President Barack Obama meets with Ghanaian President John Atta Mills
July 11, 2009, was a historic day for the United States and the African continent as the first African-American President, Barack Hussein Obama, traveled to Accra, Ghana and addressed the Ghanaian Parliament. President Obama's mere presence as the son of a Kenyan goat herder cum leader of the free world demonstrated a powerful symbolic shift in global politics.
In his first presidential address to the African continent, President Obama pledged the United States' support for African democratic leadership and its socio-economic development. He declared that "history was on the move" and that "Africa's future is up to Africans." The president also extended the America's hand as a partner for Africa stating that "... in the 21st century, we are called to act by our conscience and our common interest" to do so.
President Obama's speech to Africa, although imbued with hope, still reflected the same arrogance, blame shifting, and paternalism Western leaders have shown since the continent's independent nations began to emerge.
President Obama remarks on the Cape Coast Castle EPA/SHAWN THEW
Colonial powers still claim a stronghold on Africans' future because they never left. After the death of traditional colonialism, neo-colonialism succeeded to rule over the continent. European monarchs and heads of state were quickly replaced by CEOs, multi-national corporations, and private investors. Further undermining African autonomy, the International Monetar Fund (IMF) and World Bank stepped in to drown Africa's hopes of internal development under billions of dollars in high-interest loans and Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), which cut vital social programs focusing on education and maternal and child health in favor of promoting privatization and trade with its former colonizers.
Africans cannot control their future because it was purchased by Western owned multinational corporations and global financial institutions decades ago.
Furthermore allegations of abuses committed towards Africans by neo-colonial corporations are plenty. On June 8, 2009 Shell gas company (Royal Dutch Shell) paid $15.5 million to the Ogoni people of Nigeria after they were found complicit in the violation of their human rights including the 1995 execution of activist and author Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. While in South Africa, European owned mining companies specializing in diamond and gold mining continue to compromise their employees safety and health; many not providing adequate health care or safe working environments for its staff. And in the Congo, France's quest to acquire natural resources and minerals such as coltan, used to power cell phones, iPods, and laptops, has fueled the nation's decades long civil war.
Ghanaians line the streets to support President Obama EPA/SHAWN THEW
Just as colonizers drew the colonial map a generation ago, neo-colonialist are carving up the continent's resources in a way that deepens the ethnic conflicts and in-fighting national boundaries created 50 years prior.
President Obama said in his speech to Africa, "Freedom is your inheritance. Now, it is your responsibility to build upon freedom’s foundation." But the West has not freed Africa. The shackles of a century ago are still visible. They are every dollar of international debt and every foreign-owned corporation controlling its resources. If freedom is Africa's inheritance, then the old Western model of neo-colonialism and paternalism must die so that Africans may claim it.
Comments
Aisha, you ignore all the internal infighting that has been a part of African history for a thousand years. Biafra, Rwanda, Liberia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Darfur are just a few of the more recent examples of African cruelty towards other Africans. Blaming Europeans for the current problems of Africa is just another display of the victim mentality. For every African enslaved, raped or murdered, there's always been an African rapist, enslaver or murderer. It is in the hands of Africans to manage their resources wisely and govern themselves justly. If their governments fail to do so, it is their own fault, not the europeans.
Aisha,
A brilliant piece of journalism. Americans are fed a constant stream of stories about corrupt African governments and leaders but seldom made aware of the source of initial source of that corruption.
Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue
Seattle Progressive Politics Examiner
Blas my friend,
Very happy to find you commenting here. While your point is taken, I think you do Aisha a disservice by minimizing the significant part that western colonization has played in African history. Many of the corrupt African leaders of today are there as a result of the policies of the multinational corporations that control African resources.
Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue
Chad, you are right that colonialism left an ugly history of oppression in Africa, although 'westernization' also resulted in some positive developments. The problem is that western multinational corporations, like european slavers, could not succeed without the complicity of Africans and, while one could place some responsibility on european colonialism to some upheavals, like the Belgian Congo wars and the consequent ascension to power of Joseph Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko) in Zaire, and perhaps in the current situation in Zimbabwe, there's no explanation for the massacres in Rwanda, Biafra, Darfur, Uganda, Ethiopia/Eritrea and others than to internal African tribal hatreds. It is often the most anti-european African countries that have the most despotic rulers. Go figure! Peace back to you, brother.
I don't agree that blaming Europeans for current problems is unfair, if by that we mean we're blaming historical Europeans, up to and including the colonizers that only left in the second half of the 20th century. That's reasonable; to a very large extent, Africa's problems are the fault of Europe, although this doesn't change the fact that the actual actors in Africa's decay over the past half dozen centuries were mostly African.
However, this article leaves a bad taste in my mouth because, simply put, you don't seem to know either what you want or what you mean when you say that Western colonizers are to blame for Africa's current problems.
Development requires a combination of foreign investment and technology with homegrown innovation and hard work. Your complaint is basically that foreign corporations have invested money and business into Africa; but how would the lack of foreign funds and interest benefit Africans or solve any of it's problems? (cont.)
Simply put, it wouldn't; the biggest problem Africa has with foreign investors is that they're not doing ENOUGH to invest in the continent. Certainly you don't see people complaining in faster growing parts of the developing World- Latin America, Eastern Europe, East, South-East and Southern Asia- that foreign companies are putting factories in and developing local resources. Although every nation would like to be fully self sufficient, when you're behind technologically you have to catch up somehow. In the fastest growing parts of the developing world they're doing this by combining foreign with domestic investment, putting money into infrastructure, education and the like;
The problem with Africa is that there's a huge history of this money being diverted from actually helping anyone into graft and cronyism, lining the pockets of dictators. Some countries are trying to buck the trend as in Ghana, Mali and the like, but the reigonal reputation is the problem, not European investmen
Blas, thanks so much for your comments, they are really adding to the discourse. History shows that Africa's existing conflicts have been deepened by colonial and now neo-colonial powers that have used a divide and conquer strategy to acquire the continent's resources. For instance China's quest for oil in the Sudan has been repeatedly denounced by the international human rights community. In fact one of the most striking examples is Rwanda, a country in which Belgian colonizers created ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi. The power struggle between these groups eventually resulted in a mass genocide. If the West is to support Africa, they need to acknowledge their role in its making both positive and negative.
Jack, the argument is that Africans do not control their own resources. My point was to highlight how European investment in Africa has exploited the continent rather than benefiting it. In Obama's speech he spoke about the U.S. becoming a partner with Africa, but thus far the "partnerships" Africa has developed with the West have primarily sought to undermine internal development and create greater divisions between the haves and have nots.
I sought to look at this through the lense of neo-colonialism and paternalism, which by definition explains the co-dependent and unhealthy relationship that Africa has with the West.
Thanks for your comments. They've shown me that providing an explanation for my reasoning is necessary. Please keep reading!
@ Aisha,
Thanks for your article. I think it merits follow-up by progressive African scholars or perhaps a think tank (or both) that would take up the task of mapping the flow of capital and resources extracted by foreign multinationals. The United States, a fading superpower, has dominated the globe precisely because of centuries of domestic chattel slavery, geopolitical belligerence and the theft of African natural resources. Were Africans complicit? Obviously, but that is no different from any other conflict. Indigenous populations were usually minor actors in western orchestrated theft, destruction and domination. As for some of your respondents complaints about "victim mentality," it is not ignoble to identify who has wrong you. Only an ignoramus would stand silently whilst being assaulted. Now we must be sure to act (as we have been doing all along).
@ Jack,
Enjoy the "bad taste," African people and their descendants have been tasting it for centuries.
Ms. Brown, as a writer, any time you can get people thinking and debating in a civil and curious way on any topic, you have done a good job.
As a Zimbabwean who has had to endure such bad press towards my country in the last 10 years, this comes as a breath of fresh air! Aisha you're a star! We need more voices like this. Was completely broken when I heard Obama talk to Africans like a headmaster chastising errant school kids. The more things change the more they stay the same! Neo colonialism is what its about, in Zim were fed the nonsense that the sanctions against us are targeted, yet a quick reading of the ZDERA law passed by congress and extended by Obama in March will show you that the fight is against our sovereignty. Yes african leaders are corrupt, but to leave the argument there is to be blind to reality. The late Omar Bongo's dealings with the French is instructive, the corrupt African elite cannot exist without support from the western establishment!
Le problème est que les africains doivent dire non un jour sinon nous risquons de rester esclave pendant la fin de nos jours sur cette planète,à subir la loi des occidentaux.
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