Africa is not poor, it's overexploited.
Africa - the richest continent in the world. Understanding what I mean when I use the word “richest” for Africa is essential. It doesn’t mean that it’s home to the most billionaires on the planet or it’s an economic powerhouse, but that it has the richest concentration of natural resources that the other “rich” or “developed” nations depend upon.
I pulled out some figures regarding Africa’s natural resources footprint, and here’s what I found: (source)
30% of the earth’s mineral resources come from Africa and the continent has the biggest precious metal reserves.
According to the UN, 12% of the world’s oil and 8% of the world’s natural gas reserves are in Africa.
Africa holds nearly half of the world’s gold and recently Congo found $12 trillion worth of gold under its surface.
Two-thirds of the world’s cobalt - which is used in the production of electric cars - comes from Congo.
Congo and Rwanda together produce nearly half of the world’s tantalum - a metal used in electrical equipment.
Up to 90% of the planet’s chromium and platinum come from Africa, etc.
To illustrate:
The reason behind using these figures is to give you an idea about how rich the continent is, and how much real wealth it holds; not the monetary wealth but the wealth of commodities. The vast natural wealth that Africa has is incomparable to other continents, and these resources are highly sought after in the entire world. If a person from another planet visits the Earth and is shown the above figures, he would think Africa to be number one in terms of monetary wealth. Unfortunately, despite having access to billions of dollars worth of natural resources, Africa is one of the poorest continents on the planet. What went wrong?
There are many people who solely blame the government of African nations for their underdevelopment. I am not saying that there is no corruption at all in Africa; it has corruption just like every other nation either in the West or in the East, but the narrative that government corruption is the sole reason behind Africa’s underdevelopment is complete bullshit. Blaming Africa itself for its underdevelopment is like blaming the house owner whose house was looted by some thieves.
This article is going to be about how Western corporations are still looting Africa of its resources to this day and depriving the African nations of their sovereignty. We’ll also cover how China enslaving Africa with its so-called “debt trap” and Belt and Road Initiative is nothing more than propaganda spread by Western media outlets to paint China as a bad nation in the eyes of Africans and the world. But before we delve into all this, I think pretty much everyone who has read some history agrees that Africa was colonized and looted for hundreds of years by the Western powers, and I want to say a few words for “West doesn’t have anything to do with the ailments of Africa after it was decolonized and you can’t criticize the West for what it did in the past” kinds of people.
The West goes to their land, colonizes it, loots its resources, enslaves its population, deprives the continent of the sovereignty it needs to develop, while also financing the Industrial Rveolution in the West with the blood and sweat of enslaved Africans, and you think that doesn’t play a role for Africa’s malnourishment today? If yes, you are anything but a person who can think logically.
African slavery and colonialism are not ancient history, they are just a couple of centuries ago. You can’t and shouldn’t act like it happened a thousand years before the birth of Christ.
The priviliged Westerners talk about African countries having dictator governments while forgetting how Britain ran a covert operation to install Idi Amin as the President of Uganda. That’s just 50 years ago and that’s just one example. The US plotted coup attempts in many African nations after the WWII to promote its interests in the region and you think that doesn’t impact Africa’s political and economic system in any way? What do you smoke?
(I would call these kinds of people “empire apologists” further in this article as they try to defend the crimes of the Western empire because they are too illusioned to see through the lens of reality.)
NEO-COLONIALISM:
Colonialism didn’t end in Africa, it transformed into neo-colonialism.
Saying colonialism is a “thing of the past” would have made some sense if the West had never interfered or meddled in Africa after its so-called decolonization but the fact that Africa is still being controlled by the Western powers in some way or form makes empire bootlickers sound even dumber. Just like a flower doesn’t start smelling like a rose if you start calling it a rose, in the same manner, Africa doesn’t become independent only by you calling it independent.
The term was penned by the President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah in his book ‘Neo-colonialism: The last stage of Imperialism:
‘The essence of neocolonialism is that the State which is the subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.’
What happened next? He was overthrown in a military coup plotted by Washington.
PARASITIC FRANCE SUCKING THE AFRICAN BLOOD:
Had the empire apologists done even a bit of research outside of their partisan echo chambers, they would have known that calling Africa “sovereign” is as wrong as believing the US is an “anti-interventionist” nation.
Just before France agreed to free its African colonies, it carefully organized 14 African nations in something called “compulsory solidarity” or CFA zone. This agreement made it compulsory for the 14 African nations to put 65% of their foreign currency reserves into the French Treasury, plus another 20% for financial liabilities. They have access to only 15% of their own money, and if they need more they have to borrow it from France at commercial rates.
It doesn’t stop there. It gets much, much worse.
France controls which natural resources can the francophone countries sell into the international markets. For example, if a CFA country finds a natural resource in its land, it can’t independently sell it to anyone at an international level as long as France doesn’t permit them to. France buys up the natural resources at rates that are far below the market price.
In terms of government contracts, French companies must be considered first. They are not allowed to go elsewhere, even if a non-France company is providing a better deal.
And this has been the case since the 1960s.
In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac said:
“Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power.”
If this is “sovereignty,” as many in the West believe it is, what do you call it when a nation has full authority over how it sells its resources or governs itself?
How is this legal and aligned with international law under any circumstances?
How much of their own wealth have these nations lost since this colonial pact was signed?
WESTERN CORPORATIONS EXPLOITING AFRICA
Unfair foreign trade is just another way for the West to loot African resources and exploit the labor of Africans. Nkrumah called it a “device” for establishing neo-colonialism. Let’s look at them one by one:
A bar of delicious chocolate is a result of unpalatable child slavery:
West Africa accounts for two-thirds of the world’s cocoa production and it was exposed in a series of documentaries that cocoa production is unethical and immoral as children are being trafficked and slaved to work on the cocoa farms.
Much of the chocolate produced by multinational corporations like Nestle, Mars, and Hershey is a result of child labor, although they pledged nearly two decades ago to NOT buy cocoa harvested by child labor.
Coffee:
Ethiopia is the largest producer and exporter of coffee in Africa and due to unfair trade policies, the country is forced to sell its coffee at much lower prices to large corporations, which sell the same coffee at much higher prices making huge profits. It is estimated that Africa loses $1.47 billion every year in coffee farming due to unfair producer prices.
Commodities:
Africa is rich in commodities like gold, platinum, copper, etc. and British companies have mining operations in 37 sub-Saharan African countries, which collectively make up to $1 trillion worth of natural resources. The resources that belong to Africans are controlled by Western corporations.
Rosa Cherneva writes in her medium post:
British gold companies like Acacia Mining Plc and Randgold Resources control 12.5 million ounces of gold
Mining companies such as Anglo American and Petra Diamonds produce more than one-third of the world's diamonds.
Platinum is also concentrated in South Africa and mainly controlled by Anglo American plc and Jubilee Platinum.
It seems absurd to think that behemoths like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, and Dell are not aware of child labor being part of their production chain. They know that the cobalt they use in their products is harvested through child labor and slavery, in fact, they were once sued for the death of Congolese children working in hazardous conditions to mine cobalt. If they are aware of this, are they doing something to stop this? If they are doing something, do they really care? Or are they doing enough to stop this cruelty? Honestly speaking, I don’t think so, because exploiting the workers for the sake of profit and control is the basis of capitalism.
Not only this, the corporations have been accused of funding armed conflicts in the region to control their resources. A Canadian mining company, Anvil Mining, was sued in 2010 by the Canadian Association against Impunity for funding the Congo massacre.
THE CHINESE “DEBT TRAP” MYTH:
“Debt trap”; is the term that Westerners keep using whenever they hear about the Belt and Road Initiative. The Western media accuse China of using this initiative to drown the third-world nations into the sea of debt so that it can increase its influence in the region. It’s a ubiquitous mind virus in the Western world that keeps on spreading.
What is the BRI initiative?
Economies around the world are cooperating for mutual benefits through a number of programs and one of them is the BRI, started by China in 2013 which aims of strengthening ties with the developing world and work for infrastructure development that is mutually beneficial.
Countries from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean are joining the project, and the Western media is determined to undermine the project as the initiative is becoming widely popular across the world. Because, of course, the idea of nations working cooperatively for everyone’s benefit would be alien to any nation that spent its entire existence looting and plundering resources from other countries.
The “debt-trap diplomacy” of China is more about demonizing the country’s image on a global scale than it is about the African reality. The Western media tells us that China is weaponizing debt to loot resource-rich Africa, but the actual numbers tell us that the media is lying.
Out of the total external debt owed by the African continent, the debt owed to the Western banks, asset managers, the private lenders is roughly three times of the debt owed to China, and the interest rates on the Western debt are double compared to that of the Chinese debt. (SOURCE)
What’s more, the Chinese debt is used to build up infrastructure like roads, railways, hospitals, etc. which increases the ability of the borrower to pay back the loan, while the Western debt is mostly used in covering trade and fiscal deficits with high interest rates. The oldest railway connecting two African nations is Chinese-built.
In what sounded like a tight slap on the Western smear campaign against the BRI, China recently forgave 23 loans it provided to 17 of the African countries, and between 2000 and 2019, it has cancelled $3.4 billion and restructured $15 billion of debt. This sounds like a “debt trap” to you? When was the last time you heard any Western institution forgiving any amount of loan provided to Africa?
So, who is debt-bullying Africa? It certainly ain’t China.
Africa had been exploited, Africa is being exploited, and Africa will continue to be exploited as long as the corrupt alliance between the African leaders and the Western powers remain.
Whenever the Africans rise up against their exploitation to overthrow their leaders, they are met with brutal crackdown which is often backed by the Western leaders, because for the exploitation to continue the leaders that put foreign companies first must remain in power.
That’s why Western governments have always been against the leaders who talk about Africa’s interests, who talk about using African resources for the development of Africa, who speak up against the foreign companies looting the continent.
Thank You for reading the entire article. I would love to hear feedback from you.
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