The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has confirmed Nigerian Economist and International Development Expert Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as its new Director General. Okonjo-Iweala becomes the first African and first woman to lead the organisation.
More information about the appointment can be found here, on the Financial Times website.
Mzuzu University, one of the public Universities in Malawi, will this year be introducing a part-time Degree in Data Science.
This is welcomed news and minimally shows how progressive the learning institution has become, in that in less than 25 years since its founding it is now already emulating what some established Universities and learning institutions internationally have done, who in recent years have led the way in offering such data science courses, sometimes doing so online.
An excerpt from the University’s course details page reads thus:
‘The Bachelor of Science (Data Science) programme aims at providing students with scientific knowledge, analytical and interpretational skills, values and attitudes required for them to competently apply data science concepts in solving real life problems in this big data era.’
For more information, please refer to the links below:
http://ict.mzuni.ac.mw/?p=3126
http://ict.mzuni.ac.mw/?page_id=3124
It will be interesting to see what the full course content includes and the modules students will be studying. Further, it will also be interesting to see what graduates of the course go on to do, since one measure of the effectiveness or value of a degree qualification is the extent to which such is able to prepare or empower a student for the life of work or for other related pursuits thereafter.
We wish the University and all the students who enroll all the best in this endeavour!
The closing date for enrollment is 26th February 2021.
**Update(1.2.21): An earlier version of this article incorrectly listed the course as an online course.
They have them in most developed countries, and there is no reason why Malawi shouldn’t have a few.
For example did you know that Parpública, the Portuguese behemoth founded in 2000 and with assets worth US$13 billion, and which owns Air Portugal is a state-owned enterprise?
In the quest to find alternative solutions of economic development, the very first thing our country needs, maybe besides a mindset change, is to raise significant amounts of Capital.
This can be done in a number of ways, but probably one of the best ways is by issuing Sovereign Bonds. Using Sovereign bonds can lessen the debt burden on Malawi, and prevent the country ending up in the debt mess spiral that countries like Zambia and Angola have found themselves in.
This is because aside from the fact that the government would set the terms and conditions of the Sovereign Bonds issuance, it would also allow domestic Investors to invest and would not disproportionately make the country beholden to a foreign financier, private or public.
The reason we need such Capital is to make large strategic investments into infrastructure and equipment, which with proper planning and execution can enable Malawi to manufacture certain products which our people need most (domestic market), but also for foreign markets, and for which we have a steady and affordable supply of raw materials.
So for example, we can use such Capital to buy a refinery to manufacture Ethanol for use in the Pharmaceutical industry and in alcoholic beverages, and for use as an additive in Vehicle fuels, by expanding and starting one or two additional sugar plantations and processing plants as the ones they have in Dwangwa and Nchalo, in a similar rural area. The ethanol product can also be exported to neighbouring countries cheaply undercutting their current supply chains, but creating a new revenue stream for the Government.
The waste products from the sugar plantations (bagasse https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/bagasse ) can be used as a biofuel, reducing our country’s over-reliance on firewood – which is worsening deforestation situation in Malawi, and is responsible for the numerous floods we experience almost every year.
Similarly, a large Sheet Metal Fabrication factory could be established to manufacture Iron sheets for roof houses (malata) to be used to supply hardware stores across the country.
Both the Sheet Metal Factory and the new Sugar Processing Plant would create employment for thousands of Malawians, and can be scaled intonmuch bigger operations if required. New and organised dwellings and townships can then be created around them.
This is one way of creating large state owned corporations that can give jobs to thousands of citizens, creating employment across the country.
There would be other added benefits, such as more equitable spreading of the prosperity of the cities into the rural areas, decongesting the cities of traffic, and reducing migration to cities – as more working-age people would choose to live closer to these rural factories – where they can find jobs.
Finally, it would accelerate the provision of decent housing, water, sanitation, communications, energy and transportation infrastructure to the rural areas – factors which would contribute to the fight against poverty.
The Secret to successful state-owned enterprises is how they’re run (The Conversation)
More interesting posts at
Let us be honest, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Malawi is overstretched.
Even before any real big fish have been caught in its net, the ACB appears to be in trouble. Not entirely in a bad way , in fact the ACB is facing the good type of trouble in that never in its entire history has Malawi’s graft busting body have had to pursue so many allegations of corruption made against so many individuals and companies (some of whom are not even Malawian) in such a short space of time.
So, the big questions: Can the ACB cope with all the evidence and allegations currently coming out? I mean, does the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) have the capacity to successfully handle all the corruption cases in Malawi? Will they be able to effectively pursue each lead? And not just arresting suspects who are then subsequently released on bail, but ensuring that arrests end in successful prosecutions that lead to convictions.
I have serious doubts. Already, people are questioning why suspects like Roza Mbilizi and others have been released on bail. Malawians are also asking whether some of these arrests will go down the way of cases such as that against former budget director Paul Mphwiyo – who the High Court in Lilongwe ruled in May that he has a case to answer in relation to the MK2.4 billion Cashgate corruption case. It’s been 6 years, but Mphwiyo is still a free man.
Also, where was the ACB when corruption allegations regarding some of these cases were floating around?
I think for corruption to be effectively tackled in Malawi we need a new institution, one with far-reaching powers, a new mandate and a clear(er) objective.
We need an organisation that is staffed with new blood, that will adopt a new way of thinking and that is not hounded by old allegiances or suspect sympathies. What Malawi needs is a new Anti-corruption body that has zero links or partiality towards political parties; a truly independent institution that is only answerable to parliament, with no entanglements to DPP, PP, UDF, MCP, UTM or any other institution.
Unfortunately, that can’t be said of the current ACB and Reyneck Matemba, the ACB’s current Director General, knows it.
Remember here (external link) how the ACB’s current top sheriff complained about some of the difficulties he faced when pursuing suspects (also see the video below)?
Yes, have all those challenges suddenly gone away?
Of course, no one is suggesting that the ACB should be 100% perfect. But being imperfect should not be an excuse to have sacred cows. Further, with the scale of theft which President Lazarus Chakwera recently estimated to be K1 trillion (over $1.3 billion), you’d think that the bodies tasked with clamping down on corruption are going to be particularly powerful; with dogged prosecutors and an unflinching determination to get to the bottom of every single case.
Further, how likely is it that the ACB can for example concurrently commence court proceedings in the courts of London, Portugal, Switzerland or Qatar against suspects who many Malawians suspect have acquired or hidden the proceeds of corruptions in those countries – by virtue of sudden unexplained wealth which some of those suspects flaunt? The current ACB doesn’t have capacity to manage international parallel corruption probes. They would probably struggle, and it would take months if not years to go after funds that have been externalised.
Let us ask this same question in a different way: Can the ACB start investigating the houses which certain public figures in Malawi have bought in foreign countries? Houses bought in the UK; the flats and houses bought in the US, the millions that have flowed into South Africa? If so, when will they start following the money trail?
Instead of trying to get answers with an imperfect and compromised body, I believe what is needed is a clean slate. A fresh start. A new beginning: what is needed is the National Fraud Agency (NFA).
Malawi’s National Fraud Agency (NFA) should have powers to levy fines, powers to cancel contracts which were not signed in the best interests of the country or its citizens, and powers to impound, detain and forfeit goods, and to go after money and foreign property of officials or citizens (which is suspected of being bought using the proceeds of corruption) until the suspect can prove that such funds or property were earned legitimately, and that tax has been paid on them. The organisation should be established specifically to look at the issue of declaration of assets, externalisation of forex, to scrutinise government spending, tender awards and government contracts, and to prevent extortionate prices being charged for goods supplied to the Malawi government or to public agencies.
The NFA can work with the Anti-Corruption Bureau, but it has to be independent of the ACB. Parliament and PAC should establish a framework that decides how the NFA’s powers are to be exercised. This is important to make sure that the theft of public resources that has occured in the past in one guise or another, perpetrated by public officials including ministers, should be firmly and resolutely put to an end.
Thus, Malawi’s NFA would ensure that there is transparency and accountability, and would establish a high standard of ethics in Malawi’s politics. It would also ensure that if wrong-doing does occur, a course of action that swiftly and decisively rectifies the situation can be implemented without delay. It means unscrupulous officials can be cut-off from the business of government sooner than later, and cannot run away abroad with the proceeds of corruption – and feel as though they are beyond the reach of the law. It also means that the onus would be on the suspects to prove that they are innocent, and that their wealth, money earned or property is legitimate, and that they have paid tax on it – in accordance with Malawi’s laws. To take President Lazarus Chakwera’s lingo, it expediates justice on the “dross of sycophants“
A few weeks ago, I watched a Christmas party video in which the speaker talked about remittances by migrants living in the UK, and immediately I got an idea.
Why doesn’t the Malawi Postal Corporation (MPC) enter the business of International Money Transfers? Not only in Malawi, but across the region…
In that video, the London mayoral candidate George Galloway said that if he is elected mayor of London in 2016, he will move to make City Hall enter into the business of International Money Transfers, except it will be done on a non-profit basis. It made me think about how Malawians particularly in the UK and the US spend so much on charges and fees to send money to their loved ones.
The choice of the MPC may seem like a random or even odd one, but it is not. The Malawi Postal services has a wide network of 180 Post Offices across Malawi and 154 postal agencies in the country. Surely with such a wide network, they must have the capacity to add an additional service of money transfer ontop of the other services which MPC already offers? The only difference would be that this service will not depend on Money Transfer Operators (MTO’s) such as Western Union, Moneygram or other services, thereby more of the benefit of the transfers will remain on African soil.
In any case, remittances to East and Southern African countries have been steadily increasing. In 2013, US$28.7million was sent to Malawi from abroad (up from US$14.5million in 2006, see Index Mundi here) and US$72.8 million was sent to Zambia (Source: Examining the Relationship Between Received Remittances and Education in Malawi, Kasvi Malik, Claremont McKenna College, 2015). Zimbabwe received US$1.8 billion in 2013 (Source: Zimbabwe: Diaspora remittances in decline, The Africa Report), Tanzania received US$75.34million in 2012 and Mozambique received US$117million in 2010(data-World Bank)
In total the Overseas Development Institute estimates the total cost of fees charged by the Dallas based MoneyGram (whose 2014 revenues were US$1.45billion with $456.4million Gross Profit) and the Colorado based Western Union (whose 2014 revenue were US$5.6billion with $2.31billion Gross profit) to be US$1.8 billion (see Watkins, Kevin & Quattri, Maria. “Lost in intermediation: how excessive charges undermine the benefits of remittances for Africa.” Overseas Development Institute, April, 2014.Web. 20 March, 2015).
Surely this is money which should be utilised within Africa?
But why is this issue important?
Our Countries in Africa need money. Poverty lingers, our education systems are in tatters, we have high youth unemployment, healthcare crises, and in the face of illicit financial outflows, receding or suspended aid budgets, relatively small FDI’s and the corruption problem (which is far from going away), every penny counts.
Every penny must count.
The African Diaspora is a burdened community. The majority usually accept low-paying jobs, spend more money relatively than indigenous populations to establish themselves, are milked dry by extortionate immigration fees, have less social capital in the countries they dwell (therefore less access to informal or supplementary sources of funds), and fewer fallback protections than indigenous populations. In some countries, migrants have to pay more for healthcare, and for services which are free to the locals. They find it harder to access capital (with which to start businesses – which could help them financially), and on top of taxes, Social security / council tax, etc.. they have many mouths and responsibilities from family members back in their home countries, dependants who are often expecting dollars, pounds or Euros for their livelihood each month; to pay for rent, food, school fees, medical care and other expenses.
So how would the MPC Money Transfer scheme work?
On a very basic level, a non-profit organisation would be incorporated in the UK, the US, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and Mozambique, with bank accounts opened in all those branches.
The organisation would have one or two staff members based at the Malawian embassies in each of these countries. The Malawian government would deposit US$100,000 in each of the bank accounts, and when a remittance has been made, the organisation would level a 5-10% fee on the value of the remittance, as a cost for sending the money. A mobile app would be developed to make the job of transfering money easier, and contracts with banks and money gateways would be utilised to allow payments to other bank accounts or services in the participating countries on favourable terms. Any profits made at the end of the financial year after all the costs have been deducted would be donated to a fund to be used for job creation for youths, healthcare initiatives and other such purposes across Africa.
Obviously it’s not going to be as simple as that, and current market players are unlikely to want a new serious entrant with Social ambitions, but you get what I’m saying.
A few years ago, some people suggested that Diasporas Bonds (Read Economist article here) was the way for African migrants to help invests in their countries, but the scheme still depended on the likes of Western Union.
I acknowledge that the rise of mobile money has had a positive impact on empowering rural communities across Africa, but I’m not convinced that the benefit of such has been significant or evenly distributed among the people who use it. Indeed, it seems to me that a handful of entrepreneurs, and a few corporations (for example Orange SA who own Telkom Kenya, the part-owner of Safaricom, which owns Mpesa. Safaricom is also partly owned by Vodafone Group) have reaped the majority benefits of the mobile money revolution, meaning what mobile money has done, is made companies and corporations who are owners of the various platforms richer.
What I’m calling for is a scheme whereby our governments in Africa, as opposed to MTOs or private companies control a greater chunk of the pie, with a hope that such would lead to greater investment in services for the greater good of our people.
“What is wrong with Africa that we must always be dictated to, that somebody must dictate our course and we must be managed. And we accept it?”- President Paul Kagame speaking at the Meles Zenawi Symposium on Development
The other day – about two weeks ago, the British Prime minister referred to the migrants at Calais trying to cross into the UK as ‘swarming..’ It was an insensitive term and many people rightly took offence. On twitter, many condemned such a wording as dehumanizing.
A few days ago, Philip Hammond, the British Foreign Secretary joined Mr Cameron, speaking of ‘marauding migrants‘ threatening the standard of life of British nationals in the UK. Again, Like Cameron, you have to wonder on which planet these people live on. Amnesty International called the language shameful. The Liberal Democrats Home Affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael had this to say:
“The Tories’ language is becoming increasingly hostile and unsavoury. In reality, they are too scared to deal with the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Calais.
“Britain can’t escape the problem just by sounding ‘tough’, it needs to take a lead.
“It’s time we proved our worth on the world stage, signed up to the EU asylum policy and accept our share of vulnerable refugees, rather than expect other countries to do it for us.”
I think it is insensitive to describe other human beings in such animate and dehumanizing terms, and just goes to show how out of touch politicians really are. It also shows that humans from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are not valued in the same way British or European people are.
It’s a fallacy to see British leaders going around the world preaching democracy and peace, when right on their doorsteps, they are treating foreigners like crap. You can’t make that up, and you’d hope the world is watching.
Asylum Aid criticised the Foreign Secretary’s words as
“inaccurate and inflammatory statements”,
I agree, they present a skewed picture that divorces nuance for the situation. I’m waiting for the day a sensible British politician will rise up who will say to the people of the world that the actions of British leaders in the past have caused immense human pain, and damaged other lands far away from British shores. And some of that damage is still being felt today. I may not be alive when that happens, but I hope one day someone will be honest and brave enough call a spade a spade.
Knowing what I know about British History (both what you are taught in school, and what you find out for yourself), and having experienced first hand the institutional racism in the UK, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that in some sections of the UK population non-white people are treated differently to white people. There is extreme hostility against foreigners, which is not entirely surprising since the media fans hatred all the times. But it’s kind of strange seeing migrants contribute so much to the UK (not only via the NHS, but in the taxes they pay).
The government’s attitude towards immigration is so frustrating precisely because it is so wrong-headed. There is endless proof that the long-term benefit of migrants and asylum seekers are manifold – Ugandan refugees, for instance, have created approximately 30,000 jobs in the Leicester since 1972. Last year the Treasury’s independent advisers said that immigration is beneficial to the economy as new arrivals are most likely to be of working age – and even the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Robert Chote, stated that growing immigration to the UK “does tend to produce a more beneficial picture” for the economy. Read more here
So then why would a leader or a minister speak so negatively about migrants? Cameron and Hammond are hardly Nigel Farage, they can’t possibly be that ignorant not to see the repurcussions of their statements.
Isn’t such talk exactly the kind of talk which sows the seeds of racism, hatred and bigotry in society? Are these the kind of behaviours these leaders want to encourage in Britain? I think not, my guess is there is an agenda – some political capital is to be carved from all this.
To me this is how it looks: they are saying migrants, whose ancestors, Europeans took advantage of, looted their lands of every natural resource, enslaved their peoples, raped their women, made wars against them, divided up their lands along nothing but profit-driven motives, and generally reduced to poverty entire peoples – as they did in India and China; and whose descendants – the migrants – are now trying to find a way of escaping hardship, poverty, discrimination and violence in their own lands, are not worthy of peace, of security, of assistance – seeing their past troubles, of prosperity. Essentially that they are subhuman, thats what the actions say.
https://soundcloud.com/rttv/calais-ryan
Actions speak louder than words, and what we are seeing here is an entitlement mentality. That it’s okay for historical European abuse of non-European peoples to be swept under the carpet; that the bombing of Libya, Iraq and support for Syrian rebels is irrelevant to the migrant crisis and must be brushed over, that if you plunder resources of other countries, and create economic and political instability… its okay because if s**t happens, you can always close the borders. It’s the sort of things these people on this poster would say
During Nazi Germany’s reign, Hitler’s honchos put out propaganda which was later enacted upon to make life difficult for foreigners in Germany, in particular for Jews. What followed was a human atrocity that culminated in the holocaust, but which the Nazi machinery justified with all sorts of abominable stories. But there was a sinister motive behind the hostile rhetoric, and the Nazis made a lot of money out of it.
There’s always a sinister motive behind hostile rhetoric.
Today, the migrants at Calais are not being threatened by gas chambers or execution, but the language directed towards them – by politicians, not least the likes of the Daily Mail – is no better than that which was used by the Nazi machinery. Still, most of these migrants have no access to land or capital in the countries they flee; a polar opposite to Western corporations operating in Eritrea, Ethiopia, the various West African Countries, Syria and Iraq – who have access to land and capital in those same countries.
The migrants have no security, and indeed may be at the mercy of criminal gangs and trafficking networks – something which expats in the aforementioned countries do not have to fear. The expats can get on with their easy and comfortable lives seamlessly, while the nationals of those countries – and their migrant brothers and sisters drowning in the mediterranean – struggle with day to day living, and can’t afford an existence, never mind a luxurious lifestyle.
Why do we keep on blaming the poor migrants whose poverty the West is partly responsible for? Countries where corruption, tax-evasion, profit-shifting and white-collar crime are responsible for the loss of over US$1tn in illicit financial outflows
Death & Taxes – the true toll of tax-dodging
That is the real problem driving migrants to Europe – Inequality. Because if you have security, a good job, great educational and financial prospects and a social life – in your own country, why would you want to leave and risk your life for a pie in the sky?
British Red Cross managing director Norman McKinley recently said about the cuts to the money asylum seekers receive in the UK:
“These cruel cuts will plunge families into further poverty, making it agonisingly tough for parents to feed their children, and practically impossible to buy clothes and other essential items.”
What he forgot to mention is that many foreigners support family members back home. I know people who send as little as £20 every other month to a relative in Africa for one thing or another; to help someone pay for school, or for food, or to settle some bill. It’s not much, but it does the job, and helps people at the other end.
So then, if a government introduces policies that have the effect of creating economic hardship for an already deprived community/ section of the population, how will they be able to help their relatives abroad – who are in worse financial circumstances? It doesn’t make sense and if anything it’s counterproductive…
One final thing I should say is this. How many Swiss ‘migrants’ do you bump into everyday? Or how many ‘Norwegians’ or ‘Mauritians’ do you know or do you bump into on a regular basis?
Switzerland, Mauritius and Norway are rich countries, and their nationals live in their own countries because the countries have the capacity to create jobs and distribute wealth fairly amongst their people. When you look at Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and most countries in West Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, the story is rather different.
Further, European and American corporations are not paying bribes (in exchange for lax tax arrangements) in Norway or in Switzerland, or are they? At least you rarely hear of such corruption, unlike in the countries from whence migrants come.
If Western businessmen continue to fleece the countries from whom migrants originate,of valuable resources, how can European leaders realistically expect migrants to stay in their own countries? When the funds the country is losing is exactly the kind of money that would create jobs and an economy that can support that country’s citizens… Let’s be honest here… it’s not going to happen, and some of this rhetoric is a smokescreen to the real problems.
Mr Cameron, and Mr Hammond, if you are really serious about reducing immigration, begin by pushing for real global economic equality, at national level, within the EU, within Commonwealth, at UN level and beyond. That in my view has got a much higher chance of curbing migration to Europe than anything else.
The start of the transatlantic slave trade around the year 1519 was the beginning of tragic events that systematically displaced millions of people in Africa. By the time the last slave ship left Africa around 1867 to Cuba, the continent had been stripped of valuable human capital for nearly 3 centuries. After the abolition of slavery, the scramble for Africa in the late 1800s saw European countries colonising the well resourced African countries for another century. The history of colonialism has lived on to affect the the contemporary sociopolitical issues in Africa with detrimental effects that have hampered growth and stability for the continent. In this article I argue that Africa lags in development performance in comparison to other continents, due to its history which subjugated free thinking to develop in Africa.
Initially before the slave trade, the Portuguese were the first to establish contacts with sub-Saharan Africa and much to their surprise, they found societies which were engaged in trade, had a similar range of pre-historical industrial crafts and they were also organised into Kingdoms with class divisions. The sub-Saharan Africans were much advanced than the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean or the Brazilian littoral such that they were able to maintain equal relations with the Europeans. For the next centuries to come, Africa fully engaged in the transatlantic slave trade which accounted for an estimated 10 million slaves.
The transatlantic slave trade disturbed any pending advances in African society such that Francis Moore a merchant along the coast of Senegambia in the 1730s observed,
“Since this slave trade has been us’d, all punishments are changed into slavery.”
In 1730 the Dutch Director General of Elmina Castle on the modern coast of Ghana also observed,
“The great quantity of guns and powder which the Europeans have brought have caused terrible wars between the Kings and princes and Caboceers of these lands”.
What is evident from these observations is that the slave trade brought chaos (which in some respects is irreversible) to the continent of Africa. For 2 centuries Africans got accustomed to one mode of trade and that was the capturing and selling of valuable human capital for the development of other continents. The it can be inferred that the slave trade may well have hindered Africans from having innovative ideas, those which could have helped in the development of trade and the advancement of other aspects of society. The chiefs of Africa in conjunction with the Europeans systematically raided villages of humans, who could have played an important role in the development of Africa.
What started the transatlantic slave trade is hard to pinpoint, but evidence points out that slavery was prevalent in African societies when the Europeans arrived. Whatever the cause, the slave trade changed the African landscape in that it encouraged inter-ethnic wars with the sole purpose of capturing slaves for sale at the north African coasts. Between the 14th and 19th centuries, the most lucrative trade in Africa was the slave trade, which helped Africans to acquire guns which were used for slave wars. The violence and brain drain of Africa carried on for atleast 2 centuries and it is no wonder that by the time missionaries arrived in Africa, they witnessed brutal scenes of savagery.
Africa reeling from the effects of slavery, European countries carved up Africa into nation states which bundled different ethnic groups together. The rush to colonise Africa by the European powers, was influenced by the vast deposits of untapped natural resources which were mostly unknown to the locals of Africa. For nearly 70 years, indigenous Africans were utilised to provide manpower for farms, to fight wars, in mines and many other income generating avenues for the benefit of European countries.
To add on from the 2 centuries of slave trade, another century of colonialism was added on to the ills that crippled Africa. It was the politics of colonialism which championed the tactics of ‘divide and conquer’, where some African tribes were pitted against each other to avoid the unification of people. These tactics were triumphant in that modern-day societies of Africa still have tribalism as a hampering obstacle to national unity. Today some countries in Africa are embroiled in bitter tribal wars which seem to have no end in sight, due to long standing feuds which stem from the effects of colonialism.
During colonialism, African natural resources were excavated for the sole purpose of developing the imperialist countries while neglecting Africa. Africa’s palm oil, petroleum, copper, chromium, diamonds, platinum and in particular gold helped Europe’s earlier development, which has lived on to contemporary societies. Robert Beckford who shot a documentary titled ‘The Empire Pays Back’, claims that Britain’s debt to Africans on the continent and in the diaspora is estimated to be in the trillions of pounds. This assessment by Beckford’s experts was considered to be false because the real amount of wealth that was pulled out of Africa is arguably incalculable. It is incalculable because vast deposits of resources were pulled out of Africa, to the point that it is near impossible to document or estimate the actual volume of wealth extricated from the continent.
Which is why it is insulting. deeply offensive and laughable altogether to attack ‘migrants’ as the source of Europe’s economic and social problems, when the same European countries are largely responsible in creating the conditions which have greatly hampered the development and prosperity of African countries today.
President Barack Obama last year addressing 500 young Africans who were attending a leadership course:
“As powerful as history is, and you need to know that history, at some point you have to look to the future and say, ‘OK, we didn’t get a good deal then, but let’s make sure that we’re not making excuses for not going forward,”
This statement by Obama is a double-edged sword because a people’s history defines how modern day society is formed. It is through history that one tends to look for answers to contemporary problems which hamper nation-building activities. It is indeed true that Africa needs to look to the future rather than the past, but how is that possible when colonial borders are still a source of attrition for the thousands of tribes in Africa? When there is a huge economic divide between black Africans and Whites who live in Africa (many of whom benefitted from the proceeds of colonisation and slavery)
Further, there are young and educated Africans today with no assets who can’t get loans(therefore can’t start impactful businesses), and are barred from participation in their country’s politics because of ageism and a neopatrimonial culture. They are powerless and Obama’s statements can’t address their plight.
Ethnic conflicts in Africa are well documented and one of the clearest examples is that of the Arabs (and the Tuareg, who are Berbers) and sub-Saharan Africa(black Africans)s. Historically, the Arabs enslaved sub-Saharan Africans for about a 1000 years with about an estimated 18 million people carted off into slavery. In the 1800s when the Scamble for Africa begun, the Arabs and the sub-Saharan Africans were thrown together to form modern countries along the Sahara such as Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Sudan. This history of nations in Africa has been detrimental for nation-building, because different ethnic groups were lumped together to form nations when they had no sense of belonging to these nations.
In the past decade Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan have experienced rebellions fought over resources, politics, religion and history. In the middle of all these causative agents, ethnicity played a central role, when it came to which side the Arabs or sub-Saharan Africans picked to fight for.
Perhaps one of the most bloodiest ethnic conflicts in memory on the continent of Africa is that of the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. In 1994, Rwanda’s 7 million population was composed of Hutu (85%), Tutsi (14) and the Twa (1%). In the early 1990s Hutu extremists resented the Tutsis with claims that all the social, economic and political problems that Rwanda was going through, was down to them. On 6th April 1994, a plane carrying President Habyarimana was shot down and Hutu extremists under the cover of war, began to systematically exterminate the Tutsi population. Within weeks after 6th April, 800 000 men, women, and children were killed in a brutal manner, with ethnicity being the dividing line.
Years of animosity between tribes who were forced to form nations together, remains one of the biggest challenges for development in Africa. When Obama says that Africa has to look in the future to move on, the past still has a nefarious hold on Africa’s nation-building capabilities. Africa’s history of being under subjugation and slavery has all to do with the current disorganisation of the society of Africa. To look beyond history as Obama asserts, would be quiet difficult because the reconciliation solutions of Africa lie in the past where current problems were created. It is therefore important that the past is revisited to help in establishing the starting points of the many problems that have engulfed Africa.
The same could be said of the problems faced by African Americans, who for years have been persecuted in one form or another.
The other problem that lies with Africa is that through slavery, colonialism and post-colonialism periods, Africans have always lived in the shadow of the West. For centuries Africans have not been self-thinkers, and this has obviously affected innovative ideas on the part of African free thinking. It was through slavery and colonialism that the African way of life was made to be inferior, and whole cultures and traditions were systematically wiped out only to be replenished by western culture. Today, most sub-Saharan Africa struggles to emulate western cultures because their culture through years of subjugation, was made to look inferior. This in turn has created an identity crisis with modern Africa where society struggles with being an ‘African’, in a world where western culture is seen to be superior.
Looking at the political picture of Africa, one can see how a western style of democracy is not working in Africa. A lot of African countries that became democratic states, are today still grappling with corruption and bad governance issues because of poor accountability structures. Since the the early 1980s of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), Western ideology has been central to African affairs and time and again this has led to failure.
This historical disadvantage has and is still one of the biggest factors why Africa lags in the social, economic and political arenas. To disregard the linkage of the past and the current problems of Africa, would be a mistake because it is through history that nations are built. Africa’s tumultuous history needs to be understood and addressed, to create the many needed solutions for the continent because on the average, many African countries have only been independent for 50 years. To forge a strong Africa, Africans need to disregard assertions like those of Obama and seriously begin looking into the past to rectify the factors that disadvantaged societies, economically and politically. The options are few (for example it’s hard for countries to reunite into bigger and stronger nations), but it’s not an impossible task.
