OWEN GAGARE
CHINA has upped the ante in the ongoing new scramble for Africa by promising to shell out a staggering US$50 billion in financial and development aid and military support to the continent in the next three years at the ongoing Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (Focac) summit in Beijing.
In the last Focac in Dakar, Senegal, is pledged US$30 billion and in 2018 US$60 billion.
This presents some possible opportunities to chart a new trajectory for Africa towards modernisation, development and prosperity, yet history may simply be repeating itself, this time with even more tragic consequences.
Chinese President Xi Jinping articulated the vision, promising a fair deal for Africa. Xi announced that China and Africa’s relations have now been elevated to a new “strategic level” and are at their “best in history” as they seek partnerships for rapid modernisation and development.
China is deeply involved in the current scramble for Africa with other global powers, organisations and companies around the world. While China has Focac, other countries and organisations also have their own fora to push their own interests with the natural resource-rich Africa.
There is the United States-Africa; Russia-Africa; Japan-Africa (Tokyo International Conference of African Development); UK-Africa, France-Africa; India-Africa, Italy-Afruca, Germany-Africa; South Korea-Africa; Turkey-Africa; Saudi Arabia-Africa; and Brazil-Africa summits, as well as Africa-EU Partnership, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Australian meetings, among others.
This dramatically illustrates the new scramble currently underway, which provides both opportunity and danger for Africa.
These powers, which are all pouring in billions into Africa, are trying to consolidate their positions and influence as they compete for access to African resources and markets. African countries need to find ways to capitalise on this for their own development.
Africa, with 54 countries and a population of 1.5 billion, has vast natural resources, including oil and gas, diamonds, platinum, gold, chrome, coltan, cocoa, bauxite, uranium, copper, lithium, timber, agriculture and fisheries, among other things.
That is why it has always been a cite for competition, wars and conquer since the days of slavery.
Most conflicts in Africa are linked to a fight over resources, hence they are actually resource wars.
External forces and internal collaborators are responsible for most of the conflicts.
The contemporary situation remains the same, although the new approach has a historical context, ethical issues, critical questions of development models, investment, inclusivity, economic benefits and the subalterns.
As global powers compete and fight for space, Africa is trying to extract maximum capital and benefit, but then again lacks the bargaining power, strong leadership and institutions, and models that provide the framework for the new relations as well as just and equitable engagement.
This looms large primarily because of the historic 1884 Berlin Conference and the subsequent accelerated colonialisation of Africa, with disastrous consequences in the process.
Zimbabwe, which has huge resources, for instance, was colonised in 1890; only six years after the Berlin Conference.
It only got independent in 1980 after a protracted liberation struggle. This applies to many other African countries.
The Berlin Conference laid much of the groundwork for the initial Scramble for Africa. Beginning on 15 November 1884, the summit saw representatives from 14 Western economic powers — Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway, Turkey and the United States — gather at the residence of the historic German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to carve up the entire African continent into their respective dominions.
Geopolitics, commercial and economic factors largely motivated this partitioning, with the vast potential riches reaped from extracting Africa’s abundant natural resources underpinning the agreement reached among competing interests.
Britain, France, Portugal and Germany were the conference’s major players, having already colonised the lion’s share of Africa; Italy, Spain and Belgium were also granted sizeable chunks of the continent to govern. What followed was nothing short of an imperial onslaught at the hands of those European nations.
The Scramble for Africa provided scant material benefits to indigenous Africans, while in some cases, such as the German colonisation of Namibia and the Belgian Congo, history has since recorded unspeakable horrors and repression being unleashed on native populations.
As Howard W. French, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and author of the book Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War, observed in a December 2022 article for Foreign Policy magazine: “Over the half century or so that followed what came to be known as the ‘Scramble for Africa,’ Europe did virtually nothing to further education on the continent and inflicted some of the worst atrocities of the modern era on Africans, as colonists raced to extract natural resources using land seizures and forced labour, and implemented military conscription to fight and provide pack horselike logistical support in Europe’s wars.”
Fast forward to the present day, and both the Scramble for Africa and the Cold War — during which time African countries were often turned into bloody battlegrounds of US-Soviet Union rivalries as well as ending up the recipients of frequent coups sponsored by global powers — have left scars that run deep through the African psyche, with lingering local challenges emerging from those periods of abject economic underdevelopment remaining unresolved. And given the simmering geopolitical tensions between the East and the West that continue to intensify, fears abound Africa is once again the hapless pawn within a great power competition, with the US, France, UK, China and Russia vying for the most influence in the region today.
The resource wars are accompanied by militarisation and militarism, mostly featuring the US, Russia and China, but other countries like France, UK and the EU are involved.
As great powers compete for influence and deeper relations, Africa is caught in the middle.
The scramble for Africa has been an ongoing phenomenon, however, the intensity of the present scramble have increased multifold.
This brings new forms and dimensions of the scramble and its implication on Africa’s development.
The arrangement of the world economic order is creating the developed nations to achieve their imperialistic desires.
China’s part in this story has loomed particularly large in recent years, and the American military footprint on the continent has also expanded.
The new scramble for resources, markets and territory in Africa not only involves states, but also non-state actors, including multinational companies, Islamic fundamentalist and other rebel groups.
To protect their interests, big powers are consolidating their military presence in Africa.
The US is leveraging its military influence and acting through its Africa Command, Russia through the Wagner Group and China has also joined the fray.
In 2016, the Chinese Communist Party broke a 50-year-old policy when it announced the construction of its first and only overseas military base in the country.
As competition intensifies, the big powers are increasing their push into Africa and push back against other.
The US last year tried to come up with a new law to combat “Russian malign” influence in Africa.
This underlines the new scramble for Africa. The question is: Will this create a new dawn for Africa or history is repeating itself?
