Patronizing leaders’ summits; a risk to Africa

One observer put it succinctly, ‘a sharecropper’s gathering’. A Sharecropper if you may recall was a tenant farmer in the South of the US who was aided with tools, seeds, food and shelter to till the land and received a part of the proceeds when he sold the harvest. It was more about a power relation between the rich and the poor. Despite being overwhelmingly endowed with natural resources including energetic people, Africa is deep in debt. Almost all our earnings go to pay back loans that have achieved almost nothing worth mentioning in terms of growth and development. Yet we are trapped in debt. We still have to borrow to live and pay back.

That is why, after over 60 years of independence, Africa is still being patronized by competing forces. From time to time a world power summons African leaders to a high sounding summit.

There is the India-Africa, China-Africa, Europe-Africa, UK-Africa, France-Africa summit etc. If these are equal partnerships full of good will, why don’t we have Africa-The Rest of The World Summit where world leaders interested in Africa come to the continent and we tell them about how we intend to relate with them for mutual benefit?

But our leaders trudge along and seemingly enjoy photo opportunities. These meetings are mostly ignominious encounters of beggar and master.

After that, the reporting tries to sugar coat the events as respectful opportunities for investment. One wonders why 60 years after independence from the people that were claimed to be exploiting Africa, the continent is now begging them to return and invest, which is basically exploiting resources.

Despite all the chest thumping and high sounding revolutionary platitudes For all intents and purposes it is all a weak man’s empty talk.

There is a video clip that has gone viral, of Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame criticizing the awkward fact that African leaders are ‘summoned’ to gather in foreign capitals to discuss African problems instead of taking the initiative at home. Kagame makes a lot of sense. It is on the African continent that you have found minds that articulate the African predicament better than all else.

Take this case. Like him or loathe him, President Yoweri Museveni is high up on the tree in understanding the continent’s issues.

He once said that one of the problems of Africa is birthed by leaders who stay too long in power. He has done 36 years and is still around, by the look of things. It therefore comes as no surprise that after Kagame’s words of wisdom, when the US called once again, they went and gathered. Mark you when asked about the achievements of the last US-Africa Leaders  Summit of 2014, a president who attended sarcastically said, ‘we had a good meeting.’ It was also said when African leaders were warned about taking ‘highly risky loans’ from China which is the US’ global political and economic rival, an African leader remarked that ‘we have a right to borrow from who we want.’ In other words, leave us to choose who enslaves us.

It is quite clear from the above that all the World powers are mostly interested in having exclusive rights to Africa’s natural resources at the lowest cost possible. The trick is to lend them money they can’t pay back and then hold them at ransom -like the piper who calls the tune. The leaders of the continent know this and are double dealing to firstly keep the money coming in. Secondly, to remain in power for as long as possible, by giving more and more access to whichever power is interested, at any given time.

What will come out of these dubious partnerships is to the detriment of the African continent. A time is coming when we shall not be able to pay our debt at all as the lenders are competing to drown us in debt we can’t absorb successfully. Then the lenders will have enough leg room to do as they please.

To get there comfortably, the lenders will do all it takes to have the ‘right leaders’ in place; the ones who understand this exchange. So you are going to have leaders being supported to stay longer in power in order to sustain the agenda of selling out the continent’s independence. Elections will have less integrity and more violence. This will be supported by the lenders to have ‘their people’ in power just like you had during the Cold War between the USSR and the USA. They later called such a bad leader allied to their cause ‘our son of a bitch!’

Africa is definitely in for tough times ahead in terms of independence, governance and economic viability. None of these summits and ‘lending partnerships’ is going to yield genuine sustainable results for the continent.

What Africa needs now more than anything else is increasing production of goods and enhancing productivity of its people in areas where we have a comparative advantage. That area is agriculture. People will always need food to eat in order to survive. We have to get organized, grow it and market plus sell it. The argument that agriculture cannot be a bedrock for economic growth and progress has been put to shame by the war between Russia and Ukraine. These two countries are the leading producers of wheat. Supply has gone down and increased the price of food in many countries. With all the fertile land that we have, why aren’t we taking advantage of this situation to care for the worldwide demand? In early 1974, Brazil, a leading global coffee producer and exporter, had a problem with frost that affected its output. The prices went sky high and a country like Uganda benefited economically.

The story of agriculture can be realised successfully with minimum investment that we can mobilize at home. It does not have to give an arm and a leg to investors to help us. The current trajectory of attracting foreign investors to help us in complicated processes like manufacturing and of late rocket science, has a cost. An investor must go where they see economically viable opportunities.

The ones that are ‘facilitated’ to help us are likely to be dodgy. Many times this means giving them free land, foregoing tax revenue and repatriation of profits thereafter. An economy cannot grow when it is being drained of its lifeblood at the same time.

Twitter: @nsengoba