(Gambia) – Yet again May 25 has come this year marking the 54th anniversary of African Liberation Day without the continental unity that was envisaged as a means to economic empowerment, security and independence.
In Europe, it took them 37 years to transform the European Economic Community to the European Union. Today the EU as a collective makes nothing less than 150 billion US dollars in trade with Africa. In the same vein the US makes nothing less than 100 billion dollars out of Africa, while China collects at least 200 billion dollars a year in Africa. Meantime the total intra-African trade amounts to only 11.3% of Africa’s total trade with the world. For example, non-African airlines account for 80% of the intra-continental market share. Consequently, Brookings Institution and other experts report that 75% of the world’s poorest countries are located in Africa. In simpler terms 408, 213, 640 people, i.e. almost half of the population of Africa lives in extreme poverty.
Nonetheless, experts tell us that one of the fastest growing regions of the world is Africa with average growth rate of 5.2%. For that matter some claim that therefore Africa is rising. Yet it is estimated that Africa imports nearly 83 per cent of its food and losing on trade with the world. For example, the International Coffee Organization reported that in 2014 Africa —the home of coffee— earned nearly $2.4 billion from the crop, yet Germany, a leading processor, earned about $3.8 billion from coffee re-exports. The reason for this anomaly is because the EU imposes tariff barriers for which non-decaffeinated or unroasted green coffee is exempt from the charges, while a 7.5% charge is imposed on roasted coffee. As a result, the bulk of Africa’s coffee export to the EU is unroasted green coffee. This means technically the EU disadvantages African farmers and consequently undermines industrialization in Africa through tariffs. This is possible because, aside of all other things the EU is united, while African leaders have failed to create such a unity.
According to World Bank, by the end of 2015 Africa imported 221 billion US dollars far more than it exports which stands at 166 billion dollars. Among the seven regions of the world, Africa’s share of global trade is only 1.91% slightly higher than only South Asia at 1.86%, which is a region composed of several tiny island nations in the Pacific. In 2016, the World Bank noted that sub-Saharan Africa exported only 28.8 million US dollars of consumer goods, while it imported a whopping 80 million US dollars worth of consumer goods. What these facts and figures indicate is that in the first place Africa is only a consumer society and not a producer of manufactured goods. Thus it merely exports raw materials as always. Consequently this points to the fact that until today the resources of Africa continue to enrich and benefit the rest of the world more than they benefit ordinary Africans so long as it exports raw materials. This has been a point that Nkrumah lamented in the 1960s claiming that if the resources of the continent were put into the use of Africa, this would have made the homeland one of the most advanced places on earth.
To understand the significance of the resources of Africa, one can recall the former US Senator Jesse Helms during the Reagan Administration in the US. This was a man who strongly supported the Reagan Administration in the 1980s to oppose any attempts to impose sanctions against Apartheid South Africa on the basis that such an action would effectively hamper American interests. He stated clearly at the time that South Africa was the source of over 80% of America’s mineral supply, noting that there is no substitute for chrome in their military and industrial manufacturing. Thus he argued that without South Africa’s chrome, no engines for modern jet aircraft, cruise missiles, or armaments could be built. He went further to say that without Africa’s chrome, surgical equipment and utensils could not be produced, and their hospitals and doctors would be helpless. A former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig further buttressed this point that the loss of the mineral output of South Africa could have the severest consequences to the existing economy and security of the world! This shows that Africa in fact has the world’s richest individual countries in almost any kind of mineral resources, and yet the African is the poorest person in the world. Hence Africa is not poor, but it is Africans who are made to be poor.
Of course Kwame Nkrumah had argued that the Congo Basin alone holds enough hydro energy sufficient to power every village, town and city in Africa. The British bank, HSBA has noted that 0.03% of the solar energy in the Sahara Desert is enough to power the whole of Western Europe. Yet so long as Africa’s resources are not in the control of Africans to be exploited for their benefit, the spectre of poverty, powerlessness and oppression shall not end on the continent. For Africa to be able to control and exploit its resources primarily for themselves would require that Africa have democratic and visionary leaders who build strong institutions and ensure good governance. Since 1963 the building of such institutions and good governance have been the bane of the continent because in most part we lacked the right political leaders and intellectuals to do so. Consequently oppressive regimes with weak and corruption leadership have come to characterize most states in Africa. The evidence of that is also glaring.
A 2017 report by Amnesty International have revealed that human rights defenders, journalists and protesters in West and Central Africa are facing ever-higher levels of persecution, intimidation and violence. It says there is a growing onslaught of attacks against brave individuals standing up to injustice. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s 2016 governance report stated that over the past decade, i.e. from 2006 to 2016, the continental average score in overall governance improved by only one point. But the report noted that two-thirds of the countries on the continent, representing 67% of the African population, have shown deterioration in freedom of expression over the past ten years. It says further that 11 countries, covering over a quarter (27%) of the continent’s population, have declined across all three civil society measures – Civil Society Participation, Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association & Assembly – over the decade.
According to Heritage Foundation in its ‘Freedom in the World 2017’ report, Africa is beset by entrenched autocrats and fragile institutions. Consequently more than 75% of Africans live in ‘Not Free’ societies thanks to weak and corrupt leadership of the continent. Transparency International noted that even countries that have been noted to be models of stability, the incidence of corruption has risen significantly. In its Corruption Perception Index 2017, the organization noted that it was the rampant corruption in Ghana that led citizens to voice their frustrations through the 2016 presidential election, resulting in an incumbent president losing for the first time in Ghana’s history.
Consequent we have seen that despite stable governments with free and fair elections and peaceful change of power in Ghana and Senegal as examples, the dividends in terms of social and economic progress are quite low. In the UNDP Human Development Index 2016, both Ghana and Senegal rank as least developed countries at 139 and 162 respectively. Life expectancy in Ghana is 61.5 years while at 66.9 in Senegal while poverty rates stands at 45.4% in Ghana and 53.3% in Senegal. One may therefore ask, what has democracy brought to the people of these countries? The answer lies in their weak and corrupt leadership, which are not pursuing the relevant social and economic policies that should have transformed their countries after 20 years of stable democratic experience. Even the biggest economy of Africa, Nigeria life expectancy stands at 53 years while 88% of the population are below the poverty line and ranked at 152 as a least developed country thanks to poor leadership!
Weak and corrupt leadership has therefore severely defrauded Africa and thereby deny the continent huge opportunity to transform itself into a modern advanced society within a generation. The effect of such weak and corrupt leadership can now be seen in the level and amount of illicit financial outflows from the continent. A 2015 report by the High-level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa established by the African Union and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) puts the average financial losses at between 50 billion and 148 billion dollars a year through trade mispricing. This is more than the combined foreign direct investment and aid (ODA) to Africa thereby proving that Africa indeed has the capacity to finance its own development if indeed the continent has democratic leadership and strong institutions of good governance.
The incidence of such weak leadership is attested by the fact that as of today, 16 African countries have presidents who have been in power for more than 10 years. Some of the most corrupt and brutal dictators on earth can be found in Eritrea, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Mauritania, Cameroun, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Sudan, Congo and DRCongo. Others such as the presidents of South Africa or Kenya are notorious for corruption and vanity.
The effect of such poor leadership can now be seen in the levels of poverty, deprivation and oppression across the continent. Consequently such weak leadership and poor governance environment generated all forms of conflicts that have produced more than nine million refugees and internally displaced people. The situation further deteriorated into a high rate of brain drain and illegal migration where the youth of the continent embark on dangerous journeys only to perish in the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea or trapped in the conflict in Libya.
What is to be done?
The masses of Africa must be angry and impatient. The increasing military and economic presence of America, Europe and China among other players in Africa in their quest to dominate and control the continent’s resources is a direct threat to the security and future of Africa. There is no doubt that the continent is now a leading theatre of international rivalry thanks to its poor leadership, which must be reversed. For far too long Africa has been at the mercy of outsiders who invade the continent for their own benefit at the detriment of the continent’s benefit. This has been largely possible because of fragmented and weak leadership. The lessons of African history clearly show that its lack of unity was the fundamental disadvantage that enabled Europeans and Arabs to enslave and colonize the continent and continue to dominate the region until today. So long as Africa fails to engage in self-examination in order to restructure and reposition itself it shall remain weak and dominated as the wretched of the earth.
There are lessons for Africans to learn from the experiences of US, Europe and China. The case of China is particularly instructive. Starting in 1949, the Chinese have shown that with determination and visionary leadership, despite all the shortcomings, a vast nation like Africa can also uplift itself to become a major power in the world. Today china has become a leading political, economic, social, cultural, military and intellectual power in the world thanks to their leadership. Both China and the West offer a lesson to Africa that every country has to identify its supreme interests to pursue them uncompromisingly and to depend on itself in order to build its own capacity. This is the lesson of history that Africa must learn to embrace and put it into practice.
On 5 May 2017 China launched its first passenger aircraft. Already they have built their own naval aircraft carrier while their divers reached the deepest levels of the ocean as their astronauts shoot up to the highest points of space. China is already a nuclear power. In 2013, Pres. Xi Jinping launched his ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, a visionary blueprint for global economic development in the 21st century for China. Taking reference from the historic Silk Road, which transformed the nature of international trade links in ancient times, the Belt and Road Initiative is essentially a strategy of the Chinese for global dominance. For that matter they are building roads, railways and sea routes from China across to Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa covering more than 60 countries carrying merchandise from and to China. The first of such routes already opened between China and UK on 19 January 2017 when the first ever-direct freight train service from China arrived in London after an epic 17-day journey spanning ten countries on its 7456-mile trip.
One may not agree with the system of governance in China and certainly it has a horrible human rights record. However the facts also speak of a determination of a people who are prepared to stand on their own in the world. Africa does not have to copy the political system of China but certainly Africa has to learn from the experience and determination and initiatives of not only the Chinese but also of the Europeans and Americans as peoples and regions who are committed to the upliftment of their peoples by any means. History has confirmed that no one can develop another people but all peoples develop themselves based on their conscious ideas and actions. Until now, Africa has not proved that it is prepared and committed to produce its own ideas and put then into practice.
Even when those ideas exist, the vast majority of African leaders and intellectuals ignore those ideas for foreign ideas. For example there cannot be a better, more relevant and pragmatic ideas for African progress, security and power than those of Kwame Nkrumah. Yet since the 1960s many African politicians and intellectuals completely ignore and ridicule his ideas even though he was the first and only leader to propose a clear strategy, actions and timeline for a unified Africa. Despite ignoring his ideas, yet since then until now both the OAU and AU continue to refer to his proposals in a half-hearted manner. Furthermore there cannot be a more relevant blueprint for African integration and development than both the OAU Lagos Plan of Action 1980 and the OAU Abuja Treaty 1991. Yet these documents were also completely neglected as the AU went ahead to development its own Agenda 2063 without any bearing on the Lagos and Abuja documents. It is clear that if Africa had the right leadership at the time that pursued to the letter the Lagos Pan of Action to be followed by the Abuja Treaty, today the face of Africa would have been different.
Unsurprisingly, the African politicians and intellectuals completely ignore these relevant and instrumental tools as they opt for the more irrelevant World Bank and IMF-inspired ideas such as their Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) and the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC). These strategies, programs and initiatives promoted the idea of foreign investment, privatization, limited public spending and unregulated or liberalized economies with no agenda for industrialization when it is clear that none of such ideas were ever used by the US, Europe and China to develop and reach where they are today. But the African politician and intellectual allowed these foreign entities to impose such programs on their countries only to produce more poverty, corruption and high cost of living in Africa.
As we mark the 54th anniversary of African Liberation Day, the average African must seriously reflect on these issues in order to take a definitive position that Africa demands and deserve democratic and visionary leadership and strong institutions of good governance. This must be the position of each and every African if we are going to transform this most endowed continent into one of the most advanced places in the word in our lifetime. Let Africans demand a New Africa. This current Africa is decadent and wretched. It must be killed for a New Africa to emerge. For that to happen, each and every African must be a new citizen as defined by Kwame Nkrumah,
“Africa needs a new type of citizen: A dedicated, modest, honest, informed man and woman who submerge self in service to the nation and mankind. A man and woman who abhor greed and detest vanity. A new type of man and woman whose humility is his and her strength and whose integrity is his and her greatness”.
Forward To One Unified Democratic Africa Now!
By Madi Jobarteh
54 yrs of African distabilization rest on the shoulders of African military and political elites. Support and collusion was provided by former colonial masters, America, Russia and China to ensure complete disintegration and total collapse of our institutions and way of life. Let us not delude ourselves we the people share huge blame as collaborators in our own downward spiral.
Remedy:
Creat a subregional armed forces to maintain peace and stability and control small arms proliferation. The natural history of West African countries armed forces is dismal and wasteful. We as a people are not matured enough to maintain a professional military establishment. Fact check!
Negotiate West African trade relationship with trading partners. Individual countries are almost always at the mercy of pirate nations like China, USA and Europe. Fact check!
God Bless The Gambia
That’s saying it as it is.
Last week Madi called out African long term serving Dictators and highlighted African corruption which runs into {last estimate} 280 Billion Dollars per annum.
This week it’s the rest of The World.
280 Billion dollars is more than enough to make Africa fit and strong and independent.
Meanwhile The rest of the world gives people relief aid and feeds the sick the vulnerable and those suffering from wars and famine and sends doctors to fight disease and medicines to save thousands of lives every year.
Research into African waterborne and airborne diseases and human transmitted diseases, Funded by Western nations runs into several billion pounds every year. The Chinese for example have been funding capital projects for 3 decades and continue to do so. The Russian/ European/ American and British have raised a tourism industry for Africa worth many billions of euro’s.
The rest of the world underpins African trade and free trade and Agriculture.
If your going to tell this story>>>tell it as it is>> not as you would like to think.
Sub-Saharan Africa subsidising richer nations, campaigners say
By:
Mark Smulian
24 May 17
African nations are subsiding countries far richer than they, research by a group of development charities has found.
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Extractive industries
The extractive industries were a key culprit in Africa’s “haemorrhaging” of funds, the report said.
In a report titled How the World Profits From Africa’s Wealth, the charities said African countries received $161.6bn in loans, remittances and aid each year, but lost $203bn through tax avoidance, debt payments and resource extraction, creating a $42bn deficit.
Some $68bn was lost through capital flight, mainly by multinational companies “deliberately misreporting the value of their imports or exports to reduce tax”, while $18bn went on debt interest and principal payments and some $29bn was stolen through illegal logging, fishing and the trade in wildlife and plants.
Aisha Dodwell, a campaigner with Global Justice Now, one of the organisations that published the report, highlighted that it challenges the narrative that “Africa is poor and needs our help”.
“This research shows that what African countries really need is for the rest of the world to stop systematically looting them,” she said. “While the form of colonial plunder may have changed over time, its basic nature remains unchanged.”
The report, which excludes North Africa, said the British government bore a special responsibility for sub-Saharan African losses because “it sits at the head of a giant network of overseas tax havens facilitating this – something that could easily become a greater problem post-Brexit”.
It said Africa ought to be rich given its mineral wealth, skilled workers, new businesses and biodiversity, yet “much of the continent’s wealth is being extracted by those outside it”.
Some losses could not easily be quantified, it continued, for example from trade policies under which unprocessed agricultural goods are refined abroad.
Aid should be reconfigured as ‘reparations’ for extraction of wealth and set to reflect Africa’s losses, “not some arbitrary rate set by governments out of their own ‘generosity’”, the charities said.
Economic policies should also be recast, they argued, so they lead to equitable development.
Despite sub-Saharan Africa’s economy growing at 5% in recent years, poverty has remained deep and continues to rise. Meanwhile, western governments have pressed for trade and investment liberalisation and privatisation, which the report said had enriched foreign investors rather than Africans.
But it also said African governments should stop relying on extractive industries, in particular where these failed to pay adequate tax.
“African governments should de-prioritise extractives and focus on promoting other forms of economic activity that foster sustainable and inclusive growth,” the report urged.
The coalition of UK and African organisations that worked on the report included Global Justice Now, Health Poverty Action, the Uganda Debt Network and the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC).
Bernard Abada, policy analyst with ISODEC Ghana, said: “’Development’ is a lost cause in Africa while we are haemorrhaging billions every year.
“Some serious structural changes need to be made to promote economic policies that enable African countries to best serve the needs of their people.”
Scared: Thankyou !
Thank God the above-mentioned authoritative report vindicates my legalistic stance in the Chinese company dispute. Just for your information Mr Stales!
For your information, I have in due course read dozens of books about the tax evasion/avoidance techniques employed by corporations in recent decades in connexion with writing my masters thesis. Hence, my insistence that” smart “charges” must constitute the lion’s share of the individual strategies of African countries’ defensive strategies against abuse of this nature.
Once Africa becomes truly independent with sound democratic trading policies and eliminates Foreign exploitation that also enriches “the African few”>>> then the many can become upwardly mobile. Notwithstanding the millions of jobs that the African migrant enjoy’s from the rest of the world.
As we say >> it’s 6 and two 3’s
This a situation of shared responsibility.
Let me see Madi and others donate to the dialysis programme from Mrs Barr.
Put some money where your mouth is.
Mike, what about those of us with only mouths as most of my brothers and sisters. On a serious note, we put ourselves at a disadvantage in relationships because we fail to demonstrate good faith and effort. If you need help, show me you have done all in your power to help yourself. Putting our hands out makes people view us as beneath them and treat us as such. If we view the world as a welfare state and see ourselves as recipients of aide then we relegate ourselves to second class citizenry. Gambians and indeed Africans must leverage human and natural resources to compete effectively in the community of nations. Let’s put our money on Gambia and our mouths online.
God Bless The Gambia
End Stage renal failure is a merciless decline of the human body mass. EGFR is the measure of Kidney function. When kidney function {EGFR} falls to 8% The patient must commence dialysis. If not the body mass shrinks. Extreme loss of weight and energy. At 3 % the body rejects food and you literally starve to death.
Dialysis can maintain life. But this requires dialysis 3 times a week.{ Hemodialysis} A process that takes about 6 hours. Hemodialysis requires a suture in the arm. Peritonital dialysis can be done through the night at home.
{ That’s if you can afford a machine} This requires a small operation to fit a tube in the stomach.
Kidney transplant {if there is a donor match} Can allow a patient to live a normal life upto 20 years and sometimes beyond. All that is required is the taking of the anti rejection drug Adeport usually a single dose of around 5 Mg morning and night and a small amount of steroids.
The other treatment option is Conservative management. This responds to the symptoms of renal failure where the patient eventually dies.
I know two of the renal Consultants in the picture. I was surprised to see them here on Jollof News. They are amongst the very best in the UK.
My compliments to Mrs Barr and the team.
I can tell you with certainty that end stage renal failure is a very bad way to die. It can be prevented.
Sorry to go off subject. But this is close to my heart.
Mr Manneh: I am not here to score top points for my opinions>> I hope you feel the same; This is not a competition. It is an exercise in amicable solutions, outcomes and peaceful resolution to so many differences.