There is a 21st century version of "the scramble
for Africa", a continuation of what started in the 19th century
(1880-1914) by the Europeans who pillaged the continent's resources, systematically
exploited its people, caused tribal and regional wars, destroying its culture;
and all of it by invoking social Darwinism and other Eurocentric theories,
including ethnocentrism and 'Exceptionalism', to justify white hegemony. The new round of neo-colonial race to carve
up Africa's lucrative agricultural lands, mineral wealth, fishing rights within
its territorial waters also extends to its geographical location that makes it
so convenient for South American cocaine trade through West Africa and heroin-cannabis
trade through East Africa.
According to the World Bank (September 2010), more than 110 million acres of farmland (the size of California and West Virginia combined) were sold during the first 11 months of 2009. This was all in a mad rush of foreign private and government investors to secure cheap land (and labor to work the land), and all during the most serious economic recession in the postwar period. Between 1998 and 2008, the World Bank provided $23.7 billion for agribusiness around the world, much of it in Africa promoting what it calls 'efficient and sustainable' agriculture. Along with the erosion of subsistence farming that sustained families, there is the corresponding erosion of subsistence fishing owing to competition from European and Asian commercial fishing operations in coastal Africa. All of this is an integral part of the corporate control of Africa with the support of governments in the advanced capitalist countries and with the backing of the IMF and World Bank Group’s subsidiary agencies like the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
In 2010 the IFC has invested an estimated $100 million for agribusiness in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with merely $18 million per year in the previous decade. Naturally, IFC and World Bank investment which runs into the billions focuses solely on corporate agriculture that displaces the small farmer. This despite the advice from experts in sub-Saharan countries who argued that the best use of farmland is to distribute it to villagers (about 12 hectares per family) and give them the means to cultivate it to end hunger while also generating a potential surplus for trade. Foreign-owned agribusiness backed by their governments and international financial organizations such as the IFC produce commercial crops for export, while the native population remains poverty-stricken. It should be noted that foreign aid for Africa's agriculture dropped by 75% since 1980, thus creating the need for private foreign investment in the sector. This is all in the name of furthering the goals of privatization that Western neo-liberal push across the world with devastating consequences for workers and peasants.
In the last one hundred years, agriculture in the industrialized countries has undergone a revolution that has resulted in just a small segment of the labor force earning its living from farming, animal husbandry and fishing. Technology and science applied to the sector has raised production and made agriculture less labor intensive just as specialization and concentration has resulted in higher productivity. Modernization of the primary sector of production entails that large commercial operations in the primary sector of production, backed by favorable government policies, have taken over the sector that requires expensive agrochemicals and machinery, and a distribution network to secure steady profits. In Africa’s case, only large invariably foreign-owned commercial enterprises are able to operate under this model of development, forcing the small farmers and peasants into poverty.
With each recessionary cycle more small farmers in Africa and around the world are squeezed out of the business, while neo-liberal apologists not just in the corporate board rooms and the media, but in government and UN continue to sing the praises of large scale commercial operations as the panacea for capitalism. The transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture in first in Western Europe and then in US freed the surplus labor force for the manufacturing and service sectors of production. In the case of Africa, however, there is no manufacturing or service sector large enough to absorb the surplus labor force that is uprooted from subsistence farming and animal husbandry.
The assumption by governments, banks, and mainstream
economists is that commercial agriculture in the form of agribusiness is a
necessary development of modernization. Another assumption is that only
large-scale agribusiness, which is subsidized by government and international
organizations like the World Bank and IFFC among others, can meet the rising
demand the world's rising food demand while keeping costs low. After all,
manufacturing is just around the corner for Africa, although it promises to be
the kind of manufacturing we have seen in Bangladesh and other south Asian
countries where living standards are very low and working conditions very poor.
Given the trend toward corporate agriculture, in the last fifteen years, governments and private firms from around the world have been investing in sub-Sahara Africa because corporations chase the highest return for the lowest possible investment under the most favorable conditions to capital possible. Besides agribusinesses acquiring more land, banks, hedge and pension funds, commodity traders, foundations and individual investors have been buying land as part of portfolio investments for an average of $1 per hectare. This is in an attempt to cash in on low-cost land and labor amid a growing demand for raw food products and bio-fuels.
Given the trend toward corporate agriculture, in the last fifteen years, governments and private firms from around the world have been investing in sub-Sahara Africa because corporations chase the highest return for the lowest possible investment under the most favorable conditions to capital possible. Besides agribusinesses acquiring more land, banks, hedge and pension funds, commodity traders, foundations and individual investors have been buying land as part of portfolio investments for an average of $1 per hectare. This is in an attempt to cash in on low-cost land and labor amid a growing demand for raw food products and bio-fuels.
The EU is hoping to reduce carbon emissions by using
at least 10% bio-fuel of all fuel products by 2020. The US is aiming to reduce
its foreign dependence on oil by 70% in the next 15 years. With the help of the
World Bank and IFC, the EU and the US have been looking to Africa - more than
700 million hectares appropriated for agribusiness - as the continent to invest
in bio-fuels; this at a time that the Europeans have also been eyeing Africa as
the next frontier for solar energy. Latin America is also a target for bio-fuel
and other agrarian investment, but Africa offers even more attractive prospects
in part because of the Arab and Chinese interest as well.
In the past decade, India, China, Japan, and Arab countries have joined the 21st century scramble for Africa, in some cases because governments are concerned about soil, water, and natural resources conservation in their own countries. Private investors and governments are aggressively seeking to partition Africa's rich agricultural land as the cost of agricultural commodities is expected to rise once the current recession ends. Saudi Arabia has set aside $5 billion in low-interest loans to Saudi agribusinesses to invest in agriculturally attractive countries. Another reason for the new scramble for Africa is because of what the UN Food and Agricultural Organization calls 'spare land', areas not under cultivation, or underutilized.
Developed countries have used Africa for its raw materials and as a consumer of imported manufactured products and foreign business services, but not as roughly equal trading partners as is France and Germany. Rather, Africa has been the victim of unequal terms of trade, and external control of its key extractive sectors. In short, Africa remains semi-colonial and continues to become increasingly dependent on developed countries for overvalued manufactured products and services while exporting raw materials at prices commodities markets in the West determine based on speculative interest.
In the past decade, India, China, Japan, and Arab countries have joined the 21st century scramble for Africa, in some cases because governments are concerned about soil, water, and natural resources conservation in their own countries. Private investors and governments are aggressively seeking to partition Africa's rich agricultural land as the cost of agricultural commodities is expected to rise once the current recession ends. Saudi Arabia has set aside $5 billion in low-interest loans to Saudi agribusinesses to invest in agriculturally attractive countries. Another reason for the new scramble for Africa is because of what the UN Food and Agricultural Organization calls 'spare land', areas not under cultivation, or underutilized.
Developed countries have used Africa for its raw materials and as a consumer of imported manufactured products and foreign business services, but not as roughly equal trading partners as is France and Germany. Rather, Africa has been the victim of unequal terms of trade, and external control of its key extractive sectors. In short, Africa remains semi-colonial and continues to become increasingly dependent on developed countries for overvalued manufactured products and services while exporting raw materials at prices commodities markets in the West determine based on speculative interest.
One is favorably impressed by the rhetoric regarding “sustainable
development” that the media, governments, the World Bank, and even corporations
promise as though such development translates into social justice. After all,
the hypocrisy of corporate responsibility regarding the eco-system has been
exposed repeatedly not just by oil companies operating in Nigeria, but even by
Volkswagen as its flagrant scandal regarding emissions manipulation proved in
October 2015. The EU and US quest for bio-fuel development in Africa, and for
that matter in Latin America, has nothing to do with 'sustainable development'
or engendering greater 'self-sufficiency' or helping to 'develop' Africa -
rhetoric that the UN, World Bank, western governments and multinational
corporations are using to make 'the new scramble for Africa' more palatable to
the world. The rhetoric is obligatory to placate the masses to retain their
trust in the corporate world.
Will the people of Africa solve the chronic problems of poverty and disease as a result of the exploitation of land and labor to satisfy the demand for food and bio-fuels in Western nations? Africa's food requirements will double in the next two to three decades, a point that foreign agribusinesses, governments and IFC and World Bank are using to justify the commercialization of agriculture under foreign ownership. In the process of the neo-colonial land-grab, evictions of peasants and small farmers, entire villages uprooted, civil unrest, and citizens' complaints of 'land grabbing' have been common. Protests owing to social injustice do not stop governments from approving agribusiness deals backed by powerful forces. One common justification used for the new scramble for Africa is that the acquired territories are not utilized or 'wasteland'. Governments often do not charge agribusiness for the water they use. Just a single agribusiness belonging to an Arab investor in Ethiopia, for example, uses as much water as 100,000 people - water of course is the most precious commodity in many parts of Africa. This is the reality of agribusiness and its role in drought-ridden East Africa.
Will the people of Africa solve the chronic problems of poverty and disease as a result of the exploitation of land and labor to satisfy the demand for food and bio-fuels in Western nations? Africa's food requirements will double in the next two to three decades, a point that foreign agribusinesses, governments and IFC and World Bank are using to justify the commercialization of agriculture under foreign ownership. In the process of the neo-colonial land-grab, evictions of peasants and small farmers, entire villages uprooted, civil unrest, and citizens' complaints of 'land grabbing' have been common. Protests owing to social injustice do not stop governments from approving agribusiness deals backed by powerful forces. One common justification used for the new scramble for Africa is that the acquired territories are not utilized or 'wasteland'. Governments often do not charge agribusiness for the water they use. Just a single agribusiness belonging to an Arab investor in Ethiopia, for example, uses as much water as 100,000 people - water of course is the most precious commodity in many parts of Africa. This is the reality of agribusiness and its role in drought-ridden East Africa.
One reason for the rise of the informal economy that
includes everything from hand-carved wood statues to cocaine from Colombia and
heroin from Afghanistan using West and East Africa as hubs before sending the
product to Europe is that the neo-liberal model of development has failed. In
fact, it has failed so miserably that young impoverished Africans join rebel
groups inspired by radical Islam or tribal loyalty. At the same time the
combination of rebel activity, and violence linked to narcotics as well as
human trafficking and weapons, also linked to radical Islam and tribal allegiances
in some cases, is a reflection of a neo-colonial system, no matter the lofty
claims by Western governments, NGOs, media, the UN and World Bank that they are
looking after the interests of African people.
NARCOTICS TRADE IN AFRICA
Africa's structural problems have contributed to a
thriving narcotics trade through the Western and Eastern areas because of
geographical considerations. Given that in sub-Saharan countries the percentage
of labor force involved in agriculture, animal husbandry and fisheries ranges
from 50 to 75, the result of agribusiness is to create a larger percentage of
wage laborers instead of engaged in the subsistence economy. A percentage of
this population will choose to make a living in illegal activities – human trafficking,
weapons, and narcotics trade; others in piracy, still others in the thriving teenage
prostitution business that has a ready market around the world.
All of this is an integral part of an informal economy
that according to the African Development Bank contributes 55% of GDP in the
sub-Sahara region and accounts for 80% of the labor force. “Nine in 10 rural and urban workers have informal jobs in Africa and most
employees are women and youth. The prominence of the informal sector in most
African economies stems from the opportunities it offers to the most vulnerable
populations such as the poorest, women and youth.” http://www.afdb.org/en/blogs/afdb-championing-inclusive-growth-across-africa/post/recognizing-africas-informal-sector-11645/
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has been warning for
many years that a number of West and East African countries are now immersed in
the international drug trade, a reality that has consequences for criminal
activity and the overall subterranean economy and politics of Africa. Because the drug trade is so lucrative, the
income it generates is often larger than the entire GDP of some African
countries. This is the case with Guinea-Bissau where the cocaine trade amounts
to more than $2 billion and where violent crime in this former Portuguese
colony has been rising steadily. The
situation is not very different in Senegal where the airport at Dakar has been
used to transport cocaine from Latin America to Europe.
While West Africa is a hub for cocaine from Colombia and
Peru, East Africa is a hub for heroin and cannabis coming to the region from
South-East and Southwest Asia by air and sea, often onboard vessels that
transport legitimate commodities, and often owned and operated by European shipping
tycoons and of course European banks to launder drug money. A number of Greek shipping
tycoons have been linked to the illegal narcotics trade in Africa, but they
invariably enjoy European connections for distribution and laundering of
enormous amounts of money considering the street value is 20 times higher than
its original value when the products land in Africa.
While the drug trade may appear that it is outside the
mainstream of economic activity, it actually operates under the same laws of
capitalism and in practice under similar routines. The laws of supply and
demand apply as does the cooperation of government, albeit at a sub-level of
illegality through bribery no different than when a multinational corporation
bribes officials. Moreover, just as the extractive industries drain Africa of
capital so does the narcotics trade. People involved in this business are in
fact businessmen running operations of an illegal product but observing all
other rules of the market within which they operate and which makes no distinction
between drug money and corporate money. The bottom line for Africa is that both
the corporate and drug business result in taking capital out of the area and
leaving behind all the social and political problems.
The process of
de-capitalization, especially amid recessionary cycles in the world economy as
in the current case of depressed commodity prices, only increases the problems
with the informal economy that is a mere extension of the overall
outward-oriented dependent economy and a colonial remnant that gives rise to
illegal activities. East Africa around the Gulf of Aden is already the pirate
center of the world, and this in addition to the weapons and human trafficking trade.
Everything from illegal handicraft items to diamonds and gold are illegally
traded. West Africa is slowly transforming itself into the new world center for
South American narco-traffickers. Guinea, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Ghana,
Benin, Sierra Leone, and Senegal are among the most significant intermediary
narco-traffic countries linked to the Colombia-Venezuela coca trade.
In the absence of official cooperation,
everyone from custom officials, port authority, police, army and navy, all the
way up to cabinet officials, the drug trade would not be possible. In short,
the drug trade in Africa is an integral part of the political system and
informal economy that enjoys protection from a wide variety of players. This
makes transport low-risk in comparison with the Caribbean. With Russia as a new
player in the international drug trade and oligarchs behind the regime, the
activity has increased in the last decade.
During the
"just say No!" campaign of the Reagan era the US had the highest per
capita use--US population was around 4% but consumed 25 to 40% of the world's
illegal drugs--and this is not to say that a legal pill-for-everything panacea
in the US is not at its root a cultural trait. Today, however, both UK and
Spain surpass the US in per capita use of cocaine, and both countries along
with Portugal and France are the major destinations for coca that comes from
Latin America through West Africa.
Anecdotal evidence
suggests that Somalia, currently in the process of establishing a central
authority, is host to widespread illegal transactions, including drug and arms
trafficking. There are two important international airports in the region,
servicing the capitals' of Ethiopia and Kenya, which are used as transit points
for drugs. Both airports have connections between West Africa and the heroin producing
countries in South West and South East Asia. There is also an increasing use of
postal and courier services for cocaine, heroin and hashish.
Heroin trafficking
from Pakistan, Thailand and India to East Africa has been rising in the last
two decades. Some of this heroin finds its way to West Africa that also exports
to Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya through Ethiopia. Increasing number of Tanzanians
and Mozambicans are involved in the trafficking of heroin from Pakistan and
Iran, given that there the limited options in the formal economy. West African and
East African drug syndicates are inter-connected as they are to smugglers from
Latin America and South Asia, reflecting high level of organization.
Considering that
multinational corporations from Shell Oil to Siemens have a long history of
bribing African officials as they do non-Africans, narcotics traffickers' mode
of operation is no different than that of "legitimate" businesses.
And if the opportunity presents itself to make a living why is "dirty
money" any less valuable than "clean money," the latter of which
seems to be less than $500 a year for most Africans? Judging on the basis of
postwar recessions when per capita income has dropped as much as 50%, this
means that in this current crisis Africa will not only suffer greater
impoverishment than the rest of the world, but its economic problems will cause
more ethnic and tribal conflict, more epidemics, more intra- and
inter-continental emigration, and more political turmoil than any developed
nation can expect.
Such a climate
is ideal for more piracy, more weapons and narcotics transfer, more human
trafficking, and all of it part of the colonial and neo-colonial legacy of
outward oriented economy benefiting the developed countries. Though the
continent is in need of debt-relief and development assistance for the
short-term, the solution for a small segment of unemployed and destitute young
Africans is drugs, guns, and human trafficking that generates money, although
most of that money does not stay in the region and creates violence that
disrupts legitimate economic activity.
CONCLUSIONS
Using the
pretext of “terrorism”, a guerrilla movement under the flag of jihadists in
recent years, the West and pro-West regimes default all problems on such
fanatics in Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, Niger, Cameroon, Mali, Uganda
and Mauritania. In other words, the US and its European partners would have the
public believe that for decades when there were no Islamic jihadists,
sub-Sahara Africa under colonial and neo-colonial rule enjoyed social justice
and upward social mobility under democratic regimes. Even more insulting is the
implication that the Islamic militants are the cause and not the symptom of
Western exploitation of Africa and that if they are eliminated the continent
would have no problems. As counterproductive as jihadist warfare has been, and
as futile in achieving its goals, it is not the cause but one more symptom of
the neo-imperialist structure in the continent from Libya to South Africa, from
Nigeria to Kenya.
Besides
defaulting Africa’s problems on Islamic ‘terrorism’, there are also the
advocates of the neo-Malthusian theory - too many people too few resources,
rather than unequal income distribution. It is true that drought is a cyclical
natural disaster in parts of Eastern and Southern Africa and generally a
problem in a few other parts as well. However, does drought justify
Malthusianism and does it explain structural impediments to African
development? This is not say that a form of managed population control is not
desirable, but this is a matter of resources and education for the general
population.
The social fabric disrupted yet again by 'the new
scramble for Africa', continued political instability is a guarantee as much as
a rise in crime and social unrest. Amazingly, the same institutions that
contribute to Africa's devastation claim that they are acting in the name of
'progress, sustainable development and efficiency, helping to raise
productivity and exports, to create jobs by bringing foreign investment,' etc.;
the modern versions of "The White Man's Burden". The 'politically palatable' rhetoric of 'efficiency and sustainability' has
resulted in an outward-oriented agrarian sector catering to foreign markets
instead of inward-oriented economy designed to meet the rapidly rising
population's food needs. In 16th century England, farmers switched to animal
husbandry owing to rising demand for wool textiles. Peasants starved as the
cost of grain increased, thus "sheep ate people". In this
century, 'agribusinesses will be eating Africans'.
Apologists of agribusiness justify their support by
various arguments including ‘no country has developed’ with two-thirds of its labor
force living off the land and dependent on extractive industries. It is an
interesting coincidence that just as sub-Sahara Africa has been targeted by
drug lords in the last few years, it is also targeted by corporate farm
investors whose mode of operation is to use the low-valued land and labor and
corrupt public officials in order to serve foreign market demands. Rural
poverty will rise as a result of foreign corporate investment in African
agriculture. Will the 'new scramble for
Africa' by corporate investors and drug lords result in the elimination of
famine and disease; will it result in higher rising living standards for the
native population, or will it be another form of neo-colonialism in the name of
progress?
Uniting and
organizing at the grassroots to end racist neo-colonial exploitation whether in
the form of the formal economy based on mineral and agricultural exports or in
the informal economy that includes narcotics is the only solution for Africans.
Working toward sustainable development can only come from indigenous movements
that first change the externally-dependent political regimes and then undertake
to change the social order that would engender economic growth under an
inward-oriented model. Given the deep historical tribal and ethnic antagonisms
in Africa for which westerners are largely to blame, and the even stronger
western neo-colonial foundation that precludes horizontal development with the goal of raising living standards across the voard, the prospects of any of this taking place in
the forthcoming decades is highly unlikely. Africa will remain the continent of
contradictions with the world's poorest people, but some of the world's richest
natural resources that foreign capitalists will continue to exploit.
2 comments:
So you are saying that the Public-Private Partnerships are coming to fruition having used complex strategies and courts. These strategies depend on a fulcrum point that intercepts and exploits Gaia. It is thus urbanized and allows an environment of friendships--friendships that transcend the many divisions uniquely and often violently evolve in Africa.
And, non-lineage (or non-GMO) urban entities insure that innovative financing shifts debt debilitation away from these partnerships?
Poor Tiny Tim
Is it any wonder that Jesus wept?
That He had to raise Eleazar from the dead?
Post a Comment