Vladimir Danilov
Leading international experts estimate that one in four global consumers will be African by 2050. The African continent is home to 8 of the world’s 15 fastest-growing economies. It is therefore not surprising that interest in Africa has recently increased considerably on the part of leading international players, especially former metropoles.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the other day that Britain intends to develop long-term strategies for developing relations with African states to ensure that Russian influence does not spread to the region. London stressed that Britain’s proposal to develop relations with these countries would build on British strengths in trade, investment, defense, technology and climate change, backed by a reliable source of infrastructure investment. However, in his interpretation of British strengths, Cleverly did not mention the historically important aspect of British damage to African states during the colonial era, which the people of that continent remember very well.
It is noteworthy that the announcement of this “African vector of London” coincided with the US-Africa summit in Washington in mid-December and was clearly prompted by the appropriate “whistle” to Britain from the White House for a return to the policies of the former metropole there. It is also worth adding that the two outcome documents of the above Washington forum, the “US-Africa Leaders Summit: Joint Statement on Food Security” and the “Vision Statement for the US-Africa Partnership”, clearly show anti-Russian and anti-Chinese overtones, a move to oust Russia and China from that part of the world. However, the US plan to turn African countries against Russia has clearly failed and, as the Ambassador of Russia to the US Anatoly Antonov noted, “Washington’s slogans about a new 21st century partnership are really a wolf in sheep’s clothing… The previous and in fact neocolonial line of behavior was covered by assurances of friendship”.
Britain’s African vector of interest is not new. It should not be forgotten that the plan to establish an unbroken chain of dominions in Africa along the Cairo-Cape Town line defined the main thrust of British colonial expansion on that continent. The plan was put forward by British mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes, whose name was later even given to two British possessions in the south of the continent, Northern and Southern Rhodesia. The land and people of Africa were brutally exploited by the British colonial rulers as mines and plantations of cash crops proliferated in order to extract the continent’s wealth and export it to Europe and North America.
Although formal European domination of Africa ended in 1977, after Djibouti gained independence from France, Western companies continue to exploit the continent’s resources relentlessly. And when a local national leader gets in the way, Western governments, through “color revolutions” or armed intervention, remove such an “obstacle”, leaving the resource-rich continent poor. As Kwame Nkrumah, founder of Ghana (a former British colony), back in the day pointed out in his book “Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism”, the result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used to exploit rather than develop less developed parts of the world. According to a report published by a coalition of British and African non-governmental organizations, African states lose at least $60 billion annually from cooperation with Western governments and multinational corporations. The main force robbing Africa under the guise of charity is, according to Martin Drewry, head of Health Poverty Action, the global financial system with its center in London.
So in Africa, the struggle for control of the coast between the Cape Colony and Portuguese Mozambique, initiated by the British in the late 1870s, is well remembered. They also remember the defeat of the Zulus in 1880, turning their country into a colony, and the annexation of the entire eastern coast of South Africa to the British colonial empire after 1894, and then the British invasion of the Upper Nile Valley and their gradual entrenchment in Sudan. The Guinea coast was (and still is) also attractive to Britain as a source of cotton, palm oil and other raw materials.
Britain had already attempted unsuccessfully to regain influence in Africa in January 2020 by holding its first Britain-Africa investment summit in London. However, it was not a success for a number of reasons, among them, for example, the imperial desire to moralize the human rights situation in some African countries, notably Zimbabwe, which did not even receive an invitation to the summit. And clearly even then Britain was frankly overdue for a new division of the continent, though this time not a colonial one but an investment one: in 2014-2018 it invested $17bn in the Dark Continent, far less than, for example, the $72bn Chinese, $34bn French and $31bn US investments. And even in the following period, Britain has not been able to devote sufficient attention to Africa because of its busy post-Brexit relationship with the EU, its main trading partner.
However, as even British analysts acknowledge, the failure of London’s policy on the African continent is largely due to the lack of reinforcement of the African vector by years of diplomatic work at various levels. And the example of China, with which Washington and London intend to do battle on the African continent today, is very telling in this regard. Especially when one remembers that China hosted the first African summit on its territory back in 2000, which was followed by numerous and regular visits of Chinese officials to the African continent and investment projects. London’s policy with the African countries “with whatever funds remain”, with donor aid and investment dependent on the human rights situation, will continue to tie London’s hands in its African ambitions.
As for the reasons for London’s current “pivot” towards Africa, apart from the desire to continue exploiting the continent’s natural wealth, it should not be forgotten that it is largely due to its attempt to solve the problem of irregular migrants. They will now be sent by Britain to Rwanda, where asylum seekers will now await a decision on their applications to immigrate to the kingdom. Incidentally, this decision by London has already sparked outrage from humanitarian organizations and human rights groups. All the more so as London itself has recently accused Rwanda of human rights abuses.
London’s bold declarations of intent to actively develop relations with Africa are therefore already met with little enthusiasm and much criticism on the African continent. So are Britain’s plans to become the largest G7 investor in Africa by 2025, given the kingdom’s plunge into a deep financial, economic and energy crisis in recent months, its demonstrative focus on military and financial aid not for the world’s poorest states, but the outright Nazi regime in Kiev.
Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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