Net-capital exporters (exiting Africa)
For the past 33 years, i.e. since 1981, Africa has
uninterruptedly been a net-exporter of capital to the West World. The
thundering sum of US$400 billion is the total figure that Africa has
transferred to the West in this manner to date (for background and dynamics of
these transfers, see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading:
Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature, 2011: 41-42, 176-177).
These are legitimate, accountable transfers, largely covering the
ever-increasing interest payments for the “debts” the West claims African
regimes owe it, beginning from the 1970s. A 2010 study by Global Financial
Integrity, a Washington-based research organisation, shows that Africa may have
also transferred the additional sum
of US$854 billion since the 1970s (“this figure might be more than double, at
[US]$1.8 trillion”, the study cautions – GFI, “Illicit financial
flows from Africa: Hidden resource for development”, Washington, 2010) through illegitimate exports
by the “leaderships” of corrupt African regimes – with genocidist and
kakistocratic Nigeria topping this infamous league at US$240.7 billion externalised.
In effect, the typical state, in contemporary Africa, no longer pretends that
it exists to serve its peoples.
Furthermore, and this might appear paradoxical, trade figures and associated
data readily obtainable indicate that these same African states have performed
their utmost, year in, year out, in that key variable for which their European
World creators established them in the first place: redoubts for export services of designated
mineralogical/agricultural products to the European World/overseas. Despite
their perfunctory “failed-state” statuses in many a study, despite their
predictable dominance in “worst- corrupt-
states”’ annual league tables, despite their dreadful profiles on multiple global quality of life surveys, there are no
indications, whatsoever, that any of these African countries has found it
difficult to fulfil its principal “obligations” to the world on this accord.
Each and everyone succeeds, very much, to play their accorded role in “international relations” in spite of their immiseration!
The crucial African capital exports referred to,
legitimate or/and illegitimate, are funds of gargantuan proportions. These
funds are produced by the same humanity that many a commentator or campaign
project, especially outside Africa, would be quick to categorise as “poor” and
“needy” for “foreign aid”. In these past 33 years, the funds could and should
easily have provided a comprehensive
healthcare programme across Africa to respond robustly to particularly
public health emergencies, the
establishment of schools, colleges and skills’ training, the construction of an
integrative communication network, the transformation of agriculture to abolish
the scourge of malnutrition, hunger and starvation, and, finally, it would have
stemmed the emigration of 25 million Africans, including vital sectors of the continent’s middle classes and
intellectuals, to the Americas, Europe,
Asia and elsewhere in the world since the 1980s.
Primary capital exporters (Africa-bound)
Yet, despite these grim times of net-capital
exporting economies and failed and
collapsing states in Africa, it shouldn’t ever be forgotten that those who
still ensure that the situation on the ground is not much worse for the peoples
than it is, are Africans – individuals, working alone,
conscientiously, or working in
concert with others or
within a larger group to feed, clothe, house, educate and provide healthcare
and some leisure to immediate and extended families, communities,
neighbourhoods, villages and the like. To cap these phenomenal
strides of Africans, the 25 million African émigrés mentioned earlier presently
constitute the primary exporters of
capital to Africa itself. Africans now dispatch more money to Africa than
“West aid” to the continent, year in, year out. In 2003, according to the World
Bank, these African overseas residents sent to Africa the impressive sum of
US$200 billion – invested directly in their communities (World Bank, “Migrant
Labor Remittances in Africa”, Africa Regional Paper Series, No. 64, Washington,
November 2003: 12). This is 40 times the sum of “West aid” in real terms in the
same year – i.e., when the pervasive “overheads” attendant to the latter are
accounted for (cf. Fairouz El Tom, “Do NGOs practise what they preach?”, Pambazuka News, 15 May 2013).
In a sentence: The African humanity, at home and in the
diaspora, currently generates, overwhelmingly, the capital resource that at
once sustains its very existence and is intriguingly exported
to the West World. It is precisely the same humanity that those who benefit
immeasurably from this conundrum (over several decades and are guaranteed to
benefit indefinitely from it, except this is stopped by Africans
themselves) have consistently portrayed, quite perversely, as a “charity
case”. The notion that Africans are in any way dependent on a European
World/West World or any other “handout” overseas is at best a myth or at worst
an all-out lie perpetuated by a circle of academics and in the media who in fact
in the not-too-distant-past would have been in the vanguard
“justifying”/“rationalising” African enslavement or/and the conquest and
occupation of Africa. Surely, this historic big lie of characterisation can no longer
be sustained. Appositely, it is inconceivable that there could be any doubts now
that it is plain gibberish to quote some African “debt” to the West.
(Jackie McLean Sextet, “Appointment in Ghana” [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Tina Brooks, tenor saxophone; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 1 September 1960])
Free Africa or post-“Berlin state” Africa
Africa is endowed with the human resource and capital resource
(in all its calibration and manifestation) to build advanced civilisations of
their choosing, provided Africans abandon the prevailing “Berlin-states” they
have been forced into by pan-Europe as we now demonstrate. It is an
inexplicable and inexcusable tragedy that any African child, woman, or man
could go without food in the light of the staggering endowment of resources in
The factors which have contributed to determining the very poor
quality of life in Africa presently
have to do with the gross misuse of the continent’s resources year in, year
out. This is thanks to an asphyxiating “Berlin-state” whose strategic resources
are used largely to support the West World and others and an overseer-grouping
of local forces which exists solely to police the dire straits of existence
that is the lot of the average African. The “Berlin-state” indeed arrests African development and transformation.
It is intrinsically not dissimilar to the African-enslaved estates in the
Americas established by pan-Europe in the 15th century (CE) and, during the
course of 400 subsequent years, a leveraging tripod for the latter’s conquest
of the world. Africans have not ceased
to produce unimaginable range and levels of wealth primarily for the West,
begun 500 years ago. Consequently, the broad sectors of
African peoples are yet to lead, centrally, the entire process of societal reconstruction
and transformation by
themselves. So, this envisaged liberatory trajectory is untenable for African
constituent nations with evidently distinct histories, cultures, worldviews and
aspirations, encased in the agglomeration
of inchoate, inorganic and alienating “Berlin-state” . In contrast, the
“state-of- Berlin” serves the West most handsomely as its 21st century
“leveraging tripod” of hegemony.
African peoples, constituent
nations and nationalities, must now build the states of their choice, the
states of their aspirations. This is their right and it is inalienable. Africa must
utilise the immense resources abound for the benefit of its own peoples
in new, radically decentred states
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
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