded the right to host the 2022 World Cup, its media framed the event as a “Victory for Islam and pan-Arabism”, as headline put it back in 2010.
As the tournament got under way, the vocabulary of pan-Arabism and Islamism crept back to the front. In the conflict over the ban on alcohol and homosexual symbols, advocates of Islamism and pan-Arabism came to the defence of Qatar, Islam and traditional values against “the imperialist West”.
But the initial framing of the event by the Qatari media as an “Islamic or Arab Conquest”, which had gone largely unnoticed, provoked an angry reaction when it became part of the language of running commentary on the games.
So, when the Atlas Lions made history by becoming the first men’s team from Africa and the Middle East to qualify for the World Cup semi-final, it was hailed as a victory for the Muslim and Arab nations.
After other teams from the region – Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – were disqualified early in the race, it was only natural that football lovers in neighbouring countries would rally behind Morocco.
But some vocal groups sought to portray the Moroccan success as something much larger, more ideological and political. Consequently, the Moroccan team was assigned the role of the standard-bearer of Islam and pan-Arabism.
This argument was strengthened when some of the Moroccan team’s players celebrated their successes by unfurling a Palestinian flag on the pitch.
This kind of rhetoric outraged many in North Africa, but particularly among Moroccans who do not subscribe to these ideologies and their worldviews.
In an hour-long tirade, one dissident Moroccan YouTuber blasted those who sought to politicise the game and turn it into a global culture war.
Brother Rachid also reminded his 385,000 subscribers that half of the Moroccan team, including their coach, were in fact born and bred in Europe, the children of Moroccan migrants who learned the game and became professional footballers in Europe.
“If you were to do a DNA analysis of the Moroccan team, you would find that most of them are Amazigh. Most of them don’t speak Arabic. And if they did it will be ‘broken Arabic’ because they grew up in the West,” he said.
“Morocco is different from the Middle East, because it is fundamentally a Berber society, the Arabs came as outsiders in the 7th Century. Today in Morocco there are Arabs, Berbers, Muslims, Jews, atheists, non-religionists and Baha’is, there are Shias and Sunnis.”
Considering this Moroccan success “a victory for Arabism and Islam is an attack on the various components of the Moroccan society”, he went on to say.
In response to the pan-Arabists or Islamists seeking to hijack the Moroccan triumph for their own use, posts on social media proliferated to claim back the team as Morocco’s. Some posted pictures of the team emblazoned with Amazigh symbols.
Other critics highlighted the absurdity of turning a game of football into a religious or ethnic war, arguing that it is inconceivable that a win by France, Brazil or Argentina could be considered a triumph of Christianity.
They pointed out that would be impossible, given the ethnic and religious mix of some of the national football teams in Europe for example.
The controversy over the true identity of the Moroccan team is the latest manifestation of a “culture war” that has raged for decades across North Africa and the Middle East.
National identity has been central to the two ideologies – Islamism and pan-Arabism – that shaped political discourse in the region for decades.
While they made sense during the struggle for national liberation, prioritising social cohesion over individual freedom, they seem to have outlived their usefulness and become irrelevant in an increasingly globalised world – as the row over a football match clearly demonstrates.
-
Caribbean divided as Netherlands mulls slavery apology
PARAMARIBO, Suriname — Dutch colonizers kidnapped men, women and children from Africa and enslaved them on plantations growing sugar, coffee and other goods that built wealth at the price of misery in the Americas.
Today, the Netherlands is expected to become one of the few nations to apologize for its role in slavery. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte plans to speak in the Netherlands as members of his Cabinet give speeches in seven former Caribbean colonies, including Suriname.
Symbolism around crimes against humanity is controversial everywhere, and debates over Monday’s ceremonies are roiling Suriname and other Caribbean countries.
In Suriname, activists and officials say they have not been asked for input about the apology, and that’s a reflection of a Dutch colonial attitude. What’s really needed, they say, is compensation.
In 2013, the Caribbean trade bloc known as Caricom made a list of requests including that European governments formally apologize and create a repatriation program for those who wish to return to their homeland, which has not happened.
“We are still feeling the effects of that period, so some financial support would be welcome,” said Orlando Daniel, a 46-year-old security guard and a descendant of slaves.
Suriname is an ethnically diverse country where roughly 60% of its 630,000 inhabitants live below the poverty line and 22% identify as Maroon — ancestors of slaves who escaped and established their own communities.The Dutch first became involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 1500s but did not become a major trader until the mid-1600s, when they seized Portuguese fortresses along Africa’s west coast and plantations in northeastern Brazil. Eventually, the Dutch West India Company became the largest trans-Atlantic slave trader, said Karwan Fatah-Black, an expert in Dutch colonial history and an assistant professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Hundreds of thousands of people were branded and forced to work in plantations in Suriname and other colonies.
Portugal became the first European country to buy slaves in West Africa with help from the Catholic Church in the 1400s, followed by Spain. Some experts argue that large-scale sugar production in what is now Brazil then gave rise to the Atlantic slave trade that saw an estimated 12 million Africans transported to the Caribbean and the Americas over some 400 years, with at least 1 million dying en route.
Britain was among the first countries to ban the slave trade, in 1807. Dutch slavery continued until 1863.
If, as expected, the government issues a formal apology on Monday, it will put the Netherlands, which has a long history of progressive thinking and liberal laws, in the vanguard of nations and global institutions seeking to atone for their roles in historical horrors.
In 2018, Denmark apologized to Ghana, which it colonized from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century. In June, King Philippe of Belgium expressed “deepest regrets” for genocide and abuses committed in Congo. In 1992, Pope John Paul II apologized for the church’s role in slavery. Americans have had emotionally charged fights over taking down statues of slaveholders in the South.
A Dutch government-appointed board issued a report last year saying that “today’s institutional racism cannot be seen separately from centuries of slavery and colonialism.“
Politicians and civil-society organizations in Suriname say that July 1, 2023 would be a more appropriate date for the apology ceremony because it marks 160 years since the abolition of slavery in the country.
“Why the rush?” asked Barryl Biekman, chair of the Netherlands-based National Platform for Slavery Past.
Johan Roozer, chairman of Suriname’s National Slavery Past Committee, said that Legal Protections Minister Franc Weerwind, who has slave ancestors and is visiting Suriname Monday, should also be given reparations.
Romeo Bronne, a 58-year-old businessman in Suriname, said an apology is needed, but he wants to hear it from the king of the Netherlands or its prime minister.
“Slavery was a terrible period, and degrading acts were committed,” he said as he called for financial reparations to be spent on education, health and other public benefits. “We remained poor.”Irma Hoever, a 73-year-old retired civil servant who lives in the capital, Paramaribo, said that the Dutch “do not understand what they have done to us.”
“They still enjoy what their ancestors did to this day. We still suffer. Reparations are needed,” she said.
Activists in the Dutch Caribbean territory of St. Maarten have rejected the anticipated apology and demanded reparations, too.
“We’ve been waiting for a few hundred years for true reparatory justice. We believe that we can wait a little further,” Rhoda Arrindell, a former government minister and member of a local nonprofit, said at a recent government meeting.
Like many nations, the Netherlands has been grappling with its colonial past, with the history of Dutch slavery added for the first time to local school curriculums in 2006.
“There is a sector in society that really clings to colonial pride and finds it difficult to acknowledge that their beloved historical figures have played a part in this history,” Fatah-Black said, referring to seafarers and traders long revered as heroes of the 17th century Dutch Golden Age, when the country was a major world power.
-
Arabs in northern Africa are not Africans
Moroccan Player, Sofiane Boufal who has apologised to Africans for saying their World Cup win over Spain was a win for Arabs, is a justification that Arabs in northern Africa are not Africans but invaders whom they truly are.
I don’t know why Africans kept referring them as Africa, the identify they denied and refute.
“Sorry for forgetting to mention ALL of Africa. Thanks for supporting us. I also dedicate the victory to you of course”.
-
10 Things to Know about the U.S.-China Rivalry in Africa
The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit is about U.S. relations with the continent — but China sits in the background.
Next week, nearly 50 African heads of government plan to be in Washington, D.C. for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. A broad range of issues will be discussed, from food security to global health to education. While rightly not on the formal agenda — the summit is about the United States and African countries — the United States’ rivalry with China, and how it impacts Africa, will be in the background of this major diplomatic event, certainly to be discussed and analyzed in private conversations surrounding the summit.
Next week, nearly 50 African heads of government plan to be in Washington, D.C. for the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. A broad range of issues will be discussed, from food security to global health to education. While rightly not on the formal agenda — the summit is about the United States and African countries — the United States’ rivalry with China, and how it impacts Africa, will be in the background of this major diplomatic event, certainly to be discussed and analyzed in private conversations surrounding the summit.
1. The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit is overdue and welcome.
China has been holding the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation every three years since 2000, which is widely seen as an important means of advancing Chinese diplomatic and commercial interests. Other nations hold Africa summits too, including Russia, Turkey and Japan. This is only the second Africa summit held by the United States, the first occurring in 2014. While summits receive some criticism for not producing concrete results, there is reason to hope that this summit will be impactful. For example, its Business Forum’s “deal rooms” will announce commercial transactions involving U.S. and African companies, some backed by U.S. government agencies. The summit is an important symbol of the value the U.S. places on its African relationships — African leaders have responded well, with nearly every invited leader expected to attend.
2. China has systematically increased its involvement in Africa for over 20 years now.
China’s activities in Africa began with Beijing’s support of liberation movements fighting colonial rule. Beginning in the late 1990s, China’s commercial engagement intensified, being formalized in 2013 with the Belt and Road Initiative, a well-resourced effort to build political influence and grow commercial relationships throughout the developing world. Key activities include lending for infrastructure development engineered and constructed by Chinese companies and resource extraction by Chinese mining and energy firms. While certain countries, including Ethiopia, Angola and Zambia, have been a priority, China has grown its presence in most every African country. Over the decades since the Cold War, Chinese influence in Africa has increased significantly, while U.S. influence has flatlined.
3. China has far surpassed the U.S. as an economic player in Africa.
China is Africa’s largest two-way trading partner, hitting $254 billion in 2021, exceeding by a factor of four U.S.-Africa trade. China is the largest provider of foreign direct investment, supporting hundreds of thousands of African jobs. This is roughly double the level of U.S. foreign direct investment. While Chinese lending to African countries has dipped of late, China remains by far the largest lender to African countries. It is to be expected that China’s commercial activity in Africa would increase with the dramatic rise of its economy to become the second largest in the world, especially given China’s need for raw materials to support its very large manufacturing base. But this growth also represents a determined Chinese government-driven effort to make significant inroads in Africa.
4. Not every Chinese engagement in Africa is worrisome.
U.S. officials have expressed concern over China’s military activities in Africa. In 2017, China completed its first overseas military base in Djibouti. There have been reports of China looking to build naval bases on Africa’s Atlantic Ocean coast, including in Equatorial Guinea, where Chinese companies have constructed and upgraded port facilities. Equatorial Guinea is indebted to China, raising speculation of Beijing using its economic leverage to acquire a port, which rightly concerns the Pentagon. This led the Biden administration to ramp-up engagement with Equatorial Guinea.
Potential Chinese military ports on the Atlantic Ocean are very different, however, than the hundreds of Chinese-financed and built infrastructure projects throughout Africa, with little or no national security consequence. The United States should focus its diplomatic energy on challenging truly sensitive Chinese activities, involving telecommunications and strategic minerals, for example. A U.S. message that all Chinese economic activity in Africa is concerning confuses the issue and is self-defeating, as China will remain a major player in Africa. It also lands flat with Africans who strongly desire greater trade and investment.
5. China’s conflict resolution role remains unclear.
Despite its growing commercial presence, China has mainly remained on the sidelines concerning conflict resolution diplomacy in Africa. Beijing did appoint a special envoy for the Horn of Africa earlier this year, and held a peace conference in Ethiopia, but China has not been as active in diplomacy surrounding that country’s devastating civil war as might be expected given its heavy commercial and political investment in Ethiopia. While the African Union has taken the diplomatic lead, with the United States playing both a public and behind-the-scenes role in Ethiopia, Washington should be prepared if China moves away from its traditional “non-interference” policy to assume a larger diplomatic role in African conflicts.
6. Most African countries desire good relations with both the United States and China, wanting to avoid fallout from major power rivalry.
African leaders recall with concern the Cold War, when the United States and Soviet Union fought proxy wars in Africa, making them wary of great power rivalry. Some Africans view China as a positive development model. This favorable impression is actively cultivated by Chinese diplomacy throughout Africa. Sometimes U.S. interests will require pressuring Africans to choose, such as when the United States pressed African states to vote to condemn Russia’s brazen invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations (China abstained). But in general, U.S. diplomacy in Africa will be more effective when it’s not framed as an “us-or-them” proposition, especially versus China. Early in the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told allies that the United States would not expect them to choose between Washington and Beijing. This approach, however, will come under increasing pressure if relations between the two major powers worsen.
7. Africans want to do more business with the United States.
Africa is the poorest, and fastest growing, continent. Greater trade and investment are critical, or rising unemployment will stoke more social and political tensions, leading to violent unrest. Unfortunately, Africa remains marginalized from the global economy, representing just three percent of world trade. African leaders, in both government and business, recognize the importance of the U.S. market, the sectoral leadership of many U.S. companies, and the high standards of U.S. businesses, especially compared with the poor transparency and environmental records of many Chinese companies.
Encouragingly, the African diplomatic corps in Washington wrote the Biden administration asking that commerce be a summit priority. American businesses have been slow to engage in Africa for many reasons, including a perception of high risk, poor infrastructure and lack of government support. With more U.S. government tools now available, including the recently launched Development Finance Corporation, some businesses are viewing the summit as a place to begin their involvement in Africa.
8. The United States should play to its strengths while competing with China.
U.S. companies are not competitive against Chinese and other firms in certain industries, such as road and bridge construction. Chinese firms have lower cost structures and benefit from decades of African experience. But some U.S. companies are competitive, including in the health, financial technology and renewable energy sectors. The United States has a great asset in its large and vibrant African diaspora, many of whom maintain commercial connections with Africa. The summit is wisely engaging and profiling the diaspora.
The United States also remains a source of inspiration for the large majority of Africans, who aspire to democratic governance. Washington should continue to support African democrats, civil society and media that are pressing for open and inclusive governance, often in the face of repression. China, on the other hand, opposes these values.
9. Contract transparency is key.
Americans and Africans have a shared interest in seeing business practices throughout Africa become more transparent. Waste, fraud and abuse happen outside of public scrutiny. Africans in several countries are pressing for greater transparency of their government’s business dealings. This includes in Kenya, where parliamentarians and civil society successfully pressed for public scrutiny of the $5 billion loan agreement Kenya made with the Export–Import Bank of China to finance the largest infrastructure project in their country’s history, the now complete Mombasa-Nairobi railway. This exposure overrode a confidentiality clause, whose usage is now standard practice for Chinese lending in Africa, raising critical questions about accountability. Without a general understanding of project financing terms, it is impossible for Africans to determine whether infrastructure projects are positively contributing to their development. U.S. businesses will fare better in more transparent African markets.
10. There are no shortcuts in diplomacy.
Organizing a three-day summit involving some 50 countries is a time-consuming endeavor. There are opportunity costs, as less attention inevitably has been paid to other pressing challenges and opportunities in Africa. To make the most of the Biden administration’s summit investment, sustained follow-up is required, building on any progress made in Washington next week, including stronger diplomatic engagement. Top officials from China (and other countries) outdo American officials when it comes to visiting Africa and receiving African officials. President Trump was the first American president not to visit Africa since President Reagan. Biden has yet to visit Africa as president, although his top diplomat, Secretary Blinken, has been three times in the last year. African leaders understandably view personal visits as a show of respect for them and their countries. The United States has many interests in Africa that warrant such greater diplomatic attention wholly apart from its rivalry with China.
-
Water Crisis Poses Greatest Risk For Africa’s Food
Johannesburg – One of Africa’s largest producers of agriculture chemicals says erratic rains and water shortages pose the biggest risk to food security on the continent, more than Russia’s war on Ukraine or other supply-chain disruptions.
Those water issues — driven by climate change — will see African countries grappling with food crises for decades to come, Seelan Gobalsamy, chief executive officer of South Africa’s Omnia Holdings Ltd., said in an interview Monday. Inadequate infrastructure to move key farming products will cause further problems, he said.
“When the sun shines, it’s harsher and when there’s rain, it comes down in buckets,” the CEO said hours before one of the heaviest summer hailstorms the city has experienced in years. “If you ask me what our biggest risk is going forward, is it Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, or supply chain? It’s actually climate change.”
“The impact of climate change on consumers, on the environment and on businesses will be massive in the coming decades.”
Sub-saharan Africa has been hit by a series of devastating climate-related weather events this year. Chad and Nigeria are among nations battling floods, and more than 400 people died when torrential rains hit the South African city of Durban. A series of cyclones has pummeled Madagascar and Mozambique while large swathes in the Horn of Africa are in the midst of a worst drought in four decades.
At the same time, Russia’s military operation in Ukraine depleted imports of wheat and other key foodstuffs into the continent.
“Water is the biggest thing right now,” said Gobalsamy. In South Africa, “we have aging infrastructure and water supply is being disrupted. We have had some good rains last year for instance, and we need to focus on how to capture that.”
Most African countries are semi-arable, which means they need to be more effiicient with water, the CEO said. Omnia has invested in a 180,000 megaliter-a-year reverse-osmosis plant, and is considering all other options to “capture water, recycle water, and use water sparingly,” he said. The Johannesburg-based company is also doubling its solar electricity supply by building another five-megawatt plant.
Omnia restructured the business and tapped shareholders for a 2-billion rand ($114 million) rights issue in 2019. The shares have since climbed 151%. The company will consider deals in its agri-bio and mining businesses, in countries such as Australia, Indonesia and Canada, said Globalsamy. However, “we will not do an acquisition that will not meet our ESG objectives,” he said.
-
West African leaders plan peacekeeping force to counter ‘coup belt’ reputation
ABUJA- West African leaders said on Sunday they would establish a regional peacekeeping force to intervene in member states to help restore security and constitutional order in a region that has witnessed several coups in the past two years.
West and Central Africa has made strides in the past decade to shed its reputation as a “coup belt”, but the Economic Commission for West African States (ECOWAS) wants to do more to boost constitutional government in its member states.
“The leaders of ECOWAS have decided to recalibrate our security architecture to ensure that we take care of our own security in the region,” the leaders said in a communique after an annual summit in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.
“The leaders are determined to establish a regional force that will intervene in the event of need, whether this is in the area of security, terrorism (or to) … restore constitutional order in member countries.”
ECOWAS did not give any details of how the force would be constituted but said defence chiefs would meet next month to work out how it would operate.
The ECOWAS leaders also expressed concern over the continued detention of 46 Ivorian soldiers in Mali. They asked Malian authorities to release the soldiers by the end of this month.
If the soldiers were not released, ECOWAS leaders “reserve the right and they have taken the decision to take certain measures but they would appeal and call on the authorities of Mali to release the soldiers.”
On Guinea, the leaders said the military authorities should immediately have an inclusive dialogue with all the parties and politicians, and also expressed serious concern about the security situation in Burkina Faso, which had a coup in October.