ONE hundred years ago, European colonists conquered and plundered
Africa because they had far superior technology. To this very day,
European nations continue to plunder Africa because they possess advance
weapons. This time the weapon of choice in the re-conquest of Africa is
financial warfare; it is no longer military force. But the end result
is the same: Western corporations profit, whilst Africa remains
underdeveloped and over-exploited.
Financial imperialism is the system through which a dictatorship of
Western capital exercises authoritarian control over African economies
in order to perpetuate the exploitation of the continent for the benefit
of the West's capitalist class.Africa is a paradox that underscores the
ongoing power of financial imperialism. She is spectacularly rich, yet
the natural capital that is extracted from above and below her
children's feet continues to enrich, not Africans, but the people who
facilitate Africa's impoverishment: Western capitalists.
Financial imperialism is widening the gap between the white
bourgeois, who are a handful of North Atlantic elites, and everybody
else.Western "human rights organisations" replaced yesterday's
missionaries, who demonise and undermine independent-minded African
governments. White minority governments, which ran dictatorships in
African capitals, have now given way to white dictatorships directed
from European capitals.
European nations use debt as a weapon against Africa. Debt exploits
Africa by ensuring that funds are diverted from local developmental
investment strategies towards interest payments into imperialist banks.
Debt thereby creates a form of Financial Low Intensity Conflict (FLIC), a
new kind of warfare, far better adapted to the twenty-first century
than "primitive" forms of warfare like invasion and occupation.
These more "primitive" techniques are reserved for certain African
leaders who refuse to plunge their people into debt for the benefit of
foreign capital. Leaders who have been assassinated by European powers
for resisting Financial Low Intensity Conflict include Muammar Gaddafi,
Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara, to name but a few. "Debt is a
cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa", remarked Thomas Sankara, just
months before his assassination.
What, after all, is the objective of war? War is an act of violence
whose goal is to force the adversary to do one's will. Debt provides a
powerful lever for forcing the third-world "adversary" to submit to the
will of the Western creditors. Africa spends more on debt interest
payments to creditors in Europe than it does on investing in education
and healthcare. In short, if the West cancelled African debt, European
nations and the United Nations wouldn't need to provide aid for African
schooling and medicine.
The West's tactic is to use the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank to load African economies, governments, companies and
families with debt, siphon off their income as debt interest payments
and then foreclose when African debtors lack the means to pay. Indebting
African governments gives creditors a lever to pry away land, public
infrastructure, and other property in the public domain. Indebting
African companies enables creditors to seize employee pension savings.
The history of debt is 4,000 years old. From 2,000 BC to the time of
Jesus, it was normal for all of the countries in the world to
periodically cancel the debts when they became too large to pay.This was
easy to do in a society where most debts were owed to the State.
Nowadays, African debt is controlled by a Western dictatorship of
private capital, led by a consortium of imperialist banks that prefer
profit to debt forgiveness. After all, profit is indifferent to human
suffering.
Debt is not the only way in which the West keeps Africa
underdeveloped and de-industrialised. In fact, it is not even the
primary weapon. The main weapon in the West's arsenal of financial
imperialism is the promotion of neoliberal economic policies through
Western institutions, like the IMF and World Bank, as well as through
local puppet neo-liberal political parties.
Neo-liberalism is unquestionably the greatest cancer spreading across
the African continent. Neo-liberalism is the promotion of a combination
of counter-developmental economic policies, such as privatisation,
austerity and structural adjustment that put the interests of foreign
capital over local labour.
Through debt and neo-liberalism, the IMF and World Bank exert
de-facto control over the economies of many African States. The World
Bank and IMF control most African currencies, determine macro-economic
policy, and national budgets. The indebted African State is thus left
with just its judicial functions and above all, the maintenance of
internal public order. This is one crucial State function the Western
creditors want nothing to do with.
As Ghana's founding father Kwame Nkrumah, pointed out, the essence of
financial imperialism is that "the State which is subject to it is, in
theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international
sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political
policy is directed from outside."
Corruption is often considered to be one of the greatest diseases
plaguing Africa. Truth is, corruption and financial imperialism go hand
in hand: corruption is the basis on which the comprador bourgeoisie can
arise, prepared to sell the rights of their people to imperialism,
provided they receive their cut. In short, financial imperialism fuels
corruption just as much as corruption fuels financial imperialism.
In Africa, poverty and underdevelopment are the symptoms; debt and
neo-liberalism are the cancer. The cure is a long-sustained dose of
industrialisation through mineral refinement and a robust look-East
policy. China has recently announced that it will provide Africa with
loans of a staggering $1 trillion for infrastructure and development
over the next twelve years.
In contrast, last year, the World Bank's
spending on Africa was just $5.6 billion.Africa is China's success
story: whereas, the Americans bring drones and economic destabilisation
to Africa, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams.
Financial imperialism has meant that as with tobacco, diamonds, cocoa
and oil, Africa exports its precious resources to the West, only to buy
them back at a premium. This is one of Africa's greatest problems and
biggest opportunities. The solution to this problem is simple: Africa
must not only control its raw materials but also build the refinement
capacity to make them into finished products. Mineral refinement is the
much-needed bridge between poverty and industrialisation, and therefore,
it will transform Africa into a developed continent.
Africa's current era of imposed financial imperialism is the final,
and perhaps, the worst stage of imperialism. It is the worst stage
because, for those who practice it, it means power without
responsibility, and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation
without justice. It is the final stage because overthrowing the subtle,
yet devastating, Western imposed dictatorship of capital will be the
last step before Africa can become a First World power.
Africa's struggle against financial imperialism is not aimed at
excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in
less-developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power
of the rich countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the
less-developed. For, when all is said and done, this above all else is
our generation's struggle.
By" Garikai Chengu. He can be contacted at chengu@fas.harvard.edu
No comments:
Post a Comment