If Africa gets it right it would impoverish Western countries who are largely dependent on exploiting Africa and its peoples natural resources and their land for their wealth, so its in Western interests that this doesn’t happen. So long as Africa’s so called rise is resource driven, Africa and its people are doomed. Hence, whatever the West says in terms of assisting Africa is really all hot air, all talk.
For instance look at diamonds from South and East African countries, Western corporations buy them for a pittance from these countries, they are cut in the West and resold for millions of dollars, around the world, who gets the money? Not African governments. The same applies to all other African resources which are bought in their natural form, processed and then resold for a fortune by Western corporations, in short, without continents like Africa, the West would be dirt poor.
80% of the francophone African countries revenues, goes to France and these countries take 20%, which they have to then allocate for use in infrastructure, pay salaries, provide electricity and so on, so does Africa own its resources and its vast wealth?
As Tom Burgis in his book: The Looting Machine aptly states Africa is at present going through a form of “financialized colonialism”, what economists have called the resource curse, as Western and emerging economies such as China scramble for the continents natural resources.
By and large the West does what it likes and goes unchallenged. The West polices the world, but who polices them? So the rise of China is potentially a good thing, but at whose expense? Moral arguments won’t stop nations from exploiting each other it didn’t stop the West from developing the slave trade, in fact they used the bible to justify their actions!
We cannot afford to place our destiny in the hands of others. Africa’s technological development stagnated due to our contact with Europeans and they don’t want Africans to become technologically advanced as they would stand to lose, for obvious reasons.
Someone on radio 4 said that Africa and some parts of the Middle East have always been poorer than Europe. The truth is obviously, the reverse. Europe has always been poorer than most of the worlds peoples. Mansa Musa of Mali in west Africa was known to be the richest man in the world of his time, perhaps ever said the Daily Mail, this is going back to the 14th century!.
Did Africans lie down and accept their fate? If one wants to exploit or use a whole people, one must first control their thinking, then one will also control their actions. Is it a coincidence that Africa has religious fundamentalism, Christian and Muslim? Karl Marx said religion is the opium of the people. Religion is basically a means of mass control/exploitation.
Poverty is also a state of mind, it keeps people passive and submissive, obedient, unquestioning. History has shown that for fundamental change to occur, people must assert themselves and demand their rights. Hilary Clinton, mentioned in one of her many speeches, that African people must hold their leaders accountable, but the problems are much deeper than that.
Within the continent itself, Africa is in a power tussle, between the middle classes who helped nation building and the lower classes who are ruling Africa at the moment. Africa has had too many rulers just before independence who lacked common ideas as to how to develop and implement change, unlike in Asia or Europe, who had a few rulers over vast expanses of land and no one ethnic group wants to play second fiddle. The problem is a problem of who controls African resources. Who “will eat” the crumbs left over by Western Corporations.
So it becomes obvious that since independence, external sources cannot solely be blamed for Africa’s poverty, as we all know corruption, cronyism, elitism, terrorism, poor education, (African countries spend over 3 times as much on defence than they do on education), poor infrastructure, excesses of power, lack of impartiality in the legal system, judiciary and police, tribalism and a general lack of unified action and so on, have taken their toll of African countries.