Wednesday 23 January 2019

In a stunningly rare exposition, Italy openly reminds fellow EU member state France that its current wealth and prestige lie in the French continuing occupation and expropriation of “francophonie” Africa

 (Luigi Di Maio: ... stunningly rare exposition on France from Italian ally)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

 LUIGI DI MAIO, the Italian deputy prime minister, couldn’t be franker in raising the subject of France’s continuing occupation and expropriation of the peoples and states of so-called francophonie Africa. 

 In a speech in central Italy last weekend (John Irish and Gavin Jones, “France summons Italian envoy after Di Maio’s comments on Africa”, Reuters, Paris, 21 January 2019), Di Maio pinpoints one of the key empirical embodiments of contemporary France that is derived directly from its Africa conquest: 
If France didn’t have its African colonies, because that’s what they should be called, it would be the 15th largest world economy. Instead, it is among the first, exactly because of what it is doing in Africa … If we have people who are leaving Africa now it’s because some European countries, and France in particular, have never stopped colonizing Africa … I have stopped being a hypocrite talking about the effects of immigration and it’s time to talk about the causes … The EU should sanction all those countries like France that are impoverishing African countries and are causing those people to leave.
(For an expansive essay that focuses on this French occupation, expropriation and immiseration of Africa, see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “‘Francophonie Africa’ works!”,
https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-since-the1960s-there.html)
(John Coltrane Sextet, “Out of this world” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Donald Garrett, clarinet, bass; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live at Penthouse Jazz Club, Seattle, US, 30 September 1965])

 *****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)


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