AfricaBriefing Magazine - March - April 2022

Upbeat Zambian opposition leader eyes top job News. Analysis. Comment

March-April 2022

Vol.5 No.19

Russia-Ukraine war:

Implications for

Africa

Germany should look to Africa for energy

AU Chair’s position on Israel

Resurgent coups highlight political challenges Eurozone 5 euros UK £3.00 North America $6.50 CFA Zone CFA2,600 Ethiopia R90 Ghana GHC12.00 Kenya KSh350 Rwanda RWF3,000 Sierra Leone LE20,000 South Africa R40.00 (inc. tax) Other Southern African Countries R35.10 (excl. tax) Tanzania TSh6,500 Uganda USh10,700 Zambia ZMK45

19

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Coup breeds coup

O

VER the past nineteen months, there have been seven coups and coup attempts in African nations. In Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, and Sudan, military leaders succeeded in seizing power. In Niger and, most recently, in Guinea-Bissau, they failed.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Africa Following thebucks failed coup inglobal Guinea-Bissau on February 1, the Economic Community of West African economic trend States (ECOWAS) convened to discuss the unrest, which current ECOWAS chair and Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo described as “contagious” and a threat to the entire region.

I

He’snright.

It’ssix reasonable to assume that there’s some copycatting going on, or the norm of militaries 2018, of the 10 fastest-growing not being involvedin[inthe government] or seizing power has been broken. But while the recent spate of economies world were in coupsAfrica, have several common referring to them as “contagious” is unhelpful. according to characteristics, the World Bank,

Despite some commonalities — governments with Ghana leading the pack. With unable to provide basic services for their people, corruption, andfor weak institutions — the circumstances and mechanics of the recent coups and GDP growth thestate continent projected to attempts aretonuanced, andcent labelling themand as part accelerate four per in 2019 4.1 of a “contagion” or domino effect erases these differences, somewhat detracts from the help these countries need to build sustainable democratic per cent in and 2020, Africa’s economic growth institutions going apace. forward.Meanwhile, the World Bank’s 2019 Doing Business Index story continues Africa’s that current of coups began in August 2020, after former Malian President Ibrahimof reveals fivewave of the 10 most-improved countries are in Africa, and one-third Boubacar Keïta was arrested at gunpoint bysub-Saharan government forces.

The subsequent series of African all reforms recorded globally were in Africa. coups share some commonalities, such as political and economic instability and weak democratic

What makesbutthe more impressive and heartening is that the growthwhat happened — institutions, thestory specific circumstances in each case are crucial to understanding –and projected to what be broad-based potentially, comes next. – is being achieved in a challenging global environment, bucking In Mali and Burkina Faso,the thetrend. governments were dealing with violent extremism from ISIS and alQaeda affiliatesStory in theof Sahel, between 2020 and 2021 attacks by militant Islamistatorganisations In the Cover this where edition, Dr. Hippolyte Fofack, Chief Economist the increasedExport-Import 70 percent, fromBank 1,180 (Afreximbank), to 2,005.

African analyses the factors underpinning this Analysts agree that securityinthreat has formedstand the pretext coups in both countries.

In terms performance.

Twothe factors, my opinion, out inforDr. Hippolyte’s analysis: of thebetween differences, in Mali andChina Burkina Faso, juntas have claimed that insecurity and an and inability trade Africa and and thethe intra-African cross-border investment to deal with threats from violent extremist groups has precipitated the coups. They’re both using the infrastructure development. same justification, and in the case of Burkina Faso, the threat is more imminent.

Much hasit’s been said and written aboutaffiliates China’s ever-deepening economic foray into But while a serious concern and terror drive instability in many African nations, not Africa, especially byundergone Western aanalysts andis commentators whoinsurgency have been sounding every country that has recent coup dealing with violent from terror groups. alarm bells about re-colonisation of Africa, this time by the Chinese. But empirical In Guinea-Bissau, for example, the recent attempted coup is one of many since the nation gained its evidence paints a different picture. independence from Portugal in 1974. The nation has struggled to establish democratic traditions and institutions; President Umaro Sissocoenvironment, Embaló — the trade man whom this month’s Despite thenotably, decelerating global growth between Africa failed and coup tried toincreased oust — came power 2020,inafter contested which was still being reviewed by China byto14.5 perincent theafirst threeelection quarters of 2018, surpassing the growth nation’s Supreme Court when tookcent), office.reflecting the deepening economic the rate of world tradeEmbaló (11.6 per And in Guinea, last year’s couptrading came after President Alpha Condé changed the constitution dependency between thesuccessful two major partners. and mounted a power grab that gave him a third term in office. Although he initially won a democratic

Empirical evidence shows that China’swith domestic investment has become highlyprovided election in 2010, his power grab, combined corruption and deep inequality, apparently linked withthe economic expansion in Africa.

A one percentage point increase the impetus military needed to mount a takeover last September. inCharacterising China’s domestic investment growth is associated with an average of 0.6 the coups as contagious also discounts the influence of outside powers, primarily percentage point increase in overall African And, expected Russia and China, and to a lesser extent, Turkey andexports.

Gulf states likethe Qatar.

Broadlyeconomic speaking, these development and tradefoment impact of expanding investment on resource-rich nations don’t necessarily coups, but they doChinese take advantage of instability to support regimes African especially oil-exporting countries, is even more important. that allowcountries, them to exercise influence, legitimise their own antidemocratic systems, and extract

resources from nations rich in diamonds, bauxite, and other valuable materials.

The resilience of African economies can also be attributed to growing intra-African Sanctioning these nations and isolating them, as the European Union, the US and ECOWAS cross-border investment and infrastructure development.

A combination of the have donefactors to Malian coup leaders, does the citizens of those countries and only pushes two is accelerating the nothing processbut ofharm structural transformation in a continent coup leadership away fromand democratic foundations. where industrial output services account for a growing share of GDP. African Western countries institutions — whichare have their own vested interests in the region; across their own corporations andand industrialists which expanding their industrial footprint brutal, exploitative, andare extractive of colonialism infrom Africa; and their own on Africa and globally leadinghistory the diversification agriculture intostrangleholds higher poor nations form of debt —and impress uponsectors. unstable These nations industrial with undemocratic leadership the value goodsininthe manufacturing service champions importance the rule of law and punish them whenwith they investment don’t live up to those ideals, but don’t are carryingofout transcontinental operations, holdings around the speak to the actual of the people living in thoseand nations. globe, with needs a strong presence in Europe Pacific Asia, together account for more Neither present particularly viable pathwaysoutside for a transition than 75 do perthey cent of their combined activities Africa.to democracy. By putting on blanket sanctions, they alienate and punish citizens without addressing the root cause of the Ainstability, survey of 30 leading emerging African corporations with coups. global footprints and precipitating further instability and potentially even further

combined revenue of more than $118 billion shows that they are active in several Western powers need to work better with these countries to look honestly at the root causes of industries, including manufacturing Dangote Industries), basic materials, conflict, poverty, and instability; help them(e.g., build up and invest in stronger institutions; and work with telecommunications Econet, Safaricom), financetransition. (e.g., Ecobank) and working oil civil society and military(e.g., leaders to lay out a path to democratic Furthermore, and In addition toECOWAS mitigating highly African correlated withtoAfrican economies, withgas. regional groups like andrisks neighbouring countries encourage cooperation these emerging African global corporations aretheaccelerating the diversification ofpeer and reduce isolation can be an effective way to reduce risk of undemocratic takeovers, since sources of be growth reducing the exposure of countries to adverse commodity nations can highly and influential. terms ofsupport trade. for democratic systems, civil society, and institutions for justice and transparency, Without history will repeat itself.bullish about Africa!

This makes me very Coup breeds coup. There will be protracted instability unless the world community gets involved.

Publisher Jon Offei-Ansah Editor Desmond Davies Publisher Jon Offei-Ansah Contributing Editors

Editor

Stephen Williams Desmond Davies Prof. Toyin Falola Tikum Mbah Azonga

Deputy Editor AngelaContributors Cobbinah

Justice Lee Adoboe Contributing Editor Chief Chuks Iloegbunam StephenJoseph Williams Kayira

Director, Zachary SpecialOchieng Projects Olu Ojewale Michael Orji Oladipo Okubanjo Corinne Soar Contributors Kennedy Olilo Justice Lee Adoboe Designer Chuks Iloegbunam Joseph Kayira Simon Blemadzie Zachary Ochieng Olu Ojewale Country Representatives Oladipo Okubanjo South Africa Corinne Soar

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Contents LEADER

6

Speaking of sanctions and oligarchs

Vol.5 No.19 March - April 2022

12

COMMENT

07

Is the AU fit for purpose?

COVER STORY

12

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: What does it mean for Africa?

The isolation of Russia through the West’s punitive sanctions may not only adversely impact Africa through oil, wheat and other grain price hikes, it may also create fortress Russia that will pursue an aggressive policy in Africa and other weak regions in order to gain allies, markets, raw materials and diversification of its external relations, writes Yusuf Bangura

34

ANALYSIS

20

Germany should look to Africa for gas, not Russia

22

Resurgent coups in Africa highlight political challenges

34

Upbeat Zambian opposition leader eyes presidency

To stop financing Moscow’s brutal wars, Berlin should help African countries develop their energy sectors, writes Vijaya Ramachandran

To prevent further military intervention on the continent, governments must be responsible enough to provide solutions to their citizens' requests and allow them to enjoy the dividends of democracy, writes Toyin Falola

Having come third in a field of 16 contestants during the 2021 presidential election in Zambia, a youthful and bullish Harry Kalaba says he is sanguine about his quest for the country’s presidency in the future, telling Jon Offei-Ansah that last year’s result was clearly a vote of confidence in him by the electorate

BUSINESS & ECONOMY

38

Cote d’Ivoire at the heart of West Africa’s trade integration plans The intra-African trade project is expected to usher in new opportunities across the continent. Patrick Porquet, BACB’s Country Manager for Cote d’Ivoire, explains why the West African nation stands to benefit from expanding its trade horizons.

40

HEALTH

40

Preparing better to deal with new pandemics

Instead of a coherent and cohesive global response, Covid-19 has been marked by a chaotic patchwork of responses, which in some cases have punished countries for doing the right thing, as in the case of the travel bans imposed on South Africa and Botswana when they first reported the emergence of the Omicron variant, says Tedros Ghebreyesus, who argues that the world needs a new agreement that sets the rules of the game for responding to epidemics and pandemics

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LEADER

Speaking of sanctions and oligarchs A

T the beginning of this year, world football’s president Gianni Infantino came up with the crassest of statements to support his argument that the FIFA World Cup should be held every two years instead of the four-yearly tournament. He told a meeting of the Council of Europe: “We need to find ways to include the whole world to give hope to Africans so that they don't need to cross the Mediterranean in order to find maybe a better life but, more probably, death in the sea.”

Infantino later tried to backtrack. But the damage had been done. By the way, the FIFA president happens to be a Swiss national, and we all know the devastating effect the Swiss banking industry, with its notorious secrecy, has had on African economies over more than 40 years.

Money stolen from Africa that is stashed in Swiss banks is one of the main reasons why young Africans are taking the risk to cross the Mediterranean Sea to seek supposedly greener pastures in Europe.

They are chasing the money that should have gone to improving their standard of living.

Recently the spotlight was focused on Credit Suisse, one of the biggest banks in Switzerland, when the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) came up with revelations that exposed the inner workings of the Swiss banking system. It noted that the last 50 years had seen the “dramatic globalisation of organised crime and corruption, now totalling trillions of dollars every year”.

The OCCRP said that aided by a “criminal services industry” – corrupt banks, law firms, registration agents, and lobbyists – criminal networks had steadily grown their markets, and the world’s most corrupt officials and tycoons easily looted, laundered, and hid stolen money.

It added: “The result is an unprecedented transfer of wealth and global web of high-level corruption and organised crime that has fuelled global inequality, the rise of extremist groups, and the decline of democratic institutions all over the world.”

A former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank, Joseph E. Stiglitz, who is a Nobel laureate 6

in economics, also waded into the controversy, pointing out that developing countries and emerging markets have suffered the most from the Swiss banking system. He noted that although Switzerland had agreed to an automatic information exchange, mostly with other advanced countries, it had not done so with poor countries.

When the Russians started flooding Western Europe with suspect funds 30 years ago, the governments conveniently turned a blind eye. Newspapers were browbeaten by aggressive lawyers to stop any publication questioning the wealth of their Russian clients or their affiliation with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

Naturally, Credit Suisse said it “strongly rejects the allegations and insinuations about the bank’s purported business practices”, adding: “The matters presented are predominantly historical, in some cases dating back as far as the 1940s...”

All of a sudden, the tables have been turned. The UK, for example, has cancelled its so-called golden visa, which gave residency to “investors” with £2 million, £5 million of £10 million. More than half of the 12,000 visas issued since 2008 went to Russian and Chinese nationals. We are sure that a number of African PEPs must have also benefited.

Tell that to the Nigerians who are still chasing funds stolen by Sani Abacha who died in 1998. Cronies of the late military

‘

Action taken against Russian

Sanctions by the West against Russian oligarchs must now be transferred to suspiciously wealthy African politically exposed persons

dictator, who was neither a Bill Gates nor a Richard Branson, contrived to stash billions of dollars in Swiss banks on his behalf without any questions asked.

Other African politically exposed persons (PEPs) have kept their stolen funds in banks in Western Europe, without much success of the money being repatriated. There are the occasional halfhearted attempts by Western European governments to play to the gallery by making public pronouncements about seizing ill-gotten funds and assets and handing them back to African countries.

But the amounts involved are minuscule compared to what are held in these banks.

This brings us to the robust manner in which Western Europe has used sanctions and targeted Russian oligarchs in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All of a sudden hundreds of billions of dollars of assets have been seized from these extremely wealthy Russians.

’

oligarchs, according to Western governments, is to halt the destruction in Ukraine. But it’s not just war that can destroy a country. Economic devastation is equally as bad as all-out war – as we are witnessing in some African countries.

So, what we would like to see now is Western European governments taking similar action against suspiciously wealthy African PEPs who hold accounts in their countries’ banks.

These PEPs would now be looking for safer havens for their ill-gotten gains.

Again, the same lawyers and bankers who have facilitated movement of such funds into Europe will be at the forefront in trying to find new banking systems that could accommodate their dodgy clients, such as in Asia and the Gulf states.

But at least we now have anticorruption watchdogs such as the OCCRP to keep tabs on the global “criminal AB services industry”.

COMMENT

Is the AU fit for purpose?

Desmond Davies

A

T the African Union summit in Addis Ababa in February, the Chairperson, Moussa Faki Mahamat, launched a scathing attack on the leaders for taking issue with him over granting Israel Observer Status at the panAfrican body in July 2021. For many, it was a surprise move by Faki because this sort of thing seldom happens at the club of African leaders.

Faki, though, was exasperated by the manner in which he was ambushed.

As he pointed out, the powers of the Chairperson to grant Observer Status to non-African states were established under the AU’s Sirte Criteria of 2005. And given that 44 AU members had recognised and established diplomatic relations with Israel his decision was a no-brainer.

Also, 17 of these countries, including South Africa, had established embassies in Tel Aviv while 12 had opened General Consulates. But this did not sway the leaders who waded into Faki.

‘

foreign donors in support of its various programmes. These donors include the UK, France, Germany and other big powers. Of late, Turkey and some Middle Eastern countries have begun to play in this space.

Typically, most of these donors also have bilateral funding arrangements with the different AU states. And when they provide such funding, they may not necessarily have the same interest and agenda as that of the collective AU. Obviously, they come with many conditions for the AU and also different clauses that are attached to their bilateral financing in member states. One example I was told of was Uganda where the National Planning Authority (NPA) is responsible for drawing up programmes for the country’s education, health, judiciary, and many other sectors.

The German development agency (GIZ), which was funding the NPA, was pushing for gay rights, calling on

The lopsided nature of funding the AU is problematic because donors provide the bulk

’

As the matter is placed on hold, there seems to be a worrying lack of unity of purpose among AU member states. It really boils down to money. As long as the continent depends on funding for development on foreign donors, there will always be issues that will stultify the continent’s progress.

For starters, member states, when they are at the AU, have every intention of coming together, passing resolutions and making treaties that are meant to make changes to the continent. When these are agreed on, each member state has to ratify them before they become AU law and then to make sure that they are part of national laws to become operational.

But there is a major problem here.

The AU has invariably been funded by

the government of President Yoweri Museveni to relax such rights and to halt the criminalisation of homosexuality and imprisonment of people who were openly gay. GIZ told the NPA and the Ugandan government that unless these conditions were met, it was not going to fund projects in the country. The government’s response was that it was not interested in the funding if that was the case.

GIZ was pushing for gay rights in Uganda where such rights were not necessarily seen as important within the country’s cultural context. This is unlike South Africa, which has a pro-gay rights agenda and is pro liberalisation and freedom of choice of sexuality.

So, when you have these types of issues colliding, it is almost impossible

to come up with any kind of policy that can bring about positive change. Even if the majority of member states agree on a particular issue, they have to ratify it and translate it into national laws. That doesn’t always happen. It’s then difficult to have consensus that it implementable even though there is consensus at the AU level.

At the level of the state, the government may have a stance that is different to the AU’s. But on other issues on which the country has a common pan-African vision, the funder in bilateral discussions comes up with particular conditions that are not acceptable to the government.

For instance, there has been a robust debate on a common African currency, and even an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) monetary union. But France has been blocking the Francophone West African states from getting rid of the CFA because this currency is controlled by the French Treasury.

Clearly, these issues bring about conflicts that an African state has to deal with in order for its population to advance while also trying to be part of a regional bloc and a continental grouping at the same time.

The lopsided nature of funding the AU is problematic. For instance, its total approved budget for 2021 was $623,836,163, of which $203,500,000 (32 per cent) was to be financed by contributions from member states while $406,194,344 (65 per cent) was to come from external donors. Honestly, this is not on.

The AU needs to be financially independent. This will have to be down to members contributing wholly to the budget. For as long as the pan-African body allows external actors to call the shots, proper development on the continent will not be attained.

In this light, one might ask: is the AB AU fit for purpose?

7

COMMENT

Must Africa be worried about this new war in Europe T

HERE is no reason or justification for this new war in Europe. However the concept of only one superpower in the world is not a position that I am comfortable with, and in my book as a pacifist, the earlier there is a ceasefire the better it is for the world.

War is a bad thing, at the end of the day there are no winners, people are killed, property is destroyed and people are displaced, they become homeless, and the lot of a refugee is dehumanising.

Russia must be roundly condemned for invading Ukraine, an independent country that was created in 1991 when the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fell apart because Russia at the centre could not hold the different republics together in a coherent whole. Ukraine has a right to choose how it is governed but it would seem that because of past associations Russia still thinks that it has a right to be ‘protective’ of the foreign policy direction of the country.

Just as we all thought that the Cold War that wrecked so much havoc in relationships between superpowers had ended and that we had been ushered into a unipolar world with the USA emerging as the only country that could afford all the military 8

Ade Sawyerr

arsenal and the personnel to go with it, we have Russia now deciding that a military putsch into another country can be justified based on ‘demilitarisation’ and showing up two fingers at the United Nations My interest in the events in Ukraine harks back to what happened

participants in the UN, will be asked to take sides and whether and what the penalties will be if we decided to stay aloof. Of course, this war may be as much a military as well as an economic and political war, so what can we do in Africa to mitigate the adverse effects of this war.

escalation ‘Any of the war will

be bad for us in Africa

’

in post-independence Africa because our colonial masters felt that, despite their long-distance away, they must intervene in shaping our political destiny.

The major question is whether Africa, very much second-class

On the military front, we have several options. We can build our own global army that will help to keep incursions from foreign countries away. The Africom option, which has allowed US military bases to be established in some countries in Africa, may put us in danger if a full-

COMMENT blown hot war develops out of this crisis. The problem with Africom is that it has not done anything against inter-African conflicts, and we are hearing very little being said about the Ethiopian incursion into Tigray whilst the Russia-Ukraine conflict has taken

‘

building tooling capacity, that may help us to produce simple machines to help develop our economies. In times of war, people take drastic action on cutting their expenditure. A cost reduction period is imminent for us if this war continues and we may need to

We can build our own global army that will help to keep incursions from foreign countries away

centre stage in our news bulletins.

Another option is to impose sanctions on the Russians and refuse to buy military equipment from them.

Indeed, I wonder why we purchase so much equipment when we produce few and only end up killing each other with them or using them to execute redundant coups in our countries.

Perhaps a better option is to go to the UN and ask for a unilateral conventional weapons freeze, though that will be seen as a stance against the arms manufacturers who are the only ones to profit from war.

On the economic front, we have already started feeling the adverse effects, prices of fuel will go up and the cost of food will rise as a result.

Perhaps this is the time for African countries to think through the need for our luxury goods and examine our policies for industrialisation through

’

go back to looking at our consumption of foreign food items such as rice, noodles, and wheat and increase the production of our own local foods.

We may have to park all our luxury automobiles now that the cost of fuel is going through the roof.

This is the period where we must strengthen our resolve on our import substitution front and start looking for answers as to why some of our countries that produce crude oil need to export the crude and then go on to import petroleum products and whether the necessity that war brings will spur us better management of our economies but alas, I have already heard some leaders blaming the war for their economic mismanagement, Politically we need to start developing our own strategy for engagement with the rest of the world. We must

forge closer links with the Caribbean and lean on the huge African heritage diaspora that exists in the rest of the world. I listened with pride to a very powerful speech by the Prime Minister of Barbados when she attended the 65th Independence Day celebrations in Ghana recently. She called for Africa to come together yet again, for us to start doing business with each other, to include those in the Caribbean in our discourse about economic and political issues. She called for the realism of pan-Africanism to be implemented in our time.

Political unity is still possible if the African Union will look at it with some urgency. We have the powers that be fighting over the concept of neutrality in Europe. The issue is, who will fight for us if another country invades? Who will condemn the invasions, who will impose and enforce sanctions on the aggressor country?

It is a shame that in this 21st century, we have the same superpowers fighting for control of the world with Africa looking in from the side-lines, the Ukrainians. even in their time of distress, did not think much of helping our students in their countries to safety. They preferred to take care of their own first.

Let no African leader think that there is much they can do to intervene in this war, we may shout all we care but we must be careful – if there is an escalation it will come to Africa, if the Chinese join, we may need to reappraise our relationship with them.

Several years ago, in 1966, when the president of Ghana Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah was asked by the Commonwealth to intervene in the Vietnam war, it ended up being just a ruse to get him out of the country for a military coup d’état against him.

Any escalation of the war will be bad for us in Africa and so our prayer is to ask the Russians to cease bombing the people of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine to sue for peace.

AB

9

COMMENT

It is a weird search for Buhari’s replacement T

HE Nigerian presidential election is 12 months away. It is to lead to the inauguration of a new Federal government on May 29, 2023. But, already, every discussion is now centred on whom the next Nigerian president would be. The desperation with which the politicians are going about their predicament points to a class that has learnt nothing and is incapable of learning anything related to the art of proper governance which issues from the point of making the right and proper leadership choices.

A Nigerian proverb from the Igbo ethnic group says that someone unaware of when he started being pelted by a heavy downpour is unlikely to remember where he dried his drenched body. Where there is reason, it will be taken for granted that people angling for power will first determine what landed them in a political lurch and, from that pedestal, plot to obviate such a dreadful re-enactment in a new dispensation. But that is not the case. No one is examining the thorough mess in which the clueless and nepotistic government of President Muhammadu Buhari has left the country writhing in.

But it bears examination. As this article was being written, Buhari was in the United Kingdom for “a routine medical check-up,” about the seventh time he is embarking on such an expensive journey since he came to power in 2015. On one astonishing occasion, he spent all of five weeks in a London hospital, his presidential jet parked at Heathrow Airport amassing parking fees. Appallingly, Nigerians have never been told the medical condition that compelled Buhari to become an exemplar of medical tourism; 10

Chuks Iloegbunam

something he vowed would be beyond toleration if he became president.

are budgeted annually, cannot even boast of analgesics!

That’s not all. The national photograph is even gloomier. In the seven years he has been in office, President Buhari’s government is yet to construct a dispensary, not to talk of a clinic or an infirmary. When his son, Yusuf, whose

The politicians are certain that such matters are non-issues or, at best, mere details. Except that the ordinary people think differently. Since Buhari came to power fuel prices have more than trebled.

Despite being in the top bracket of the

‘

Nigerians have no idea of the colossal cost of Buhari’s routine medical check-ups in favoured London

source of livelihood is unknown and who has since been invested with a high chieftaincy title in his home state of Katsina, crashed to within an inch of death in a power bike accident, he was instantaneously flown to Germany for expert medical attention – at the people’s expense. Yet, to this day, no one knows by how much Nigeria was set back in having Yusuf treated in a European hospital. No one has ever been given an idea of the colossal cost of Buhari’s routine medical check-ups in favoured London! It is thanks to Aisha, Buhari’s wife, that people got to know that the Clinic inside Aso Rock, the seat of the Presidency, for which billions

’

world’s leading producers of crude oil, Nigeria imports refined fuel. Buhari’s government has not thought fit to build a single refinery; it has not even ensured that the near obsolete four refineries in existence are functioning even at a third of their installed capacities. People and businesses have continued to bear the excruciating pain of ever rising prices of PMS – premium motor spirit or petrol; HHK – household kerosene or cooking kerosene; ATK – Aviation Turbine Kerosene or kerosene for aircraft; and AGO – Automotive Gas Oil or diesel.)

But the worse was to come. Three

COMMENT months ago, the cabals that are not only smiling to the banks but also buying them all off for importing refined fuel excelled themselves. They flooding the country with “contaminated” fuel. The results?

First, countless cars filled their tanks with the evil fuel and got their engines instantly devastated. No one is discussing compensation to such hapless car owners.

Secondly, no one is talking of identifying the importers of the ruinous fuel, let alone bringing them to justice. Rather, all the talk is now on the acute fuel scarcity prompted by the contamination spell. Fuel prices have taken a steep, upward spiral.

Flight cancellations are hitting epidemic proportions. Queues at pump stations sometimes run into hundreds of metres.

But, President Buhari, who is the Oil Minister as he also was over 30 years ago when he was a military dictator, has not uttered a single word on the calamity.

One of those who would replace Buhari as president is Ahmed Bola Tinubu, a former Governor of Lagos State. He has been going political barnstorming in recent months, telling his listeners that he has officially apprised Buhari of his life-long ambition to be President and that Buhari has given him the green light to pursue his ambition.

The catastrophe that is Buhari’s government does not at all register in Tinubu’s firmament. People who have wondered why Tinubu expects to be rewarded with national leadership for doing more than most to install the errant Buhari administration got the shock of their lives when Tinubu recently waxed lyrical to celebrate Buhari’s 79th birthday with a litany of the man’s “achievements”!

Said Tinubu: “Mr. President, your tenure in office has coincided with some of the most difficult and challenging times this country and, indeed, the entire global community has faced…

“Yet, despite it all, you continue, calmly and with uncommon dignity, to steer the ship of Nigeria through the most turbulent of waters. On this birthday, I wish to appreciate the unseen and underappreciated work that you have done and continue to do to guide Nigeria ever nearer to its manifest destiny.

“Through your careful leadership and measured governance of our great nation,

your administration has achieved many things for which we can rightfully be proud. Under your watch, previously abandoned infrastructure projects have been completed all over the country.

“Unheralded reforms and measures taken by your administration are also taking effect to bring greater transparency and accountability to governance. While the benefits of these reforms may not yet be well understood or appreciated, your legacy as a great reformer and democrat will live long into the future… You are a man of high intellect and exceptional character and I wish you a wonderful birthday and many more years in good health and renewed strength.”

A consensus of opinion is that Tinubu will excel as a fiction writer, even to the point of winning to Nobel Prize for Literature. While Tinubu’s “calm and dignified achiever” is in London and his wife in Dubai, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is on nationwide strike, the fourth time since Buhari became President. Instead of properly funding tertiary institutions as his government agreed with ASUU, Buhari donated $1 million to the Taliban in Afghanistan! It is a straight matter of borrower turning donor. Nigeria’s Debt Management Office

“repairing” a knee that apparently fell apart. But he was Governor of Lagos, the richest Nigerian State, for eight years but could not build a hospital for knee repairs.

His supporters were asked why Federal Character principle that governs or ought to govern national appointments should not apply to the election of a President.

Since the inception of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the Yoruba has produced the President for eight years in Olusegun Obasanjo. The Yoruba has produced the Vice President for eight years in Professor Yemi Osinbajo. The Hausa has produced the President for 11 years in Umaru Musa Yar’Adua (3 years) and Buhari (8years). The Hausa has produced the Vice President for 13 years in Atiku Abubaker (8 years) and Namadi Sambo (5 years).

But, the Igbo, one of the three major ethnic groups, has produced none of President and Vice President for even a millisecond.

Those who raised the question of equity in national leadership were told to sit right down and keep bloody quiet.

Outside Tinubu, there many others, mostly jokers, pranksters and upstarts, hectoring all comers to become President.

It is doubtful that their heads, like flies, will escape swatting at the hands of the big guns. Thus a country of disparate

did not build a ‘Tinubu single hospital during his eight years as Governor of Lagos, the richest Nigerian State (DMO) announced recently that as at the end of 2021, the country was indebted to China, France, Japan, India and Germany to the tune of $4.26 billion. Meanwhile, the Global Terrorism Index has ranked Nigeria the third most terrorised country in the world.

So, Tinubu waits to be president. He recently used a whole month in London

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peoples, coupled together by imperialist Britain, that was indexed essentially on the tripod of Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba ethnic groups since independence in 1960 has been functioning with only two legs, which is why the table is unable to attain stability. Blindly, nonetheless, the weird search continues for a replacement AB for ineptitude.

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COVER STORY

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: What does it mean for Africa?

The isolation of Russia through the West’s punitive sanctions may not only adversely impact Africa through oil, wheat and other grain price hikes, it may also create fortress Russia that will pursue an aggressive policy in Africa and other weak regions in order to gain allies, markets, raw materials and diversification of its external relations, writes Yusuf Bangura

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HE invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the unfolding geopolitical crisis have serious implications for Africa. Three stand out in bold relief. The first is the danger of reinstitutionalising the doctrine of spheres of influence in the governance of the world system. Putin regards the territories of the former Soviet republics as “historical Russian land”, which suggests that Russia has the right to take them back or intervene in them to get the leaders of those countries to submit to Russian demands.

Putin’s address to the world on the day of the invasion is telling. In that long and rambling speech, he asserted: “The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have noted is our historical land, a hostile ‘anti-Russia’ is taking shape.” This statement suggests that Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan belong to, and will always be contested by, Russia.

Part of Putin’s problem of seeing exSoviet republics as Russian territory is that the Russian empire was the only empire in Europe that survived the First World War. The Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and German empires all collapsed in 1918 and a host of new nations were born. The Russian empire was simply transformed into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics when the Bolsheviks took power in 1917. However, the fact that the exSoviet republics have only enjoyed three decades of independence doesn’t mean they should lose it against their will.

Big powers have historically carved out areas that they regard as spheres of influence. The Monroe doctrine, for instance, informed the foreign policy of the US for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Under this doctrine, the US viewed efforts by European powers to 12

Russian President Putin with South Africa's Cyril Ramaphiosa

influence or control countries in the Americas as a threat to US security. In exchange, the US agreed to not interfere in the affairs of Europe and its colonies.

As imperial powers, the foreign policies of France, the UK and Portugal have also been driven by notions of spheres of influence. Britain struggled to maintain control of its ex-colonies after it agreed to give them independence; it created the Sterling Area and Commonwealth system to defend the waning international role of the pound sterling. Under this system, it tried to compel the newly independent countries to maintain their reserves in the UK Treasury, tie their currencies to sterling and pursue extremely conservative fiscal policies (spending only what they earn as foreign exchange) in exchange for the UK directing its investments, trade and aid flows towards them.

And through the Franc zone, France continues to exercise considerable control over the monetary policies of the Francophone African countries and regards those countries as part of its sphere of

influence. It intervenes regularly in those countries to change or prop up regimes and has 3,500 troops in Mali, which are now being withdrawn, under the guise of fighting Islamist militants.

Even during the Ebola crisis, Western assistance to the three West African countries affected by the virus – Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea – followed a spheres of influence logic, with the UK heavily involved in Sierra Leone, the US in Liberia and France in Guinea.

The doctrine of spheres of influence has no place in the UN charter or international law. Indeed, the raison d’etre of the UN, and its antecedent, the League of Nations, was the outlaw of the quest for spheres of influence in world politics.

The fundamental principles of the UN are the prohibition of force in settling disputes unless when sanctioned by the Security Council or for self-defence; acceptance of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and equality of all member nations; and respect for freedom and human rights.

These principles seek to outlaw war in the

COVER STORY conduct of international relations.

Cold War.

Despite their violation in many instances, they remain important for small states that do not have the resources to confront strong nations. Indeed, resistance to the doctrine of spheres of influence and military alliances informed the decision by developing countries to form the NonAligned Movement during the Cold War.

During the Soviet era, Russia had a progressive, anti-Western or antiimperialist policy: it stood in solidarity with African countries in fighting European colonial domination and the obnoxious racist regime of apartheid South Africa.

It provided technical, educational and financial aid as well as military assistance to many countries. And it did not associate itself with kleptocratic and bloody military regimes like those of Idi Amin of Uganda, Jean-Bédel Bokassa of Central African Republic, Mobutu Sese of Seko of Zaire or Samuel Doe of Liberia, which were nurtured or supported in varying degrees

by Western powers.

Most developing countries still regard these principles as sacrosanct. It is not surprising that the overwhelming majority of developing countries (111 out of the 141) voted for the UN General Assembly resolution that “deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine”, and called on Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces”.

If Putin’s blatant attempt to relegitimise the doctrine of spheres of influence is allowed to stand, what will stop the former European imperial powers from affirming their right to intervene regularly in Africa, and even recolonise a few countries, by arguing that they created those countries in Berlin in the 19th century?

The second issue is how a beleaguered Russia is likely to behave in Africa. If the West’s sanctions bite and Russia finds itself excluded from much of the European social, economic and political space, it is likely to become more paranoid and

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Russia served instead as an inspiration to forces across Africa that were interested in transformative social change, even though Ethiopia, Mozambique and Angola that tried to implement the Soviet model of development turned out to be disasters.

A beleaguered, authoritarian, economically weak, rent-seeking capitalistic Russia that has been stripped of its aspirational ideology will be different. The current Russia will be highly transactional, aggressive and opportunistic.

Russia’s recent attempts to revive its flagging relations with African countries are instructive.

Given its weak economy, it will not be a strong competitor in productive

What will stop the former European imperial powers from affirming their right to recolonise a few countries in Africa by arguing that they created those countries in Berlin in the 19th century?

confrontational and would aggressively seek allies in non-Western regions, including in Africa.

Africa’s open, fragmented, underdeveloped and contested policy space makes it a strong candidate for enhanced Russian intervention, big power politics and creation of spheres of influence.

Russia’s engagement with Africa will be substantially different from Soviet engagement with the continent during the

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investments, trade and aid compared to China, the EU and the US. Russia’s exports to Africa were a mere $13 billion in 2019 and its foreign direct investment was estimated to be less than one per cent of Africa’s total FDI stock in 2017.

This is pittance when compared to China’s FDI stock of $110 billion in Africa and its $250 billion trade with African countries. Russian companies in Africa have largely focused on the extractive

sector – such as diamonds, nickel, manganese, oil and gas – as well as nuclear energy where they have a comparative advantage.

Even though Russia is rich in mineral resources, it lost many of those resources to the new states after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is believed that importing raw materials from Africa is cheaper than extracting them from Russia’s remote regions that hold the bulk of its resources.

Increased Russian involvement in Africa’s extractive sector, which has a history of corruption, bad deals and illicit transfers, is unlikely to be different from the West’s, and recently China’s pillage of the continent’s resources and impoverishment of its people. In Honest Account 2017, Global Justice Now reported that in 2015, Africa as a whole was a net creditor to the rest of the world (largely Western countries) by $41.4 billion. In other words, more resources – $203 billion through tax avoidance, debt payments and resource extraction – were taken out of the continent than flowed in: $161.6 billion through loans, remittances and aid.

The Thabo Mbeki-led African UnionEconomic Commission for Africa’s own panel estimated in 2015 that $50 billion was leaving Africa as illicit financial flows every year. And War on Want reported in 2016 that about 100, mostly British, companies listed on the London Stock Exchange controlled more than $1 trillion worth of resources in just five commodities: oil, gold, diamonds, coal and platinum; and a quarter of those companies were registered in tax havens.

Russia’s quest for raw materials may spur enhanced greed and dirty tricks, as it tries to compensate for lost opportunities in the West. This may aggravate Africa’s resource drain.

Russia is also likely to push African countries to transition to nuclear energy, where it has a huge advantage, citing the continent’s large deficit in power generation. About 600 million Africans are estimated to be without access to electricity.

Nuclear energy was one of the agenda items at the 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi, attended by 42 African leaders.

Russia is in negotiations with most North

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COVER STORY African countries, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and Rwanda to sign nuclear energy deals, and has committed to provide 80 per cent of the funds to build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant for a whopping $25 billion.

will be seen primarily through the prism of its conflict with the West and need to secure whatever resources and economic opportunities it can get as it tries to evade sanctions and diversify its stuttering economy.

However, Russia has a poor record in large-scale infrastructure projects. Despite Nigeria sinking more than $10 billion into the Ajaokuta iron and steel project, the Russian company, TyazhPromExport, contracted to build the plant in 1976 failed to produce a single steel before the project was abandoned in 1994. The failure of the Ajaokuta steel project has been a huge blow to Nigeria’s quest for industrialisation.

Democratic norms and practices have not travelled well in Africa after the wave of democratisation that ended military and one-party rule in much of the continent in the 1990s. There has been a serious democratic regression as incumbents in many countries change their constitutions to extend their rule; governing parties capture all state institutions, harass opposition parties and restrict the rights of citizens; and elections are rigged to prevent a transfer of power. By 2020, term limits had been modified or eliminated in 16 African countries and in a list of controversial elections in the world, 50 are African.

Nuclear reactors are expensive, capital intensive, take years to build, and have high maintenance and safety costs. African countries should be wary of incurring unsustainable debts and permanent dependence on Russia to run and maintain reactors. It is not surprising that South Africa cancelled its agreement with Russia for a second nuclear plant in 2017, citing cost, after an environmental group successfully challenged the government in court.

Surely, there must be cheaper and safer green energy alternatives – such as solar, hydro and wind power – to nuclear reactors in solving Africa’s electricity problem.

A beleaguered Russia is also likely to be heavily involved in the internal politics of African countries. Such intervention

Such setbacks in democratisation, security challenges and failure to improve the lives of citizens have encouraged the military to make a comeback in African politics. Military coups have occurred in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sudan and Chad in the last two years.

While Western powers have been opportunistic in advancing the democracy agenda in Africa – punishing countries it dislikes while giving a pass to others until there is a breakdown of order – it has joined African regional organisations, which have failed to hold flawed

Nuclear energy was one of the agenda items at the 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi

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democracies to account, to oppose the return of military rule in the continent.

Russia has stepped in to prop up besieged African dictators by providing arms and military protection.

Its state-owned arms export agency, Rosoboronexport, is the largest arms exporter to Africa, accounting for about 50 per cent of the continent’s arms imports. It is the second largest arms exporter in the world after the US. Indeed, the armament sector plays a big role in Russia’s economy as it accounts for a large proportion of manufactured exports. Algeria and Egypt are Russia’s biggest clients in Africa, but it has recently expanded sales to a number of sub-Saharan African countries, including Nigeria, Tanzania, Cameroon, Angola and the Central African Republic.

Russia uses its paramilitary or mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group, which specialises in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism training as well as use of military hardware, to challenge Western power in Africa and provide security to rogue African leaders who want to remain in power and roll back pressures for democratic change. In exchange, Russia receives concessions to extract mineral resources, commercial contracts or access to ports and airbases.

The Wagner Group is active in the Central African Republic, where it has been accused of summary executions, torture and indiscriminate targeting of civilian facilities, Sudan (especially during Omar Al-Bashir’s regime), Mozambique, Madagascar, Libya, Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso. There has been a standoff between France and Mali, where French troops have been unable to beat back Islamist terrorists despite committing 3,500 troops there since 2013. Faced with pressure from France, its European allies and African regional organisations to organise elections for a transition to civil rule, the military leader, Assimi Goita, invited the Wagner Group to prop up its security and declared the arrogant and pushy French ambassador persona non grata.

Africans are likely to see an aggravation of this kind of big power competition on their continent in which Russia and willing African dictators try to beat back pressures for democratisation and protection of human rights. Western governments may also be forced to give up

COVER STORY all pretences about promoting democracy in Africa and may relate with countries primarily from a strategic perspective of countering Russian and Chinese penetration of the continent.

It is indeed astonishing that although 25 African countries supported the General Assembly resolution that calls on Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine, 17 abstained, eight did not vote and one voted against. Russia provides security through its Wagner Group to many of the states that abstained or stayed away, others are under sanctions themselves, and some have bilateral military cooperation agreements with Russia.

It is important to understand that Western powers only became interested in the global democracy project after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For much of its history, the West practiced democracy at home and pragmatic politics, as defined by its strategic and economic interests, overseas. This meant it could work with all kinds of despots and corrupt leaders whose interests were aligned with its own interests. Its cosy relations with the despotic regimes of the Gulf oil states underscores this point.

Britain tried to use democracy as a tool to stagger its exit from its colonies in the 1950s and part of the 1960s, while devising new methods of influence or control, such as the Sterling Area system and the Commonwealth – but this was only for a brief period. France did not bother with the idea of injecting democracy into its decolonisation project, and Portugal was chased out of its colonies through armed struggles.

Let us be clear: the belief that the US had become the only super power in town after the collapse of the Soviet Union encouraged the West to cloak its global strategic interests with the ideals of democracy. We may be heading back to the stark days of authoritarian politics of the pre-1990s. It is difficult to believe that the West will firm up its already questionable commitment to democracy on the continent when faced with challenges from Russia and China who have no interest in democracy.

One final issue that should be highlighted in discussing the invasion and how it is likely to impact Africa is the

short-term effects of the rise in oil, gas and wheat prices. Russia is the world’s second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia; it is also the fourth largest gas exporter after the US, Qatar and Algeria.

And both Russia and Ukraine are major wheat producers, with Russia ranked third in the world after China and India, and Ukraine seventh. Both Russia and Ukraine account for 30 per cent of global wheat exports, and Ukraine is a major exporter of maize and vegetable oil. South Africa, for instance, imports about 30 per cent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, and Russia is the second largest exporter of wheat to Nigeria.

Supply chains in commodity production and marketing are often disrupted during global crises. It is not surprising that oil, gas, wheat and other grain prices, which were already rising in late 2021, have skyrocketed since the invasion.

The effects of price rises depend on whether a country is a net exporter or importer. For the big oil producers, such as Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Libya, Algeria, Republic of Congo, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Chad the price increase in oil is likely to be a boon as state revenues will increase, especially if production is ramped up. Gas producers like Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Angola and Equatorial Guinea may also take advantage of the cancellation of the Russo-German Nordstream 2 oil pipeline if they can invest in the infrastructure for supplying gas across the Mediterranean into Europe.

However, the vast majority of African countries do not produce oil or, if they do, are net importers. For these countries, the global oil price hike has translated into a sharp rise in the prices of petrol and related products as well as increases in transport fares.

A similar problem can be observed for grains. The important wheat producers in Africa are South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Nigeria. However, all these countries are net importers. While the rise in wheat prices may improve the incomes of local farmers, it may hurt consumers as bread, pasta, noodles, biscuits and cakes become expensive.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the

current standoff between Russia and the West threaten world peace. The doctrine of spheres of influence, which informs Putin’s invasion, is dangerous not only for former Soviet republics but also for African countries and other small nations around the world. It provides justification for redrawing boundaries, annexing countries and undermining the territorial integrity of states, which is a fundamental principle of the UN. The isolation of Russia through the West’s punitive sanctions may not only adversely impact Africa through oil, wheat and other grain price hikes, it may also create fortress Russia that will pursue an aggressive policy in Africa and other weak regions in order to gain allies, markets, raw materials and diversification of its external relations. This is likely to impact African politics negatively as equally beleaguered rogue African politicians that do not want to give up power may sign up for Russian protection.

In this new dynamic, Western countries may be forced to abandon their already questionable support for Africa’s troubled democracy project and engage African countries through the prism of their rivalry with Russia.

The insistence of the West to maintain NATO’s ‘open door policy’ of admitting any country that seeks to join the alliance is dumb. Putin should withdraw from Ukraine and Ukraine should not be admitted into NATO. While the doctrine of spheres of influence should be rejected unreservedly, the security interests of all states that do not threaten the territorial integrity of other states should be respected.

Putin seems to have overplayed his hand. The West cannot win a war against him because of his nuclear arsenal, but his economy can be crippled and the three decades of his citizen’s exposure to, and enjoyment of, Western lifestyles and contacts can be disrupted, fuelling resentment and possibly instability in his country.

The invasion has done profound damage to Russia’s relations with the West, which will be difficult to reverse as long as Putin and like-minded people around him are in power. Africa should brace itself for the challenging years ahead.

AB

Yusuf Bangura was a Research Coordinator at the UN Research Institute for Social Development from 1990-2012. He was the lead author of the UNRISD flagship report, Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics, and Series Editor of Ethnic Inequalities and Governance of the Public Sector, and Developmental Pathways to Poverty Reduction. In 2013-14, he taught international political economy at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone 15

COVER STORY

Liberal rules-based multilateral order upended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the security of small nations, reinforces the illiberal turn in world politics by challenging the body of rights and democratic norms that gained ascendancy in the 1990s and marks a decisive end to the post-Cold War security regime that governed the strained but stable relations between the West and Russia and guaranteed the independence of East European countries and former Soviet republics in the last three decades, argues Yusuf Bangura

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USSIA’S transition from communism to capitalism was messy; its economy contracted by about 40 per cent after a shock therapy of price liberalisation and privatisation; inflation skyrocketed, the rouble plummeted, and shortages of basic food items became the norm. While the employment data did not show any mass layoffs, about a quarter of the workforce was on unpaid or low-paid leave. A third of the population fell into poverty and the social protections developed in the Soviet era proved insufficient for maintaining basic wellbeing. Boris Yeltsin, the first post-Communist president, sought, and Russia was granted, membership of the IMF in 1992 and obtained a series of loans with tough conditionalities that did not improve the country’s economy. Indeed, former Russian Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Yegeny Primakov believes that Russia’s losses under the IMF were twice as large as those suffered during World War Two. Many Russians saw the IMF loan agreements as an attack on Russia’s sovereignty and an attempt to turn Russia into a vassal state of the West. Indeed, the loss of the Soviet republics, the deep economic recession and dependence on Western institutions for finance profoundly weakened Russia’s status as a global power and provoked a conservative and neo-nationalist turn in domestic politics.

Russians yearned for a strong leader that would reverse the decline and restore the country’s position in the comity of nations.

After winning several fairly credible elections and stabilising the economy with the help of soaring oil and gas prices, Ever since he came to power in 2000, Putin has been obsessed with recreating the boundaries of the Soviet Union as Russian territory

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COVER STORY Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB official, fitted the bill of a new messiah. When he assumed power in 2000, Russia’s political system, though fragile, could still be described as an electoral democracy, as relatively free and competitive elections were regularly held.

However, within a few years of his rule, Putin reined in independent political organisations, controlled national television stations and other media, weakened the power of the oligarchs that had been empowered by fire sales of state assets, and concentrated power in the presidency.

Supreme political authority provided the basis for challenging Western hegemony and reclaiming former Soviet lands.

Ever since he came to power in 2000, Putin has been obsessed with recreating the boundaries of the Soviet Union as Russian territory. In 2005, he told the BBC that the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and a “genuine tragedy” for the Russian people as “tens of millions”

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Latvia, which share a common border with Russia, would have been allowed to join NATO if Russia had regained its confidence and was governed by a resolute and calculating leader like Putin. Matters were not helped when NATO signalled that it would consider Ukraine’s membership of the alliance.

Russians yearned for a strong leader that would reverse the decline and restore the country’s position in the comity of nations.

Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB official, fitted the bill

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of Russians found themselves outside of Russian territory.

His strategic view of the world is a throwback to the Concert of Europe of the 19th century in which the great powers had vested interests and spheres of influence, intervened in the internal affairs of small states and acted collectively to maintain a balance of power or security in Europe.

Such a system is antithetical to the current multilateral norms and arrangements that seek to curb unilateralist behaviour by states.

The refusal of the US and its Western allies to not only dismantle NATO but expand it to include former Soviet republics was a strategic blunder of enormous proportions, especially as Putin wanted Russia to join the alliance but was told he had to apply like any state seeking membership. Hubris or triumphalism clouded Western strategic policy making.

Many bought the dubious and self-serving idea of ‘the end of history’ – that markets and democracy will now determine how states are governed, and the US will be the only super power and will do as it pleases in policing the world.

This posture fuelled Putin’s suspicion that the West still regarded Russia as an enemy and was not serious about world peace. In the logic of realpolitik and national security, the borders of states, especially those of great powers, should be free of antagonistic military forces.

It is highly unlikely that Estonia and

There are two key planks in Putin’s strategy to revive Russia’s power. The first is his challenge of liberal values and the rules-based multilateral system. It must be stressed that the attack on liberalism is not just a Russian problem.

The US and its allies ignored UN rules and procedures in 2003 by invading Iraq under the false pretence of looking for weapons of mass destruction, and there have been countless other US interventions in foreign countries that clearly violated the rules-based international order, including the use of lethal drone strikes in Pakistan and Arab countries.

In his 2020 book, United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State, David Vine observes that the US “has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since its independence”.

Liberal values have also eroded in the US where there was an attempt in January 2021 to prevent a transfer of power to the winner of the presidential election; and laws are being passed in Republicancontrolled state legislatures to limit black participation in the electoral process and overturn election results.

Putin’s anti-liberalism is, however, visceral or an article of faith and serves as an instrument for resurrecting Russian power. In this regard, Russia has emerged as a leading actor in disinformation, cyberattacks, and tampering with the electoral processes of Western and other

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COVER STORY democracies.

Russia’s hacking of Hilary Clinton’s and the Democratic National Committee’s emails and collusion with Wikileaks to influence the 2016 elections is instructive.

It is clear from Putin’s pronouncements that he is unhappy with the post-Cold war security arrangements and the global rulesbased liberal order, which he believes, shackle his quest for global power.

The second plank of Putin’s strategy is to claw back lost territories along Russia’s border. The vehicle for realising this strategy is the 25 million ethnic Russians residing in the new ex-Soviet countries.

The creation of the Soviet Union in 1917 was accompanied by Russification of non-Russian republics through a process that involved deportation of large numbers of disloyal individuals from indigenous populations and encouraging Russians to migrate and fill gaps in labour markets and public administrations.

One of the most glaring examples of Russification was the displacement of the German population in Kaliningrad (which does not even share a border with Russia but is wedged between Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea) and massive migration of Russians into the region after Germany’s defeat in the Second World War. Joseph Stalin occupied, demanded and was given the right to annex Konigsberg (the previous name of Kaliningrad) by the Allied Powers as compensation for the mass suffering Russians incurred from Nazi Germany.

Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, supported the expulsion (ethnic cleansing) of Germans from Konigsberg. In his words, “expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will

be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble”.

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In 1945, there were only 5,000

I observed in 2004 the deep animosity between Latvians and ethnic Russians when I organised a UNRISD conference in Riga, the capital, that discussed the

The refusal of the US and its Western allies to not only dismantle NATO but expand it to include former Soviet republics was a strategic blunder of enormous proportions

Russians and more than 100,000 Germans in Konigsberg; by 1948 about 400,000 Soviets had moved into the region. There are now only 1,600 Germans or about 0.4 per cent of the population; Russians currently account for 87 per cent of the population.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had the largest number of ethnic Russians (about 8,300,000 or 17.2 per cent of the population)), followed

by Kazakhstan (3,600,000; 20.2 per cent), Belarus (785,000) and Uzbekistan (750,000). However, Latvia (487,250; 25 per cent) and Estonia (322,700; 24.2 per cent) have higher percentages of ethnic Russians than all other countries.

Relations between ethnic Russians and host nations are often tense as the latter seek to undo historical injustices.

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findings of our research project on Ethnic Inequalities and Governance of the Public Sector.

The current Latvian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Artis Pabriks, who was a researcher at the time, conducted the Latvian study. Memories of the 60,000 or more Latvians deported to Siberia by Soviet leaders just after the Second World War were still fresh among Latvians, who also disliked the fact that Russians constituted the majority population in their capital city. Russians on the other hand complained about language laws and tough citizenship rules that made it difficult for Russians to obtain citizenship under the new government.

Putin has used the agitation of ethnic Russians for equal treatment as a basis for invading the new territories. The forerunner to the invasion of Ukraine was Russia’s intervention in the conflict in 2008 in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia in which Russia supported and later recognised the two breakaway territories from Georgia.

Despite the very small number of ethnic Russians in those territories, residents there now carry Russian passports. The big prize is Ukraine, which Putin regards as a spiritual and cultural home for Russians and which, as we have seen, hosts the largest number of Russia’s diaspora.

The pattern for annexation is clear: ethnic Russians complain about discrimination and declare independence

Matters were not helped when NATO signalled that it would consider Ukraine’s membership of the alliance

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COVER STORY applications.

Its technological strength is in nearspace exploration, rocket engines and military hardware. However, research suggests that there have been hardly any spill overs from such sectors into the civil sphere.

Unlike Russia, China seeks to use – not disrupt – the existing global arrangements to challenge Western hegemony

in their localities, the Russian army is sent in to defend them, the Russian parliament recognises the breakaway territories, and Putin formalises the process by incorporating the territories into Russia.

The popular uprising in 2014 against the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, who was critical of Ukraine’s application to join the EU, his removal from office and subsequent exile to Moscow may have been a turning point for Putin.

The first invasion of Ukraine was in Crimea in 2014 where ethnic Russians account for 65 per cent of the population.

The failure of the Western powers to draw a line on Crimea emboldened Putin to mount a second invasion of the country.

Again, as in the first invasion, ethnic Russians complained about maltreatment and seized Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas region where they constituted a majority, the Russian military rendered support, Russia’s parliament recognised their autonomy and Putin sent in the military for a full invasion, which, this time, may involve the annexation of the entire country.

Russia’s strategy for the countries on its southern border, which are less antagonistic, involves the creation of a regional alliance (the Collective Security Treaty Organisation) of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and turning these countries into puppet states. This allowed Russia to send troops to oil-rich Kazakhstan in January 2022 to put down anti-government protests. The other non-Soviet country on Russia’s southern border, Mongolia, relies on Russia to counter Chinese threats to its territory.

The two-plank strategy of disdain for the liberal rules-based world order

and annexation of ex-Soviet republics is underpinned by a policy of reducing Russia’s economic dependence on the West in order to be able to withstand sanctions.

The Economist recently reckoned that Russia had reduced its debt to just 20 per cent of GDP, built formidable reserves of $620 billion and created a “fortress economy”.

The extent to which such measures will insulate the Russian economy and appetite of its nomenklatura and oligarchs for Western goods and services from the current raft of Western sanctions remains to be seen.

Russia’s mission to upend the liberal rules-based multilateral order suggests lack of confidence in its ability to use those rules to catch up with the West. Playing rogue is the weapon of great powers in decline.

In this regard, Russia’s behaviour contrasts sharply with China’s, a rising economic and technological powerhouse, which seeks to use – not disrupt – the existing global arrangements to challenge Western hegemony and attain its goal of super power status. Russia is not even among the top 10 largest economies in the world; its GDP of $1.4 trillion is dwarfed by those of the US (about $20 trillion) and China ($14 trillion). Russia’s GDP equals that of Brazil’s but lags behind India’s and even the Republic of Korea, with a population of only 50 million.

Despite a few pockets of excellence and an educated workforce, Russia is also outmatched in the technological field; it spends just one per cent of its GDP on research and development; its corporations conduct little or no research and the country as a whole trails China, the US, Japan, Korea, Germany and India in patent

While Russia is an economic dwarf, it ranks second to the US in the global firepower index or military capability and has the largest number of nuclear warheads in the world, 6,257 to the US’s 5,500 and China’s 350, according to World Population Review, 2022. This asymmetry between military power and economic and technological prowess may explain Putin’s infatuation with military might and willingness to use it to assert Russia’s status as a global power.

The wide-ranging sanctions recently imposed on Russia suggest that the West is willing to stand up to Russia by isolating it from vital areas of global finance, trade, investment, technology, entertainment and travel. The scale of the sanctions is unprecedented.

We may well be witnessing the return of the Iron Curtain, which may plunge Europe into protracted instability as Russia fights back to break free from isolation. It is highly unlikely now that Ukraine will be admitted into NATO. However, the invasion has given NATO a new lease of life and produced an outcome that Putin wanted to prevent: NATO troops and potential instability on Russia’s western border.

Neutral Western countries like Sweden, Finland, Ireland and even Switzerland may abandon their longstanding policy of neutrality and seek NATO membership for protection. Remarkably, the decision of Sweden and Switzerland to fully participate in the Western sanctions makes them vulnerable to Russian retaliation if they remain outside of the military alliance.

Putin regards Ukraine as a spiritual and cultural home for Russians

AB

19

ANALYSIS

Germany should look to Africa for gas, not Russia To stop financing Moscow’s brutal wars, Berlin should help African countries develop their energy sectors, writes Vijaya Ramachandran

W

ITH the United States and United Kingdom banning Russian energy exports and the European Union announcing it will reduce Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of the year, the West is urgently debating how to replace Russian energy deliveries. The most crucial issue is the Russian gas on which Germany and other parts of Europe depend. From Washington to Berlin, politicians have announced they will be doubling down on wind and solar energy.

But while renewable energy production will be part of a long-term solution, the idea that it can replace Russian oil and gas quickly and at scale is disingenuous at best—and disastrous for Western economies and consumers at worst. The reasons should be clear to all but the energy-illiterate: wind and solar power can replace some of the Russian gas used

Germany has suspended the Nordstream 2 certification

20

to generate electricity—but only when the wind blows and the sun shines, requiring substantial backup generation capacity, much of it powered by natural gas. What’s more, electricity is only part of the energy equation: the majority of Russian oil and gas is not used by power plants but to heat homes, run factories, and fuel cars, trucks, planes, and ships—none of which can be easily shifted to other fuels. If Western countries don’t want their economies to come to a standstill, oil and gas previously delivered from Russia needs to be sourced elsewhere.

Europe will therefore need a large, reliable supply of non-Russian fossil fuel for the foreseeable future. And any serious debate about energy security needs to focus very quickly on where future non-Russian supplies will be sourced. For Europe— especially Germany and the other countries most dependent on Russian supplies—part

of the answer will be for Europe to stop looking east and start looking south to Africa.

Germany is the linchpin. For the past several decades, successive governments in Berlin have pursued a policy of maximising the country’s dependence on Russian oil and gas, not least by turning off all but two remaining nuclear reactors.

Gas will likely remain a critical source of Germany’s energy for years—perhaps decades—to come. It accounts for 25 percent of the country’s total primary energy consumption, and imports make up 97 percent of supply. Russia is the main source, followed by the Netherlands and Norway. (Germany has substantial supplies of natural gas of its own that could be accessed by fracking, but Berlin has banned the technology.) If Germany is to phase out Russian energy, it is not clear how Germans will heat their homes and

ANALYSIS power their factories.

Natural gas is cheap and reliable, burns twice as cleanly as coal, and is a critical input in many sectors—not just electricity generation. In Germany, 44 percent of gas was used for heating buildings in 2020, while industrial processes consumed 28 percent. Gas is the best and cheapest feedstock for the manufacture of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, of which Germany is a critical supplier. (Russia and its ally Belarus are also major fertiliser producers.)

Gas is also used in refining, the production of chemicals, and many other types of manufacturing. All of this is difficult—if not impossible—to replace with green energy anytime soon.

Germany has already announced it will further increase its use of coal, which overtook wind to become the biggest input for electricity production globally in 2021. Some of this will be lignite—the worst possible fossil fuel, dirtier than conventional coal and extracted in vast open-pit mines that litter the German countryside. But Germany has boxed itself into a corner with its energy policies—most crucially, the replacement of nuclear power with Russian gas—and does not have a lot of options. Already, the European Commission has given its absolution to countries replacing Russian gas with coal and producing higher emissions as a result.

Germany must also be clear-eyed about its long-term energy future, including rethinking its current stance on carbon-free, non-Russian nuclear energy.

Germany will also need substantial supplies of natural gas for the foreseeable future. If Berlin is serious about energy security, it should look to Africa, which has substantial natural gas production, reserves, and new discoveries in the process of being tapped. Algeria is a major gas producer with substantial untapped reserves and is already connected to Spain with several undersea pipelines.

Germany and the EU are already working to expand pipeline capacity connecting Spain with France, from where more Algerian gas could flow to Germany and elsewhere. Libyan gas fields are connected by pipeline to Italy.

In both Algeria and Libya, Europe should urgently help tap new fields and increase Additional reporting by Jon Offei-Ansah

The Trans-Sahara pipeline

gas production. New pipelines under discussion currently focus on the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline Project, which would bring gas from Israel’s offshore gas fields to Europe.

But the biggest African sources lie south of the Sahara—including Nigeria, which has about a third of the continent’s reserves, and Tanzania. Senegal has recently discovered major offshore fields. Very little of Africa’s gas has been exploited, either for domestic consumption or export.

Recently, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan said the Russian invasion of Ukraine could prove to be an opportunity for gas sales as the East African country makes efforts to secure a new energy market outside Africa. “Whether Africa or Europe or America, we are looking for markets,” said Hassan. “And fortunately, we are working with companies from Europe.”

Tanzania, which has the sixth-largest gas reserves in Africa – an estimated 57 trillion cubic feet (1.6 billion cubic metres) of gas reserves – says it has been working with Shell to utilise its vast offshore gas resources and export to Europe and elsewhere.

Africa’s largest gas producer has similar plans too. Timipre Sylva, Nigeria’s oil minister, told the press at the gas exporting countries’ forum in Doha recently, “We want to build a pipeline, a trans-Sahara pipeline, that is going to take our gas to Algeria, then to Europe.”

Nigeria’s comments are buoyed by the recent signing of an MoU with Algeria and the Niger Republic and the ongoing construction of the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline.

There is no official word on when the pipeline, first mooted in the 1970s, will be completed but it is slated to run through northern Nigeria into Niger and Algeria, connecting to Europe eventually.

Germany should take note of these opportunities. If the proposed Trans-Saharan pipeline is completed, it will connect to the existing Trans Mediterranean, Maghreb Europe, Medgaz, and Galsi pipelines that supply Europe from transmission hubs on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. The Trans-Saharan pipeline would be more than 2,500 miles long and could supply as much as 30 billion cubic meters of Nigerian gas to Europe per year—equivalent to about twothirds of Germany’s 2021 imports from Russia.

AB

Vijaya Ramachandran is the director for energy and development at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research centre located in Oakland, California 21

ANALYSIS

Resurgent coups in Africa highlight political challenges To prevent further military intervention on the continent, governments must be responsible enough to provide solutions to their citizens' requests and allow them to enjoy the dividends of democracy, writes Toyin Falola

A

FRICA remains the continent with the highest number of coups, at least in the history of the 20th and 21st centuries. Coups or military interventions are always embarked upon with self-righteous reasoning from the junta aimed at salvaging the nation.

Without retelling the different escapades that have hit the continent in the past, it is not surprising that military rule has not been favourable to many concepts of civil society. The violation of human rights is almost the first oppressive step taken by each coup, and Africa is still trying to recover from the costly fiasco of military interventions.

To Africans, military coup d’états indicate that there has been a challenge facing the existing political structure and that the military takes over with an initial confession of restoration of normalcy in society. No matter how promising the pedagogical announcement of every coup is, its emergence has also proven

to be evidence of political instability and economic chaos.

to promise a return to peace, which the people, unfortunately, believed.

For quite a while now, the military had been in the barracks but it seems the lions have been unleashed upon the political sphere, with coups occurring at an alarming rate and in rapid succession across the continent.

Other coups, such as those in Mali, Chad, Guinea, and Cote d’Ivoire, have rocked the African political atmosphere, drawing widespread attention. Also, Mali has been facing too many successive military interventions with three in 12 years. Other countries have similar experiences, making this one of the points to assert that something is wrong with the continent.

The most recent military intervention of January 24, 2022, in Burkina Faso, combined with the recent coups in Niger, Mali, and Guinea, has sparked the debate about whether or not coups have finally resurfaced within many parts of the continent, as well as the suspicion of how the nationals of these countries embraced these coups.

The military took over power in Burkina Faso after deposing the government of Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in a coup led by Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba. This came at the seeming peak of militant aggression in the country, and the military had come in

The government of Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was deposed in a coup led by Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba

22

With the above recent events, it is clear that there is a propensity for military intervention, especially where an African country is facing political instability or a security challenge. This is because they have become the common excuse of the juntas in Africa.

Should we be surprised that the military is taking over the helm of affairs of a country in an undemocratic manner again? History repeats itself, but some scholars have pointed out factors that can

ANALYSIS be considered carefully in forecasting the resurgence of military interventions in Africa. One of these scholars is Robert Jackman, who, in contrast to Aristide Zolberg's opposing beliefs, was optimistic that a series of events and factors could resurface in different areas and might be common in all of them.

After analysing different data in Africa, Jackman came up with a structural model, and he argues for a process that might have been noticed and could happen simultaneously or in different ways in a nation. First, he posits that if social mobilisation is not managed, it will result in the resurgence of coups, which could be typical to other countries.

Jackman analysed two hypotheses for this factor and stated that social mobilisation should not ordinarily cause political instability, as the number of participants may be small. However, if they become many, due to making more people politically relevant in society, the government must be able to quickly meet their demands, or else social mobilisation in the country will turn into a coup.

Second, Jackman relied on the hypothesis on "organisational age," as put forward by Samuel P. Huntington, that if the youth, like the African community, is the driving force behind mobilisation, it could most likely lead to a coup. This is because the youth are characterised by their desire for rapid change, which the government would most likely be unable

Mali junta leader Assimi Goita. The country has been facing too many successive military interventions with three in 12 years

other recent coups.

Jackman's second proposition was the effect of mass participation and a multiparty system. It is popularly debated that the increase in mass political participation and the existence of at least two political parties can cause political instability because the varying interests of these strata may not be realistically satisfied.

The dominance of one or two parties allows for the aggregation of interest on collective fronts. Hence, the clash of

we be surprised ‘Should that the military is taking over the helm of affairs of a country in an undemocratic manner again? to provide.

This first theory could be seen in many of the recent coups in Africa. For instance, before the Mali 2020 coup, there were a series of non-violent protests, one of which was led by the June 5 Movement–Rally of Patriotic Force (M5-RFP), as is the case in

’

different parties in a multiparty system might invite a coup. One example is the political instability in Lesotho, one of which was the disagreements of the Basotho Congress Party (BCP) and Basotho National Party (BNP) on the king's powers, which later led to the BNP's alliance with the military.

Furthermore, Jackman analysed the view that cultural pluralism could cause political instability. He states that where there is more than one cultural origin, incoherent interests are likely, which could lead to clashes. More so, the origin of this stemmed from primordial loyalty to a certain group.

However, on the contrary, there are beliefs that cultural pluralism would not be a problem except there are dominant groups in the society. This view is backed by the history of ethnic disagreements in countries like Liberia, Burundi, Democratic Republic Congo, Algeria, Madagascar, Congo, and Somalia. The 1967 Nigerian Civil War between the Biafrans (mostly Igbo) and the rest of the country is an easy and relatable point of reference to further this assertion. Before the war, ethnic dominance had pre-informed the two 1966 military coups, which many interpreted as ethnically motivated.

In essence, different political mobilisations have been overtures to military interventions in Africa, just as they were in the past. Before the January 24 coup in Burkina Faso, different protests and mobilisations (violent or non-violent) arose. Similarly, the other two arms of the above model have been evident in the recent coups.

Africa should have learned from the past. These events are bound to reach their crescendo, which is expected to affect the community because many of people's demands were not met. It is pertinent that other countries seeing the same symptoms 23

ANALYSIS should take immediate redress and rescue the situation because a coup can be contagious.

In line with the above, some scholars have explained the reason for the resurgence of coups from the vantage point of the coup contagion hypothesis.

This means that where there is a military intervention, there is a possibility that countries in other areas of the region might also resort to it.

Military intervention in a country brings about a sense of legitimacy in another country and encouragement. Other countries, particularly those with similar problems, will start to see it as the only viable solution to their problems. More so, the presence of the coup wave has been argued to be a catalyst for the resurgence of military interventions in other countries.

The problem is that no one knows where the wave will start from. An example was the predominant waves of coups in French-speaking African countries and some former British territories.

Fast forward to present-day Africa, there seems to also be the possibility of a coup contagion in West Africa. Since 2010, there have been 16 military coups across West Africa and 43 in Africa as a whole. In a way, these events underscore the above assertion that a coup might be contagious and may explain whether or not a military intervention is back in Africa.

In the recent coups, it is ironic that the citizens have welcomed the military back with open arms. After the January 24, 2022 coup in Burkina Faso, thousands of citizens were seen celebrating, and there was no condemnation of such intervention.

A similar development happened in Mali and some other African countries also.

This development is quite disturbing, considering the notorious attributes that

‘

to military rule, which does not satisfy the immediate and important needs of the people. The victory achieved through military intervention can be regarded as a

Where there is a military intervention, there is a possibility that countries in other areas of the region might also resort to it

military juntas are known for in the past.

Such migration from the disposition to democracy to military rule only points to the failure of democracy in Africa.

Democracy, which unarguably has been widely regarded as the best available system of government in which people and their interests are expected to matter, has failed on the continent.

Economic crises, security challenges, and, most importantly, the dominance of corrupt practices in government have made citizens lose faith in the system. Africans are getting more frustrated by unfavourable policies, unnecessary red-tape, and favouritism that have become attributes of African democratic government.

After getting too tired of the disguise of democracy, there is a need for a paradigm shift and a revolution in which the people now regard military intervention as an alternative solution. It should be clear that the people prefer democracy

’

pyrrhic one because when the precarious tendencies of the military junta start manifesting, they may be more disastrous than what the people had previously suffered under a democratic government.

Democracy must be reformed, for its failures give birth to authoritarianism. To prevent further political intervention, the government must be responsible enough to provide solutions to their citizens' requests and allow them to enjoy the dividends of democracy.

The socialists who promised democracy became wealthy socialites, creating a mess, becoming maggots that terminated their own lives in excessive consumption. Reforms and positive deliverables will allow the citizens to regain interest in democracy and defend it.

Furthermore, there is a need to remodel African democracy to consider African diversity and cultural uniqueness.

Considering the various interests of society and every group will go a long way in amending the constitutions to reflect the attributes of all identity groups.

It is high time that the continent took a bold step to confront corruption and promote good governance. Hungry people cannot eat democracy. If changes are not treated as urgent, the military in other countries may follow the example of what has been happening in their surrounding regions, succumb to the pressure of political instability and take to unlawful ascension to power.

The youth are characterised by their desire for rapid change

24

When thousands of people take to the streets to rejoice, understand their feelings and joy.

AB

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ANALYSIS

Is Africa being slowly recolonised?

World powers today appear to have re-developed an interest in dominating African countries, although the approach seems to be a little different from forceful takeovers of the past, argues Toyin Falola, who says that subtle attempts are now being made by taking advantage of economic and military disabilities

T

HE 19th century was arguably the most intense period of global expansionist activities in modern African history. European powers took cognisance of African resources during this era and acquired them. The scramble is the formal summation of the monopolistic attempts of those countries to dominate the continent.

It formally describes the phase between the European race to dominate the African continent, the Berlin conference, and the consequent creation of colonies by the same European countries in the 19th century. Essentially, it marked the inception of increased colonial activities and the corresponding overhaul of the preexisting political and economic autonomy.

domination. This is the concept of neocolonialism.

While neo-colonialist interests continue to thrive in the modern world, world powers appear to have re-developed dominative interests in African states. This time, however, the approach seems to be a little different. Instead of a forceful takeover of these African countries, there have been subtle attempts to gain diplomatic leverage by taking advantage of economic and military disabilities, as well as similarities in central political ideology.

The following analysis highlights the potential interests of distinct world powers – both the capitalists in the West and the Socialists to the East. It also considers some major global moves that hint at this

modern scramble. Finally, the remaining ideas discuss neo-colonial structures and their roles in facilitating the modern-day scramble for domination.

First, let us consider a brief examination of the approach of the socalled Socialist states – Russia and China – and their respective interests on the African continent. Russia, for example, has actively leveraged economic, military, and political strategies to gain ground in certain African countries. Russian military support to countries like Libya and Sudan is a typical example of the state's strategy for maintaining relevance in Africa.

For instance, the Tripoli siege, the threat of the Islamic militia in 2018, and the rampaging rebel group all provided

Before these events, there were historical records of economic exchanges between European merchants and African nations and communities. However, world powers desired geopolitical control and economic superiority due to competitive paranoia, which they could get through dominant acquisition.

At the end of the scramble, states apparatuses were established within the jurisdiction of each colonial power, with the sole purpose of serving the interests of the conquering nations. However, the 20th century marked the uprising of various nationalistic movements, which foreshadowed and triggered the independence of many of the colony states.

Most of these states attained full political autonomy at independence but lacked the necessary apparatuses to exist functionally without dependence on their former colonial rulers and subsequently serving their interests.

The foundation of this structural deficit, and the resultant dependence, was laid through the erosive indoctrination perpetrated during the phase of colonial 26

Russia was linked to the provision of military backup for the deposed Sudanese dictator, Omar al-Bashir, on several occasions

ANALYSIS the ideal opportunity for Russia to broker strategic deals with the Libyan government. The Russian government was reported to have provided manpower

‘

much power these trades afforded the Russian government in an analysis of the Wagner group and its connection to the Russian military. According to Marten,

Both the capitalists in the West and the Socialists to the East have distinct interests in Africa

support, weapons, missiles, and logistic support to the Libyan troops during conflicts.

In the case of Sudan, Russia was linked to the provision of military backup for the Sudanese dictator, Omar al-Bashir, on several occasions. Of course, these are no majestic acts of charity. It is a basic diplomatic rule that such supports are transactional and that a world power like Russia would have wielded the greater bargaining power. From a critical examination, influence in Libya gives Russia considerable geopolitical weight and access to resources such as Libyan oil fields.

American academic Kimberly Marten pointed out an example of how

’

the appointment of Valery Zhakarov – a Russian national – as the National Security Adviser to the Libyan government – was indirectly part of the price Libya had to pay. Marten also suggested that Libya’s over-reliance on Russian military forces directly compromised Libya's sovereignty.

Furthermore, the Russian effect on the Sudanese state and the government of Mozambique was inferred in Joseph Siegel’s analysis of Russia’s expanding influence in Africa. As part of the conclusions of his analysis, he specified that "Russia's support of the Sudanese included the deployment of Wagner forces to support the Sudanese military while gaining access to gold mines in the west of the country." There were also digital footprints of the Russian connection to the toppling of al-Bashir to maintain interest in the two Sudanese states.

When examined in-depth, other subtleties like trade agreements, educational summits, diplomatic and business relations also seem to be skewed in favour of the Russian government.

Apart from access to resources like oil and gold, this expansion ultimately gives the Russian state leverage over its Western rivals, that is, America. One could infer that the Russian interests do not necessarily differ from what world powers conceived in the 19th century: power, competitive advantage, and wealth.

Aside from the Russian government, the People’s Republic of China has also gained considerable influence on the modern African continent. Unlike the direct deal brokerage approach of the Russians, the Chinese are branded more as economic partners. This government is devoted to upholding the impression of a win-win economic partnership with vital

African states.

In 2006, the Chinese established their African policy based on mutual benefit and developmental partnerships to enforce this perception. Summarily, the policy included strategies to ensure reciprocal benefits in the economy, development, governance, and coordination areas.

Since the establishment of the policy, the Chinese government has conspicuously been involved in loan deals with major African countries like Nigeria, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Ethiopia, and Zambia.

In addition, this government has actively sponsored the revitalisation of significant service sectors in several African countries.

It has been actively involved in infrastructural and scientific projects in these countries. According to the BBC, China invested approximately $1.6 billion in Africa in 2005 alone. By 2012, China had trade worth more than $166 billion with Africa. As evidence of further substantiation, a Chinese newspaper report revealed that China's trade with Africa had increased by approximately 83 per cent since the beginning of the century.

Surprisingly, there has been no plausible cumulative record of predatory political motive against the Chinese government in its partnership with Africa.

Although there are speculations about China’s possible interference in the African socio-political atmosphere, there has been no concrete report or digital footprint to back this up.

References were made to military activities in Zimbabwe and the role of the Chinese-Sudan oil transaction in the Sudanese genocide. However, there were no direct links between these situations and the interest of the Chinese in any way.

Nonetheless, despite the Chinese government’s apparent neutrality in the socio-political activities of African states, there are legible economic effects of the resource exchange programmes. There are also footprints of Chinese influence in monopolising the resources of some African states at the expense of the nation.

Given the complexities of economic aid and reciprocity, one could infer that the Chinese want the same things as their counterparts – power, resources, and wealth.

The Socialist states are not the only ones implicated in these exploitative

27

ANALYSIS partnerships. Western powers, particularly the US, have also played their cards to maintain their geopolitical power in Africa while accruing economic benefits. Africa was a crucial factor in the emergence of the US as a world power after the Second World War. But due to different reasons, including the attempts made by the then USSR and China, there has been a significant shift in the power balance in Africa.

The diplomatic move made by the US during the George Bush administration was a defining moment for AfricaUS relations. Although the US had established relationships with different African states before Bush, it was the first obvious pointer of a resource-motivated partnership. The antecedent circumstance checks well; America had just launched an energy plan a year before this meeting. In 2002, the White House invited 11 African heads of state for meetings, incidentally many of them from countries rich in oil.

Of course, the US adopted a Messiahlike approach to Africa. It preached the ideals of democratic liberation and presented some notable initiatives in Africa such as the aids relief, the malaria

‘

Gaddafi’s moves to nationalise the country’s oil economy jeopardised the interests of the US in Libya at the time

military programmes to provide free arms to major African countries like Nigeria.

While the above has been instrumental to the survival of African states, they are ultimately ploys to secure the interests of the US in Africa and maintain its geopolitical power in the grand scheme of things. In some cases, resource payback imposed in return for foreign aid has been detrimental to African states' independent

A Russian was appointed National Security Adviser to the Libyan government – part of the price Libya had to pay for over-reliance on Russian military support

initiative, and the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The US has also provided considerable military aid to key African states. For example, it recently adopted

’

polity and economy. However, the country with the higher bargaining power logically wins in such cases.

The US’ major detrimental involvements in Africa include the Djiboutian military intervention and the Libyan decimation in 2011. As in the case of Nelson Mandela, Muammar Gaddafi was an outspoken nationalist with Communist affiliations. Of course, such an individual would be detrimental to the interests of the US. In 2016, the US publicly admitted its involvement in his arrest and incarceration.

The US’ Libyan intervention dynamics

are different and somewhat delicate. Before this, the Libyan leader had made moves to nationalise the country’s oil economy.

These moves jeopardised the interests of the US in Libya at the time.

On the surface, the aftermath of the US intervention in the Libyan internal squabble seemed altruistic. Gaddafi cracked down on protests and civil demonstrations, resulting in the outbreak of civil war.

However, a deeper analysis would reveal a possible non-altruistic motive behind the intervention. The US needed to remove the major obstacle to its economic interests in Libya.

Furthermore, and in the context of international law, the US became involved in what appeared to be a domestic situation. Undoubtedly, the relationship between African states and world powers like China, Britain, the US, and Russia has been presented as beneficial to developmental endeavours in Africa.

However, African leaders need to wake up to the realisation of the nationalistic biases inherent in these moves. In diplomatic situations, it is only natural that a country defends its interest.

These pointers should warn African states to apply caution in these situations.

It is also a call to strive towards viable policies aimed at considerable selfsustenance in the coming decades. These and similar discourses must drive panAfrican relationships if the continent intends to survive in the subsequent AB years.

Libya’s over-reliance on Russian military forces directly compromised Libya's sovereignty

Toyin Falola is University Distinguished Teaching Professor and Humanities Chair at The University of Texas at Austin in the US. 28

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July-August 2019 Vol. 2 No.4

News, Analysis & Comment

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ANALYSIS

AU Chair sets out his stall on Israel Having granted Israel Observer Status at the African Union in July last year, in accordance with the pan-African body’s rules, its Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, was taken aback after his decision was vehemently opposed at the summit of the leaders in Addis Ababa in February. Here, we publish excerpts of his hard-hitting defence of his actions

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AM constantly keen to promote the interests of the Union and to reinforce the positions taken by member states in international fora. It is out of this concern, and in this sole concern, that at the request of several member states and after in-depth consideration, I decided on 22 July 2021 to grant the state of Israel Observer Status.

I would like to clarify matters on two points: a procedural matter and a substantive issue. The powers of the Chairperson to grant Observer Status to a non-African state are established by the Sirte Criteria of 2005.

These criteria provide, in Part II, SECTION II.1: “A non-African state or organisation wishing to be accredited to the AU should address its request to the Chairperson of the AU Commission” In paragraph 2 of the same section: “The Chairperson shall consider such requests on the basis of the principles and objectives of the Constitutive Act, relevant decisions of AU Organs and these criteria.”

In para 2 of the same section: “The Chairperson shall consider the said request bearing in mind the best interests of the Union as well as the views and concerns of the member states. If, in his considered opinion, there is no reason not to accept the request, the Chairperson shall accept the Letter of Accreditation from the Head of Mission or the representative of the state concerned.”

The result is that he is empowered to grant Observer Status. This right is not limited, nor subject to any form of prior consultation of any member state, nor to any internal or external legal or political opinion and may be exercised at any time.

This is easily understood because the above-mentioned Para. 2 clearly specifies: 30

AU Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat asserts his authority to grant Israel Observer Status

“In the event of any subsequent objection by any member state to the accreditation... the Chairperson shall place the matter at the next session of the Executive Council.”

The reservation against the decision is therefore a subsequent act and not an act prior to the decision. It suffices for the Chairperson, in his deep conviction, to consider the request complying with the Constitutive Act and the interests of Africa for him to be able to take the decision. He is also not limited in time; he can take his decision at any time.

Considering the aforementioned text, there is no limitation anywhere such as a preliminary procedure, consultations, legal opinion or internal or external policy. The only corollary to this power of assessment and decision of the Chairperson of the Commission is the right of any member state to subsequently express reservations as considered in Para 1 above.

By granting Observer Status to the state of Israel, I, therefore, acted in full

compliance with my prerogatives and powers while respecting the procedure because at the first known reservation I expressed my will to revert to the next session of the Executive Council, which I did exactly.

In terms of procedure, and before raising the only substantive issue, I cannot fail to stress the extent to which I find it inadmissible for member states to go and sign petitions with other states, which are not members of our Union, against any decision by one of our Organs. There is undeniably a real double fault here, of those which are members of our Organisation and of those, non-members to whom we have granted Observer Status and who have arrogated to themselves the right to publicly criticise our decisions. This attitude of contempt for our Organisation is unacceptable, and truly reprehensible.

Four essential elements convinced me of the relevance of my decision. I thought long and hard before giving my consent, knowing the uses and possible

ANALYSIS traditional political [manipulation] of the Palestinian issue in the Arab-Muslim world, particularly, as I myself for many years opposed the recognition of the state of Israel by my country, Chad.

The first of the elements which motivated my decision is the number of AU member states that have recognised Israel. As I received the request for granting Observer Status to Israel and in view of the repeated approaches of several member states, including that of the then Chairman of the Union, in support of this request, I carefully considered the number of states that recognised Israel on the continent. The number does not leave any doubt: 44 members of our Organisation recognise Israel and have established diplomatic relations with that state.

While 17 have opened embassies in Tel Aviv, 12 have opened General Consulates there, not to mention that a large number of African states opened their markets and economic space to Israeli enterprises and signed Cooperation Agreements in fields as varied and sensitive as education/training, defence, security, intelligence, nuclear cooperation, agriculture, technological innovations, health, economy and finance.

The obligation to take account of the national choices and interests of member states, as stipulated by the Sirte criteria, left me no choice but to grant Observer Status to the country with which all these states, more than four-fifths of the members of our Union, maintain such a diversity of relations.

How in the face of this overwhelming number, could I imagine that I was violating the Constitutive Act and the relevant decisions of the Organisation by acting in favour of the national interests and choices of 44 member states? By which logic could I consider that all these states had themselves violated our texts by establishing such strong and rich relations with Israel?

How could I have understood that South Africa, Angola, Namibia,

Some African leaders oppose Israel’s Observer Status at the AU

Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Eswatini, Lesotho, in Southern Africa, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, in West Africa, Egypt, Morocco in North Africa, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Eritrea, The Comoros, Mauritius, Madagascar in East Africa, Chad, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, DRC, the Central African Republic, Gabon, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe in Central Africa have all violated the Constitutive Act? It was clear to me, and it remains clear to me, that I acted in harmony and consistency with the national choices in this matter of four-fifths of our member states. It is clear that by acting in this way I have only done, independently of any subjectivity or personal inclination, a faithful reflection of a tangible, irrefutable reality: that of the recognition of Israel on a very large scale in Africa.

The second element on which my decision was based is the number of member states that expressly asked for this accreditation. They were larger than that of the member states that did not recognise Israel. Which number should I comply with? The majority or the minority?

The third element on which my decision was based is more substantive. It goes beyond the reality of numbers. It is in harmony with our Organisation and the entire international community, particularly the United Nations: that is, the recognition and solemn support to the two-states solution, for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

In this regard, I warmly commend the important efforts made by Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, to enhance civilian and security cooperation with Israel as well as the frequent meetings between the two parties. I commend as well the efforts of Egypt in recognising Israel a long time ago and exchanging ambassadors while playing the positive role of mediator and thus contributing to the alleviation of the sufferings of the Palestinian people, in Gaza particularly.

Fourthly, why should what Egypt, under the circumstances, has done positively, be denied to the AU? Do we have less confidence in our Organisation that we cannot imagine that it can play a role, be it small, in the resolution of a conflict which concerns us politically and emotionally?

Why do we want to deny the AU the possibility to challenge Israel and motivate it to observe the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people; to stop all acts of violence against them; to frankly recognise their fundamental rights, including their right to establish a national state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, as I affirmed to the representative of Israel at the time of the presentation of his credentials? Why should we deprive ourselves the use of a political and diplomatic tool to contribute to peace between the two peoples?

These are the elements which led me to take the decision which I presented to the Executive Council in October 2021, in compliance with the relevant applicable criteria, and which I submit to day to your wisdom. I leave you to judge.

However, and before concluding my remarks, I would like to make an observation on the values and virtues to be respected within our African family in which no one should consider that he has the monopoly of such virtues.

I could well understand that a state, among the 11 members which do not yet recognise Israel, rejects the granting of Observer Status to Israel. But frankly, I find it hard to understand the consistency of this rejection by any member state whose national flag flies in the heart of Tel Aviv and which hoists, in the heart of its own capital, the Israeli flag while organising a grand ceremony of presentation of credentials. What is this logic that allows a member state to enjoy the recognition of a state at home and to refuse it to the Organisation, whose overwhelming majority recognises this state? Is the said state acceptable at the national level while it cannot at the African level?

I have known for a long time how in Africa, in the Arab and the Muslim world, the just cause of the Palestinian people has been used, but this is another debate on which I do not want to dwell any longer.

Why should this issue divide us?

Things are so simple. Since the existence of this Organisation, we have always sought consensus. This is my preferred choice. However, when this consensus, for one reason or another, is not reached, a decision must be taken.

This decision is no longer mine. If you want to reach a consensus and/or a compromise, I will apply it. If you decide to simply cancel it, I will implement your decision. You want to maintain it, I will also apply it. I leave it to your AB wisdom, whatever be the option.

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ANALYSIS

South Africa-Israel relations: a delicate balancing act Even though South Africa and the Jewish state have long-standing diplomatic ties, the ANC government is committed to the Palestinian struggle, writes Frank Lekaba

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IPLOMATIC relations between South Africa and Israel span a period of 70 years, beginning with Israel establishing a legation in South Africa in 1952, and in 1974 upgrading it to an embassy. In 1972 South Africa established a Consulate General in Tel Aviv, which was upgraded to an embassy in December 1975.

However, there have been continuities and changes following South Africa’s democratic breakthrough in 1994. Despite South Africa being a pariah state, Israel supported the apartheid state and ignored the fact that its political system was declared a “crime against humanity” by the UN in 1966.

The democratic South Africa, which emerged in 1994, continued with diplomatic relations but changed its tone and foreign policy position on the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. This posture by Pretoria has remained firm and consistent.

The South African government could be criticised for inconsistent foreign policy positions. However, when it comes to Israel and Palestine, the ANC government is consistent in its support for the recognition of the Palestinian state. This commitment finds expression in both domestic and foreign policy positions.

Domestically, some key public figures were criticised for going against the government’s position. The former Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, Mogoeng Mogoeng, was reprimanded for his Christian views on the matter between Palestine and Israel. He has been made to publicly apologise by the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), a constitutionally recognised body which deals with, among other things, “complaints brought against judges”.

Miss South Africa, Lalela Mswane, a “brand ambassador” for the country, did not receive any government support for her trip to compete for the Miss Universe pageant held in Eliat in Israel in December 2021.

Instead, she was advised against taking 32

part solely because it was being held in Israel. Mswane was not celebrated by the government after emerging as a runner up at the pageant.

A few years ago, a South Africa artist popularly known as DJ Black Coffee was vehemently opposed for his willingness to perform in Israel. In response to the criticism, he said he was working and making money for his children. Both Black Coffee and Mswane were lambasted for their lack of political consciousness and an inability to sympathise with the people of Palestine.

Earlier this year, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa received the credentials of the Israeli ambassador, Eliav Belotsercovsky. This sparked criticism from some sections of the public who called out South Africa’s hypocrisy: that the government expected individuals not to have links with Israel while it was reluctant to cut ties with the Jewish state or impose trade sanctions against the country.

The passion to isolate Israel is coming strongly from activist movements that support Palestine and seeking to block

anything connected with Israel. Therefore, the South African government’s support for Palestine is a political response: trying to be relevant to the movement calling for disinvesting in Israel and also honouring the country’s history of suffering under apartheid oppression.

Thus, South Africa took this symbolic position to the 35th ordinary session of the African Union summit of Heads of State and Government in February. This followed the decision by the AU Commission Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, to grant Israel Observer Status at the pan-African organisation.

Few countries – Algeria, Namibia, Tunisia, Nigeria and Libya – supported South Africa in the quest to review and decline Faki’s decision on Israel. But there were some states – the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Cameroon and others – that were in support of the decision.

What are the influences affecting South Africa’s foreign policy in this regard?

How should this debate be understood?

It is important to lay out the foreign

President Cyril Ramaphosa. The ANC government is consistent in its support for the recognition of the Palestinian state

ANALYSIS

Miss South Africa, Lalela Mswane, a “brand ambassador” for the country, did not receive any government support for her trip to compete for the Miss Universe pageant held in Eliat in Israel in December 2021

policy principles underpinning South Africa’s position. Firstly, how was this decision arrived at? At its 2017 National Conference, the ANC passed a resolution that called on South Africa to “downgrade” its embassy in Israel, setting the tone for Ramaphosa’s administration’s diplomatic relations with Israel.

This followed the “provocative” decision by the Trump administration to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The conference noted: “Consequently and in order to give our practical expression of support to the oppressed people of Palestine, the ANC has unanimously resolved to direct the SA government to immediately and unconditionally downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel to a Liaison Office.”

The resolution was clearly in favour of the Palestinian “two-state” solution to the on-going impasse with Israel. However, it did not provide a comprehensive foreign policy framework of how South Africa would diplomatically engage with Israel.

In response to questions on the progress the government was making in downgrading the embassy, Ramaphosa noted: “Government is in the process of giving effect to a resolution of the governing party that South Africa should downgrade its embassy in Israel.”

Besides the ANC’s resolution, South Africa’s position is justified by its Diplomacy of Ubuntu. This White Paper on South African foreign policy of 2011 prefaced it thus: “South Africa is a multifaceted, multicultural and multiracial country that embraces the concept of Ubuntu as a way of defining who we

are and how we relate to others. The philosophy of Ubuntu means ‘humanity’ and is reflected in the idea that we affirm our humanity when we affirm the humanity of others.”

This is intrinsically linked with the AU’s principle of “peaceful co-existence”, which therefore deems Israel to have violated this principle and as such it is contrary to South Africa’s foreign policy principles and objectives. It is these principles and objectives that underpinned South Africa’s call for the review of the Observer Status granted to Israel.

By way of trying to understand the key issues giving rise to the debate and contextualise the South African position, it would make sense to interrogate the reasons provided by Faki for his decision.

In justifying his decision, the AU Chair argued in favour of procedural and substantive issues.

On procedure, indeed the Constitutive Act, he points out that it empowers him to make this kind of decision. He provided four substantive issues to justify his position: firstly, 44 of the AU’s 55 member states have recognised and established diplomatic relations with Israel, 17 of which have embassies in Tel Aviv; secondly, the majority of states are endorsing the decision as opposed to a minority against it, although in this case he does not provide substantive evidence; thirdly, the UN recognises and advances a “two-state” solution; and lastly, the AU would be depriving itself of an opportunity to closely interact with Israel to find a solution to the problem.

With a closer analysis of these issues,

one may conclude that Faki missed a point about the founding principles of the AU’s predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity: that they were ideological and political. They were to unite the continent and fight colonisation in all its forms.

The founding principles of he OAU are salient to the founding principles of the AU, particularly “peaceful co-existence of member states and their right to live in peace and security” and “respect for the sanctity of human life...” Faki’s reasons are, therefore, not within the confines of these principles of both the OAU and the AU. Firstly, Israel is not abiding with the principle of “peaceful co-existence” and “respect for the sanctity” of the lives of Palestinians. It cannot be that the AU has principles for its own members, and different principles for those that it accords Observer Status. The principles that guide the AU’s members must undergird its external relations.

There are two points to appreciate from the justification of the stubborn position of the AU Commission Chair: firstly, that there is incoherence between foreign policy principles and national interests of member states. This is a valid point when questioning the sincerity and genuineness of the commitment to push a “two-state” solution for Israel and Palestine.

But no matter how valid this criticism might sound it is plainly a red herring

by Faki when it relates to South Africa.

His argument falls flat considering South Africa’s consistent campaign against Israel and its intention to downgrade its embassy in Tel Aviv.

On the issue of Israel and Palestine, South Africa has remained consistent and committed to the just cause of recognising Palestine as a sovereign state, resulting in “peaceful co-existence”.

Secondly – although it is not a point emerging from Faki’s defence of his decision – is the readmission of Morocco into the AU and the seemingly dwindling support for the people of Western Sahara.

Since Morocco was readmitted, the issue of the disputed territory has received silent treatment. This could be a potential risk for the Palestine struggle, should the Observer Status of Israel be maintained.

Whatever manner in which the matter is handled henceforth, it has clearly shown that South Africa firmly stands with the people of Palestine against Israel.

AB

Frank Lekaba lectures Comparative Politics, African Politics, Political Philosophy and Political Development in Africa at North West University in South Africa. He is a Doctoral candidate at the University of Johannesburg. His research interests are in democracy, peace and security in Africa 33

ANALYSIS

Upbeat Zambian opposition leader eyes presidency Having come third in a field of 16 contestants during the 2021 presidential election in Zambia, a youthful and bullish Harry Kalaba says he is sanguine about his quest for the country’s presidency in the future, telling Jon Offei-Ansah that last year’s result was clearly a vote of confidence in him by the electorate

Harry Kalaba: “I didn’t enter politics for my own sake,”

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ANALYSIS

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N a region where politicians are wrongly (or perhaps rightly) perceived as corrupt, one man stands tall as a beacon of probity. After eight years in government, four of which he served as Zambia’s foreign minister, Harry Kalaba resigned, saying his decision was prompted by “swelling” levels of corruption “perpetrated by those who are expected to be the solution”. When the news of his resignation broke in January 2018, I said to myself: “Here’s a man of integrity. If only there were more like him, Africa would be a better place.”

So, I considered it an honour and privilege to meet the dapper, affable and youthful 46-year-old Kalaba during his brief visit to London mid-February.

Obviously, my opening remark when we sat down for the interview was about his resignation.

“The point of departure, firstly, is that I didn’t enter politics for my own sake,” he said. “I entered politics because I thought I could make a difference and when I came across evidence that the leadership I was serving under was not committed to fulfilling the people’s intentions I didn’t see any honour in me then continuing as foreign affairs minister.

so they harvested nothing, but it’s just sad that independent minds are not celebrated, that people are made to feel that if you’re not in the pack, not in the group then you are wrong,” Kalaba said.

“I decided that it was better to be lonely with the right decisions rather than to be in the company of many people who were on the wrong side of history.”

Kalaba’s attempts to form his own political party were equally frustrated at every turn, including the authorities’ refusal to register the party for supposed “security reasons” “The moment they realised I had taken the initiative, they blocked me and said they could not register the party for security reasons. I went and revived a party that was already in existence – the DP [Democratic Party] – and that’s when I had a chance of participating fully.

“But when they heard that Henry Kalaba was behind it, the authorities

said the DP [founded in 1991] was not registered. So, we fought court battles for almost two years until we won.”

In last August’s presidential election, which was won by Hakainde Hichilema, Kalaba came third. He didn’t do badly, considering there were 16 other candidates vying for the presidency.

“Yes, we managed to come third,” he says. “We could have done much better but the election we had in 2021 was about a revolution. People didn’t want the [Lungu] government that was there and decided they were going to give it to the longest serving opposition leader [Hichilema] and that’s how he won the election,” he explains.

A bullish Kalaba believes that coming third in a field of 16 contestants is a vote of confidence by the electorate. “It’s a mark of confidence by the people that they are taking us [DP] seriously. That in the nottoo-distant future we will be able to take the first spot.”

“The most honourable thing for me was to resign because I saw the insatiable greed for money and material things by my leaders, I saw that the people who should have been talking for the vulnerable, who should have been talking for the poor people were no longer doing that. Instead, they opted to pursue their own agendas. That I thought for me was counterproductive, it was unhealthy, and I didn’t want to be part of such a regime, so the only thing I could have done was to resign and redeem my conscience.”

The ensuing recriminations could have permanently driven a man of lesser conviction out of politics. On the contrary, they hardened Kalaba’s resolve.

‘There were demonstrations organised against me almost in every part of the country to denounce me. There were issues of getting me investigated, people were making up stories against me, trying to paint me black and there were also moves to get me arrested by the head of state [then president Edgar Lungu].

“Luckily for me, all those manoeuvres that were deployed would not work. They didn’t find me corrupt, they didn’t find that I had gone against the law on anything and

Kalaba believes that coming third in a field of 16 contestants is a vote of confidence by the electorate

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ANALYSIS

Kalaba says he is offering leadership that will empathise with Zambians

In a region where 55 per cent of the population is below the age of 65, but where the ages of the majority of their leaders are far beyond the retirement age for workers, the general clamour is for the youth to be given a chance to manage the affairs of the continent. But Kalaba believes that the capacity for good political and economic governance is more important than age.

space to contribute to their economies’ emancipation.”

“We find that the biggest economies like America have demonstrated to us that it’s not about age, it’s about the capacity of one to steer the nation to greater levels.

Clearly that must be a sign of what the young ones have to offer.

“We have invested a lot in projects that have seen a lot of corruption thriving.

Zambia has been constructing roads at sometimes three or four times the actual costs. We have gone into contracts that siphoned the little monies that we have in the treasury,” he says.

“When you look at the UK, you have had young prime ministers that have steered multi-billion-pound economies, and yet that was nothing to do with age. The point I’m trying to drive home is it’s about what one can offer.

“Whilst we celebrate our elderly statesmen and women we also have to be eulogising and celebrating the upcoming leaders, so that there should be even 36

Zambia has the dubious reputation of being the first country during the Covid-19 pandemic to default on its sovereign debt, with its total external debt currently exceeding $12 billion. This, Kalaba attributes to corruption and misplacement of priorities by the previous administration of Lungu.

“At the end of the day, people have been looking at ways of getting revenue from the treasury to go in their own private hands – and this has decapitated economic growth. So, really it is true that the external debt doesn’t reflect the potential that our country has, but I think it reflects a deficiency in leadership and a lack of focus on the things that really matter.

“So, the debt issue is just about leadership. I’ve always said that we have just three challenges in our country: leadership, leadership, leadership. If we can fix these we’ll be on the right path to economic emancipation,” Kalaba adds.

He disagrees with the current Hichilema administration’s borrowing of $1.2 billion from the IMF saying: “The potential that we have as a country and the kind of money we are getting from the IMF doesn’t reflect who we are.”

According to Kalaba, between 2014 and 2018, Zambia exported about 1.5 million tonnes of copper to China, yet only about 400,000 tonnes were recorded, meaning slippages of about $680 million in monetary terms.

“So, if the slippages in the resources could be plugged, we should not lose the amount that we are losing, I don’t think there is any need to go to the IMF and borrow $1.2 billion,” he says.

Kalaba believes that Zambia has not properly exploited its massive mineral resources to benefit the country. “We

ANALYSIS have a lot of mineral potential in our country, which has not been put to good use. That is why I am proposing if I am elected as president of Zambia that we have a statutory body like the one that Dr [Kenneth] Kaunda had before.

“We had a body called Memarco, which basically regulated with mineral exports from our country. So, we used to know the quantities of copper that were mined in a particular area because you could not export without going through Memarco. We also used to know about gold and every other mineral exported.

“But today we have several mines opened up, especially in the south west of Zambia, and yet these mines export on their own. Zambia doesn’t know, we don’t even have the capacity to know how much they are exporting,” Kalaba says.

He continues: “They will tell us they have exported copper when they have exported cobalt; they will tell us there were no diamonds. So, we have been losing a lot of revenue as a result of failing to plug holes in the mining sector.

“I am proposing that unless we do the plugging of holes in the mining sector; unless we remove that veil of secrecy around the exports of our minerals, we will continue wallowing in poverty as a country. And leadership must be firm. But the first thing they do is begin patronising the mining conglomerates when they form the government. How can things change?”

Kalaba thinks that with proper management of its agricultural and mineral resources, Zambia can become

self-sufficient and redress what he sees as a massive trade imbalance with regional economic powerhouse South Africa. “We have become an economic colony of South Africa: you come to Zambia but think you are in South Africa because of the Shoprite stores. Everything that is in South Africa has come to Zambia.

“We used to have our own traditional shops, but all these have collapsed. Right now, between Zambia and South Africa, both member states of SADC it’s about 72 to 28 in favour of South Africa. That’s not good for us.”

Kalaba is equally sceptical about the much-heralded Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). “Even when I was foreign affairs minister, I was quite sceptical of it because, while the idea sounds splendid, in practical terms it will be a challenge because of various economic issues.

“The challenges that Ghana has are unique to Ghana, the challenges that Nigeria has are somehow only peculiar to Nigeria. And to just allow others to open like that all across the African continent I think is an ambition too high to implement and successfully achieve because a lot of parameters need to be put in place,” he says.

On a personal level, the deeply religious Kalaba doesn’t see any conflict between his beliefs and politics. “The short and truthful point is that even politics is a service to God’s people, and so those of us who want to become leaders must also submit and read scriptures that leadership

comes from God. “Therefore, it becomes important that we become God-fearing. The Bible says we shall be the heads and not the tails.

So, it’s our inescapable responsibility as Christians to ensure that the values we have in the Christian faith are transported into politics and help our brothers who think politics must be a game of killing one another, must be a game of deceit.

“Politics cannot be trivialised and reduced to that. It’s a very important component because everything in society hinges on politics,” Kalaba adds.

His full recovery from a near-fatal accident in 2015 reinforces Kalaba’s belief that he is destined to lead his country. “I should have died in 2015. I had a very terrible accident. I was hit by a train. I was unconscious for two weeks and basically incapacitated for about six months. For the whole year I never went for work because of that accident,” he recounts.

‘So, I have always believed that I am living on borrowed time. The Lord has given me extra time. I can only suspect that God has preserved me for a purpose.

“And now that I am still in politics in Zambia, it is most likely that I could lead the country and allow the people see a different type of leadership that can emancipate them; leadership that will be able to listen to them; leadership that will be able to empathise with them as opposed to a leadership that is all about self.

“So, I am supremely confident that is what God is leading me to do,” AB Kalaba adds.

Copperbelt town of Kitwe: Zambia has not properly exploited its massive mineral resources to benefit the country

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BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Cote d’Ivoire at the heart of West Africa’s trade integration plans The intra-African trade project is expected to usher in new opportunities across the continent. Patrick Porquet, BACB’s Country Manager for Cote d’Ivoire, explains why the West African nation stands to benefit from expanding its trade horizons.

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OTE d’Ivoire is one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, reporting a GDP of $61.4 billion in 2020. From 2012, the Francophone country achieved admirable economic growth rates of around 8 percent year on year – growth only slowed, but not reversed, by the pandemic. As one of the key economic driving forces in West Africa, Cote d’Ivoire has adopted an important role in promoting intra-African trade integration.

23 percent of Cote d’Ivoire’s trade is with other African markets. Of this, most imports come from Nigeria, and the lion’s share of exports head to neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso. And while its proportion of intra-African trade activity is already greater than several of its neighbours, Cote d’Ivoire has taken concrete steps to further develop its trading links with the rest of the continent. Indeed, the country’s economic capital Abidjan is playing host to the 2023 Inter-African Trade Fair (IATF), a conference aimed at promoting trade, investment, and continental integration.

Cote d’Ivoire’s business community is committed to the intra-African project – the country’s Chamber of Commerce & Industry is working closely with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other supranational entities, and political leaders have demonstrated willingness to engage with other African counterparts.

It is this spirit of regional dialogue which enabled the creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – launched in 2021 following the signing of a landmark agreement in 2018. Bringing together 44 African nations in an effort to create the world’s largest free trade zone by number of countries, the AfCFTA is 38

Cote d’Ivoire is one of the region’s most robust economies

a game changer for Cote d’Ivoire’s trade relationships with its neighbours and the rest of the world. It envisions a trade bloc of 1.3 billion people, with a cumulative GDP of $4 trillion, and draws upon a longstanding movement for wider intra-African integration.

The AfCFTA envisions a more interconnected continent, but also one with a stronger position in the global market. The benefits therefore extend beyond Africa’s borders – enhanced pan-African integration would enable the harmonisation of regulatory frameworks across the continent, encouraging international businesses to invest in Africa and facilitating their expansion into new markets. This is increasingly relevant in the

context of supply-chain volatility, which has prompted some corporates to consider relocating manufacturing capabilities there from further afield.

It is estimated that AfCFTA could increase total intra-continental trade flows by over 65 percent, and, according to the World Bank, Cote d’Ivoire is among those who stand to gain most.

The implementation of the free trade area could see tariffs eliminated on 90 percent of goods over a five-year period pending ongoing negotiations. Cote d’Ivoire’s national income is consequently projected to increase by 14 percent.

The country is no stranger to panregional initiatives. Before the launch of AfCFTA, proponents of African trade

BUSINESS & ECONOMY integration focused on the establishment of a network of overlapping Regional Economic Communities (RECs), which are now seen as essential stepping stones to the more ambitious goal. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), within which Cote d’Ivoire falls, is one such REC. A longstanding champion of regional integration, ECOWAS has previously grabbed headlines with ambitious plans to create a common currency for its 15 members and applies a common external tariff to goods originating from outside the region.

The country also forms part of the community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD), though this REC does not currently have a corresponding trade agreement. Furthermore, Cote d’Ivoire is the largest member of the West African Economic Monetary Union (WAEMU) and represents the largest economy within the zone, making up 40 percent of the Union’s economic activity.

Many African economies are highly dependent on commodities, but unlike many of its peers Cote D’Ivoire has a relatively diversified economy – deriving its income from goods such as cocoa, refined oil, rubber, cotton, but also from its strong services sector, which makes a significant contribution to the country’s GDP.

As such, Cote d’Ivoire represents one of the region’s most robust economies. The World Bank sees trade as a critical driver of the country’s recovery to pre-pandemic growth levels, and though currently the majority of its trade activity is conducted with partners outside the continent, expanding intra-regional trade links will doubtless provide Cote d’Ivoire with additional economic stability.

In terms of trade with African partners, Cote d’Ivoire naturally does most business with its ECOWAS neighbours. It imports a significant amount of petroleum from Nigeria, while Mali and Burkina Faso combined comprise 43% of the country’s African exports. But Cote d’Ivoire also engages with markets beyond West Africa, exporting unwrought gold to South Africa – where it enters the market duty-free – and buying fish from Mauritania.

Notwithstanding its great potential, intra-African trade still faces several obstacles. Many such barriers are common to a number of African markets – poor infrastructure, excessive border bureaucracy, and, in some areas, political unrest – all of which complicate efforts towards integration. But the Ivorian government has taken real positive steps towards addressing these challenges – making large investments into highway and rail infrastructure, and improving

the processes at borders to facilitate the movement of goods.

And as the AfCFTA progresses towards maturity – 41 out of 54 countries have now ratified it – the opportunities for Cote d’Ivoire to expand its trade horizons are great. The county is the world’s largest producer and exporter of cocoa, contributing to 40 percent of global production, and Ivorian cocoa could find new markets across the continent.

Other exports such as coconut, banana, fish, refined petroleum, gold and rubber could also increase as trade barriers are reduced – in this regard, trade volumes with Ghana, Liberia and Guinea are likely to see a significant uptick given their close geographical proximity.

Though most attention has been devoted to the benefits a connected Africa will bring to trade in goods, Cote d’Ivoire’s strong services sector is also set to gain from the standardisation, reduced crossborder bureaucracy, and increased mobility promised by AfCFTA. The services sector in Cote d’Ivoire is dominated by banking, telecoms and private equity – and it forms a large part of the economy, contributing to 53.9 percent of GDP and employing 47.3 percent of the workforce. In recent years, the number of banks within the country has almost doubled, in part due to the arrival of Nigerian, Moroccan and South African financial institutions. Greater regional integration should bolster the sector further and, in turn, improve access to finance for businesses in the country.

In this respect, specialist trade banks with the capacity to connect the continent’s disparate markets will no doubt continue to play an instrumental role in financing and supporting intra-African initiatives.

International businesses, whether financial institutions, traders or other corporates, are taking note. Its significant natural resources and burgeoning agricultural sector suggest that Cote d’Ivoire will occupy an important role in cross continental supply-chains, while the country has also carried out substantial economic reforms to broaden its tax base, digitise administrative processes and restructure its banking sector. Cote d’Ivoire has all the ingredients necessary for success as part of an increasingly integrated African economy.

AB

Patrick Porquet: ‘intra-African trade still faces several obstacles’

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HEALTH

Preparing better to deal with new pandemics Instead of a coherent and cohesive global response, Covid-19 has been marked by a chaotic patchwork of responses, which in some cases have punished countries for doing the right thing, as in the case of the travel bans imposed on South Africa and Botswana when they first reported the emergence of the Omicron variant, says Tedros Ghebreyesus, who argues that the world needs a new agreement that sets the rules of the game for responding to epidemics and pandemics

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HE authors of WHO’s Constitution were well aware of the link between health and peace, which is why they wrote in the preamble that the health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security, and is dependent upon the fullest co-operation of individuals and states.

on social media, the marginalisation and politicisation of science has impeded the response to the pandemic and cost lives.

Since those words were written, the world has faced many outbreaks and epidemics. Just this century, we have seen H5N1 influenza, SARS, MERS, the H1N1 pandemic, multiple Ebola outbreaks, Zika and more.

Science can in fact widen inequalities, unless it is paired with a commitment to equity. As we speak, 83 per cent of the population of Africa is yet to receive a single dose of vaccine.

But of course, nothing matches the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has thrown the world into turmoil for more than two years. Covid-19 is a powerful demonstration that a pandemic is so much more than a health crisis.

My point is not that science should be the only consideration in decision-making about public health. My point is that science should be the central and guiding consideration.

Vaccine nationalism, export bans and bilateral deals between manufacturers and high-income nations severely restricted the

number of doses Covax was able to ship in the first half of last year.

The supply situation has now improved, and Covax has been able to ship more than 1.2 billion doses of vaccine to 144 countries and territories. WHO and our partners are working night and day to support countries to turn vaccines into vaccinations, to reach our target of vaccinating 70 per cent of the population of every country by the middle of this year.

To reach that target, we are calling on all countries to urgently fill the ACT Accelerator’s financing gap of $16 billion, to ensure equitable access to vaccines, tests and treatments and PPE everywhere.

It illustrates the interconnectedness between health and the economy, security, education, and the intimate links between the health of humans, animals and our planet. There are many lessons to learn about what has worked and what has not.

Science must guide policy, not the other way round.

Throughout the pandemic, WHO has convened thousands of scientists from around the world to examine the rapidly emerging evidence and distil it into the guidance we give the world.

Science has given us valuable insights into how this virus spreads, how it causes disease, and how to stop it. But in some countries and communities, and

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Tedros Ghebreyesus: science should not be the only consideration in decision-making about public health

HEALTH A resilient health system is not the same thing as an advanced medical care system. Even some countries with the most sophisticated medical care were overwhelmed by Covid-19.

By contrast, some middle-income countries with fewer resources fared much better, thanks to investments in public health after outbreaks of SARS, MERS, H1N1 and others, especially in the Mekong region.

For instance, the simple art of contact tracing is one that many high-income countries have struggled with, but it’s one that many low- and middle-income countries have done well, because of their experience with infectious disease outbreaks, and their investments in public health.

The backbone of public health is robust primary health care, for detecting outbreaks at the earliest possible stage, as well as for preventing disease and promoting health at the community level.

The world needs a new agreement that sets the rules of the game for responding to epidemics and pandemics. Instead of a coherent and cohesive global response, the pandemic has been marked by a chaotic patchwork of responses, which in some cases have punished countries for doing the right thing, as in the case of the travel bans imposed on South Africa and Botswana when they first reported the emergence of the Omicron variant.

Trust is everything. A study published in The Lancet earlier this month examined the reasons why some countries have had higher rates of infection and death than others from Covid-19.

The age profile of the country, GDP per capita, and mean body mass index were all found to play a part. But the researchers found that perhaps the single most important factor in countries’ preparedness and ability to respond effectively is trust.

The study concluded that stronger risk communication and community engagement are essential for making the world safer against future epidemics and pandemics. Vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other tools are essential, but the most effective tool is engaged and empowered communities.

preparedness and response. The recommendations of the various panels fall into four areas, or pillars. First, we need stronger governance.

Instead of the confusion and incoherence that has fuelled this pandemic, we need cooperation and collaboration in the face of common threats. At a Special

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harness the power of collaborative and artificial intelligence and other cuttingedge technologies.

To facilitate greater sharing of pathogens and clinical samples, we’re piloting the WHO BioHub System, based at a secure facility in Switzerland.

To improve mutual accountability,

Even some countries with the most sophisticated medical care were overwhelmed by Covid-19

Session of the World Health Assembly last year, WHO’s 194 member states decided to negotiate a new international instrument, to provide the rules of the game for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

Just as countries have united in the past to adopt treaties against tobacco, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, climate change and more. So now, the nations of the world have made a strong statement that health security is too important to be left to chance, or goodwill, or shifting geopolitical currents, or vested interests.

A new international accord will not solve every problem on its own, but it will provide an essential overarching framework – the rules of the game – for a more coordinated and harmonised response to future epidemics and pandemics. Above all, obligations from countries.

Second, we need stronger financing.

It’s obvious that nationally and globally, we need substantial resources for strengthening global health security. Our analysis estimates the needs at $31 billion per year.

To close the gap for the most essential functions – such as surveillance, research and market-shaping for countermeasures – we support the idea of a new dedicated financing facility, anchored in, and directed by, WHO’s constitutional mandate, inclusive governance and technical expertise.

Third, we need stronger systems and tools to prevent, detect, and respond rapidly to epidemics and pandemics.

Already, WHO has taken steps to build some of these systems and tools.

To strengthen surveillance, we have established the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin, to

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solidarity and cooperation between countries, we’re piloting the Universal Health and Preparedness Review, a new peer-review mechanism for enhancing national preparedness, based on gaps identified to improve and strengthen national capacity.

And to strengthen capacities for local production of vaccines and other health products in low- and middle-income countries, we have established the WHO Technology Transfer Hub in South Africa, which has already developed its own mRNA Covid-19 vaccine candidate.

The choice of South Africa is because the greatest gap is in Africa. Of course, the hub will serve Africa and the rest of the world.

And fourth, we need to understand how this pandemic started. We owe it to those who have died and their families to do our best to identify where this coronavirus came from.

It’s important to understand that WHO does not have a mandate to investigate outbreaks on its own. Our role is to conduct joint studies with affected countries, at their invitation. Especially with the negotiations of the member states, I hope this will improve and we will have a mandate to investigate.

That is what we did in China last year – joint studies. Every hypothesis remains on the table, and we are continuing to make progress, but we have also experienced setbacks in sharing of data – especially lab records.

Above all, the Covid-19 pandemic reminds us that health is not simply a There is a strong consensus that luxury for the rich, it’s a fundamental the world needs an enhanced global human right. But it’s also a right that not architecture for pandemic prevention, everyone enjoys equally.

AB Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus is WHO Director-General. The above is an edited version of his lecture at Robert S. McNamara Lecture on War and Peace at Harvard Kennedy School on February 25, 2022 41

CULTURE

Malta or Melita?

Mounira Chaieb was pleasantly surprised to discover strong similarities between Tunisia and the Mediterranean island of Malta

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CANNOT count how many times I have come across the phrase that Maltese is nothing but “corrupted Arabic”. Nor can I count the number of newspaper articles I have read that have asked the question – with a sense of amazement at the existence of an Arabic dialect as an official language of an EU country – "Where did the Maltese language come from?"

Historians have posed different views about the origins of the Maltese language. Some argue that it’s of Levantine or Moroccan origin. Others that it’s of Algerian, Libyan or Tunisian origin. Some have concluded that it was the result of the various conquests that took place from the 9th century up until the country’s independence in 1964.

As for the origins of the inhabitants of this Mediterranean island, a Maltese poet by the name of Adrian Grima went even further to suggest that “the Maltese are nothing but Muslim Arabs who gradually converted to Christianity after being stranded”.

This is something that has always

fascinated me especially since my first time on the island in 1999 when I went there for work. Elminstro ta Lafariyet Elbarraniya, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was the first thing that caught my eye back then, on the building located in the heart of the capital Valetta: Italian and Arabic mixed together.

The conference I attended then was highly confidential. We were not to publicise it until after the event. It was organised by a US-based group and intended to achieve “middle ground” between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The media present did not just represent those two parties, but many countries of the Arab world. Arab journalists based in the West were also in attendance.

The American man in charge of organising it, who hardly slept at night, instead drinking endless cups of coffee to stay alert, expected me to consent to him telling me how to run the debate I was recording for a special BBC radio programme. I had to remind him that I already had an editor, who was also present.

I was never invited again after that.

On that first visit I found every corner of Malta a testimony to its rich history, but just like the secrecy with which the conference was surrounded, I felt there was a great deal of secrecy shrouding the country too. A small island that hardly featured in the news in spite of it being a member of both the Commonwealth and the European Union, Malta has always played host to several conferences on the future of countries across the Mediterranean with the issue of migration from North and subSaharan Africa always high on the agenda of the Maltese government.

Upon my second visit recently, as Malta was one of very few countries on the UK’s “Green” list during the Covid19 pandemic, I was bewildered when the taxi driver who picked me up from the airport asked if I understood Maltese. Before I replied, he spoke in a language that sounded to me to be a very close adaptation of the Tunisian dialect.

Both Tunisia and Malta were invaded by the Phoenicians, the Byzantines, the Romans, the Turks, the Arabs as well as the French. Malta was also part of the British Empire for over 150 years, so it is hardly surprising that its business practices, national laws and education carry British overtones.

English is still the country’s official language and like the UK, the Maltese drive on the left side of the road. The people I interacted with seemed to share a common resentment for these cross-cultural influences, especially those of the Arab and the British, as the Maltese are a very proud people, largely considering themselves southern European and their small island “the centre of the world”.

The similarities don’t just stop there.

The Maltese language is a mix of Italian and Arabic, and not just classical Arabic. I once stood in a queue to purchase a ticket for a sightseeing bus tour of the island, and turned around when the lady at the kiosk shouted to the driver ’wahda’, meaning one

The Maltese language is a mix of Italian and Arabic

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CULTURE

Malta: a small island that hardly features in the news

(traveller), that was me. She spoke with a heavy Tunisian accent. I almost mistook her for a Tunisian woman talking to me.

My sense of bewilderment was even greater when I was waiting for the bus at the main station on another day and a middle-aged, shabby-looking, slim Maltese man with few teeth tried to chat up a Maltese woman of a similar age and far neater appearance by asking her “esh ismek inti”, “what’s your name?”

Wherever I went, on the street, in restaurants, by the beach , it felt like I was hearing Tunisian being spoken with only a slightly different accent: “shamsh”, meaning “sun’; “eshtaa”, “rain”; “gharb”, “west”; “bilmout”, slowly”; “oshrob”, “drink”; “koul”, “eat”; “tayeb”, “OK”; “ismaa”, “listen”; “journatta tayeba”, “have a good day”; “sahha”, “thank you” or “enjoy”; “hbib”, “friend”; “hafna”, “plenty”; “flous”, “money” and so on.

The similarities between the two nations extend to include the tone and the temperament of their peoples as well. While visiting, I got the feeling that the Maltese are as expressive as Tunisians are. For instance, the guide on the bus tour, a large, middle-aged Maltese lady who limped and moved in her translation between English, Italian, French and German, got visibly irritated and impatient every time a passenger asked for clarification about something. She also spoke with great pride about her country.

Like Tunisians, the Maltese are also family-oriented and regardless of the age, love to dress up and socialise.

It’s also believed that the name Malta originates from Melita, an area on the island of Djerba on the south eastern coast of Tunisia that carries that same name today. There are even Maltese families who have been living in Tunisia for decades, and never went back. Were the Maltese and Tunisians supposed to be one nation at some point in history? I wonder.

I also noticed on my second visit a large increase in the number of immigrants there; a noticeable fact when the total population of the country numbers barely half a million people. People who immigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, Egypt, Sudan, Syria and even further afield, from the Indian sub-continent and even the Far East, were doing all kinds of jobs, with some owning their own businesses.

Globalisation reached Malta too: American coffee shops and fast food chains had a heavy presence, especially in Valetta and the surrounding touristic areas.

Tourism was thriving and there was a considerable construction work almost everywhere: roads expanded, hotels, new apartments and a Smart City – a state-ofthe-art information technology and media city built on the models of Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City were all underway; spoiling the original character of the place, but a sign nonetheless, of prosperity and money being invested.

The Maltese complained that Covid and lockdown had taken their toll on their country’s economy. But to me, an outsider,

it felt like Malta was fast getting back on its feet.

With my country of origin facing a whole range of challenges spanning the political, economic, and social, all combined with the years I’d spent putting up with London’s ever-changing weather, I seriously considered moving to Malta.

It would be a reasonable compromise, I thought, since I couldn’t move back home yet and Malta being a stone’s throw from home. So, I started searching online for expatriate groups in Malta. One popped up almost straightaway and I asked for people’s feedback.

Most assumed that my move would be work and money driven. They advised me to think twice on the basis that living in Malta was quite expensive and its system not as efficient as the UK’s. There was a kind of consensus that it was one thing to visit and quite another to live there.

A Tunisian lady said she was living in the UK for years with her husband and two young kids. Like me, they had visited Malta and envisioned themselves moving there. And so, they did, and regretted it ever since. She talked about a whole range of issues: her kids facing racism at school was a major issue for her.

While I was there, I did hear Maltese people express their resentment that their country had been “taken over by immigrants”.

I abandoned the idea, but would like to visit again even if it’s just to hear the Tunisian dialect spoken with that AB intriguing accent.

Mounira Chaieb is a Tunisian freelance journalist and writer based in London.

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REVIEW

A step in the right direction Ezo Tankisi reviews a brilliant anthology that takes the reader through appraisals of 50 novels written by authors from African, Asian, South American and Indigenous Peoples background, and which she says is starting the journey towards diversifying literature This Is The Canon: Decolonise Your Bookshelf In 50 Books

By Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay £16.99; ‎Greenfinch; 352 pp

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LTHOUGH the literary canon was established in the 16th century, it has always had one major failing: the authors celebrated over the centuries – and even in these modern times – have invariably been white and male.

But this anomaly has finally been put right through This Is The Canon: Decolonise Your Bookshelf In 50 Books,

by Joan Anim-Addo, Deidre Osborne and Kadija Sesay who have reviewed 50 outstanding literary works of authors who are black (from Africa and its Diaspora) and Asian, and of Indigenous Peoples background. The three female authors want their work to be at the forefront of the literary canon and to be studied at universities.

This outstanding anthology takes the reader through a journey of understanding what the canon is all about and why diversifying the literary world is so important. It is about understanding the roots of the Western canon; how it came to be and what to make of it.

It is important to note that the authors are not trying to replace the existing canon, instead they view this list of 50 books as an addition to it. The introduction highlights the difficulties that authors from different backgrounds may have faced, but which must have played a part in making their writing that much more effective.

A reading of some of the African women authors reflects this point, providing examples of some of the life difficulties that they, and other women, have faced.

Children Of The New World: A novel Of The Algerian War is a beautifully written book by Assia Djebar, which was set in the city where the first action for liberating Algeria from French rule began.

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Algerian women of different persuasions are highlighted, some whom adhere to traditional Algerian stereotypes while others defy these. Djebar’s novel remains true to the struggles of these women by showcasing how strong each character is in her own unique way in battling the challenges they face by being a woman in Algeria.

A Question of Power, by Bessie Head, set primarily in Botswana, is a gut-wrenching story about a girl called Elizabeth. She started life in troubling circumstances, with her mother confined to a mental institution when she was a young girl. Elizabeth believes that her foster parents are her real parents.

This is only the beginning of her struggles. Elizabeth faces abuse throughout her life: mentally, physically or emotionally. This touching novel takes the reader though a psychological journey where they come to understand the effects of systematic racism.

The authors

Goldsmiths, University of London.

Joan Anim-Addo, Grenada born, is the UK’s first black professor of Literature.

She co-founded the MA in Black British Writing with Deirdre Osborne at

Deirdre Osborne, who was born in Australia, is a Reader in English Literature and Drama at Goldsmiths.

So Long A Letter is an empowering and inspiring story on sisterhood. Written

by Mariama Bâ, the story focuses on two Senegalese friends, Ramatoulaye and Aissatou. Both women are essentially failed by their husbands. And although the love in their marriages disappears, the love between the two friends remains.

The Joys of Motherhood, by Buchi Emecheta, provides a deep understanding of how colonialism influenced peoples’ experiences and relationships. Although the protagonist of the story, Nnu Ego, is the daughter of a wealthy chief, once she gets married and becomes the “property” of her husband, her struggle with poverty begins.

This story is a perfect example of how disruptions in a woman’s life could be put down to her loyalty to family, tradition and culture.

A well thought out feature of the anthology is the “if you like this, try…” section, which is included after each review to encourage readers to read other related novels, thus widening the opportunity to diversify and decolonise one’s reading habits.

But it does not stop there. The 10page Afterword also encourages readers to expand their activism in the literary world by regularly browsing through local bookshops or attending literary festivals.

There is a list authors who are deemed to be activists; those writers who “use their public platform to highlight others to read”.

But the authors of This Is The Canon acknowledge that all the writers covered in the anthology “challenge injustice in their writing…”

In all, This Is The Canon is a brilliant anthology in starting the journey into diversifying literature. It is an anthology that does a lot to support and encourage authors of colour. It is safe to say that the authors have achieved their aim.

Although there is still a long way to go in diversifying the canon, this anthology is not just simply a reading list; it is a step in the right direction for literary change. AB Kadija George Sesay, of Sierra Leonean descent, works in literary project management and creative professional development with adults and young people.

APPRECIATION

Dr Amos Sawyer: outstanding scholar and builder of institutions Lansana Gberie pays tribute to the renowned Liberian academic and politician who died in the US on February 16, aged 76

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HE death of Dr Amos Claudius Sawyer is an abject loss for Liberia and Africa, and will be insupportable to his family, his wide circle of political associates and friends, and to his many mentees across Africa and the world. He was Liberia’s most important intellectual, and his sterling accomplishments were many and various.

They included a highly productive professorship at the University of Liberia in the 1970s and 1980s, a key role in drafting Liberia’s most open and democratic Constitution during that period, and holding the interim presidency of Liberia for four of its most turbulent years. He later dedicated all his energies as Chair of the Governance Commission towards creating or reinforcing institutions to ensure a more stable democracy.

From the beginning of his career at the University of Liberia in the 1970s, Sawyer was a committed political activist. He was a prominent member of the Movement for Justice in Africa, (MOJA), which, founded

in 1973, was the first truly progressive leftwing political movement in Liberia – and one which espoused both comprehensive political changes and a pan-African message of solidarity with other continental political and social movements.

Sawyer remained committed to its ideals even as he buried himself deep into the archives to produce substantial scholarly works, including his magnum opus, The Emergence of Autocracy in Liberia: Tragedy and Challenge, published in 1992. Rigorously researched, the book appeared when Sawyer was serving as interim president of Liberia, though he had completed the manuscript before taking on that onerous role in 1990.

He had relied almost entirely on archival and published sources to write the book, and because he was now a central player in the country’s affairs, the book felt somewhat aloof in an affected way. The same, with perhaps more justification, can be said about his subsequent book, Beyond Plunder, published in 2005.

This criticism, however, would not have worried Sawyer: with almost pedantic care, he always tried to separate his commitment as a political activist and his work as a scholar. It is no reproach to note that the effect of this was not always a happy one – they very often are not – but Sawyer’s standing as a humanist and serious intellectual remained consistently high throughout his long career. In his final labours as Chair of the Governance Commission – focusing on land reform, decentralisation, national reconciliation, and the limits and parameters of presidential power, including transitions – these twin commitments at last meshed into a sort of pained grandeur.

When he was appointed to this role by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in 2006, he was perplexed, he wrote to me in an email, by what he saw as two competing approaches to governance reform. The more prominent, far better funded one was being implemented and directed by Liberia’s external partners, and its sole focus was drawn from a playbook Liberia was all too familiar with: the boilerplate about improving public sector management through fighting corruption, rationalising ministries and other government agencies and other institutional accretions.

Sawyer instead immediately decided upon another approach: “A visit to foundational issues that have to do with a sense of community and national identity, local government empowerment, land reform and judicial reform,” he noted.

He deplored the fact that the US was creating what amounted to a new army for Liberia before the country’s citizens had made up their minds whether they needed one, and what kind; before a security sector review was attempted or a security sector policy drafted and discussed. These, he said, “require vigorous consultations among Liberians, including a national conference”.

Dr Sawyer was Interim National President of Liberia from 1991 to 1994

Considering that the military in Liberia 45

APPRECIATION had played so central a role in the country’s recent carnage as perpetrators – and that, during its disarmament, it had paraded an astonishing 19 Generals or Lt.-Generals, 36 Major-Generals, 111 Brigadier-Generals, 579 Colonels, 765 Majors, 1,238 Captains and 550 Lieutenants – this was not at all a trivial issue. Sawyer pushed for, and got, both the security sector review and policy.

Whether both documents had much influence upon the Americans is another matter. In the event, according to information released by the US government in February 2015, the Americans had by that time invested over $411 million in Security Sector Assistance to Liberia, most of that (about $300 million) on the army and only $108 million toward the development of the Justice Sector and Liberia National Police. The jury is out on what this means for Liberia’s future stability.

I first made contact with Sawyer in early 2001. In November 2000, at the height of President Charles Taylor’s catastrophic reign, men armed with knives and hammers attacked Sawyer in the Monrovia offices of the Center for Democratic Empowerment (CEDE), which he had set up shortly after his term as Interim National President of Liberia (1991-1994) to advocate good governance and the peaceful settlement of the ongoing civil war in the country.

The assailants beat him and his colleague Conmany Wesseh, CEDE’s Executive Director, viciously, and vandalised the offices. While in hospital recuperating, a friend who was close to the Taylor regime discreetly advised Sawyer that the attack was a message from Taylor:

leave the country or else. Sawyer took the hint and, along with Wesseh, fled Liberia.

Sawyer relocated to the US, where he set up a branch of CEDE and launched a

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had relocated CEDE to Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire, where Johnson Sirleaf, the future President of Liberia, had also made home as an exile from the Taylor regime.

Sawyer’s standing as a humanist and serious intellectual remained consistently high throughout his long career

campaign against Taylor, whom he accused of being the mastermind of the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone – evidence of which were later well-documented

by Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Sawyer got support from a few US lawmakers, once the Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up, to have Taylor indicted by it.

However, the US State Department and National Security Council were somewhat indifferent, not because they didn’t have evidence of Taylor’s culpability but because – as Sawyer explained to me in an email at the time – such an indictment would mean that the US would have to accept the responsibility of delivering Taylor to the court. And American officials did not like the idea. Meanwhile, Wesseh

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I was then the West Africa lead for a project launched by the Canadian NGO, Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), on “conflict” diamonds. Two UN reports had implicated Burkina Faso as a conduit for diamonds emanating from Angola and Sierra Leone as well as illicit weapons from dubious European sources that were ferried to Taylor, some of which ended up in the hands of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone.

The Project thought that as a former journalist I might be able to sniff around the region and get greater detail of the transactions. Sawyer had put us in touch with CEDE in Abidjan.

I was well-received by Wesseh, whom it had been my immense pleasure to meet earlier at a conference on child soldiers and small arms hosted by then Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy in Winnipeg in Canada. I spent a week in Abidjan, during which time Medina Wesseh arranged a delightful dinner with Johnson Sirleaf, before I headed to Burkina Faso via the now-defunct Air Afrique.

I was far less well-received there. I was immediately arrested upon showing my passport to immigration authorities at Ouagadougou airport, interrogated for an hour or so, and detained in a cavernous room at the airport for hours. I was then placed on the next available flight to Abidjan as the last passenger before takeoff.

Ouagadougou was then hosting its annual film festival, which I felt would be

Sawyer was often accused by his political foes of being a Sierra Leonean at heart

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APPRECIATION nice to attend, so the deportation doubly hurt. This was in 2001. I was to have met with a prominent NGO in Ouagadougou with which PAC had established contact, and our contacts in the country later suggested that the Burkinabe authorities had intercepted those telephone and email exchanges. I doubted this at the time, but I can think of no other explanation.

In 2008, I moved to Liberia to head an international human rights organisation supporting the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its Security Sector reform process. I met with Sawyer often during that time. In September that year, I convinced him to be the keynote speaker at a conference organised by my friends at the Concord Times newspaper in Freetown. We both stayed at the Bintumani Hotel in Freetown for three or four nights, during which I took him to a luncheon with former President Tejan Kabbah, who was a great raconteur at such moments, and who later chaired the conference at which Sawyer was the keynote speaker.

I also arranged a lunch meeting with Dr Peter Tucker, who was then Chair of Sierra Leone’s Law Reform Commission, also now deceased. Sawyer was immensely impressed by the work that Tucker was doing on various legislations, including

‘

time in Freetown, Sawyer appeared to be a total stranger. He had been to the city before, but his stay, mostly during peace talks, had been confined to the hotels by Lumley Beach. For example, he didn’t appear to have known of Youyi Building in central Freetown, which houses many of the country’s government ministries, when I took him there. He marvelled at such a structure in Sierra Leone, whereas in Liberia government ministries were scattered around in privately-owned houses in often insalubrious settings.

The Concord Times conference was a great success, and Sawyer and I flew back to Monrovia in a small commercial plane, which he regretted: he wanted to travel by road to see more of the country, but we had been slow to make the arrangements: the road then was atrocious.

Every morning during our stay in Freetown, Sawyer worked away on his statement to the TRC, which had begun public hearings months earlier. He shared his statement with me, which, like his big book, had the tone of a more or less disinterested academic looking at events through archival and other documentary sources.

This was partly, I suspected, because of the clumsy language the TRC commissioners used in inviting Sawyer

The military in Liberia had played so central a role in the country’s recent carnage as perpetrators

those focused on land tenure. He later, alone, visited Tucker at his offices.

In Liberia, Sawyer, who was born in remote Sinoe County, was often accused by his political foes of being a Sierra Leonean at heart because his father had emigrated from Freetown. But during our

’

and leading players in the progressive movement and in subsequent roles to provide “a critical review and expert perspectives into the dynamics and processes of governance and their impact on the Liberian conflict.” Still, I found the written presentation curious – one was looking for some personal reflections,

some kind of introspection. Some of that came later, in response to questions from the commissioners: I was in the audience.

The exchanges were often animated, and one sensed a lot of discomfort on the part of Sawyer.

It is part of the difficulty I alluded to earlier, the need, as Sawyer saw it, to separate the academic from the politician or political activist. Facing the sometimes maliciously probing TRC commissioners, this pose became difficult. But Sawyer still managed to be entirely truthful without being particularly illuminating.

In the immediate post-war Liberia, pre-Samuel Doe Liberia was seen as almost idyllic – a paradise shattered by the so-called progressives with their popular front-style agitations and rice riots and, this was generally hinted at, their inspiring of the catastrophic Doe coup which led inevitably to the even more catastrophic Taylor war.

Sawyer clearly did not agree with some of the actions of the likes of Gabriel Bacchus Mathews, a charismatic and unscrupulous demagogue who inspired the Rice Riots of 1979 by his inflammatory action of calling for popular demonstration at night. But he was very reluctant to openly criticise him. This for him would have meant, I suspected, letting down the side and playing into the hands of those ignorant revisionists now blaming the progressive movement of the 1970s, not the great institutionalised corruption of settler rule and the brutal autocracy of Doe, for Liberia’s great plight.

A few months before his death, after prolonged illness and no doubt now more aware of his mortality, Sawyer announced his resignation from politics. He became more introspective, openly admitting to some mistakes of the late 1970s and even criticising Mathews. He was writing his memoirs.

Those of us who profoundly admired Sawyer as a great human being, an unsurpassed scholar, a brave freedom fighter, a builder of institutions, and a mentor, can only hope that he had completed those memoirs before his death. It would likely have been his best book, now no longer constrained by the expediencies of his committed politics, and perhaps his greatest political legacy.

AB

Dr Lansana Gberie is Sierra Leone’s Ambassador to Switzerland and Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva.

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