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H.S. Graduate has largest auto manufacturer in Africa.
Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About
- Thread starter TommyHilltrigga
- Start date
Secure Da Bag
Veteran
DRC has the highest visa fees in Africa. Why?
I feel like South African blacks live a high quality of life compared to the rest of Africa. But maybe this is just a misconception based off what i see in movies/social media
I know a lot of poverty is there like every else but considering apartheid wasn’t that long ago it’s amazing to see rich blacks in SA thriving
I wonder how it got that way
This may sound a little off base but long story short, the whites in South Africa developed South Africa for themselves and made blacks their subjects. When apartheid ended, there was a transfer of wealth to the blacks (not evenly distributed, but still). The blacks are the beneficiary of the European capital that had been flowing to South Africa since its early settling.
What people gotta understand is this: The whites in South Africa (SA) landed in the 1600s and SETTLED. The keyword is settled because if you look at other former European settler colonies (USA, Australia, NZ, Canada etc) you'll notice they are all well developed. Where as other African colonies (Nigeria, Ghana, DRC) were extraction colonies (take the raw materials out and back to the Mother colonizer). SA was one of the few African colonies the whites actually wanted to settle in (Zimbabwe to a lesser extent).
And it makes sense.
SA, unlike much of sub-Saharan Africa, is actually quite temperate (no mosquitoes and tropical diseases). The weather in Cape Town is similar to what you'd find in the Bay Area in California. Johannesburg is similar to Southern Cali as well (sunny, low humidity, not too hot, not too cold, little rain). So from a settler perspective, the weather was not too far from what they say in Europe (at least Cape Town).
But the real boom to SA's economy was in the 1800s when gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand near Johannesburg. Many Europeans from Germany, England, etc flocked to SA because they were offered land and felt they could make a better life for themselves in SA than back home (there is a similar thread to this with Australia as well). The mid-1800s was when the capital was really flowing in to develop the gold and mining trade in SA. Many towns built then were in proximity of the mines and that's how and when much of the Gauteng province which contains Johannesburg, was built.
When SA was under the British crown, it was seen as a Commonwealth rather than a strict colony. It enjoyed more autonomy and a lot of the laws and statues were borrowed from the British. Till this day, SA still has some of the strongest institutions and organizations in Africa.
For comparison, Nigeria colonized in the late 1800s/early 1900s and capital didn't really even start flowing till about WW1, when the Brits came to extract palm oil and other raw materials. And unlike in SA where they'd set up towns to live. The Brits would build only what they needed e.g. a road from the resource depot to the port. No more, no less.
Long story short, Whites organized capital and used black and Malay labour to build SA up to what it is today. And even in the 1900s, the Europeans still saw South Africa as part of the "Western world" and would trade freely with them (unlike the rest of Africa), it really wasn't till Apartheid really went global that the European powers started singing a different tune. I mean SA had nuclear energy and weapons at one point in time. Right before the handover of power to blacks, they dismantled their entire program and voluntarily gave up their weapons.
We know why though...
If you're interested in their history, I suggest checking out this book
"A History of South Africa" by Leonard Thompson.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/P/B00K5R8D2K.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SX500_.jpg
I read it right before I visited SA a few years back. Really helped me with the context of where the country is.
Deff gotta back again...but for different reasons
I've been following these guys for a minute now. They're expanding a lot in Nigeria. A very well documented homegrown success story.
I was about to say this, the economy in the colony was designed to serve the metropolis. Europeans would often build everything of importance by the ocean — so they can just ship their shyt off to Europe — and chunk deuces to the hinterland, leaving the continent's interior underdeveloped (cutting off the Trans-Saharan Trade Route in the process and leaving places in that region out to dry when it used to be one of the most developed regions in Africa, for example). The Portuguese were notorious for this: they had been in Angola since the late 1400s but didn't conquer it for real for real until the early 1900s cause they couldn't care less about anywhere past Luanda. It was also advantageous for Europeans to promote these coastal elites so as to have local leaders do the administration job for them instead of setting up shop for good and doing the dirty work themselves. You even foster infighting by moving like this cause you stay out the way and let the locals go at each other's throats: I was reading on the liberation war in Guinea-Bissau and how Amílcar Cabral found mobilizing people outside the capital to be a pain in the ass precisely because most of them had never even ran across a colonizer yet so how could they have an anti-colonial sentiment, such was the neglect for anywhere outside of Bissau. Fanon touched upon this as well when he said that, at the time of the Algerian War of Independence, cats had more hate for their local caid or whatever than for Frenchmen cause that's who came to collect taxes and that's whom they had to answer to.
I'm gonna start posting more ITT. @Yehuda Good looking for holding this thread down.
EU launches reset with Africa after pandemic disruption
Say what you want, but I'm happy China and Russia are in Africa just for the fact that you have more investment options than the US/EU.
The only thing I'll say is African leaders need to focus on infrastructure investment. I know the big thing now is Digital technology and capabilities, but the big focus should be on heavy infrastructure (roads, ports, airports etc)
EU launches reset with Africa after pandemic disruption
Say what you want, but I'm happy China and Russia are in Africa just for the fact that you have more investment options than the US/EU.
The only thing I'll say is African leaders need to focus on infrastructure investment. I know the big thing now is Digital technology and capabilities, but the big focus should be on heavy infrastructure (roads, ports, airports etc)
Last edited:
Angola claims US$11 billion recovered from graft cases
By AFP
February 11, 2022
Angolan President João Lourenço, launched an anti-corruption drive shortly after taking office in 2017. PHOTO/Getty Images
Angola has recovered assets worth more than $11 billion that had been looted from state coffers and stashed in countries around the world, the justice minister said Thursday.
The authorities have launched 715 criminal prosecutions for corruption, fraud, embezzlement and other financial crimes, Justice Minister Francisco Queiroz said in the state-owned Jornal de Angola.
Over the last three years, the government has recovered nearly 11.5 billion dollars (10.06 billion euros) in cash and property in Angola and around the globe, he said.
Assets have been recovered from Britain, Switzerland, Singapore and Bermuda, among others, he said.
“The total amount seized and recovered, in the country and abroad, totals $11,486,042,997.22,” he said in the paper.
After taking office in 2017, President Joao Lourenco launched an anti-corruption drive to recoup assets he suspected were embezzled under his predecessor, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
Dos Santos, 79, is accused of appointing relatives and friends to top positions during his 38-year presidency. They allegedly siphoned off Angola’s oil wealth, leaving behind a nation mired in poverty.
His daughter Isabel is being investigated for allegedly funnelling state funds into offshore assets — accusations she vehemently denies.
Angola claims US$11 billion recovered from graft cases
By AFP
February 11, 2022
Angolan President João Lourenço, launched an anti-corruption drive shortly after taking office in 2017. PHOTO/Getty Images
Angola has recovered assets worth more than $11 billion that had been looted from state coffers and stashed in countries around the world, the justice minister said Thursday.
The authorities have launched 715 criminal prosecutions for corruption, fraud, embezzlement and other financial crimes, Justice Minister Francisco Queiroz said in the state-owned Jornal de Angola.
Over the last three years, the government has recovered nearly 11.5 billion dollars (10.06 billion euros) in cash and property in Angola and around the globe, he said.
Assets have been recovered from Britain, Switzerland, Singapore and Bermuda, among others, he said.
“The total amount seized and recovered, in the country and abroad, totals $11,486,042,997.22,” he said in the paper.
After taking office in 2017, President Joao Lourenco launched an anti-corruption drive to recoup assets he suspected were embezzled under his predecessor, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
Dos Santos, 79, is accused of appointing relatives and friends to top positions during his 38-year presidency. They allegedly siphoned off Angola’s oil wealth, leaving behind a nation mired in poverty.
His daughter Isabel is being investigated for allegedly funnelling state funds into offshore assets — accusations she vehemently denies.
Angola claims US$11 billion recovered from graft cases
NATO and Africa: A Relationship of Colonial Violence and Structural White Supremacy
Djibo Sobukwe | 23 Feb 2022
French Military Bases in Africa
NATO is the means of continuing colonial aggressions against African countries.
Considering the public media attention and concern about possible expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is worth reminding people about NATO’s bloody history in Africa. NATO was founded in 1949 after WWII at a time when African countries were still under the yoke of colonialism. In fact most of the original founders of NATO had been Africa’s principal colonizers such as UK, France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and the USA as lead NATO organizer and dominant partner. The organization was established as a collective defense against the Soviet Union with the requirement (Article 5) that any attack on one was considered an attack on all and therefore requiring a collective response.
Since NATO was founded with the purported purpose of halting possible Soviet aggression and stopping the spread of Communism it would seem to follow that after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 there would no longer be a need for NATO. Since then however, NATO has expanded from the founding twelve to at present thirty member states many of whom are eastern European countries, formerly Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact allies. Today, NATO has become a huge axel in the wheel of the military industrial complex controlled by US empire for the purpose of full spectrum dominance , driven by the ferocious appetites of corporate capital.
Colonial Africa as NATO Bases
Walter Rodney accurately describes the early foundation of colonial Africa’s relationship with NATO which continues today as he described in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa:
"Needless to say, in the 1950’s when most Africans were still colonial subjects, they had absolutely no control over the utilization of their soil for militaristic ends. Virtually the whole of North Africa was turned into a sphere of operations for NATO, with bases aimed at the Soviet Union. There could have easily developed a nuclear war without African peoples having any knowledge of the matter. The colonial powers actually held military conferences in African cities like Dakar and Nairobi in the early 1950’s, inviting the whites of South Africa and Rhodesia and the government of the USA. Time and time again, the evidence points to this cynical use of Africa to buttress capitalism economically and militarily, and therefore in effect forcing Africa to contribute to its own exploitation. [emphasis added] [1]
Kwame Nkrumah had already warned in his 1967 Challenge of the Congo that there were at least seventeen air bases, nine foreign naval bases, three rocket sites and an atomic testing range operated by NATO in in North Africa, in addition to military missions in about a dozen other African countries, not to mention the exploitation of raw materials for the production of nuclear weapons occurring in the mines of Congo, Angola, South Africa and Rhodesia.[2] Nkrumah called for the urgent need to counter the challenge of NATO in the strategy he outlined in his Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare which included the call for a military high command and an All African People’s Revolutionary Army (AAPRA).[3]
The example of Portugal, as one of the original members of NATO is worth exploring. The great freedom fighter of Africa, Amilcar Cabral, called Portugal “a rotten appendage of imperialism” he said, “Portugal is the most underdeveloped country in Western Europe. Portugal would never be able to launch three colonial wars in Africa without the help of NATO, the weapons of NATO, the planes of NATO the bombs- it would be impossible for them.” [4]
Cabral goes on to explain that the only reason Portugal was able to hold on to its colonies in Africa is because it had been a semi-colony of Britain since 1775 and Britain defended Portugal’s interest during the partition of Africa. Furthermore NATO, a creation of the US, uses Portugal and its colonies as part of the larger objective of domination of Africa and the world.[5] Portugal conducted a vicious war against its colonies in Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique much like the US did in Vietnam. In both cases, colonizing powers used the most modern weapons including napalm and cluster bombing campaigns killing thousands, against guerilla armies that refused to bow down. The Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano was forced to give up economic interests in Angola to some of the NATO powers in exchange for the NATO armaments and supplies used.[6] Yet, Portugal still lost the war against the heroic anti-colonial forces.
NATO’s Strategy of Neo-colonialism
Imperialism has always used its strategy of divide and rule. To enable the acceptance of the idea of a ‘benevolent’ NATO, the colonial powers knew that they had to convince and recruit a neo-colonial class of indigenous Africans who would do their bidding. This divide played itself out in the national liberation movements between those who were friendly to imperialist forces and those who wanted a real break from colonialism. Nkrumah explains in Neo-colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism, the wide array of methods employed by neocolonialism, ranging from economic, political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres. To do this, NATO works hand in hand with other mechanisms of imperialism like the CIA[7] which was instrumental in the coup against the Nkrumah government and the murder of Patrice Lumumba.
The settler colony of Azania/South Africa would be another example of a NATO outpost. From the beginning it was obviously on the side of the Western/ NATO powers since it was essentially a colony of Britain and therefore was a NATOsurrogate. In 1955 South Africa and Britain formulated the Simonstown agreements which contained provision for the naval surveillance and defense of the African continent from Cape to Cairo. In spite of a purported arms embargo, NATO countries and Israel also provided South Africa with the necessary technology to develop nuclear weapons.
NATO & AFRICOM
AFRICOM is actually a direct product of NATO via EUCOM, the US European command. EUCOM is a central part of NATO and originally also took responsibility for 42 African states. In 2004 NATO ended a five-year period of expansion; in 2007 the EUCOM commander proposed the creation of AFRICOM. James L. Jones Jr. explains how he came to make the proposal for AFRICOM from his position as commander of EUCOM as well as commander of operational forces of NATO.
The US/NATO role in the destruction of Libya in 2011 is important to highlight because it offers some important lessons. First, US imperialism and its western lackies do not accept any country that decides to be an independent force outside of its sphere of influence. Secondly, it also demonstrates how NATO can work hand in hand with other US/western dominated world structures like the UN. In 2011 the UN (resolution 1973) gave political authorization for a “no fly zone” and blockade of Libya purportedly to “protect” its citizens but which ultimately resulted in the destruction of Africa’s most prosperous country with the highest Human Development Index.
US led NATO forces launched a bombing campaign that killed thousands of civilians and caused tens of billions of property and infrastructure damage. This shows that although US-led NATO sometimes uses the UN for political cover, it has no problem illegally overstepping its UN mandate to commit its crimes against humanity and achieve its regime change goals. Even a few countries that abstained from the UN vote like China said they did so as not to offend the reactionary Arab League and the African Union which approved of the resolution. In this case indirect and direct cooperation between NATO, the UN, the AU, and the Arab League (which includes the GCC countries ) shows the expansive and deeply woven web of US and NATO reach.
The book The Illegal War on Libya edited by Cynthia McKinney, includes the chapter titled “NATO’s Libya War, A Nuremberg Level Crime” in which Stephen Ledman writes:
"The US-led NATO war on Libya will be remembered as one of history’s greatest crimes, violating the letter and spirit of international law and America’s Constitution. The Nuremberg Tribunal’s Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a Supreme Court justice) called Nazi war crimes ‘the supreme international crime against peace.’ Here are his November 21, 1945 opening remarks:
'The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.' "
Jackson called aggressive war “the greatest menace of our times.” International law defines crimes against peace as “planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing."
All US post-WWII wars fall under this definition. Since then, America [US] has waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide. It has killed millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as in Central and South America.[8]
Those mentioned here are but a small sampling of NATO/AFRICOM’s bloody works in Africa’s past. NATO continues to operate under guise the of “training” and “humanitarian” peacekeeping assistance. Jihadist terrorist violence on the continent has increased since the founding of AFRICOM and NATO’s destruction of Libya resulting in civilian casualties and instability which the west has used as pretext and justification for the continued need for AFRICOM. As the Black Alliance for Peace’s AFRICOM watch bulletin reported , since the founding of AFRICOM there has also been an increase in coups by AFRICOM trained soldiers.
Consistent with what Nkrumah, Rodney and others warned of in the 1960’s and 1970’s NATO continues today in the form of AFRICOM facilitating wars, instability, and the corporate pillage of Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for example is continuously plundered for its strategic raw materials such as cobalt, tantalum, chromium, coltan, and uranium etc. These minerals are strategically important not only for electronic devices but also for the technologies that drive the military industrial complex. AFRICOM continues to rely on its neocolonial African proxies to fight wars on its behalf in the DRC and throughout Africa to achieve its objectives. With the rise of China, the US/NATO now seek to ensure full spectrum dominance that seeks to shut China or any other country out of the competition to control global capital.
Djibo Sobukwe is on the Research and Political Education Team of the Black Alliance for Peace. He is also a former Central Committee member of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party who worked with Kwame Ture on the political Education Committee. He can be contacted at djibo1@gmail.com
NATO and Africa: A Relationship of Colonial Violence and Structural White Supremacy
Djibo Sobukwe | 23 Feb 2022
French Military Bases in Africa
NATO is the means of continuing colonial aggressions against African countries.
Considering the public media attention and concern about possible expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is worth reminding people about NATO’s bloody history in Africa. NATO was founded in 1949 after WWII at a time when African countries were still under the yoke of colonialism. In fact most of the original founders of NATO had been Africa’s principal colonizers such as UK, France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and the USA as lead NATO organizer and dominant partner. The organization was established as a collective defense against the Soviet Union with the requirement (Article 5) that any attack on one was considered an attack on all and therefore requiring a collective response.
Since NATO was founded with the purported purpose of halting possible Soviet aggression and stopping the spread of Communism it would seem to follow that after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 there would no longer be a need for NATO. Since then however, NATO has expanded from the founding twelve to at present thirty member states many of whom are eastern European countries, formerly Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact allies. Today, NATO has become a huge axel in the wheel of the military industrial complex controlled by US empire for the purpose of full spectrum dominance , driven by the ferocious appetites of corporate capital.
Colonial Africa as NATO Bases
Walter Rodney accurately describes the early foundation of colonial Africa’s relationship with NATO which continues today as he described in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa:
"Needless to say, in the 1950’s when most Africans were still colonial subjects, they had absolutely no control over the utilization of their soil for militaristic ends. Virtually the whole of North Africa was turned into a sphere of operations for NATO, with bases aimed at the Soviet Union. There could have easily developed a nuclear war without African peoples having any knowledge of the matter. The colonial powers actually held military conferences in African cities like Dakar and Nairobi in the early 1950’s, inviting the whites of South Africa and Rhodesia and the government of the USA. Time and time again, the evidence points to this cynical use of Africa to buttress capitalism economically and militarily, and therefore in effect forcing Africa to contribute to its own exploitation. [emphasis added] [1]
Kwame Nkrumah had already warned in his 1967 Challenge of the Congo that there were at least seventeen air bases, nine foreign naval bases, three rocket sites and an atomic testing range operated by NATO in in North Africa, in addition to military missions in about a dozen other African countries, not to mention the exploitation of raw materials for the production of nuclear weapons occurring in the mines of Congo, Angola, South Africa and Rhodesia.[2] Nkrumah called for the urgent need to counter the challenge of NATO in the strategy he outlined in his Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare which included the call for a military high command and an All African People’s Revolutionary Army (AAPRA).[3]
The example of Portugal, as one of the original members of NATO is worth exploring. The great freedom fighter of Africa, Amilcar Cabral, called Portugal “a rotten appendage of imperialism” he said, “Portugal is the most underdeveloped country in Western Europe. Portugal would never be able to launch three colonial wars in Africa without the help of NATO, the weapons of NATO, the planes of NATO the bombs- it would be impossible for them.” [4]
Cabral goes on to explain that the only reason Portugal was able to hold on to its colonies in Africa is because it had been a semi-colony of Britain since 1775 and Britain defended Portugal’s interest during the partition of Africa. Furthermore NATO, a creation of the US, uses Portugal and its colonies as part of the larger objective of domination of Africa and the world.[5] Portugal conducted a vicious war against its colonies in Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique much like the US did in Vietnam. In both cases, colonizing powers used the most modern weapons including napalm and cluster bombing campaigns killing thousands, against guerilla armies that refused to bow down. The Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano was forced to give up economic interests in Angola to some of the NATO powers in exchange for the NATO armaments and supplies used.[6] Yet, Portugal still lost the war against the heroic anti-colonial forces.
NATO’s Strategy of Neo-colonialism
Imperialism has always used its strategy of divide and rule. To enable the acceptance of the idea of a ‘benevolent’ NATO, the colonial powers knew that they had to convince and recruit a neo-colonial class of indigenous Africans who would do their bidding. This divide played itself out in the national liberation movements between those who were friendly to imperialist forces and those who wanted a real break from colonialism. Nkrumah explains in Neo-colonialism, The Last Stage of Imperialism, the wide array of methods employed by neocolonialism, ranging from economic, political, religious, ideological and cultural spheres. To do this, NATO works hand in hand with other mechanisms of imperialism like the CIA[7] which was instrumental in the coup against the Nkrumah government and the murder of Patrice Lumumba.
The settler colony of Azania/South Africa would be another example of a NATO outpost. From the beginning it was obviously on the side of the Western/ NATO powers since it was essentially a colony of Britain and therefore was a NATOsurrogate. In 1955 South Africa and Britain formulated the Simonstown agreements which contained provision for the naval surveillance and defense of the African continent from Cape to Cairo. In spite of a purported arms embargo, NATO countries and Israel also provided South Africa with the necessary technology to develop nuclear weapons.
NATO & AFRICOM
AFRICOM is actually a direct product of NATO via EUCOM, the US European command. EUCOM is a central part of NATO and originally also took responsibility for 42 African states. In 2004 NATO ended a five-year period of expansion; in 2007 the EUCOM commander proposed the creation of AFRICOM. James L. Jones Jr. explains how he came to make the proposal for AFRICOM from his position as commander of EUCOM as well as commander of operational forces of NATO.
The US/NATO role in the destruction of Libya in 2011 is important to highlight because it offers some important lessons. First, US imperialism and its western lackies do not accept any country that decides to be an independent force outside of its sphere of influence. Secondly, it also demonstrates how NATO can work hand in hand with other US/western dominated world structures like the UN. In 2011 the UN (resolution 1973) gave political authorization for a “no fly zone” and blockade of Libya purportedly to “protect” its citizens but which ultimately resulted in the destruction of Africa’s most prosperous country with the highest Human Development Index.
US led NATO forces launched a bombing campaign that killed thousands of civilians and caused tens of billions of property and infrastructure damage. This shows that although US-led NATO sometimes uses the UN for political cover, it has no problem illegally overstepping its UN mandate to commit its crimes against humanity and achieve its regime change goals. Even a few countries that abstained from the UN vote like China said they did so as not to offend the reactionary Arab League and the African Union which approved of the resolution. In this case indirect and direct cooperation between NATO, the UN, the AU, and the Arab League (which includes the GCC countries ) shows the expansive and deeply woven web of US and NATO reach.
The book The Illegal War on Libya edited by Cynthia McKinney, includes the chapter titled “NATO’s Libya War, A Nuremberg Level Crime” in which Stephen Ledman writes:
"The US-led NATO war on Libya will be remembered as one of history’s greatest crimes, violating the letter and spirit of international law and America’s Constitution. The Nuremberg Tribunal’s Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a Supreme Court justice) called Nazi war crimes ‘the supreme international crime against peace.’ Here are his November 21, 1945 opening remarks:
'The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.' "
Jackson called aggressive war “the greatest menace of our times.” International law defines crimes against peace as “planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing."
All US post-WWII wars fall under this definition. Since then, America [US] has waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide. It has killed millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as in Central and South America.[8]
Those mentioned here are but a small sampling of NATO/AFRICOM’s bloody works in Africa’s past. NATO continues to operate under guise the of “training” and “humanitarian” peacekeeping assistance. Jihadist terrorist violence on the continent has increased since the founding of AFRICOM and NATO’s destruction of Libya resulting in civilian casualties and instability which the west has used as pretext and justification for the continued need for AFRICOM. As the Black Alliance for Peace’s AFRICOM watch bulletin reported , since the founding of AFRICOM there has also been an increase in coups by AFRICOM trained soldiers.
Consistent with what Nkrumah, Rodney and others warned of in the 1960’s and 1970’s NATO continues today in the form of AFRICOM facilitating wars, instability, and the corporate pillage of Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for example is continuously plundered for its strategic raw materials such as cobalt, tantalum, chromium, coltan, and uranium etc. These minerals are strategically important not only for electronic devices but also for the technologies that drive the military industrial complex. AFRICOM continues to rely on its neocolonial African proxies to fight wars on its behalf in the DRC and throughout Africa to achieve its objectives. With the rise of China, the US/NATO now seek to ensure full spectrum dominance that seeks to shut China or any other country out of the competition to control global capital.
Djibo Sobukwe is on the Research and Political Education Team of the Black Alliance for Peace. He is also a former Central Committee member of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party who worked with Kwame Ture on the political Education Committee. He can be contacted at djibo1@gmail.com
NATO and Africa: A Relationship of Colonial Violence and Structural White Supremacy
France Withdraws From Mali, But Continues to Devastate Africa’s Sahel
French troops have now begun to leave Mali, but they are not returning to France.
Vijay Prashad | 25 Feb 2022
Telly, one of the first villages in the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali
On February 17, 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron held a press conference in Paris just ahead of the sixth European Union-African Union summit in Brussels along with Senegal’s President Macky Sall and Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo as well as European Council President Charles Michel. At the conference, Macron announced that the French forces would be withdrawing from Mali. This means that France and its European allies will start to wind down “Barkhane and Takuba anti-jihadist operations in Mali.” The protests in Mali against the presence of the French troops seem to have finally succeeded.
Macron said that France had to withdraw its troops because it would no longer like to “remain militarily engaged alongside de facto authorities whose strategy or hidden objectives we do not share.” A statement appeared on the French government website signed by the European Union (EU) and by the African Union (AU) that made the same point, namely that “the Malian transitional authorities have not honored their commitments.”
The language used by Macron and included in the AU and EU statement shows a lack of transparency about the real reasons behind the withdrawal of troops from Mali. The government of Mali (“de facto” and “transitional”) came to power through two coups d’état in recent years: Colonel Assimi Goïta, leader of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People of Mali, carried out the first coup in August 2020 against the elected government and installed Bah Ndaw, who was a military officer, as the interim president of Mali. Ndaw was then overthrown in a second coup in May 2021, when Goïta took over the position of interim president himself. By June, the European countries insisted that the new military junta hold elections by February 2022. Goïta said that he would honor this timeline. He did not do so, which gave the EU and the AU the excuse to break links with Goïta’s government.
That’s the excuse being used by these regional powers to wind down operations in Mali. Matters become far less clear, however, when it comes to the statements that were made by France in this regard. Macron spoke about Goïta’s “hidden objectives,” but did not elaborate on that accusation. What could these “hidden objectives” be?
Mali’s Troubles
Mali’s troubles do not start and finish with the unrest in northern Mali nor with the military coup. If you were to ask Alpha Oumar Konaré, the president of Mali from 1992 to 2002, he would tell you a different story. When Konaré took over the presidency in Mali in 1992, the people were exhausted by the debt crisis produced by International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies and by military rule. They wanted something more. One of Konaré’s close advisers said during his time in office, “We service our country’s debt on time every month, never missing a penny, and all the time the people are getting poorer and poorer.”
Konaré’s government asked for relief from the IMF so that it could marshal resources toward ensuring the development of the northern part of the country; the insurgency, Konaré argued, would be better confronted by development than by war. The United States government and the IMF disagreed.
From Konaré’s time in office as president to now, Mali’s governments—whether civilian or military—have been unable to craft a policy framework to tackle endemic social and economic crises. It is true that there has been a long-standing rebellion in the north that has brought together the Ifoghas aristocrats among the Tuaregs and the Al Qaeda factions that came out of the Algerian civil war (1991-2002) and the destruction of Libya (2011-2012); none of the many peace agreements have worked largely because there is simply no money in Bamako, the capital of Mali, to promise the kind of development needed to undercut a million frustrations. Less remarked, but equally true, are the devastatingly poor social indicators in the rest of Mali, where hunger and illiteracy appear normal in Bamako’s bidonvilles.
Western intervention in much of Africa has not resulted in beneficial economic assistance in the region. This assistance has come through IMF austerity policies and military aid.
France’s 2013 military intervention into Mali came alongside its construction of a military project across the Sahel belt called G5 Sahel (including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) in 2014. The military in each of these countries received aid, and its officers received training. It is no surprise that Goïta, for instance, received training from the U.S. armed forces in Burkina Faso alongside Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who carried out a coup in Guinea in September 2021; it is no surprise either that Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba of Burkina Faso trained alongside these men and carried out his coup in Burkina Faso in January 2022; and no surprise that in Chad, “General Kaka” (Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno), the son of the former president, was installed as the president by the military in what was effectively a coup in April 2021. Three of the G5 Sahel countries—Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali—are now led by a military government (Niger’s authorities thwarted a coup in March 2021).
All the handwringing about why there are so many coup attempts in Africa these days fails to connect the dots: no agenda out of the IMF-austerity model is permitted by the Western states, which prefer to build up the military forces in the region rather than allow a genuine social democratic process to open in these key African countries.
Discomfort With the Western Interventions
In October 2021, Mali’s current Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga told a Russian news outlet that his government had “proof” that the French are training terrorist groups such as Ansar Dine. According to his interview, France had created an “enclave” in the Kidal region in 2013. “They have militant groups there, which were trained by French officers,” Maïga said. Kidal is in Mali’s north, not far from its borders with Algeria and Niger.
Nothing Maïga said should have raised an eyebrow. France’s former ambassador to Mali, Nicolas Normand, made some similar comments in 2019 when he released his book on the continent, Le grand livre de l’Afrique. Normand told Radio France Internationale that Macron’s government forged ties with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad and with the aristocrats of the Ifoghas region to prevent them from making a rapid advance toward Bamako. France wanted to play the “good armed groups” against the “bad armed groups,” but in the end failed to see that both these groups were terrible for Mali. This approach, combined with the civilian casualties of the French military operations (22 civilians died when France bombed a wedding in Bounti in 2021, for example), turned the people of Mali away from France.
French troops have now begun to leave Mali, but they are not returning to France. They will be deployed to next-door Niger, where they will continue their mission to prevent migration to Europe and to fight off the radicalized victims of IMF austerity (which often come in the form of frustrated young people, some of whom turn to terror). Macron’s eyes are on the French presidential elections, which are expected to take place in April this year, and on the rising tensions in response to Russia’s military intervention into Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the people of Mali came to the streets to celebrate the departure of the French. Interestingly, many of the signs thanked the Russians. Perhaps the entry of Russian aid and mercenaries are the “hidden objectives” Macron was referring to?
France Withdraws From Mali, But Continues to Devastate Africa’s Sahel
French troops have now begun to leave Mali, but they are not returning to France.
Vijay Prashad | 25 Feb 2022
Telly, one of the first villages in the Bandiagara escarpment in Mali
On February 17, 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron held a press conference in Paris just ahead of the sixth European Union-African Union summit in Brussels along with Senegal’s President Macky Sall and Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo as well as European Council President Charles Michel. At the conference, Macron announced that the French forces would be withdrawing from Mali. This means that France and its European allies will start to wind down “Barkhane and Takuba anti-jihadist operations in Mali.” The protests in Mali against the presence of the French troops seem to have finally succeeded.
Macron said that France had to withdraw its troops because it would no longer like to “remain militarily engaged alongside de facto authorities whose strategy or hidden objectives we do not share.” A statement appeared on the French government website signed by the European Union (EU) and by the African Union (AU) that made the same point, namely that “the Malian transitional authorities have not honored their commitments.”
The language used by Macron and included in the AU and EU statement shows a lack of transparency about the real reasons behind the withdrawal of troops from Mali. The government of Mali (“de facto” and “transitional”) came to power through two coups d’état in recent years: Colonel Assimi Goïta, leader of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People of Mali, carried out the first coup in August 2020 against the elected government and installed Bah Ndaw, who was a military officer, as the interim president of Mali. Ndaw was then overthrown in a second coup in May 2021, when Goïta took over the position of interim president himself. By June, the European countries insisted that the new military junta hold elections by February 2022. Goïta said that he would honor this timeline. He did not do so, which gave the EU and the AU the excuse to break links with Goïta’s government.
That’s the excuse being used by these regional powers to wind down operations in Mali. Matters become far less clear, however, when it comes to the statements that were made by France in this regard. Macron spoke about Goïta’s “hidden objectives,” but did not elaborate on that accusation. What could these “hidden objectives” be?
Mali’s Troubles
Mali’s troubles do not start and finish with the unrest in northern Mali nor with the military coup. If you were to ask Alpha Oumar Konaré, the president of Mali from 1992 to 2002, he would tell you a different story. When Konaré took over the presidency in Mali in 1992, the people were exhausted by the debt crisis produced by International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies and by military rule. They wanted something more. One of Konaré’s close advisers said during his time in office, “We service our country’s debt on time every month, never missing a penny, and all the time the people are getting poorer and poorer.”
Konaré’s government asked for relief from the IMF so that it could marshal resources toward ensuring the development of the northern part of the country; the insurgency, Konaré argued, would be better confronted by development than by war. The United States government and the IMF disagreed.
From Konaré’s time in office as president to now, Mali’s governments—whether civilian or military—have been unable to craft a policy framework to tackle endemic social and economic crises. It is true that there has been a long-standing rebellion in the north that has brought together the Ifoghas aristocrats among the Tuaregs and the Al Qaeda factions that came out of the Algerian civil war (1991-2002) and the destruction of Libya (2011-2012); none of the many peace agreements have worked largely because there is simply no money in Bamako, the capital of Mali, to promise the kind of development needed to undercut a million frustrations. Less remarked, but equally true, are the devastatingly poor social indicators in the rest of Mali, where hunger and illiteracy appear normal in Bamako’s bidonvilles.
Western intervention in much of Africa has not resulted in beneficial economic assistance in the region. This assistance has come through IMF austerity policies and military aid.
France’s 2013 military intervention into Mali came alongside its construction of a military project across the Sahel belt called G5 Sahel (including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) in 2014. The military in each of these countries received aid, and its officers received training. It is no surprise that Goïta, for instance, received training from the U.S. armed forces in Burkina Faso alongside Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who carried out a coup in Guinea in September 2021; it is no surprise either that Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba of Burkina Faso trained alongside these men and carried out his coup in Burkina Faso in January 2022; and no surprise that in Chad, “General Kaka” (Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno), the son of the former president, was installed as the president by the military in what was effectively a coup in April 2021. Three of the G5 Sahel countries—Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali—are now led by a military government (Niger’s authorities thwarted a coup in March 2021).
All the handwringing about why there are so many coup attempts in Africa these days fails to connect the dots: no agenda out of the IMF-austerity model is permitted by the Western states, which prefer to build up the military forces in the region rather than allow a genuine social democratic process to open in these key African countries.
Discomfort With the Western Interventions
In October 2021, Mali’s current Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga told a Russian news outlet that his government had “proof” that the French are training terrorist groups such as Ansar Dine. According to his interview, France had created an “enclave” in the Kidal region in 2013. “They have militant groups there, which were trained by French officers,” Maïga said. Kidal is in Mali’s north, not far from its borders with Algeria and Niger.
Nothing Maïga said should have raised an eyebrow. France’s former ambassador to Mali, Nicolas Normand, made some similar comments in 2019 when he released his book on the continent, Le grand livre de l’Afrique. Normand told Radio France Internationale that Macron’s government forged ties with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad and with the aristocrats of the Ifoghas region to prevent them from making a rapid advance toward Bamako. France wanted to play the “good armed groups” against the “bad armed groups,” but in the end failed to see that both these groups were terrible for Mali. This approach, combined with the civilian casualties of the French military operations (22 civilians died when France bombed a wedding in Bounti in 2021, for example), turned the people of Mali away from France.
French troops have now begun to leave Mali, but they are not returning to France. They will be deployed to next-door Niger, where they will continue their mission to prevent migration to Europe and to fight off the radicalized victims of IMF austerity (which often come in the form of frustrated young people, some of whom turn to terror). Macron’s eyes are on the French presidential elections, which are expected to take place in April this year, and on the rising tensions in response to Russia’s military intervention into Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the people of Mali came to the streets to celebrate the departure of the French. Interestingly, many of the signs thanked the Russians. Perhaps the entry of Russian aid and mercenaries are the “hidden objectives” Macron was referring to?
France Withdraws From Mali, But Continues to Devastate Africa’s Sahel
Ethiopia starts producing electricity from Nile dam
Date 20.02.2022
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which pushed Ethiopia into a longstanding dispute with Egypt and Sudan, started generating electricity on Sunday, according to officials.
Ethiopia's massive hydro-electric dam project on a tributary of the Nile has raised regional tensions
Ethiopian government officials on Sunday, said a giant hydroelectric dam built on a Nile River tributary has started generating power.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed officiated an event which saw one of the 13 turbines of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) begin power generation.
"From now on, there will be nothing that will stop Ethiopia," Abiy said.
At the same time, the lead engineer noted there was still work to be done.
"We just started generating power, but that doesn't mean the project is completed,'' the dam's project manager, Kifle Horo said.
"It will take from two and half to three years to complete it," Kifle added.
The project has caused friction in Ethiopia's bilateral relations with Egypt, which depends on the 6,695 kilometer-long (4,160 miles) Nile for most of its water supply.
The Nile is among the largest rivers in the world and supplies communities all along it with water and hydroelectric power. The drainage basin encompasses ten countries: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
What is the story of Ethiopia's new dam?
In 2011, construction began on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, 30 kilometers from the Sudanese border on the Blue Nile, one of two main tributaries of the Nile River.
The dam will eventually produce over 5,000 megawatts of electricity, doubling the electricity output of Ethiopia. It will also be one of the largest hydroelectric dams on the African continent once it is generating at or near capacity in the next year or two.
The large reservoir for the dam is 145 meters (475 feet) and can contain 74 billion cubic meters (2,600 billion cubic feet). As of last July, the reservoir was sufficiently full for the dam to begin producing electricity, though no official announcement was made by authorities.
Why are Egypt and Sudan upset about the dam?
Around 97% of Egypt's water supply comes from the Nile.
A 1929 treaty between Egypt and Sudan, then represented by colonial power the UK, gave Egypt veto power over construction along the Nile along with a historic right to claim the river as its own. A 1959 treaty with Sudan cemented Egypt's status.
In 2010, Nile basin nations agreed to the Cooperative Framework Agreement without Egypt and Sudan. The agreement shreds the need for Cairo's approval for projects along the Nile River.
Ethiopia says the dam will not have repercussions downriver. Egypt objects that this is unlikely and that the dam will affect water supplies in time it takes for the reservoir to refill.
Egypt, which has a population of around 100 million people, has said the dam poses a grave threat to the nation's water supplies, while Sudan has said the dam imperils millions of lives.
African Union-sponsored talks between all three nations have yielded no progress.
Ethiopia starts producing electricity from Nile dam
Date 20.02.2022
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which pushed Ethiopia into a longstanding dispute with Egypt and Sudan, started generating electricity on Sunday, according to officials.
Ethiopia's massive hydro-electric dam project on a tributary of the Nile has raised regional tensions
Ethiopian government officials on Sunday, said a giant hydroelectric dam built on a Nile River tributary has started generating power.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed officiated an event which saw one of the 13 turbines of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) begin power generation.
"From now on, there will be nothing that will stop Ethiopia," Abiy said.
At the same time, the lead engineer noted there was still work to be done.
"We just started generating power, but that doesn't mean the project is completed,'' the dam's project manager, Kifle Horo said.
"It will take from two and half to three years to complete it," Kifle added.
The project has caused friction in Ethiopia's bilateral relations with Egypt, which depends on the 6,695 kilometer-long (4,160 miles) Nile for most of its water supply.
The Nile is among the largest rivers in the world and supplies communities all along it with water and hydroelectric power. The drainage basin encompasses ten countries: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
What is the story of Ethiopia's new dam?
In 2011, construction began on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, 30 kilometers from the Sudanese border on the Blue Nile, one of two main tributaries of the Nile River.
The dam will eventually produce over 5,000 megawatts of electricity, doubling the electricity output of Ethiopia. It will also be one of the largest hydroelectric dams on the African continent once it is generating at or near capacity in the next year or two.
The large reservoir for the dam is 145 meters (475 feet) and can contain 74 billion cubic meters (2,600 billion cubic feet). As of last July, the reservoir was sufficiently full for the dam to begin producing electricity, though no official announcement was made by authorities.
Why are Egypt and Sudan upset about the dam?
Around 97% of Egypt's water supply comes from the Nile.
A 1929 treaty between Egypt and Sudan, then represented by colonial power the UK, gave Egypt veto power over construction along the Nile along with a historic right to claim the river as its own. A 1959 treaty with Sudan cemented Egypt's status.
In 2010, Nile basin nations agreed to the Cooperative Framework Agreement without Egypt and Sudan. The agreement shreds the need for Cairo's approval for projects along the Nile River.
Ethiopia says the dam will not have repercussions downriver. Egypt objects that this is unlikely and that the dam will affect water supplies in time it takes for the reservoir to refill.
Egypt, which has a population of around 100 million people, has said the dam poses a grave threat to the nation's water supplies, while Sudan has said the dam imperils millions of lives.
African Union-sponsored talks between all three nations have yielded no progress.
Ethiopia starts producing electricity from Nile dam
Barack Obama’s father identified as CIA asset in U.S. drive to “recolonize” Africa during early days of the Cold War
Posted Feb 10, 2022 by Gerald Horne
Over the last decade, the U.S. has been quietly expanding its covert intelligence empire in Africa as part of a growing geopolitical rivalry with China.
A new book published by Susan Williams, entitled White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, reminds us that the likely consequences will be disastrous.
Williams’s book updates an earlier study edited by Philip Agee, Ellen Ray, William Schaap and Louis Wolf, entitled Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa.
She focuses mostly on the ties between Ghana and the Congo roughly between 1957 and the coup in Accra in 1966, and the close relationship between early paramount leaders Kwame Nkrumah and the assassinated Patrice Lumumba; however, she manages to cover other hotspots as well.
The deep CIA penetration of Africa was evident in the Agency’s apparent recruitment of Barack Obama Sr., a protégé of Tom Mboya, an anticommunist, pro-capitalist Luo from Kenya who had served as the African representative of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICTFU), which received covert CIA funding through the AFL-CIO. The U.S. was trying to groom Mboya as a replacement for Kenya’s first Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta, who was perceived as more left-wing. (for more details, see Gerald Horne, Mau Mau in Harlem: The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009). Obama was brought to the University of Hawaii in an exchange and then studied economics at Harvard, though his career floundered when Mboya was assassinated in 1969.
Williams notes that the CIA generally specialized in “assassination, overthrowing elected governments, sowing conflict between political groups and bribing politicians, trade unionists and national representatives at the UN,” all clandestine and coercive strategies that were applied in Africa. Other strategies took the form of soft power initiatives; the secret sponsorship and infiltration of educational facilities, artistic endeavors, literature and Africa-focused organizations.” [465]
“Covert action of any sort, said Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who chaired the Senate Select Committee investigation into the abuses of the CIA, was nothing more than ‘a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies’—and worse.” [475]
Still, despite the revelations emerging from this senatorial investigation, the author reprimands the “narrow focus” of this body which “largely neglected CIA operations elsewhere in Africa,” beyond Congo. This body’s findings also “were weakened by its reliance on the testimony of CIA officials.” [506]
The industrious author mines archives in Austria, Belgium, Ghana, The Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, Britain, the United Nations and, of course, the U.S., outstripping the 1970s’ congressional investigation. [527-528]
Still, she argues accurately that “the files released in 2017-18 under the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act contain a wealth of information that is not available elsewhere…but they are heavily redacted.” [420] Nonetheless, President Biden has postponed further releases—for the time being.
Kwame Nkrumah, first leader of independent Ghana in 1957, had studied in the U.S. “between 1935 and 1945,” principally at historically Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. [15]
There he became acquainted with leaders of the Left, including W.E.B. Du Bois and his spouse, Shirley Graham Du Bois, along with actor-activist Paul Robeson, whom he invited to Accra to serve as a professor by 1962.
Although the foregoing leaders played a sterling role in forging solidarity, the same cannot be said for all of the hundreds of “American Africans,” to use the descriptor applied to them. Franklin Williams, a former NAACP leader, was U.S. envoy to Ghana in 1966 when Nkrumah was overthrown and he was widely suspected of complicity. [495] Pauli Murray, a justifiable heroine of the anti-Jim Crow movement in the U.S., was considered by a leading scholar of Ghana to be “something more than an unwitting asset” of U.S. imperialism. [190]\
The author also points the finger of accusation at Horace Mann Bond, father of yet another civil rights hero: Julian Bond. [58] Intellectuals, e.g., novelist Richard Wright and Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, were apparent unwitting tools of the CIA. [62, 64].
She manages to include Barack Obama, Sr., in this circle of iniquity (though she has him arriving in 1962 on these shores although the president was born in 1961). [206]
U.S. imperialism was quick to isolate and marginalize those, e.g., Paul Robeson, who were pro-socialist and keenly in favor of true African independence: virtually every sector of opinion not within his orbit was penetrated thoroughly. In the late 1930s he had spearheaded the formation of the Council on African Affairs but, by the mid-1950s, it had been forced into liquidation by government harassment and arising in its stead were the American Committee on Africa, the African American Institute, the American Society of African Culture—and if they are to be held to the same standard that was used to brand so-called “Communist fronts”—these groups could be well considered “CIA fronts” (despite worthwhile work especially by the ACOA).
Even the precursors of Black Power had their limitations, e.g., in 1961 when in a still startling episode captured on film, writer Maya Angelou and others entered the United Nations building in Manhattan to engage in a stormy protest against U.S. complicity in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. So far, so militant.
However, they chose to bar Robeson’s closest comrade, Communist Party USA leader Ben Davis, on anti-communist grounds—unmentioned by the author—though it was the latter’s comrades worldwide who were seeking to preserve Congolese sovereignty and Lumumba’s life both, which these New Yorkers—whatever their good intentions—were incapable of achieving. [398-399]
Still, since the author writes definitively that “it has been established that President Eisenhower authorized the assassination of Lumumba,” these protesters’ anger was well-justified. [511]
This Pan-Africanism was bilateral: Amilcar Cabral, founding father of Guinea Bissau who was assassinated in a dastardly fashion in 1973, spoke movingly of the dire plight of African-Americans, especially after the August 1965 revolt in Los Angeles, an anguished cry against police terror. “We are with the blacks of the United States of America,” he declaimed, “we are with them in the streets of Los Angeles and when they are deprived of all possibility of life, we suffer with them.” [500]
Of course, these “American Africans” were bit players compared to the U.S. elite hungry for Ghana’s diamonds and Congo’s uranium, so necessary for atomic bombs. Maurice Tempelsman, long-time consort to Jacqueline B. Kennedy, widow of the slain president, was pivotal here. [90-94]
Then there were the labor leaders tied to the AFL-“CIA,” e.g., Irving Brown and Jay Lovestone, whose deviltry continues to boggle the imagination. [76]
Invoking the premier U.S. scholar of Angola, the late John Marcum, who “was supported financially by the CIA,” Williams demonstrates [458] how she often soars beyond the Ghana-Congo tie.
This southwest African nation was instrumental in regional and continental politics when, upon independence in 1975, the regime invited Cuban troops there to vouchsafe sovereignty in the face of a militarized intervention by apartheid South Africa, aided by the CIA. They stayed on until the late 1980s and guaranteed freedom for Namibia by 1990 and South Africa itself by 1994.
Why was U.S. imperialism so bent on foiling African self-determination? Part of it was gaining a stranglehold on the continent’s vast resources: diamonds, uranium, the gold of South Africa, the oil of Angola, etc. Part of it was guaranteeing cheap labor particularly in industrialized South Africa for U.S. automobile manufacturers and tire plants among others. And part of it was disrupting an African Left that was seen as much too close to Moscow and its allies.
Tragically, we may never know the full extent of the skullduggery to which the CIA resorted in order to accomplish its devilish goals. Robeson’s son suspects his father was subjected to “the MKUltra ‘mind depatterning technique,’” involving drugs—but “records related to MKUltra were destroyed in 1973,” says the author. [486]
We also need to know more about the agency seeking “to trigger amnesia by concussion of the brain.” [442] We need to know more about a number of “suicides,” all with a similar methodology: They all “fell from the balconies of New York high-rises.” [474]
Nevertheless, the author merits our heartfelt thanks for her indefatigable labor that has rescued a history that needs to be better known and will be instrumental in the final defeat of U.S. imperialism on the beleaguered continent.
Barack Obama’s father identified as CIA asset in U.S. drive to “recolonize” Africa during early days of the Cold War
Posted Feb 10, 2022 by Gerald Horne
Over the last decade, the U.S. has been quietly expanding its covert intelligence empire in Africa as part of a growing geopolitical rivalry with China.
A new book published by Susan Williams, entitled White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa, reminds us that the likely consequences will be disastrous.
Williams’s book updates an earlier study edited by Philip Agee, Ellen Ray, William Schaap and Louis Wolf, entitled Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa.
She focuses mostly on the ties between Ghana and the Congo roughly between 1957 and the coup in Accra in 1966, and the close relationship between early paramount leaders Kwame Nkrumah and the assassinated Patrice Lumumba; however, she manages to cover other hotspots as well.
The deep CIA penetration of Africa was evident in the Agency’s apparent recruitment of Barack Obama Sr., a protégé of Tom Mboya, an anticommunist, pro-capitalist Luo from Kenya who had served as the African representative of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICTFU), which received covert CIA funding through the AFL-CIO. The U.S. was trying to groom Mboya as a replacement for Kenya’s first Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta, who was perceived as more left-wing. (for more details, see Gerald Horne, Mau Mau in Harlem: The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009). Obama was brought to the University of Hawaii in an exchange and then studied economics at Harvard, though his career floundered when Mboya was assassinated in 1969.
Williams notes that the CIA generally specialized in “assassination, overthrowing elected governments, sowing conflict between political groups and bribing politicians, trade unionists and national representatives at the UN,” all clandestine and coercive strategies that were applied in Africa. Other strategies took the form of soft power initiatives; the secret sponsorship and infiltration of educational facilities, artistic endeavors, literature and Africa-focused organizations.” [465]
“Covert action of any sort, said Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who chaired the Senate Select Committee investigation into the abuses of the CIA, was nothing more than ‘a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies’—and worse.” [475]
Still, despite the revelations emerging from this senatorial investigation, the author reprimands the “narrow focus” of this body which “largely neglected CIA operations elsewhere in Africa,” beyond Congo. This body’s findings also “were weakened by its reliance on the testimony of CIA officials.” [506]
The industrious author mines archives in Austria, Belgium, Ghana, The Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, Britain, the United Nations and, of course, the U.S., outstripping the 1970s’ congressional investigation. [527-528]
Still, she argues accurately that “the files released in 2017-18 under the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act contain a wealth of information that is not available elsewhere…but they are heavily redacted.” [420] Nonetheless, President Biden has postponed further releases—for the time being.
Kwame Nkrumah, first leader of independent Ghana in 1957, had studied in the U.S. “between 1935 and 1945,” principally at historically Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. [15]
There he became acquainted with leaders of the Left, including W.E.B. Du Bois and his spouse, Shirley Graham Du Bois, along with actor-activist Paul Robeson, whom he invited to Accra to serve as a professor by 1962.
Although the foregoing leaders played a sterling role in forging solidarity, the same cannot be said for all of the hundreds of “American Africans,” to use the descriptor applied to them. Franklin Williams, a former NAACP leader, was U.S. envoy to Ghana in 1966 when Nkrumah was overthrown and he was widely suspected of complicity. [495] Pauli Murray, a justifiable heroine of the anti-Jim Crow movement in the U.S., was considered by a leading scholar of Ghana to be “something more than an unwitting asset” of U.S. imperialism. [190]\
The author also points the finger of accusation at Horace Mann Bond, father of yet another civil rights hero: Julian Bond. [58] Intellectuals, e.g., novelist Richard Wright and Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, were apparent unwitting tools of the CIA. [62, 64].
She manages to include Barack Obama, Sr., in this circle of iniquity (though she has him arriving in 1962 on these shores although the president was born in 1961). [206]
U.S. imperialism was quick to isolate and marginalize those, e.g., Paul Robeson, who were pro-socialist and keenly in favor of true African independence: virtually every sector of opinion not within his orbit was penetrated thoroughly. In the late 1930s he had spearheaded the formation of the Council on African Affairs but, by the mid-1950s, it had been forced into liquidation by government harassment and arising in its stead were the American Committee on Africa, the African American Institute, the American Society of African Culture—and if they are to be held to the same standard that was used to brand so-called “Communist fronts”—these groups could be well considered “CIA fronts” (despite worthwhile work especially by the ACOA).
Even the precursors of Black Power had their limitations, e.g., in 1961 when in a still startling episode captured on film, writer Maya Angelou and others entered the United Nations building in Manhattan to engage in a stormy protest against U.S. complicity in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. So far, so militant.
However, they chose to bar Robeson’s closest comrade, Communist Party USA leader Ben Davis, on anti-communist grounds—unmentioned by the author—though it was the latter’s comrades worldwide who were seeking to preserve Congolese sovereignty and Lumumba’s life both, which these New Yorkers—whatever their good intentions—were incapable of achieving. [398-399]
Still, since the author writes definitively that “it has been established that President Eisenhower authorized the assassination of Lumumba,” these protesters’ anger was well-justified. [511]
This Pan-Africanism was bilateral: Amilcar Cabral, founding father of Guinea Bissau who was assassinated in a dastardly fashion in 1973, spoke movingly of the dire plight of African-Americans, especially after the August 1965 revolt in Los Angeles, an anguished cry against police terror. “We are with the blacks of the United States of America,” he declaimed, “we are with them in the streets of Los Angeles and when they are deprived of all possibility of life, we suffer with them.” [500]
Of course, these “American Africans” were bit players compared to the U.S. elite hungry for Ghana’s diamonds and Congo’s uranium, so necessary for atomic bombs. Maurice Tempelsman, long-time consort to Jacqueline B. Kennedy, widow of the slain president, was pivotal here. [90-94]
Then there were the labor leaders tied to the AFL-“CIA,” e.g., Irving Brown and Jay Lovestone, whose deviltry continues to boggle the imagination. [76]
Invoking the premier U.S. scholar of Angola, the late John Marcum, who “was supported financially by the CIA,” Williams demonstrates [458] how she often soars beyond the Ghana-Congo tie.
This southwest African nation was instrumental in regional and continental politics when, upon independence in 1975, the regime invited Cuban troops there to vouchsafe sovereignty in the face of a militarized intervention by apartheid South Africa, aided by the CIA. They stayed on until the late 1980s and guaranteed freedom for Namibia by 1990 and South Africa itself by 1994.
Why was U.S. imperialism so bent on foiling African self-determination? Part of it was gaining a stranglehold on the continent’s vast resources: diamonds, uranium, the gold of South Africa, the oil of Angola, etc. Part of it was guaranteeing cheap labor particularly in industrialized South Africa for U.S. automobile manufacturers and tire plants among others. And part of it was disrupting an African Left that was seen as much too close to Moscow and its allies.
Tragically, we may never know the full extent of the skullduggery to which the CIA resorted in order to accomplish its devilish goals. Robeson’s son suspects his father was subjected to “the MKUltra ‘mind depatterning technique,’” involving drugs—but “records related to MKUltra were destroyed in 1973,” says the author. [486]
We also need to know more about the agency seeking “to trigger amnesia by concussion of the brain.” [442] We need to know more about a number of “suicides,” all with a similar methodology: They all “fell from the balconies of New York high-rises.” [474]
Nevertheless, the author merits our heartfelt thanks for her indefatigable labor that has rescued a history that needs to be better known and will be instrumental in the final defeat of U.S. imperialism on the beleaguered continent.
Barack Obama’s father identified as CIA asset in U.S. drive to “recolonize” Africa during early days of the Cold War
Somali capital opens first horse riding stable in decades
By Abdi Sheikh
March 3, 2022 | 7:18 AM GMT-3 | Last Updated 18 hours ago
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/XFF2L4EVOFLTHN5PSB7WLH22TU.jpg)
Yahye Isse, 29, the owner of the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre, attends to horses at his training stable outside the main stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia February 17, 2022. Picture taken February 17, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/QZK6UVTNGJMIFALOPXLIP6GGHI.jpg)
Yahye Isse, 29, owner of the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre, attends to a horse at his training stable outside the main stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia February 17, 2022. Picture taken February 17, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/SMJ3EPVTSZJXHDYWTEHXEO3AWM.jpg)
Somali students from the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre participate in horse racing as part of their training within a neighbourhood in the Yaqshid District of Mogadishu, Somalia February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/EUDMRBTBXNMAVA5J2KFUXY3SQQ.jpg)
Somali students from the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre participate in horse racing as part of their training within a neighbourhood in the Yaqshid District of Mogadishu, Somalia February 25, 2022. Picture taken February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/LVBYKL4EGZIOJKTSSKDNVMMBCY.jpg)
Yahye Isse, 29, the owner of the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre, attends to a horse at his training stable outside the main stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia February 17, 2022. Picture taken February 17, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
MOGADISHU, March 3 (Reuters) - On a tree-lined, unpaved road in Somalia's capital, people duck out of their homes to stare in awe at an unusual sight: two young men atop white horses, racing neck and neck, in training for what would be the city's first horse races in decades.
Slowly improving security has fuelled demand for sports and leisure activities – and horse-riding has proved a hit.
Watching the training, mother of five Abshira Mohamed said she was happy to see an activity that inspired young people and entertained parents like her.
Yahye Isse, 29, established his stable to offer riding lessons to the public and to eventually host competitions in Mogadishu between riders from the city and from the country's semi-autonomous regions.
The capital is still frequently hit by deadly suicide bombings by the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab, which aims to topple the central government. The stable is a bet that instability will not worsen, said Isse.
"Horse races are meant for peaceful areas, not war zones," said Isse. "Children and the elderly love to see horses, they have a beauty that attracts people."
During the era of military dictator Siad Barre, who was toppled in 1991, only police were taught horseback riding. But the new stable, which operates out of the Mogadishu stadium and is home to 14 horses, has attracted dozens of young Somalis who have signed up for lessons and dream of racing in international competitions one day.
More than 30 students have completed a six-month riding course at his stable, and Isse has eight full-time students currently enrolled, each paying $100 per month. Isse and his three fellow trainers do not earn a salary, he said, and he funds his school through his car hiring and land leasing business.
He said he hoped the government would provide support to grow the stable and develop the sport further in the country.
Reporting by Abdi Sheikh Writing by Maggie Fick Editing by Alexandra Hudson
Somali capital opens first horse riding stable in decades
By Abdi Sheikh
March 3, 2022 | 7:18 AM GMT-3 | Last Updated 18 hours ago
Yahye Isse, 29, the owner of the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre, attends to horses at his training stable outside the main stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia February 17, 2022. Picture taken February 17, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
Yahye Isse, 29, owner of the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre, attends to a horse at his training stable outside the main stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia February 17, 2022. Picture taken February 17, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
Somali students from the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre participate in horse racing as part of their training within a neighbourhood in the Yaqshid District of Mogadishu, Somalia February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
Somali students from the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre participate in horse racing as part of their training within a neighbourhood in the Yaqshid District of Mogadishu, Somalia February 25, 2022. Picture taken February 25, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
Yahye Isse, 29, the owner of the Yahya Fardoole horse training centre, attends to a horse at his training stable outside the main stadium in Mogadishu, Somalia February 17, 2022. Picture taken February 17, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar
MOGADISHU, March 3 (Reuters) - On a tree-lined, unpaved road in Somalia's capital, people duck out of their homes to stare in awe at an unusual sight: two young men atop white horses, racing neck and neck, in training for what would be the city's first horse races in decades.
Slowly improving security has fuelled demand for sports and leisure activities – and horse-riding has proved a hit.
Watching the training, mother of five Abshira Mohamed said she was happy to see an activity that inspired young people and entertained parents like her.
Yahye Isse, 29, established his stable to offer riding lessons to the public and to eventually host competitions in Mogadishu between riders from the city and from the country's semi-autonomous regions.
The capital is still frequently hit by deadly suicide bombings by the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab, which aims to topple the central government. The stable is a bet that instability will not worsen, said Isse.
"Horse races are meant for peaceful areas, not war zones," said Isse. "Children and the elderly love to see horses, they have a beauty that attracts people."
During the era of military dictator Siad Barre, who was toppled in 1991, only police were taught horseback riding. But the new stable, which operates out of the Mogadishu stadium and is home to 14 horses, has attracted dozens of young Somalis who have signed up for lessons and dream of racing in international competitions one day.
More than 30 students have completed a six-month riding course at his stable, and Isse has eight full-time students currently enrolled, each paying $100 per month. Isse and his three fellow trainers do not earn a salary, he said, and he funds his school through his car hiring and land leasing business.
He said he hoped the government would provide support to grow the stable and develop the sport further in the country.
Reporting by Abdi Sheikh Writing by Maggie Fick Editing by Alexandra Hudson
Somali capital opens first horse riding stable in decades
Russia/Ukraine war: Senegal stops ‘illegal’ recruitment of its citizens as volunteer fighters
By Jenny Ese Obukohwo
March 4, 2022
The Senegal government has condemned a call by Ukraine’s embassy for Senegalese volunteers to join its fight against Russia.
The West African country said it learned of a Facebook post by the embassy of Ukraine in Dakar, appealing to foreign citizens for help.
Senegal’s foreign ministry said Yurii Pyvovarov, ambassador of Ukraine to Senegal, was subsequently invited to verify the publication, and he confirmed that 36 volunteers were already registered.
“In view of the seriousness of such facts, the Ministry officially notified, on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Senegal, a note verbale of protest strongly condemning this practice which constitutes a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, in particular with regard to the obligation to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Consequently, the Ministry urged the Embassy to immediately withdraw the above-mentioned appeal and cease, without delay, any procedure for enlisting persons of Senegalese or foreign nationality, from Senegalese territory.
“Failing this, the Department reserves the right to make any decision that the situation calls for. The Ministry would like to point out that the recruitment of volunteers, mercenaries, or foreign fighters on Senegalese territory is illegal and punishable by the penalties provided for by law.”
In response, the Ukrainian embassy announced that it had stopped registration for volunteers in Senegal, The Cable reports.
Meanwhile, some Nigerians have shown interest in traveling to Ukraine to fight Russian forces.
Ukraine’s embassy in Nigeria had however said the volunteers must provide$1,000 for tickets and visas.
Russia/Ukraine war: Senegal stops ‘illegal’ recruitment of its citizens as volunteer fighters
By Jenny Ese Obukohwo
March 4, 2022
The Senegal government has condemned a call by Ukraine’s embassy for Senegalese volunteers to join its fight against Russia.
The West African country said it learned of a Facebook post by the embassy of Ukraine in Dakar, appealing to foreign citizens for help.
Senegal’s foreign ministry said Yurii Pyvovarov, ambassador of Ukraine to Senegal, was subsequently invited to verify the publication, and he confirmed that 36 volunteers were already registered.
“In view of the seriousness of such facts, the Ministry officially notified, on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Senegal, a note verbale of protest strongly condemning this practice which constitutes a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, in particular with regard to the obligation to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“Consequently, the Ministry urged the Embassy to immediately withdraw the above-mentioned appeal and cease, without delay, any procedure for enlisting persons of Senegalese or foreign nationality, from Senegalese territory.
“Failing this, the Department reserves the right to make any decision that the situation calls for. The Ministry would like to point out that the recruitment of volunteers, mercenaries, or foreign fighters on Senegalese territory is illegal and punishable by the penalties provided for by law.”
In response, the Ukrainian embassy announced that it had stopped registration for volunteers in Senegal, The Cable reports.
Meanwhile, some Nigerians have shown interest in traveling to Ukraine to fight Russian forces.
Ukraine’s embassy in Nigeria had however said the volunteers must provide$1,000 for tickets and visas.
Russia/Ukraine war: Senegal stops ‘illegal’ recruitment of its citizens as volunteer fighters
What’s in store for Nigerians as oil prices surge? Experts speak
Crude Oil pipelines
For a country like Nigeria, which sells crude and buys refined fuel, the effects will not be as straightforward.
By Abdulkareem Mojeed and Mary Izuaka
March 8, 2022 | 4 min read
The surge in oil prices comes with serious implications for both oil producing and non-producing countries alike.
The price of crude rose on Monday to $130 a barrel, the highest since 2008 as the United States and its European allies considered banning the importation of Russian oil in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Brent crude futures jumped $12.61, or 10.6 per cent, to $130.72 a barrel by 0449 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude climbed $10.41, or 9 per cent, to $126.09.
Monday’s intraday highs were near record levels seen for both contracts in July 2008 when Brent hit $147.50 a barrel and WTI touched $147.27.
The expectation is that oil exporting countries will rake in revenues and grow their foreign reserves, while the cost of goods will rise globally. But for a country like Nigeria, which sells crude and buys refined fuel, the effects will not be as straightforward.
The chief executive officer of the Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Bismarck Rewane, said Nigeria can reap from the development but said there were challenges too.
He compared the present situation to what obtained in 2008 under former President Umaru Yar’adua and Central Bank governor, Charles Soludo, when Nigeria’s external reserve was $60 billion, its excess crude account was $22 billion, and Naira traded at N158.00 a dollar.
Nigeria’s reserve currently is about $39 billion while the excess crude account plunged to just about $35 million. Naira is trading at N570 and N580 at the black market.
“In other words, with the same price of oil we are having a currency which is 300 per cent weaker than what it was in 2008,” Mr Rewane said in an interview on Channels TV business morning show on Monday . “We call it the paradox of oil. Oil price is up, the naira is down. Oil price down, naira down.”
“And all of us should be happier. But the reality is that all things being equal, the naira should appreciate, the reserves should be higher and all of us should be happier.
“We have revenue problems, management problems and then we have shocks. So what happens is that it is like the prodigal son, you spend all that you saved, you borrow some more and then you go back to your father to say father I have erred. That’s what it is,” he said.
Crude oil extraction [Photo credit: Bloomberg]
Paul Alaje, economist at SPM Professionals, said, “The increase in pump price to an unprecedented amount in recent years has shown that the Nigeria government will earn more in revenue from crude, however, as soon as this revenue comes, the Nigerian government will give it out to refineries around the world.
“The direct implication of this is that the government will now need to pay more in subsidies beyond the gauge that was received from revenue. This will also further deplete the potential share of the revenue,” Mr Alaje said.
He said it will impact the potential share of revenue to all the state governments.
“As the war between Russia and Ukraine continues, the positive impact will be reduced or eliminated within the shores of Nigeria,” he said.
“As this goes on, it will get to a point where the government will be pressured to remove subsidies or to partially reduce the impact of subsidies.
“One of these two will be happening in the coming months. I don’t think the Nigerian government will have the finances to 100 per cent finance subsidies for the next 18 months. We might see the government coming to offload some of the pressure of subsidy directly on Nigerians.
“These are possible things that we are likely to see in the coming months as things unfold,” he added.
Samuel Bamidele, head, Research and Intelligence, Phillips Consulting Limited, said while Nigeria as a major oil exporter should earn more in foreign exchange, it is constrained by its inability to meet up with its production quota.
“There is just a little we can do with the fact that our capacity to produce is still low when compared to other oil exporters,” he said.
“However, away from production capacity, the increase in the oil price which is supposed to give us some improvement in revenue, may not last. The excitement is short.
An illustration of Crude oil drums
“This is the fact; we still import petrol. So it’s a mixed impact for Nigeria,” Mr Bamidele said.
“What that means is that we are going to be importing PMS at a higher price. So whatever gains that Nigeria is supposed to get from the oil price is already undermined by the fact that we have to import fuel,” he said.
“If oil prices keep standing high can the government afford to continue paying the subsidy which will keep going up?
“I’m sure by the time you look at the subsidy payment by the next one month it will be at a very unprecedented level because we have fuel scarcity going on in the country.
“So, the question is, are oil prices going to return to 165? That’s the conversation that we probably need to have at a broader contest and Nigeria might need to start getting ready for the price of PMS to trend at an unprecedented level based on what is happening in the global oil market,” he said.
“What that means is that everyone using petrol, businesses, transport inflation will hit so hard on people, food prices will likely jump up because those using petrol to move goods from one place to another, and transportation will increase prices.
“For now, I think we just need to look up what is going to happen in response from the government in respect to how Nigeria is managing the rising oil price because it will affect the price of PMS that Nigeria is importing,” he said.
“The rising oil prices are supposed to get more money for Nigeria but we can only do as far as we produce, production is still a challenge.
“In terms of looking at the cost and the benefits, are the benefits more than the cost? Is the cost more than the benefit? I haven’t done the analysis but I can tell you the fact that it is not going to be easy on Nigeria at the moment and that’s why the minister is currently saying that the pricing of oil from Russia needs to ease up as quickly because the cost might eventually outweigh the benefits and the pressure will come on everyone,” he added.
Africa too
The implications of the war in Ukraine for Africa will also be dire.
Ross Harvey, a natural resource economist and policy analyst, said the repercussions of Russia’s behaviour “are truly global, and the negative impact on African countries cannot be overstated.”
He said while the increase in oil prices is good news in the short run for oil-exporting African countries, it is economically destructive in the medium to long term.
“African oil exporters do not refine enough of their oil domestically to avoid fuel imports. Oil rents may temporarily provide a buffer to fund fuel subsidies, but this crowds out the incentive to add value locally,” Mr Harvey said in a piece on Good Governance Africa.
“When the oil price escalates on the back of global insecurity created by Russia, import-driven inflation skyrockets, driving up transport and food prices. This eliminates expenditure potential on other items, rapidly reducing economic activity and wealth,” he said.
What's in store for Nigerians as oil prices surge? Experts speak
Crude Oil pipelines
For a country like Nigeria, which sells crude and buys refined fuel, the effects will not be as straightforward.
By Abdulkareem Mojeed and Mary Izuaka
March 8, 2022 | 4 min read
The surge in oil prices comes with serious implications for both oil producing and non-producing countries alike.
The price of crude rose on Monday to $130 a barrel, the highest since 2008 as the United States and its European allies considered banning the importation of Russian oil in protest against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Brent crude futures jumped $12.61, or 10.6 per cent, to $130.72 a barrel by 0449 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude climbed $10.41, or 9 per cent, to $126.09.
Monday’s intraday highs were near record levels seen for both contracts in July 2008 when Brent hit $147.50 a barrel and WTI touched $147.27.
The expectation is that oil exporting countries will rake in revenues and grow their foreign reserves, while the cost of goods will rise globally. But for a country like Nigeria, which sells crude and buys refined fuel, the effects will not be as straightforward.
The chief executive officer of the Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Bismarck Rewane, said Nigeria can reap from the development but said there were challenges too.
He compared the present situation to what obtained in 2008 under former President Umaru Yar’adua and Central Bank governor, Charles Soludo, when Nigeria’s external reserve was $60 billion, its excess crude account was $22 billion, and Naira traded at N158.00 a dollar.
Nigeria’s reserve currently is about $39 billion while the excess crude account plunged to just about $35 million. Naira is trading at N570 and N580 at the black market.
“In other words, with the same price of oil we are having a currency which is 300 per cent weaker than what it was in 2008,” Mr Rewane said in an interview on Channels TV business morning show on Monday . “We call it the paradox of oil. Oil price is up, the naira is down. Oil price down, naira down.”
“And all of us should be happier. But the reality is that all things being equal, the naira should appreciate, the reserves should be higher and all of us should be happier.
“We have revenue problems, management problems and then we have shocks. So what happens is that it is like the prodigal son, you spend all that you saved, you borrow some more and then you go back to your father to say father I have erred. That’s what it is,” he said.
Crude oil extraction [Photo credit: Bloomberg]
Paul Alaje, economist at SPM Professionals, said, “The increase in pump price to an unprecedented amount in recent years has shown that the Nigeria government will earn more in revenue from crude, however, as soon as this revenue comes, the Nigerian government will give it out to refineries around the world.
“The direct implication of this is that the government will now need to pay more in subsidies beyond the gauge that was received from revenue. This will also further deplete the potential share of the revenue,” Mr Alaje said.
He said it will impact the potential share of revenue to all the state governments.
“As the war between Russia and Ukraine continues, the positive impact will be reduced or eliminated within the shores of Nigeria,” he said.
“As this goes on, it will get to a point where the government will be pressured to remove subsidies or to partially reduce the impact of subsidies.
“One of these two will be happening in the coming months. I don’t think the Nigerian government will have the finances to 100 per cent finance subsidies for the next 18 months. We might see the government coming to offload some of the pressure of subsidy directly on Nigerians.
“These are possible things that we are likely to see in the coming months as things unfold,” he added.
Samuel Bamidele, head, Research and Intelligence, Phillips Consulting Limited, said while Nigeria as a major oil exporter should earn more in foreign exchange, it is constrained by its inability to meet up with its production quota.
“There is just a little we can do with the fact that our capacity to produce is still low when compared to other oil exporters,” he said.
“However, away from production capacity, the increase in the oil price which is supposed to give us some improvement in revenue, may not last. The excitement is short.
An illustration of Crude oil drums
“This is the fact; we still import petrol. So it’s a mixed impact for Nigeria,” Mr Bamidele said.
“What that means is that we are going to be importing PMS at a higher price. So whatever gains that Nigeria is supposed to get from the oil price is already undermined by the fact that we have to import fuel,” he said.
“If oil prices keep standing high can the government afford to continue paying the subsidy which will keep going up?
“I’m sure by the time you look at the subsidy payment by the next one month it will be at a very unprecedented level because we have fuel scarcity going on in the country.
“So, the question is, are oil prices going to return to 165? That’s the conversation that we probably need to have at a broader contest and Nigeria might need to start getting ready for the price of PMS to trend at an unprecedented level based on what is happening in the global oil market,” he said.
“What that means is that everyone using petrol, businesses, transport inflation will hit so hard on people, food prices will likely jump up because those using petrol to move goods from one place to another, and transportation will increase prices.
“For now, I think we just need to look up what is going to happen in response from the government in respect to how Nigeria is managing the rising oil price because it will affect the price of PMS that Nigeria is importing,” he said.
“The rising oil prices are supposed to get more money for Nigeria but we can only do as far as we produce, production is still a challenge.
“In terms of looking at the cost and the benefits, are the benefits more than the cost? Is the cost more than the benefit? I haven’t done the analysis but I can tell you the fact that it is not going to be easy on Nigeria at the moment and that’s why the minister is currently saying that the pricing of oil from Russia needs to ease up as quickly because the cost might eventually outweigh the benefits and the pressure will come on everyone,” he added.
Africa too
The implications of the war in Ukraine for Africa will also be dire.
Ross Harvey, a natural resource economist and policy analyst, said the repercussions of Russia’s behaviour “are truly global, and the negative impact on African countries cannot be overstated.”
He said while the increase in oil prices is good news in the short run for oil-exporting African countries, it is economically destructive in the medium to long term.
“African oil exporters do not refine enough of their oil domestically to avoid fuel imports. Oil rents may temporarily provide a buffer to fund fuel subsidies, but this crowds out the incentive to add value locally,” Mr Harvey said in a piece on Good Governance Africa.
“When the oil price escalates on the back of global insecurity created by Russia, import-driven inflation skyrockets, driving up transport and food prices. This eliminates expenditure potential on other items, rapidly reducing economic activity and wealth,” he said.
What's in store for Nigerians as oil prices surge? Experts speak