Towards Decolonizing Sub Saharan Africa

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By Munir Daair  

The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered into history … They have never really launched themselves into the future.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France 2007-2012.

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Archibishop of Cape Town 1986-1994

“We have to be honest and acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent”.

“Without Africa, France would slide down into the ranks of a third world power”.

-Jacques Chirac. President of France 1995-2007 

-“Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers”.

Old Testament. Genesis 9:25. 

You can go further. But you don’t have to, to understand the colonial mindset that enslaved and robbed Africans. According to biblical history, Ham, the father of the African race and one of Noah’s three sons, was cursed by his father, making Ham’s son, Canaan, and his off springs eternal slaves of Ham’s two brothers and their off springs. The mindset that set the tone for Africa’s current predicament is one that still believes Africans, especially the sub Saharan, are essentially sub human, upon whom wrongs don’t really amount to crimes against humanity. It was the mindset that enabled Europe to lament and pay reparations for the murder of 6 million Jews but ignore Belgium’s King Leopold’s murder of 10 million Congolese, French complicity under President Francoise Mitterand in the Rwandan genocide, Winston Churchill’s favourite term for Africans, “Blackamoor”, or the German policy of killing African adult male and sending their wives and children into the deserts of Namibia to die from dehydration and starvation in a policy the German commanding officer, Gen Lothar von Trotha justified saying, “If I had made the small water holes accessible to the womenfolk, I would run the risk of an African catastrophe comparable to the Battle of Beresonia.”  Skulls of murdered black Africans from Namibia were sent to Germany for research to prove that the white race is superior to Ham’s off springs, the black race. Which should beg the question, superior in what exactly?  

European colonial expeditions evolved into nations in the “new world”, where natives in millions were brutally murdered to make way for the new nations of the Americas, or in Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, which had their own share of European bloody expansion. But it is in Africa where, in nations disguised as independent, European colonial subjugation continues to this day, since 1884 when German’s chancellor Otto van Bismark brought together European powers in a Berlin conference to agree to stop killing each other over Africa and instead focus on carving up Africa between them. And carving they did, mercilessly. The conference was followed by enslavement, plunder and extermination of entire African villages and the elimination of Africa’s rich history, culture and native languages. The continent’s resources became low hanging fruits ready for the picking. Ironically, even when the slave trade was abolished, those once held in slavery were not compensated. But those who once owned the slaves were! That imbalance has not been rectified, nor have reparations been paid. 

Slavery is still going on

I recently visited the Greek island of Lesvos as part of my research for a book I am writing.

Lesvos is a big island used to accommodate incoming refugees and other “illegal” migrants.

It was created by the EU to give the impression of free movement for those landing on European soil. In reality, it is a big prison island with concentration camps from where migrants cannot leave. The most notorious, Camp Moria, was burnt down in protest for the inhuman conditions the migrants are held. I walked through the deathly silent ruins of Camp Moria trying to imagine how the migrants were locked up and how they spent years of destitution in this most inhuman place. it was an experience I do not wish to repeat.  In the UK, instead of island prisons, a barge has been transformed for the purpose. There is a sinister motive for Europe’s migrants’ policy. It is intended at once to ensure a controlled influx of illegal migrants while providing slave labour to serve European agriculture and industry. Legalizing migrants would turn them into expensive labour. But not if they are slowly allowed in as illegals and meanwhile imprisoned on islands and barges until needed. Nothing has changed since the bygone days of European colonial occupation of Africa except the modus operandi. Three hundred years ago it was European slave traders who transferred slaves on big ships from Africa into Europe and the Americas. Today they come by themselves, bearing the cost and risk of travel across the Mediterranean on rubber boats, many drowning in the process. The European African colonial relations continue to be tipped in Europe’s favour. 

Coming back through the window

The French, under Charles De Gaulle, took a long term approach towards their colonies. Independence for these colonies came with strings attached that effectively denied these colonies sovereignty and retained French political control over its colonies, keeping monetary and economic benefits pouring into French coffers.     

Charles De Gaulle’s Africa enforcer was one, Jacques Foccart. Ironically, both De Gaulle and Focart were freedom fighters who resisted Nazi occupation of France. But their spirit of freedom didn’t include Africa. The two men set out to devise a diabolical plan that would enable France to leave through the door but come back through the window to ensure France will remain West Africa’s colonial master and the colonies will pay in fact for French occupation. They created a currency which they initially called Franc of the French Colonies of Africa now (Communaute Financier Africaine) CFA Franc. The currency was pegged to the French Franc [now EURO]. Under the CFA regime, France must receive 50-65%  of its former colonies’ foreign reserves, effectively, being paid a colonial tax by its impoverished African subjects! In Euro terms, the French treasury receives about 500 billion Euros yearly. But  France can unilaterally decide to devalue the CFA to get more money. And it did just that in 1994 in what is infamously known as the Dakkar Declaration when Franc Afrique heads of states and central banks were brought to rubber stamp the decision to devalue the CFA by 50%. But there’s more. Through the CFA regime, France can procure resources from its colonies using the CFA, pegged to the Euro. On the other hand, its former colonies are unable to sell finished products, because of their expensive Euro pegged currency, but sell only raw material, to France, which sells back finished goods. It doesn’t end there. To gain nominal independence, these colonies were required to enter into military and commercial treaties with France. Under these treaties, French companies have the first right of refusal for all government contracts, mining concessions and full access to raw material. The French government will control the supply of all weapons and military training. Infact, not only has the CFA become the tool of occupation, but also the weapons supply control has handicapped the war against terrorist groups such as ISIS, Boko Haram and Al qaeda in West Africa. That control on weapons also justifies the continued military presence by French and other western forces, who mostly guard the exploration of gold and uranium rich mines, while failing to eliminate the terrorist groups, which is the reason these western forces were ostensibly brought in, in the first place. One doesn’t need to be a genius to see the equation.   

It is hardly possible to consider independence or decision making sovereignty when not just one’s lands are under foreign military occupation but the monetary system and decisions are also foreign controlled. Those who tried to challenge and deviate from this system, or tried to test the extent of their independence were dealt with swiftly and violently. 

In 1958 Guinean President Sekou Toure carried out a referendum over joining the CFA. The  people voted 95% against joining. France’s response was swift and brutal. It was intended to show others what could happen if they follow the Guinean path. De Gaulle ordered the immediate removal of the entire French civil service running the newly independent but illequipped country. The removal even included doctors and teachers. He then ordered the departing French to carry out a scorched earth operation, burning and destroying everything, under the watchful eyes of the French military. That destructive departure was famously described by the French as, “un divorce sans pension alimentaire” (a divorce without alimony)!     

In 1963 Togo’s president Sylvanus Olympio tried to take his tiny country out of the CFA regime. He was swiftly overthrown and assassinated. In 1987 Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara met the same fate when he too tried to free his country. 

A weak Africa is the mainstay of colonial Africa policies

Keeping Africa hungry, needy, destitute, weak and undeveloped are so entrenched that it will take the united resources of the entire African continent to undo the damage done to Africa, particularly in west Africa where Franco Afrique continues to wreak havoc. But the first steps towards changing the dynamics have been taken.

France’s west African colonies are now revolting. Yet, even as that revolution against European colonial occupation is gaining steam, African leaders must be careful not to replace one occupation with another. 

The wars over Africa that ended with foreign powers agreeing to carve up Africa between themselves have been reignited. Africa is the future battleground among western colonial powers and between western and eastern powers,  each trying to wrest control of Africa. As we see clearly the developing power struggle over Niger between France which refuses to recognize the de facto military government and the US which just sent a new ambassador, effectively recognizing the military authorities, in an attempt to replace France. Western powers have already started tearing at each other exploit France’s predicament.  It will get worse as western powers find themselves cornered by the scarcity of their own resources amid the rise of powerful and resource rich regional blocks such as BRICS. On the other side is Russia and China, both outflanking western powers not just in Africa, but globally. The new battle lines for the wealthy, but impoverished and weakened Africa have been drawn.     Yet, there are great opportunities for Africa to navigate these treacherous waters and realize the potential its vast resources offer. Relative to its resources, Africa probably has the worst development record globally. Western colonial powers have ensured that predicament. France alone receives 500 billion Euros annually from its continued colonization of West Africa. And that does not include the other avenues of income France derives through the “right of first refusal” agreements it enforces.   

It will be folly to underestimate the challenges ahead and colonial legacies. Africa’s colonial past and the consequential weaknesses that facilitated the exploitation of Africa’s resources will continue to bite into African attempts to free and transform itself, going forward. At the top of those weaknesses is Africa’s shocking food insufficiency. Consider these facts:

In 2022 Russia alone supplied 11.5 million tons of grain to Africa. 

Africa’s total food imports in 2022 amounted to $55 billion, and unless something is urgently done, it will double in less than 10 years.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t take much to see Africa’s food production potential. In fact, you can see it with your naked eye in towns, villages and the vast savannahs. Yet, 60% of Africa’s arable land is uncultivated, making a lot of its 1.3 billion people virtually food destitute and the entire African continent vulnerable to foreign blackmail and domination. Twenty percent of Africa’s population is undernourished or outright starving and more that 50 million of its children are physically underdeveloped due to malnutrition. In the remaining 40% of cultivated lands, it is not Africa’s daily staple, wheat, rice or maize that occupies the majority of its farmlands, but cocoa, coffee and cottonseed for export to the affluent markets of the colonial west.

It is impossible for Africa to gain full independence and take ownership of its own resources when foreign powers can control Africa’s political decisions through a bushel of wheat! It becomes even worse when Africa is internally led, not by its young and energetic who are part of Africa’s future, but by the old, outdated and mostly corrupt who are part of its past. 

Coup d’ etat or Revolution?

The recent changes in west Africa are welcome. These are not coup d’ etat replacing freely elected governments with a military junta, as we are made to believe. These are revolutions which, as the world can see, have grassroot support, against puppet regimes serving colonial interests. In the absence of better avenues towards change, the revolutions are the only course of action for that desperately needed change.  Provided they do not fall into the

same old trap that will necessitate another revolution. Those bringing about these revolutionary changes must remember; the only successful revolution is not the one that overthrew the incumbent, but the one that will not require, yet, another revolution.

Munir Daair is an African born writer and political commentator. 

@MunirDaair