Besieged From Cradle to Grave

Published on 14th February 2006

Malcolm X once put it that “It may sometimes be necessary to cut off the hand that feeds you; if it stops you from feeding yourself.”

Africa is separated from Europe by a tiny strip of land and water. However, the cultural gulf between the two continents is enormous. The relationship between the two is oftentimes marred by mutual suspicion, if not outright antagonism. To the European, the African is an unfathomable mystery. The African, on the other hand, sees the European as an opaque mirror, a sort of optical illusion - the more you see, the less you understand.

Western scholarship/leadership still tries to maintain the distortions. As European history books often tell it: Europeans chanced on Africans, the less-endowed members of the human race and decided to take the black man's burden, with a view of lifting him to a level of their own civilization. They created self-sustaining societies for Africans, leaving them in charge. But what happened? The barbaric Africans created a gigantic mess – necessitating Europeans to come to their rescue!

To most African immigrants, Europe is very opaque. Here we are, having left our countries because the Structural Adjustment Policies, foisted on African countries by Western-institutions, like the IMF and the sadly-misnamed World Bank, and political destabilization of our land by western agents, have made living a meaningful life all but impossible in our countries. What do we have in return?

Western countries continue to send over-compensated 'developmental-experts' to our countries to, they say, impart some obscure knowledge, that will lift us from our economic doldrums and bring us to the promised land. There are over a hundred thousand 'aid-workers' in Africa today. These aid-workers, IMF strategists and World Bank Consultants propound and force policies on African governments. Backed by their mass-media, financial institutions and governments, they pursue financial, political, economic, emotional and psychological policies that are designed to suit the interests of Euro-America.

Africans are excluded from decision-making on projects to site in their land, even though it is their fate that is being decided, and it is them who pay the ultimate price, as happened in Berlin when their continent was sundered.

It is only when the projects fail that we start to hear that things are going wrong in Africa. Africans are too corrupt or African governments are too despotic. I do not believe that African politicians are more corrupt than their Italian, Japanese and American counterparts. And it is debatable whether Nigerians are more clannish than, say, Belgians.
Parliaments across Europe are busy passing laws making it virtually impossible for us to stay in Europe, yet Europeans are rushing to Africa to help us and boasting how much they love us.

Aid fosters and nurtures economic and political dependency. How is the African expected to grow normally when from infancy unto death, there is a white hand lending help? To use the analogy of a child: would a child grow into a normal adult, independent and self-confident, if the parents are constantly at its beck and call? Would a child make headway in life, if its supposed parents are constantly sabotaging all its efforts?

Historically, no country ever developed by charity, or 'economic-aid.' Africa cannot be developed by aid however well-meaning and well-intentioned but by using her intellect to harness  resources, to solve  problems. The great empires of Africa (Ethiopian, Nubian, Egyptian, Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Zimbabwe) were built by Africans. Africa is the richest and best-endowed of the world's continents in terms of mineral wealth.

Africans have to find original solutions to their peculiar problems. They have to be the initiators, and not the followers, of development plans.In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, I saw aid workers rushing from one conference to the other, in  giant Toyota jeeps. The same was the case in Niamey, Niger. Tooling around the dusty sahel in their big wagons, wining and dining at hotels where food prices look like telephone numbers, one cannot but accuse these aid-workers of sanctimonious hypocrisy. With salaries plus emoluments, that dwarfs the GDP of many small African nations, it is difficult to see what the aid-workers are developing apart from their bank accounts, among the most materially-deprived peoples in the world. Aid agencies have divided up the continent, each one jealously guarding its own little turf. While they engage in their bureaucratic warfare, Africa continues to sink deeper into wretchedness.

Does this mean that there is no meeting-ground between Africans and Western NGOs? No! NGOs should try to listen more and talk or do less. There are many Africans with input into policy-making. Why are they not consulted? Whose fate is being determined! Why are African experts not being sent to Africa?

There are a lot of things that will stop Africans dreaming about migrating to Euro-America, and send the aid-workers back home to rest their tired bones! To begin with, Africa should be allowed to develop its own political and economic system, without interference and lectures from Euro-America. Even when all evidence has pointed to the simple fact that over a quarter of century of European prescription, the economies of Africa still remain in depression, Euro-American scholarsleaders are still prescribing solutions!

The sad truth is that almost all African countries have long lost their sovereign rights. The IMF and the World Bank have taken over the management of African economies. Little wonder then that Tanzanian elder statesman, Julius Nyerere, dubbed the IMF 'International Ministry of Finance. Solutions to Africa’s problems are divined by people totally unaware of the realities of Africa. Western-style democracy has been promoted to the level of praxis, touted as the cure-all solution to Africa's ailments without caring whether these institutions are failing in Europe.

On the economic front, the production of cash crops was promoted over food crops, with the twisted logic that heavily-subsidized Euro-American foods are cheaper. Euro-American farmers continue to enjoy export boom and higher living standards at the expense of the Africans. In the meantime, the prices of  cash-crops are falling on the 'World-Market' - heavily dominated by Euro-American dealers.

Ghana is being touted as the new wonder-land, where IMF policies are working. If we use the amount of Mercedes Benzes on the streets as the measurement of progress, Ghana is doing real good. But if we use indices like actual national production and the level of general contentment, we have to sing another song. Ghana remains a consuming rather than a producing nation. Ghana national assets are being disposed off, and its indigenous firms going bankrupt under the relentless assault of imports. Its productive forces are turning increasingly to speculation and trading instead of production. Many children in Ghana have stopped going to school because their parents are too poor to pay the fees. People are dying because they cannot afford hospital treatment. What type of future are we building when the majority of our children cannot afford education?

Second, there must be better prices for African products: As anyone who drinks coffee and eats chocolate in Europe can attest, the prices are remarkably stable - that's when they are not 'goedkoop.' African farmers are slaving more and more, to get less and less for their products, the prices of which, determined in London, Chicago, Paris and New York, keep tumbling down! Production of coffee is a back-breaking job, as anyone who has been to a coffee farm can confirm. The so-called 'cash-crops' do not produce money for the producers. The  markets are controlled by Western dealers and prices determined by Western speculators. The peasant cocoa farmer, who worked the farm from dawn to dusk under intense sun, gets only 8% return. The African government receives about 17% in taxes and duties. The rest, a massive 75%, is appropriated by Western dealers. Africans are growing what they don't eat, and they eat what they don't grow.

Third, concerning stolen money and capital flight, there is no denying, or running away from the fact that most of the moronic dictators imposed on Africa by the Western Secret-Services are corrupt beyond redemption. According to the US magazine, National Enquirer (February 2, 1992 edition), African dictators are estimated to have stolen US$100 billion over 20 years! Of course, this huge theft is known to Euro-American governments. But since the moneys are lodged in their banks and yielding taxes and interests for them, they made no attempt to expose it. This money rightly belongs to Africa. That money  could have been utilized to ameliorate some of the problems that are forcing Africans to flee their countries and making it necessary for 'aid-agents' to go to Africa. It's this money that Euro-American banks are lending back to Africa at usurious rates. It is the interests on the loans, from money that rightly belong to them, that Africans are starving themselves to pay.

Fourth, if European governments should encourage their MNCs to have some sense of social responsibility, and spend part of their huge profits to develop the areas they are exploiting.

Royal SHELL, the giant Anglo-Dutch oil company, called SHELL Petroleum Development Company in Nigeria, is the biggest exploiter of Nigeria's oil. Much of this oil is located in Ogoni land. For the Ogoni whose homeland sits atop a vast expanse of crude oil deposit, life has become synonymous with washing with spittle while living by the riverside. SHELL hasn’t provided any social amenity there. A basic thing like electricity is unknown in a place that has produced billions of dollars in profits. A Nigerian Minister once asked a pungent question: 'Is Shell a noun or a verb?' Shell, like most European Multi-nationals, are literally SHELLing the poor countries.

From birth to death Africans are never left alone by do-gooders. It is time that Africa is left alone. We are not mental or physical cripples who need constant attention and ministering. W are going to make mistakes, no doubt, but learn from them. I don't believe that Africa has a problem that Africans cannot solve. Let Africans regain their self-respect and dignity, then and only then can we show what we can do. The Asians are doing it, we also can, if our 'helpers' can take a back-stage.

Those who say that we blame the West for all our ills have to tell us why it is difficult for the west to leave Africa alone. What made Africa such a special case that Euro-America has to saturate it with helpers?


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