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From Then to Now - Stop Foreign Intervention in Africa!
News, Articles, Info ......
News agencies report that the United States Air Force is building a multi-million dollar base for armed drones in Niger. The Niger Air Base 201 is expected to be functional by early 2019 and lies a few miles outside Agadez, Niger. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokeswoman Samantha Reho has attempted to justify the base by claiming that it “will be crucial in the fight against extremism”. “The location in Agadez will improve U.S. Africa Command’s capability to facilitate intelligence-sharing that better supports Niger and other partner nations, such as Nigeria, Chad, Mali and other neighbours in the region and will improve our capability to respond to regional security issues,” Reho said....Read more
One of the most important aspects of continued foreign intervention in Africa concerns the plundering of cultural artefacts by the imperialist countries not least by Britain and its major cultural institutions. This has been highlighted recently by the so-called Magdala 1868 exhibition which opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London in April 2018. Magdala 1868 is an exhibition of important cultural treasures including a crown, a royal wedding dress and various religious items plundered from the then Ethiopian capital of Magdala (Maqdala) during an invasion by British troops in 1868....read more
On 9 February, the Panel of Experts of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Committee concerning Libya provided its interim report to this committee. The UN has not published the interim report nor made public its 11 recommendations but the Committee declared it would be following up 8 of these which related to its own work. This committee is currently chaired by Olof Skoog, Sweden’s representative to the UN and its resolutions are drafted by the UK mission to the UN, which is the current penholder for this committee... read more
On 30 November, the two day EU-AU summit came to a close in Abidjan, the capital of Côte D’Ivoire. Commentators noted the neo-colonial overtones in the choice of venue, given that the current president of that country, Alassane Ouattara, was installed by French paratroopers in 2010 while the previous president, Laurent Gbagbo, is languishing in a prison cell in the Netherlands, another African victim awaiting his turn in the hands of the so-called International Criminal Court.
This reality was confirmed by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who, on his way to Abidjan, delivered another one of his anti-African outbursts during his stop-over in Burkina Faso... read more
as in the USA and Canada. In Kenya alone in 2016, there were some 12,000 foreign expatriates working for such NGOs. These trans-national NGOs, which number in their thousands across the continent, are active in all aspects of Africa’s social, economic and political life and represent a force aimed at undermining African independence and reinforcing Africa’s neo-colonial relationship with various big powers... read more
‘Land-grabbing’ in Africa – a complex issue
Added 29 August 2017 
Foreign intervention in the form of owning African land is a vast and complex subject. This complexity is increased by the difficulty of accessing accurate information and the need to understand the issue in its context. Two important sources of information on the topic are a 2009 report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) entitled ‘Land grab or development opportunity?: Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa’ and a 2011 Oxfam report ‘Land Grabbing in Africa: A review of impacts and possible policy responses’. The former was based on research in 5 countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Sudan) carried out over a period of 5 months covering deals greater than 1000 hectares (a hectare is roughly the size of a football field) over the time frame of 2004-2009. The latter was compiled in 2011 by Tinyade Kachika, a senior legal researcher at Oxfam... read more
One of the most concerning developments in the struggle between various foreign powers for control over Africa’s resources and exploitation of its people is the rise of the number of foreign military bases being established on the continent. Using as their pretexts, the so-called struggle against terrorism and piracy and the provision of humanitarian assistance, various foreign powers are establishing bases across Africa. ... read more
G20 Summit proposals reflect new scramble for control of Africa’s human and material resources
Added 6 August 2017 
The recent summit meeting of the G20 countries in Hamburg, Germany, was the occasion for increasing contention between the big powers over the wealth of the African continent. The governments of Britain and Germany were the most active, both in response to the unprecedented activity of China, which now dominates Africa’s international trade. The new scramble for control of Africa’s human and material resources is well under way..... read more
G4S, the infamous British ‘security’ firm has over the last 40 years spread its tentacles deep into Africa. Today, this huge monopoly, which with nearly 700,000 employees in 125 countries boasts of being the second largest private sector employer in the world, has also established a considerable presence in Africa. With over 111,000 employees in more than 29 countries on the continent, it is now the largest private employer in Africa. In addition it has some 58,000 customers in Africa, including governments, businesses and non-governmental organisations.... read more
Corruption and Poverty in Africa can only be ended by breaking all neo-colonial ties
Added 2 June 2017 
The British charity Oxfam has recently produced an extensive report on inequality and corruption in Nigeria, entitled Inequality in Nigeria: Exploring the Drivers. Nigeria is currently Africa’s biggest economy but it is well-known that 70% of its population or about 112 million people live in abject poverty, without even basic facilities such as clean water and sanitation. Nigeria is an example of a global phenomenon that a capital-centred system is incapable of meeting the needs of its population, that those who are the wealth creators live in poverty, and that the rich are getting richer and the poor becoming poorer. It is now estimated that just sixty-two people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest 50% of humans, and the richest 1% have more wealth than the other 99% of humanity combined.
Nigeria is not only Africa’s largest economy and a major oil producer but also one of the fastest growing with annual growth rates of around 7% since the year 2000. Yet the number of poor people, those living on less than $2 per day has grown overall and as a percentage of the entire ...... read more The Commonwealth remains a means to perpetuate neo-colonialism and is an anachronism in the 21st century
Added 13 April 2017 
The government has recently made great efforts to strengthen the neo-colonial ties that exist in the so-called Commonwealth, the organisation of some fifty-two states around the world, most of which were former British colonies. Eighteen of these countries over one third of all the members of the Commonwealth are located in the African continent. Indeed, Africa is the continent that has the most Commonwealth member states and the largest number that are not former colonies of Britain such as Namibia, Mozambique and Rwanda.
The British government’s plans, especially those involving African countries, are apparently such a significant aspect of the new post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ that some government officials began referring to them as ‘Empire 2.0,’ a phrase that subsequently appeared in the press, ahead of the inaugural summit of Commonwealth trade ministers held in London last week.......read more 
Plans by the EU to hold Africans in camps in Libya in order to prevent them entering Europe have run into opposition from various forces in that country. These plans were announced at the recently concluded EU heads of government conference in Malta. At this conference, EU heads of government confirmed their intention to block, as far as possible, Africans crossing the Mediterranean to arrive in Europe. In this context, the EU voiced its full support for the memorandum of understanding which was struck on 3 February 2017 between the government of Italy and a representative of the Government of National Accord (GNA) which is the armed faction in Libya that is backed by the EU.......read more
The EU deepens its interference in Africa to block Africans arriving in Fortress Europe
Added 6 February 2017 
Meeting in the Maltese capital of Valetta on 3 February, the EU heads of governments expressed their support for the EU’s policy of deepening its interference in North Africa and the Sahel region of West Africa. In its declaration at the end of the meeting, the EU declared its intention to “to take additional action to significantly reduce migratory flows along the Central Mediterranean route”. This stated policy is aimed at blocking the arrival in Europe of Africans fleeing the chaos caused by the economic and military intervention of the EU member states in various African countries. The declaration further stated the EU’s intention of ensuring the “mainstreaming of migration within its Official Development Assistance for Africa”. This policy which is elaborated in the EU document ‘Migration on the Central Mediterranean route: Managing flows, saving lives’ sets out the EU’s plans for achieving its goals with regard to “illegal” African migration into the territories of the EU member countries.........read more
The Westminster Foundation for Democracy – a racist and colonialist institution for furthering British interference in Africa
Added 10 January 2017
One of the most pervasive and destructive features of foreign intervention in Africa is the ideological and political interference by various big powers in the lives of Africa and its peoples. As Amilcar Cabral pointed out, this intervention is aimed at breaking the independent African historical journey, disempowering Africans and pushing them down into a state of oppression.
The Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) is a British limited company that actively and unashamedly pursues a policy of ideological and political interference in Africa in support of the interests of Britain’s monopolies. This organisation, which was established in March 1992, describes itself as “an arms-length non-departmental public body which operates closely with, but is independent of, the UK Government”.........read more The BBC World Service, Soft Power and Foreign Intervention in Africa
Added 22 November 2016 
It has recently been reported that the British government will step up its intervention in Africa through the expansion of the BBC World Service in the continent. The BBC has this week announced the largest expansion of its World Service since the 1940s with plans to broadcast in eleven new languages worldwide. Six of those languages – Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya, Yoruba, Igbo and Pidgin are mainly spoken within the African continent and it is evident that there is a particular focus on three countries, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Nigeria......read more
The Significance of China's Military Activity in Djibouti
Added 18 October 2016 
“China is expanding its military ties across Africa, and even constructing a naval base in Djibouti. The shift began towards the end of the Hu Jintao era (2002–2012), when Beijing declared the protection of Chinese overseas interests to be a foreign policy priority, and, based on this, announced a China–Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Security.
Its direct involvement in African security has been taken to a new level under President Xi Jinping. Cooperation with Africa on peace and security is now an explicit part of Beijing’s foreign policy”........ read more The essence of Britain’s economic intervention in Africa has remained unchanged since the days of slavery and colonialism
Added 31 August 2016 
British imperialism is notorious in history as one of the main plunderers of Africa’s wealth from the days of slavery and colonialism. Despite its determined efforts to turn reality on its head and present itself as a force which allegedly “gives Africa aid”, the facts demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that Britain remains a parasite on Africa’s economy. A recently published War on Want study, entitled, “The New Colonialism: Britain's scramble for Africa's energy and mineral resources” provides further proof, if any was needed, of the damaging effects of Britain’s economic intervention in Africa.
The study focuses on the activities of 101monopolies which are listed on the London Stock Exchange, operate in 37 African countries and between them “control over $1 trillion worth of Africa’s most valuable resources”, including gold, platinum, diamonds, copper, oil, gas and coal. These monopolies control entire branches of the economies of different African countries, thereby making them the key decision makers in these sectors. In this way, African independence is negated and it becomes impossible for African governments to formulate any coherent economic policy aimed at addressing the challenges of social and economic development on the continent.....read more 
Britain, the other big powers and the imperialist system of states are responsible for global instability, poverty and the refugee crisis
Added 16 June 2016 According to reports from the UN Refugee Agency, over 200,000 refugees have crossed the Mediterranean already this year and over 2500 have lost their lives. Nearly nine hundred people lost their lives making the hazardous crossing in the last week of May this year. The majority of migrants who lost their lives embark from Libya and attempt to reach Italy and this route is particularly dangerous. Most of the migrant/refugees in Libya originate in West Africa as well as from countries such as Somalia and Eritrea. It is estimated that there are currently around 800,000 migrants still waiting in Libya to cross the Mediterranean. In addition, there are thousands more from Syria, Afghanistan and other war zones and impoverished areas seeking a new life in Europe and often at the mercy of organized criminals....... read more 
US and Senegal sign new agreements
Added 12 June 2016 In a further example of the growing United States military presence in Africa an agreement was recently signed with Senegal.During the 2013 Ebola medical episode Senegal was a base for US military aircraft to transport troops, health workers and equipment to Liberia.Senegal also hosted the annual U.S.-led counter-extremism Flintlock military exercises for West African forces earlier this year and the country is reported to be in need of assistance due to instability in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. This putative danger is the pretext for the updated US/Senegal agreement...... read more 
India in Africa
Added 2 June 2016 “Compared to other major world economies, India is an emerging economy, but it is making inroads into Africa. Indian investment flow in Africa is significant, at $50 billion in 2014, although the vast majority of that goes to the tax haven Mauritius. Still, Indian companies are active in a number of sectors in African economies, among them automobiles, services (mainly telecommunications and finance), pharmaceuticals, construction and resources.” The Diplomat Nov 13, 2015 India has no single document outlining its foreign policy strategy and has been criticised internally as such but one can discern it priorities from it actions according to Dhruva Jaishanka: “But beyond normalising and enhancing relations with the US, Modi’s international priorities were quickly made evident. Within his first year, he embarked upon state visits to India’s immediate neighbourhood, three crucial Indian Ocean island countries, important Asia-Pacific powers (China, Japan, and Australia), and eventually Western Europe..... read more 
How privatisation opens education in Africa to foreign control
Added 16 May 2016 Since the unleashing of neo-liberal globalisation, the main imperialist financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, have pushed privatisation in Africa, through their structural adjustment programmes and conditions attached to their programmes and loans. As a result, over the last 25 years, African countries have seen a relentless rise in the transfer of economic entities and entire sections of their economies into foreign control. Initially, the privatisation was focused on state owned economic enterprises, including factories, banks, and shipping companies but expanded to include basic infrastructure, such as railways and water provision, and is now moving into the provision of basic services such as education. The case of Bridge International Academies and its activities throughout Africa highlight the grave dangers that this process poses of reversing even the limited gains made as a result of the independence struggles. Bridge International Academies (BIA) is a private company which was set up in 2008 by two American business people, Jay Kimmelman and Shannon May. Its declared aim is to be ‘the global leader in providing education to families who live on $2 a day per person or less’. Their intention is to be educating at least 10 million children in Africa and Asia by 2023. Currently, some of the main investors in BIA include Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, the Zuckerberg Education Ventures of the Facebook founder, a venture capital firm, LearnCapital, the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank and Britain’s Department for International Development. In 2014, at the World Economic Forum on Africa, the founders of this company were named social entrepreneurs of the year. ...... read more 
There can be no justification for Britain’s intervention in Libya. No to foreign intervention in Africa!
Added 11 May 2016 In 2002 a little known former foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair named Robert Cooper wrote a now infamous article The Post Modern State and the World Order justifying a ‘new kind of imperialism.’ Cooper, who went on to to become a Special Advisor at the European Commission and a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations argued that there is the postmodern world of the EU, NATO and the other big powers and what he referred to as the ‘premodern world’ which included Africa. According to Cooper: ‘The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.’. ...... read more 
Foreign intervention in Libya must be brought to an end
Added 19 April 2016 Five years after the event the media has been full of reports of an interview with US President Obama, in which he alleges that the ‘worst mistake’ of his presidency was ‘failing to plan for the day after…intervening in Libya.’ Of course Obama did not mean that the NATO invasion of a sovereign African country in order to effect regime change and the assassination of its head of state was a mistake. In the same interview he made clear that in his mind US intervention ‘was the right thing to do.’ It speaks volumes about the nature of US imperialism and its chieftain that such a statement can be made. How is it conceivable that the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world can organise armed intervention in another country, overthrow its government without having any consideration for the consequences of that act, nor any plan to deal with those consequences? . ...... read more 
How foreign control of African economies undermines Africa’s economic development
Added 16 April 2016 In March 1964, when presenting Ghana’s 7 Year Development Plan to parliament in Accra, Kwame Nkrumah declared, “I have come here today to present to you, and to the people of Ghana, our Seven-Year Development Plan, which when completed, will bring Ghana to the threshold of a modem State based on a highly organised and efficient agricultural and industrial programme”. He continued, “….it is our aim, by this Plan, to eradicate completely the colonial structure of our economy”. He further stated that implementation of the plan should lead to the creation in Ghana of “a self-sustaining economy, based on socialist production and distribution. An economy balanced between industry and agriculture, providing a sufficiency of food for the people, and supporting secondary industries based on the products of our agriculture. In other words, an economy founded securely on the basis of socialist production and distribution”. With these words, Nkrumah articulated a vision of how people-centred economic development might take place in an African country. ...... read more 
Russia and Africa
Added 10 April 2016 “Currently, the scope for Russian-African partnership is significantly expanding. This process is unlikely to end in breakthroughs, but there is little doubt that Russia will try hard to restore its full-scale cooperation with African countries, the success of which would assist the mutual interests of both sides and contribute to the establishment of a just and multipolar world order under the complex and contradictory conditions of the 21st century.“ http://russiancouncil.ru/en/inner/?id_4=2002#top-content June 2013 “Putin has led Russia into an active part in United Nations peacekeeping in Africa, dispatching troops to operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Sudan, South Sudan, and the Western Sahara…At the same time, Russia is pouring resources into gathering information about Africa to better shape its policymaking. To cite just one example, the Institute for African Studies within the Russian Academy of Sciences now embraces thirteen research units, a working group, and an information center, employing a total of more than one hundred academic staff members—a substantial commitment of public resources to research that is unmatched by any other government.” Atlantic Council, MARCH 13, 2014....... read more 
The International Criminal Court – a mechanism for criminalising opposition to foreign intervention in Africa
Added 11 March 2016 The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established on 17 July 1998 when 120 states adopted the Rome Statute which is the legal basis of this organisation. The court, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, should not be confused with the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The latter is part of the United Nations and deals with legal disputes between UN member states. The ICC, on the other hand, is not part of the UN and has as its stated aims to “exercise its jurisdiction over persons for the most serious crimes of international concern” and to “to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of these crimes”....... read more 
The Neo-Colonial Nature of the European Union and its intervention in Africa
Added 6 March 2016 The current debates in the monopoly controlled media concerning the future of Britain’s membership of the EU are presented from the perspective of falsifying its essential character. The EU remains the organisation of the big monopolies and financial institutions of Europe, especially those of Britain, France and Germany, and acts on the basis of the requirements of these interests not those of the peoples of Europe nor those in other parts of the world...... read more Foreign Direct Investment undermines African economic independence and fuels foreign intervention
Added 17 February 2016 In the current world situation, neo-liberal economic doctrine, which upholds the interests of the monopolies, prevails. According to this theory, foreign direct investment (FDI) is the only means available for countries to achieve economic development and address the challenge of raising the people’s standard of living. The World Bank estimated that in 2010 48.5% of Africa’s population south of the Sahara were living on no more than $1.25 per day and so were classified as living in extreme poverty. The followers of neo-liberal economics argue that the solution to this problem lies in the flow of FDI into the continent...... read more Africa and the BRICS
Added 13 February 2016 In the last decade there has been an intensification of interventions in Africa. One of the most notable aspects of this is the role of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa association (BRICS). According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa ‘trade with the BRICS has grown faster than with any other region in the world, doubling since 2007 to $340 billion in 2012, and projected to reach $500 billion by 2015’. In his 2014 book Africa Rising: BRICS Diversifying Dependency, Ian Taylor, Professor of International Relations at University of St Andrews, argues that..... read more Britain and the big powers must cease all intervention in Libya
Added 08 February 2016 In recent comments Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Phillip Hammond, appeared to rule out any direct use of British combat troops in a new NATO invasion of Libya. His comments were made following a meeting of over twenty foreign ministers of countries that are part of the US-led coalition established to allegedly combat the growing presence of the sinister IS/Daesh in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Hammond’s statement also came at a time and when there were some indications that NATO and its allies were preparing for new armed intervention in Libya, five years after previous military intervention and bombing of the country led to regime change, as well as the assassination of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, and ushered in the destruction, anarchy and human suffering that now exists in what was Africa’s most developed country..... read more The US Africa Command (AFRICOM)
Added 29 January 2016 One of six global military commands within the United States Department of Defense unified command structure - each of which co-ordinates the activities of the country’s hundreds of military bases - U.S. Africa Command [AFRICOM] splits the 50 plus countries of the African continent into 5 regions. Each one - East, North, West, Central and Southern is declared to be an area of [self-proclaimed] responsibility [including Egypt] and is how AFRICOM facilitates political interference, military intervention and exploitation of the continent’s natural resources ....... read more Foreign economic intervention in Africa - a means of plundering the continent
Added 14 January 2016 Discussion of the intervention of the big powers in Africa can often focus on political and military intervention. However, these military and political actions are usually driven by the aim of securing economic intervention and plundering the continent through exploitation of its natural and human resources. ....... read more Valletta Summit Fails to Address the Causes of the Refugee Crisis
Added 18 November 2015 On November 11 and 12, Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May joined other leaders and government ministers from over sixty African and European countries meeting at the Valletta Summit in Malta to discuss the continual flow of refugees and asylum seekers from African countries to Europe. ....... read more The New Scramble for Africa
Added 18 November 2015 In 1884 The Times newspaper coined the phrase ‘Scramble for Africa’ to describe the contention between the major European powers for a share of what the Belgian king Leopold contemptuously referred to as ‘this magnificent African cake.’[1] Britain, France, Belgian, Germany and the other big powers each attempted to carve out their share of the African continent during the infamous Berlin Conference ....... read more Refugees from Foreign Intervention in Africa
Added 18 November 2015 The Red Crescent has reported that the bodies of at least 95 refugees have been found washed ashore in Libya over the past week. Most of the dead are reported to have been traveling from other African countries....... read more Criminal Response of EU to Shocking Deaths of Migrants
Added 18 November 2015 Last week the EU Foreign Affairs Council announced that it will step up military and other forms of intervention, particularly in Libya, allegedly in order to prevent the deaths of migrants traveling to Europe from North Africa. Already this year almost 2,000 men, women and children, mainly of African origin, have lost their lives....... read more Britain’s intervention in Africa
Added 18 November 2015 Britain has long been one of the main foreign powers to intervene in Africa for the purposes of plundering the continent’s resources and....... read more Events & Activities
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Inspiring Quote ......"Does that mean you have to all leave here and go fight in Africa? We do not believe so. That is not being realistic in our opinion. History is a very strong chain. We have to accept the limits of history but not the limits imposed by the societies where we are living. There is a difference. We think that all you can do here to develop your own conditions in the sense of progress, in the sense of history and in the sense of our total realisation of your aspirations as human beings is a contribution for us. It is also a contribution for you to never forget that you are Africans". Amilcar Cabral From around the web ......Prime Minister Theresa May hosts a bilateral meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa
Added 4 July 2018 
Much can be deduced from the nature of the UK’s relationship with South Africa by examining the above report from the Prime Minister’s Office on the meeting between Theresa May and Cyril Ramaphosa. Of particular interest is the final paragraph, which states “£50 million new UK funding across the next four years to help South Africa improve its business environment to make it more attractive to investors including in the UK and ultimately lift some of the poorest people in South Africa out of poverty by creating jobs and opportunities. The funding will be used to identify and dismantle barriers to trade within Africa and beyond, creating a wealth of opportunities for the UK businesses over the coming years.”
This, as ambiguous as it is, does not bode well for the South African national economy. Britain has a long colonial, military and imperialist history in South Africa. Successive British governments supported the Apartheid regime in South Africa, branding the ANC as a terrorist organisation, a position in contradiction to the British people who were largely opposed to the Apartheid regime. British companies have invested heavily in South Africa, especially in the extractive industries. More recently, the scandalous British advertising consultancy Bell Pottinger was found to be actively circulating racist messages aimed at creating divisions between different communities in South Africa. This scandal so tainted the company that is had to close it operations. Africa, in general, following the imposition of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)s by the European Union is one of the most open regions of the world. In other words, it is already “barrier free”. This is on top of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) structural adjustment programs (SAP) which further opened up African countries to foreign exploitation. It is in this context that the British government is placing its main focus on reducing barriers to British companies exploiting opportunities in South Africa. There is a crisis of poverty and inequality in Britain in a period where there is a relatively low unemployment. Many working people have to rely on top up benefits and food banks to make ends meet. A lot of the jobs created in Britain are zero hour contracts with increasingly limited terms and conditions of work. When the British government speaks of lifting people in South Africa out of poverty through the creation of jobs it can be clearly understood that this is just the double speak of modern marketing language, it does not in any way shape or form represent what it sounds like... Report of the meeting 
Joseph Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with President Xi Jinping, at The Great Hall of the People in Beijing, September 4, 2015.
Bloomberg reported at the beginning of this week that 35 Chinese mining companies came together to form the “Union of Mining Companies with Chinese Capital” (also known as USMCC per its French acronym) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC or simply Congo) “at the initiative of China’s embassy and on the advice of Congo’s mines minister”. This represents nothing less than the establishment of a powerful lobbying group that centralizes China’s enormous economic influence over the Congo and provides Beijing with the possibility of exerting its political will, interestingly at what was supposedly the suggestion of Kinshasa itself. On the surface, it might seem peculiar that a mineral-rich country would ask its top trading partner to do such a thing given the predisposition of any state to worry about losing its sovereignty through such means, but the situation in the Congo is unusual by any standard and deserves some further elaboration in order to understand the current context... read more
Chinese President, Xi Jinping, welcomes Djibouti's President, Ismail Omar Guelleh, to Beijing
China will host the first-ever China-Africa security and defense forum later this month, a Chinese military spokesperson said last Thursday. The move signals deepening ties between the world’s most rapidly developing country and a number of nations in the developing world.
Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, said at a press briefing Thursday that the African participants will visit the Chinese armed forces, including the army, navy and air force. The forum itself will focus on regional security issues and the development of Africa's own security capacities, in addition to mutual cooperation, Xinhua News Agency reported...read more 
In December 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that “[China] will proactively push forward the construction of a global network of partners and will proactively push for political solutions for international hot issues and difficult problems”. While this policy began under the presidency of Hu Jintao, the level of Chinese involvement has grown rapidly under the Xi administration. China’s increased involvement in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping is one clear example of this proactive policy. In 2015, President Xi promised to make 8,000 troops available to the UN, and he also offered to help train 2,000 peacekeepers from other countries... read more
The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) was established by an April 2013 Security Council resolution following France's intervention in January of that year. The official mandate of the mission as established by the UN Security Council was to support political processes in that country and carry out a number of security-related tasks. The Mission was tasked to "support the transitional authorities of Mali in the stabilization of the country and implementation of the transitional roadmap." In 2014 the mandate was expanded to "focus on duties, such as ensuring security, stabilization and protection of civilians; supporting national political dialogue and reconciliation; and assisting the re-establishment of State authority, the rebuilding of the security sector, and the promotion and protection of human rights in that country."... read more
On March 19, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that Canada would be sending a task force of an as-yet undetermined number of troops and Chinook and Griffon helicopters to join the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) for a one-year deployment. The announcement in fact expands Canada's military involvement in Mali and the Sahel region of Africa which has been ongoing since 2010.[1]
A Department of National Defence press release says that the mission is to "bring sustainable peace and stability to Mali and the Sahel."[2] "Canada is committed to building a more peaceful and prosperous world. Ensuring the safety and security of our citizens -- and those of our allies -- means working to confront instability and conflict around the world. Canada's support for United Nations peacekeeping will help vulnerable and marginalized communities build a better future for themselves," the press release says...read more 
If the unconfirmed reports about a possible Russian base in the breakaway region of Somaliland are to be believed, then Moscow is finally flexing its military muscles beyond Eurasia and signaling its eagerness to return to Africa.
The typically trustworthy Alt-Media information portal South Front republished the claims that have been circulating for the past couple of days about a possible Russian military base in the breakaway region of Somaliland, a development that initially caught many observers off guard but is entirely explainable in hindsight if it actually comes to pass. The report alleges that Moscow has been in talks with the self-proclaimed authorities in Hargeisa to build a small multiuse air and naval facility in the Djibouti-bordering town of Zeila in exchange for formally recognizing the region’s “independence”. The UAE is already constructing its own base in.... read more China Says U.S. Wants World For Itself And That's Why It Can't Accept Beijing's Role in Africa
Added 06 April 2018 
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with Cameroon's President Paul Biya at the Great Hall Of the People in Beijing on March 23, 2018.
China has defended its expanding role in Africa after lawmakers in Washington announced they would open an investigation into Beijing's push for economic and military influence in a number of countries there.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a GOP representative from California, said on Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo that China was "a big problem" and that he and fellow Republican lawmakers were "running an investigation on many aspects of China," including allegations of intellectual property theft, currency manipulation and its "military footprint" in Africa. The following day, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denied charges of malpractice and called for cooperation rather than competition with the U.S....read more 
Thousands of Ghanaians rallied in the streets of their capital on Wednesday to protest a deal that would give the United States military an expanded role in Ghana.
As part of the agreement struck last week, the United States would invest about $20 million in equipment and training for the Ghanaian military, carrying out joint exercises with Ghana and using the nation’s radio channels and runways. Ghanaian officials said the agreement was an extension of a two-decades-long relationship between the United States and Ghana, a West African nation that has been a regular host of bilateral and multilateral military exercises... read more Dispossession Does Not Mean Accumulation: Capitalist Accumulation in Africa
Added 20 March 2018 
In recent decades, worldwide contemporary events of expropriations, evictions and dispossessions have come to the forefront of public and academic debates. Similar events to those that occurred in Europe at the dawn of the capitalist mode of production are now being dramatically reproduced in the periphery of the world-system. Africa, for instance, is probably the most significant area of so-called land grabs, considering just one example of dispossession. The Land Matrix (2018) shows that of the 42 million hectares of agricultural land that have potentially been converted from smallholder production to commercial use worldwide, 22 million hectares are African. Departing from Marx’s so-called primitive accumulation, scholars have claimed that such an inaugural process of capital would be an ongoing process. For Saskia Sassen, capitalism has advanced to a new phase of of primitive accumulation that arose as a result of the financialisation of the economy. For others, primitive accumulation never ceased to exist given that it is necessary to late capitalism and, for this reason, must coexist with it (see De Angelis; Hardt and Negri; Harvey)...read more
At the opening of the 15th National Leadership Retreat, president Kagame asked national leaders why Rwanda is among the worst performers in terms of child malnutrition. A recent report – still publicly unavailable – of the National Institute of Statistics found a child malnutrition rate of 38 percent. This figure seems a weird anomaly in a country that is lauded for its ‘developmental success.’ Average yearly growth rates around 7.2 percent are among the top 10 globally. The country ranks 41st on the World Bank Doing Business Report, and is applauded as one of the world’s most performing business reformers. At the continental level, the country is praised for the implementation of a Green Revolution and named top performer in the transformation of the agricultural sector... read more
Tax avoidance, tax evasion, tax heavens, illicit financial flows and global tax governance are real buzzwords that have come to dominate current international political and financial domains. Tax avoidance, understood as the use of the so-called ‘loopholes’ in the tax legislation to reduce one’s tax payments increasingly tops news charts. The recent EU’s blacklist of 17 tax havens, Paradise Papers and last year’s Panama Papers are among the starkest examples. Recent waves of tax dodging scandals including those of tax evasion – the use of unlawful means to escape paying tax – pushed many governments globally towards implementing various structural changes to taxation systems. Moreover, there is a growing call towards making the ‘fight’ against the exploitation of tax regulations ‘a global effort’ and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD), Tax Inspectors Without Borders and the Declaration on Automatic Exchange of Information are amongst the most prominent measures of this kind... read more
New Evidence of Africa’s Systematic Looting, From an Increasingly Schizophrenic World Bank
Added 19 February 2018 
A brand new World Bank report, The Changing Wealth of Nations 2018, offers evidence of how much poorer Africa is becoming thanks to rampant minerals, oil and gas extraction. Yet Bank policies and practices remain oriented to enforcing foreign loan repayments and transnational corporate (TNC) profit repatriation, thus maintaining the looting.
Central to its “natural capital accounting,” the Bank uses an “Adjusted Net Savings” (ANS) measure for changes in economic, ecological and educational wealth. This is surely preferable to “Gross National Income” (GNI, a minor variant of Gross Domestic Product), which fails to consider depletion of non-renewable natural resources and pollution (not to mention unpaid women’s and community work)...read more Spurious Justifications of Britain, France and the EU for their Intervention in Africa
Added 6 February 2018 
Placard reads: "Loving Freedom, reduced to slavery. Europe is an accomplice to crimes". Protest against slavery in Libya outside the Libyan Embassy in Paris on November 24, 2017
The annual Anglo-French summit meeting took place on January 18 with a high-level meeting at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst between Prime Minister Theresa May and President Macron. Although the summit's agenda was presented as wide-ranging, it was evident that increasing military activity and what is referred to as security co-operation was at the heart of the meeting. What was particularly evident, was increasing intervention in the affairs of African countries by France and Britain both to prevent what is described as the threat of "Islamist-terrorism" in the Sahel and to establish the borders of the EU firmly in that region allegedly to control the flow of migrants to Europe and prevent modern forms of slavery... read more
Pushed into a Dead End
Berlin is shaping Tunisia to fit the interests of German investors Added 23 January 2018 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed
Protests continue against the new Finance Act, which is leading to drastic price hikes in Tunisia, a site of German low wage production. The IMF had imposed the Act on the country to combat the consequences of the structural crisis, in which Germany had played a role in creating. German enterprises and the German government have contributed to Tunisia’s focusing its production on but a few export sectors - particularly the textile and cable production - which cannot offer any real possibilities for the country's development. Because of its heavy dependence on foreign enterprises, Tunis was forced to grant investors tax benefits, which helped drive that country into a dept trap. Last year, Tunisia had to pay nearly a fifth of its budget to foreign creditors, according to a study by the German Left Party-affiliated Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Within the framework of the G20-"Compact with Africa," Berlin is shaping Tunisia to fit the interests of German investors... read more
Following coordination with the United Arab Emirates, Egyptian forces arrived in Eritrea today, Al Sharq has reported. The forces are armed with modern technology and heavy armoured vehicles. Sources told Al Sharq that a meeting was convened between the UAE, Egypt and the Sudanese opposition representing groups in Darfur and eastern Sudan. There are no reported military confrontations.
The military presence in Eritrea may be a response to Sudan allowing Turkey to take over Suakin Island in Sudan temporarily last year, as part of a broader Turkish engagement policy in Africa. Suakin was once Sudan’s largest port and governed by the Ottoman Empire but has fallen into disuse since the creation of Port Sudan in the 20th century just 60 kilometres to the north... read more New Age Colonialism: British Companies Control $1.05 trillion of African Resources
Added 2 January 2018 
101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange are said to be in control of an identified $1.05 trillion worth of resources in Africa. These companies have mining operations in over 37 countries on the continent and 59 are incorporated in the United Kingdom while 12 are incorporated in British tax havens. The rest are mainly domiciled in London in spite of being incorporated elsewhere. This is not even the worst news; the British government is enabling the exploitation using its political gravitas to pressure African countries into adopting policies that are favorable for British interests. It is a deplorable replay of colonialism...read more
Operations in Niger are part of a broader strategic plan to further dominate Africa military and economically. The Sahel is a treasure trove of valuable minerals and other natural resources. U.S. military occupations, although said to be based on cooperative efforts between the host governments and Washington, clearly represent the interests of international finance capital based on Wall Street...read more
President Trump’s expansion of war is most evident in the skies of Somalia where an acceleration in drone strikes have been reported.
U.S. Africa Command has conducted fourteen airstrikes since August bringing the year’s total to eighteen. The increased tempo of airstrikes started in September between the Kismayo and Mogadisu region. Earlier this month, we reported on Trump’s administration hitting a new milestone - when U.S. Africa Command launched its first airstrike against the Islamic State-linked fighters - further accelerating the US presence..read more 
France's president Macron at the G5 Sahel summit in July 2017
The Sahel, which has been devastated by the 2011 NATO war in Libya and the resulting French war in Mali starting in 2013, is facing a new military escalation as France steps up its deployments in the strategic, resource-rich region in its former colonial empire.
The new regional force set up by Paris, the Sahel G5—comprising Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad—carried out its first operation, code-named Haw Bi (“Black Cow”) from October 27 to November 11 in the border region between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The G5 force operated in coordination with French troops and the MINUSMA, the 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali. It carried out patrols aimed at ethnic Tuareg or Islamist fighters hostile to Paris and the Malian central government in Bamako... read more 
The European Union's policy of helping the Libyan authorities intercept migrants in the Mediterranean and return them to "horrific" prisons in Libya is "inhuman", the United Nations said Tuesday.
"The suffering of migrants detained in Libya is an outrage to the conscience of humanity," the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement...read more 
This memorandum aimed to pinpoint some of facts that the Libyan people were subjected to during the past six years where the most horrendous crimes were committed against its people. These crimes were committed under the name of human intervention, protection of civilians, introducing democracy and prosperity where the NATO forces, with the help of some Arab countries and a few Libyans, attacked Libya with all weapons under its disposal. The justifications put forward were as false as the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in fact it was a systematic destruction of a sovereign country and a peaceful nation...read more
Nearly five years after the European military mission was launched in Mali, experts are describing the country's situation as a disaster and warning against Berlin and Paris' further militarization of the Sahel. Mali "has never" seen "such a level of violence" as "currently," says a former French diplomat...read more
In Kenya, they are called the “clothes of dead white people.” In Mozambique, they are the “clothing of calamity.”
They are nicknames for the unwanted, used clothing from the West that so often ends up in Africa. Now, a handful of countries here in East Africa no longer want the foreign hand-me-downs dumped on them because they’re trying to manufacture their own clothes. But they say they’re being punished for it — by the United States. Here in East Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Burundi have been trying to phase out imports of secondhand clothing and shoes over the last year, saying the influx of old items undermines their efforts to build domestic textile industries. The countries want to impose an outright ban by 2019...read more 
The small African country of Burundi, where ICC prosecutors are investigating alleged human rights violations, has become the first to leave the International Criminal Court; the government claims that the institution is biased against non-Western countries.
Burundi has become the first country to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, a year after notifying the US Secretary General of its intention to withdraw from the Rome Statute which underpins the Court... read more 
The Pentagon is calling for an increase in the US military footprint in Africa, where there are over 6,000 troops currently stationed. This as a top general confirms the four US soldiers killed in Niger were ambushed by an Islamic State-affiliate.
Speaking from the Pentagon on Monday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford told reporters that US troops in Niger do not go on patrol with local forces unless the chances of enemy combat are “unlikely.” He confirmed the four US service members killed in the October 4 ambush were taken by surprise when they were attacked by a group of 50 militants affiliated with the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL)... read more 
Between 2006 and 2010 the deployment of US special forces troops in Africa increased by 300 per cent. From 2010 to 2017 the numbers of deployed troops exploded by nearly 2000 per cent, occupying more than 60 outposts tasked with carrying out over 100 missions at any given moment across the continent.
The October 4 killings of four US Green Berets in Niger has provided a rare glimpse into the far-reaching American military operations throughout the African continent which have been conducted almost entirely in secret. Pentagon officials on Friday told reporters that the ambush was carried out by a self-radicalized group supposedly affiliated with ISIS. The Pentagon additionally admitted that at least 29 patrols similar to the one that was fatally ambushed have been carried out by American soldiers in Niger... read more 
Turkey has launched a major military base in Somalia. The $50 million facility is designed to provide support and training to troops of the war-torn country which is struggling to rebuild its national security forces.
Turkey opened the new military training facility south of Somalia’s capital city Mogadishu Saturday. Senior officials, including Turkey's Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar and Somalia’s Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire attended the opening ceremony, which is expected to house and train at least 1,000 soldiers at a time...read more 
Troops from China’s only overseas base have staged their first live-fire drills in what military analysts said was a major show of combat readiness.The exercises in Djibouti on Friday involved dozens of officers and took place at the country’s national gendarmerie training range, the People’s Liberation Army Navy said in an online report. Troops arrived at the base – China’s first overseas garrison – less than two months ago and the drill was meant to test the personnel’s capacity to handle a range of weapons and tasks in extreme heat, humidity and salinity, the report said... read more
For the vast majority of media outlets Africa is a continent in chaos, a place of countless massacres, epidemics, and starvation caused by conflicts, that generate extremist groups which mercilessly loot, rape, and kidnap.
Also a place with enchanting landscapes, abundant mineral resources, and at the same time threatened by drought and desertification, for many in the West, Africa is the kingdom of tribal conflicts, smuggling, and inevitable poverty... read more BBC World Service: expanding 'global democracy' or just a tool of soft power for the UK?
Added 12 September 2017 
This month, 54 years after the end of the bloody conflict with the Mau Mau rebels that ended three-quarters of a century of imperial rule in Kenya, the British are returning to their former East African colony – in word, if not in deed.
Afaan Oromo, spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya, is one of a dozen dedicated language channels being launched on various platforms by the BBC World Service over the next few weeks. In Nigeria, ruled by London from 1800 to 1960, the British are already wielding new influence – on August 21, the BBC introduced a new digital service in Pidgin, an informal language derived from English and spoken by tens of millions of people in West and Central Africa, including 75 million in Nigeria alone. Pidgin and Afaan Oromo are among a dozen new tongues being added to the BBC’s portfolio in the biggest expansion of the World Service since the Second World War, bringing the total languages broadcast to 40. Half of the 12 new languages are spoken in Africa, chiefly in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Nigeria, but the BBC is also launching services aimed at North Korea, Russia and parts of India. New Arabic-language radio programmes for the Gulf and North Africa were added in May. According to the BBC, which aims to extend its reach from 308 million to 500 million people by 2022, it is merely doing the non-English-speaking world a favour... read more 
A parliamentarian from the Central African Republic has accused the UN Mission (MINUSCA) of complicity in an attack that killed dozens of people in the eastern city of Gambo, media reported today.
Local deputy Michel Kpingo stated that even though everyone wanted to replace the MINUSCA's Moroccan contingent of the Minusma, they did not do so, and 'the complicity of those soldiers was clearly established in Gambo incidents', he explained in relation to the assault, killing 10 Red Cross workers...read more 
Europe-Africa summit, Paris 2017
Some see the popular vote in the UK to withdraw from the European Union as a major blow that diminishes the future of Europe. But Brexit is a distraction from the core threat to Europe: policy driven by business strategy in response to a looming demographic crisis.
At a time when nationalist and separatist movements seem to constrain Europe, the EU is expanding its role as a global actor. Against the backdrop of xenophobia and an aging workforce, an emerging public-private alliance of EU policy and business leaders is creating its own client states in African countries where emigration is highest. ... read more Colonialism’s new clothes: The EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements with Africa
Added 1 September 2017 
Since 2002, African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries have negotiated a reciprocal free trade agreement known as the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU). While it was marketed as the magic bullet towards the ACP countries’ industrialisation and development, it is in fact an unfair agreement that is anchored in a colonial framework.
Though not highly publicised, the EPA has faced continued opposition from across the ACP countries, not least because of its devastating effect on small scale farmers. The case of some African countries presented here is illustrative of the way communities are fighting to regain control over their resources and protect their markets from the flooding of cheap EU processed foods, along with pesticides and genetically modified organisms... read more 
The ANC’s national policy conference has questioned the value of South Africa’s cherished membership of Brics – the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa forum – which is a cornerstone of South Africa’s foreign policy. This was one of several conference decisions more or less at odds with national foreign policy, including a call for solidarity campaigns with banned Swazi political parties and for the downgrading of the South African embassy in Israel... read more
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the ECOWAS summit in Liberia in June 2017
South Africa is preparing to boycott October's Africa-Israel summit in Togo, the country’s ambassador to Lebanon announced this week. Ambassador Sean Benfeldt says that the meeting aims to normalize relations between African countries and an “occupation state.” He highlighted Israel’s “inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip”, while pressing to end the humanitarian suffering of Palestinians in the besieged territory.... read more
Secret US Military Documents Reveal a Constellation of American Military Bases Across Africa
Added 10 August 2017 
Gen. Thomas Waldhauser sounded a little uneasy. “I would just say, they are on the ground. They are trying to influence the action,” commented the chief of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) at a Pentagon press briefing in March, when asked about Russian military personnel operating in North Africa. “We watch what they do with great concern.”
And Russians aren’t the only foreigners on Waldhauser’s mind. He’s also wary of a Chinese “military base” being built not far from Camp Lemonnier, a large US facility in the tiny, sun-blasted nation of Djibouti. “They’ve never had an overseas base, and we’ve never had a base of…a peer competitor as close as this one happens to be,” he said. “There are some very significant…operational security concerns.” ... read more Struggle for Influence in Africa
Added 02 August 2017 
German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Müller, unveils his government’s “Marshall Plan with Africa"
Overshadowed by the dispute on free trade and the Paris Climate Agreement, the German government has found acceptance for its Africa policy initiatives at the G20 summit in Hamburg. The G20 states in Hamburg have backed the "Compact with Africa" initiative, Berlin seeks to use for gaining new influence on the African continent. The "Compact" includes measures enabling industrial nations, such as Germany, to set their preferred conditions for investments in individual African countries... read more
Having played a key role in the destruction of Libya in 2011, the US government is now using the resulting chaos as an excuse to further interfere in the affairs of that country.
A new diplomatic and military policy for Libya that could significantly expand US involvement in the country could be finalized by the Trump administration in the next few weeks, according to two US officials.
The policy, if approved, would aim to further the existing US goal of supporting reconciliation between rival factions in eastern and western areas of Libya. The policy could also lead to the eventual re-opening of the US embassy and the establishing of a new intelligence sharing effort led by US special forces, according to the officials. ...read more 
French President Emmanuel Macron has come under fire for calling problems in Africa “civilizational" at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany.
When a journalist from the Ivory Coast asked the newly-elected leader why there was no Marshall Plan for Africa, the billions of dollars in economic aid the United States poured into destroyed European countries after World War II, Macron responded with a three-minute soliloquy...... read more Tanzanian farmers are facing heavy prison sentences if they continue their traditional seed exchange
Added 12 June 2017 
In order to get developmental assistance, Tanzania amended its legislation, which should give commercial investors faster and better access to agricultural land as well as a very strong protection of intellectual property rights.
‘If you buy seeds from Syngenta or Monsanto under the new legislation, they will retain the intellectual property rights. If you save seeds from your first harvest, you can use them only on your own piece of land for non-commercial purposes. You’re not allowed to share them with your neighbors or with your sister-in-law in a different village, and you cannot sell them for sure. But that’s the entire foundation of the seed system in Africa’... read more 
More wealth leaves Africa every year than enters it – by more than $40bn (£31bn) – according to research that challenges “misleading” perceptions of foreign aid.
Analysis by a coalition of UK and African equality and development campaigners including Global Justice Now, published on Wednesday, claims the rest of the world is profiting more than most African citizens from the continent’s wealth. It said African countries received $162bn in 2015, mainly in loans, aid and personal remittances. But in the same year, $203bn was taken from the continent, either directly through multinationals repatriating profits and illegally moving money into tax havens, or by costs imposed by the rest of the world through climate change adaptation and mitigation .......... read more 
EU troops in the Sahel
It was recently reported that representatives of the governments of Italy and Germany called on the EU to establish a mission on the border of Libya and Niger, ostensibly to curtail the numbers of migrants and refugees who eventually cross the Mediterranean and arrive in Europe. Ministers of the Interior from Italy and Germany wrote a joint letter to the EU Commission in early May stating that more must be done to "prevent that hundreds of thousands of people once again risk their lives in Libya and on the Mediterranean Sea in the hands of smugglers".
In fact, this demand is a request for an extension of the existing EUCAP Sahel Niger mission, part of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), begun in 2012 to allegedly give "security" advice to the government of Niger. Already over 120 representatives of European security forces and justice departments are deployed in Niamey, the country's capital. Since 2014 EUCAP personnel have also been deployed in Agadez, central Niger, specifically.... read more The war you’ve never heard of
The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa, exclusive documents reveal Added 30 May 2017 
Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe.
Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe.....read more 
On 11 August 2015, speaking at the celebrations marking the 55th anniversary of the independence of Chad, President Idriss Deby declared, ‘we must have the courage to say there is a cord preventing development in Africa that must be severed.’ The ‘cord’ he was referring to is now over 71 years old. It is known by the acronym ‘CFA franc’.
The pillars of the CFA franc Like other colonial empires – the UK, with its sterling zone; or Portugal, with its escudo zone, France had its franc zone. The CFA franc – orginally the French African Colonial franc – was officially created on 26 December 1945 by a decree of General de Gaulle. It is a colonial currency, born of France’s need to foster economic integration among the colonies under its administration, and thus control their resources, economic structures and political systems.......read more 
The United Arab Emirates is quietly expanding its military presence into Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East, a US report says.
According to the Associated Press, the UAE has new overseas bases on the African continent after deploying expeditionary forces to Yemen and Afghanistan. The UAE is taking part in a Saudi war on Yemen to restore a former government to power, which has killed about 12,000 people so far. Yemeni sources have revealed that the United Arab Emirates is trying to establish control over the strategic island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea, which Yemen’s resigned president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi had rented out to the Persian Gulf kingdom for nearly a century.......read more Heavily subsidized crops from Europe are unfairly dumped on the African continent creating starvation and poverty when domestic producers cannot compete.
Russian special forces sent to back renegade Libyan general – reports
Added 6 April 2017 
Russia appears to have deployed special forces to an airbase in western Egypt near the border with Libya in recent days, in a move that adds to US concerns about Moscow’s deepening role in Libya.
The news came as renewed violence broke out around key oil terminals in the east of the country and the capital Tripoli. US and diplomatic officials said any such Russian involvement might be part of an attempt to support the Libyan military commander, Khalifa Haftar, who suffered a setback on 3 March with an attack by the Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB) on oil ports controlled by his forces......read more UK government post-Brexit plans to create Africa free-trade zone are being internally branded 'Empire 2.0'
Added 12 March 2017 
Plans by government ministers to boost trade links with African Commonwealth countries are being internally branded “empire 2.0” by sceptical officials who are worried about the importance being placed on such deals ahead of the UK’s negotiations of leaving the European Union (EU).
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is expected to promise to build better links with the whole of the 52 member countries of the Commonwealth when ministers from each country meet in London later this week.......read more 
On March 3, in his address to the annual official opening of the National House of Traditional Leaders in South Africa's parliament, the president of that country, Jacob Zuma, outlined his government's intention to address the issue of land reform. His remarks have been greeted with a hysterical reaction by those who have benefited economically from invading African countries, seizing land by force and exploiting Africa's people and her resources.
Given the fact that previous efforts to address the injustices caused by colonial land theft, such as in Zimbabwe, have been a trigger for intensified foreign intervention in Africa, STOPFIIA is making available for its readers the full text of President Zuma's remarks on land reform. The full address can be read here. Among other remarks, Zuma stated that the ruling ANC considers that the country has entered the second phase in the transition from apartheid colonialism to a national democratic society. In addressing the issue of land reform, he stated. Honourable Members, The land question is central to the achievement of a National Democratic Society and true reconciliation and empowerment of our people. It is a central issue for traditional leaders. We have identified the weaknesses in the land restitution and redistribution programme. The willing buyer, willing seller principle did not work effectively. It made the State a price taker in an unfair process. In addition, there are too many laws dealing with land reform which causes confusion and delays. The fact remains that land hunger is real. This is not surprising as this was the fundamental question at the centre of the liberation struggle. To attain the goal of radical socio-economic transformation in relation to land reform, we are looking at two critical actions; First we must undertake a pre-colonial audit of land ownership, use and occupation patterns. Once the audit has been completed, a single law should be developed to address the issue of land restitution without compensation. The necessary constitutional amendments would then be undertaken to effect this process. We are also looking at the possible re-design and establishment of the National Land Claims Commission as a Chapter 9 Institution, so that it can have the necessary powers to help us reverse this historical injustice. This would also require a Constitutional amendment. All of this will require unity and common purpose and action in the country, to ensure redress and meaningful reconciliation. Naturally government and the governing party would want to ensure that this is an orderly process. We do not support chaos and illegal land grabs. Actions must be informed by the Constitution and the laws of the land. In the meantime land reform continues on the basis of existing laws. We urge our people that when land is made available it should be utilised to produce food so that we fight hunger and poverty. Government has committed itself to support black smallholder farmers. To date, an estimated amount of 2.5 billion rand was made available for the provision of livestock feed, water infrastructure, drilling, equipping and refurbishment of boreholes, auction sales and other interventions. The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries continues to support food production by women in rural areas and other subsistence farmers through the programme called Fetsa Tlala or Xoshindlala that we launched a few years ago. Last week we launched the Operation Phakisa programme to improve the performance of Agriculture, Rural Development and Land Reform. A lot of good work has been done by government, business, labour, academia, professional organisations and agricultural organisations to boost our agriculture sector. We impressed upon them to ensure that land reform and black advancement in agriculture feature prominently in the work of this Phakisa programme as well. By the time the various sectors sign an agreement in July this year, the outcome must be one that advances radical economic transformation. It should not be business as usual. 
Refugee children and women making the dangerous journey to Europe to flee poverty and conflicts in Africa are being beaten, raped and starved in “living hellholes” in Libya, the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, has said.
Children are being sexually abused, coerced into prostitution and work, and held to ransom for months in squalid, overcrowded detention centres, as they make their way along the Central Mediterranean migration route, the agency warned in a new report.... read more 
A half-century and one year ago today Canada helped overthrow a leading pan Africanist president. Ghana’s Canadian-trained army overthrew Kwame Nkrumah, a leader dubbed "Man of the Millennium" in a 2000 poll by BBC listeners in Africa.
Washington, together with London, backed the coup. Lester Pearson's government also gave its blessing to Nkrumah's ouster. In The Deceptive Ash: Bilingualism and Canadian Policy in Africa: 1957-1971, John P. Schlegel writes: "the Western orientation and the more liberal approach of the new military government was welcomed by Canada." The day Nkrumah was overthrown the Canadian prime minister was asked in the House of Commons his opinion about this development. Pearson said nothing of substance on the matter. The next day External Affairs Minister Paul Martin Sr. responded to questions about Canada's military training in Ghana............read more 
Boris Johnson with reporters during his recent visit to Gambia
Britain's top diplomat’s press team blocked questions from local reporters in Gambia about his nostalgic comments for British colonialism in Africa.
During a state visit to Gambia, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson refused to answer questions from local journalists regarding previous comments and articles where he voiced support and nostalgia for colonialism......read more 
In a major interview for roape.net Hakim Adi discusses his research, activism and politics. Adi has spent year’s researching the African diaspora, Pan-Africanism and communism in the 20th century. On the anniversary of the 1917 revolution he explains that the significance of 1917 is not so much how it helps us understand the past, or as a way of understanding Africa’s history, but rather that it shows that the alternative can be created in the present and future.....read more
USAFRICOM Military Intervention in Gambia Makes Good on Pentagon “Joint Operations”
Added 23 January 2017 
United States Africa Command has been planning an intervention in West Africa for years
A major military invasion of the small West African state of Gambia is taking place as troops from neighboring Senegal are entering the agricultural country. Gambian President Yahya Jammeh had been granted a three month extension by the parliament to remain in office in the midst of a controversy surrounding the outcome of a recent national election.......read more Representatives of Namibia's Ovaherero and Nama peoples have filed a class action complaint, while Berlin is trying to get off cheap in the dispute over compensation for Germany's colonial crimes.
Protest againts germany's colonial crimes in Namibia
Representatives of Namibia's Ovaherero and Nama peoples have filed a class action complaint, while Berlin is trying to get off cheap in the dispute over compensation for Germany's colonial crimes. The victims' descendants are demanding compensation for the seizure of their land and cattle and for the genocide perpetrated on their ancestors in South West Africa, a German colony at the time. The German government was poised to reach a negotiated settlement with the Namibian government in the compensation dispute. Windhoek was supposed to renounce all compensation claims and, in return, receive a "Future Foundation" to appease the Ovaherero and Nama peoples - who would otherwise be left empty handed - with memorial sites and other projects of cheap "commemorative culture.".........read more
Commandos Without Borders: America’s Elite Troops Partner with African Forces But Pursue US Aims
Added 22 December 2016 
Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, commander of Special Operations Command-Africa, during a ceremony with Senegal troops. (Photo: Getty)
Al-Qaeda doesn’t care about borders. Neither does the Islamic State or Boko Haram. Brigadier General Donald Bolduc thinks the same way.
“[T]errorists, criminals, and non-state actors aren’t bound by arbitrary borders,” the commander of Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA) told an interviewer early this fall. “That said, everything we do is not organized around recognizing traditional borders. In fact, our whole command philosophy is about enabling cross-border solutions, implementing multi-national, collective actions and empowering African partner nations to work across borders to solve problems using a regional approach.” A SOCAFRICA planning document obtained by TomDispatch offers a window onto the scope of these “multi-national, collective actions” carried out by America’s most elite troops in Africa. The declassified but heavily redacted secret report, covering the years 2012-2017 and acquired via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), details nearly 20 programs and activities -- from training exercises to security cooperation engagements -- utilized by SOCAFRICA across the continent. This wide array of low-profile missions, in addition to named operations and quasi-wars, attests to the growing influence and sprawling nature of U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) in Africa.......read more 
The Obama administration has overseen an unprecedented expansion of American military might on the African continent, with dozens of bases and outposts opening there since he took office.
A Nov. 17 investigation by Nick Turse, a journalist and American military scholar, found that the United States maintains at least 60 bases or military outposts throughout Africa, although not all are actively used at all times: “Some are currently being utilized, some are held in reserve, and some may be shuttered. These bases, camps, compounds, port facilities, fuel bunkers, and other sites can be found in at least 34 countries — more than 60% of the nations on the continent — many of them corrupt, repressive states with poor human rights records......read more British spying: tentacles reach across Africa’s heads of states and business leaders
Added 12 December 2016 
Dozens of politicians, diplomats, military and intelligence chiefs, members of the opposition and leading business figures were wiretapped across the continent.
This rare overview of modern satellite espionage could hardly be less technical and abstract, for it not only names the victims of intercepts but also reveals the scale of a surveillance operation spanning an entire continent. That continent is Africa. New documents shown to Le Monde, in collaboration with The Intercept, from the data cache of the former NSA (National Security Agency) operative Edward Snowden, originally given to Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, offer unprecedented insight into information on twenty African countries collected by GCHQ, the British intelligence service, between 2009 and 2010.......read more 
As Ali Kawu eases his handcart to a halt on a recent morning in north-east Nigeria, it is the first time he has dared to stop walking in more than 24 hours.
A day earlier, at 8am, Boko Haram militants raided his village. Kawu, 25, escaped with what he could – his wife, their three children, and kindling for a fire. They left behind their papers, six sacks of beans, up to 15 dead neighbours, and 10 kidnapped villagers. Then they walked all day and all night........read more 
Child and adult abuse allegedly committed by French peacekeepers in the Central African Republic may have taken place on a much wider scale than previously thought, a local NGO believes. The republic’s president has urged France to ensure justice is done.
Yamacuir Centrafrique, an NGO based in CAR capital Bangui, believes the sexual crimes committed by French troops could number more than 100, far more than “a dozen” of officially recognized cases. Yvan, an NGO officer, told Sputnik France there have been “more than a hundred” victims of sexual abuse by French troops – including children and adults – interviewed by his organization between 2014 and 2015........read more 
Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan
OTTAWA—Canadian troops headed to Africa will operate in dangerous territory where peacekeepers have been killed, says Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.
In an exclusive interview with the Star from Vancouver Sajjan said Canada has committed to a three-year deployment that will be reassessed each year to ensure it has an “enduring” impact. It will be spread among a number of unspecified African countries, have a major focus on training and increasing “capacity” of the host nation as well as other countries’ troops, and build on existing social, economic and deradicalization programs on the ground........read more 
Conflict and low commodity prices in several countries across Africa have slowed growth significantly in 2016, according to revised GDP forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Despite the challenging climate, there are some strong performances in Africa. Côte d'Ivoire (7.98 percent), Tanzania (7.17 percent) and Senegal (6.64 percent) lead the region in terms of GDP growth.......read more 
Increasing Chinese investment in everything from small food enterprises to massive railway projects across Africa has drawn criticism and warnings of a future dependency on Asia's superpower. But what do Africans themselves think about Chinese investors? Turns out, they love them. According to a recent report by Afrobarometer, almost two-thirds (63%) of Africans say China's influence is somewhat positive or very positive, while only 15% see it as somewhat or very negative. Increasing Chinese investment in everything from small food enterprises to massive railway projects across Africa has drawn criticism and warnings of a future dependency on Asia's superpower. But what do Africans themselves think about Chinese investors? Turns out, they love them. According to a recent report by Afrobarometer, almost two-thirds (63%) of Africans say China's influence is somewhat positive or very positive, while only 15% see it as somewhat or very negative......read more 
The regime change riots and torching of foreign companies which preceded Ethiopia’s imposition of a six-month-long state of emergency have more to do with waging a Hybrid War against China’s Maritime Silk Road and its Horn of Africa component than they do with airing out local socio-political grievances.
Africa’s second-most populous country and one of the world’s fastest growing economies has been in sporadic turmoil over the past 10 months as its largest plurality violently agitated over what it claimed to be socio-political injustices. The Oromo began protesting late last year because of opposition to the central government’s plan to expand the capital of Addis Ababa into their region. The problem arose because the municipality is entirely surrounded by Oromia Region, so it’s impossible for Ethiopia’s most important city to develop in the future without reaching some sort of compromise with the neighboring locals about their land rights......read more 
Ghana is in a debt crisis. Having had significant amounts of debt cancelled a decade ago, the country is losing around 30% of government revenue in external debt payments each year.
Ghana’s crisis is the result of a gradual increase in lending and borrowing off the back of the discovery of oil and high commodity prices. More money was then borrowed following the fall in the price of oil and other commodities since 2013, to try to deal with the impact of the commodity price crash, whilst the relative size of the debt also grew because of the fall in the value of the Ghanaian currency, the cedi (GH¢), against the dollar ($).......read more China respects some African countries' decisions to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC)
Added 1 November 2016 
China respects some African countries' decisions to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) and understands their long-standing concerns with the court, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Wednesday.
Spokesperson Lu Kang's remarks came after Gambia announced its withdrawal from the ICC on Tuesday, for the court's "unfairly targeting Africa," following similar decisions by South Africa and Burundi.....read more 
Despite the West's drones, preemptive military strikes, and illegal occupations, the International Criminal Court has indicted 39 defendants in its 16 years, all Africans.
Calling the International Criminal Court the "International Caucasian Court," Gambia Tuesday became the third African nation to announce its departure from the Hague tribunal which has indicted 39 defendants in its 16-year career, all Africans........read more 
South Africa has joined Burundi in officially announcing its withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying its laws are incompatible with obligations under the ICC.
The South African government gave a formal notice of its intention to pull out of the ICC on Friday. South Africa “found that its obligations with respect to the peaceful resolution of conflicts at times are incompatible with the interpretation given by the International Criminal Court,” the document, signed by International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane...........read more End Britain's Domination and Exploitation of the Human and Material Resources of the African Continent
Added 13 September 2016 
The recently published War on Want report "The New Colonialism" highlights the extent of British monopoly control of Africa's major resources and the fact that the monopolies operate with total impunity. They are, of course, not answerable to the people and governments of Africa but are able to openly flout international law to exploit the human and material resources of the African continent with full support of the British government and the major international institutions......read more
Despite China's ever-increasing clout in Africa, Japan will most likely manage to carve out its own niche in the African market, Alexey Maslov, an Asian policy expert from the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics, told Sputnik.
In an interview with Sputnik, Alexey Maslov, an expert on Asia from the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics, did not rule out that Japan will be able to carve out its own niche in the African market despite China's growing clout in the continent. The interview came after the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) wrapped up in Nairobi, in an event that saw Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledging that his country will allocate a whopping 30 billion dollars for the development of African countries in the next three years.......read more 
China is enhancing its participation in efforts to increase power production capacity in Africa, specifically in Angola and Mozambique, a factor that the International Energy Agency (IEA) considers vital for the continent’s development.
In the recent study on “Boosting the Power Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa – China’s Involvement”, the IEA estimates that Chinese companies were responsible for nearly 30 percent of newly added electricity production capacity between 2010 and 2015 in that region of the African continent, which includes Angola and Mozambique......read more 
The job of a US president is to protect and enhance the American Empire. But sadly, African leaders continue to waste time expecting manna from Washington. Decades of being let down by unfulfilled promises from American (and Western leaders) appear not to dampen enthusiasm to keep on expecting a miracle.
Barring any shattering political quake, it appears that Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton will slug it out the US November presidential elections. That such a profoundly illiterate, shockingly ignorant and crass politician like Trump gets to vie for the presidency of the world’s most important nation should tell us that something is fundamentally wrong with American politics. But that is a story for another day.........read more DRC: Communities mobilise to free themselves from a century of colonial oil palm plantations
Added 12 August 2016 
After many years of running oil palm plantations, the world’s largest food company Unilever sold the lands it had grabbed mostly to foreign companies. The communities living next to and within Unilever’s former plantations are amongst the poorest in Africa. Now they are mobilizing to fight their grabbed land.
Oil palms are native to the forests of Central and West Africa and inseparable from the region’s peoples and their cultures. Communities in this part of the world have relied on oil palms for thousands of years — as a source of food, textiles, medicines and construction materials. Most of the world’s oil palms, how ever, are cultivated far away, in Southeast Asia, and not in forested palm groves, but on massive monoculture plantations where tropical forests used to stand. These oil palm plantations are a product of Europe’s brutal colonial legacy.....read more 
NEW DELHI: Following the successful India Africa Forum Summit hosted by New Delhi last October in which all 54 African countries participated, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's four-nation visit to the continent from July 7 to 11 have given a pronounced leg-up to India-Africa ties.......read more
The New Colonialism: Britain's scramble for Africa's energy and mineral resources
Added 31 July 2016 
Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange control over $1trillion worth of Africa’s resources in just five commodities - oil, gold, diamonds, coal and platinum. My research for the NGO, War on Want, which has just been published, reveals that 101 companies, most of them British, control $305billion worth of platinum, $276billion worth of oil and $216billion worth of coal at current market prices. The ‘Scramble for Africa’ is proceeding apace, with the result that African governments have largely handed over their treasure..... read more
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) have deprived Africa of much needed development finance to achieve its development goals, according to a new United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report.
The UNCTAD Economic Development in Africa Report 2016 estimates that between 1970 and 2008 a total of US854-billion (R12218-billion) left Africa in IFFs. This is an incredible amount of money because one third of this could have helped Africa pay its external debt in 2008. It is estimated that this amount is equivalent to the official development assistance that Africa received in that same period.....read more Africa: AU Advisory Body Slams International Criminal Court
Added 19 July 2016 
Ahead of an African Union summit that begins Sunday, a key advisory body of the organization has condemned the International Criminal Court, saying its focus has been limited to Africa since its founding in 2002.
The Economic Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) does not speak for the AU. However, its statements echo the complaints of African leaders who have pushed for member countries to quit the Rome-based court, which has jurisdiction in 124 nations over alleged cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.... read more 
The continent of Africa is today facing a new colonial invasion, no less devastating in scale and impact than that which it suffered during the nineteenth century. As before, the new colonialism is driven by a determination to plunder the natural resources of Africa, especially its strategic energy and mineral resources. At the forefront of this ‘scramble for Africa’ are British companies, actively aided and abetted by the UK government...........read more
Brexit is cause for celebration for the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The European Union is the historical heir to the Berlin Conference of 1884 that divided the world into Euro-North American spheres of dominance. Europe has inflicted immense suffering on the rest of the planet. “Believing Brexit could represent the beginning of the end for international cooperation, is to believe that the world does or should revolve around Europe.....read more
US Air force consolidating its control of Africa's militaries
Kenyan, Ugandan and US air forces are conducting personnel recovery and combat rescue operations in Kenya as part of a first of its kind joint training exercise African Partnership Flight, the US Air Force said in a press release......read more
In an unprecedented move, envoys of the African nations came together last week to protest against the Indian government. They even threatened to boycott the Africa Day celebrations on May 26. The reason behind their anger was not the killing of a Congolese citizen in the capital New Delhi, but the Indian government's indifference toward the case.
"The Group of African Heads of Mission have met and deliberated extensively on this latest incident in the series of attacks to which members of African community in India have been subjected in the last few years. They note, with deep concern, that several attacks and harassment of Africans in India have gone unresolved without diligent protection and conviction of perpetrators," the envoys said in a statement to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government..... read more 
When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the UK, the media spotlight was on the country's remarkable economic growth and its growing investment worldwide, including in Africa.
But many could be forgiven for thinking that China is the topmost investor in Africa, given the high profile nature of the country's presence on the continent. However, according to a UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report in 2013, Malaysia was ranked as the top Asian investor in Africa in 2011, the latest year for which figures were available. The report revealed that after France and the US, Malaysia was the third largest foreign investor in Africa followed by China .......read more 
Turkey has been diligently working to expand its influence in Africa, a move to boost its ambitious strategy to emerge as a global actor in the region.
The increasing frequency of visits to Africa by top Turkish officials since the beginning of this year indicates the importance Turkey attaches to the continent. As many as 10 African countries have been visited by top Turkish officials in recent months. Turkey's interest in Africa is particularly fostered by the expectation that the continent will emerge, with its fast-growing economies and rich natural resources to be exploited, as a major global actor in the second half of this century....... read more 
Africa continues to outperform other world regions despite falling commodity prices and rising conflict in 2015, according to revised GDP figures forecasted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) accessed via Analyse Africa........... read more
Press TV has conducted an interview with Lawrence Freeman, an African policy analyst from Baltimore, to talk about the 2nd Regional Security Summit in Abuja which is intended for discussing the ways of impeding Boko Haram’s empowerment in the West African region.......... read more
Sharing and saving seed is a crucial part of traditional farming all over Africa, writes Heidi Chow. Maybe that's why governments, backed by multinational seed companies, are imposing oppressive seed laws that attack the continent's main food producers and open the way to industrial agribusiness. But Ghana's women farmers are having none of it.......... read more
American military forces launched combat actions in the East African country of Somalia on Tuesday, destroying at least three military vehicles manned by fighters with the militia group al-Shabab.
US personnel provided “defensive fire,” including salvos of helicopter-based missiles, during fighting near an African Union (AU) checkpoint manned by Ugandan troops. The US troops, who are deployed to Somalia as “advisors” to the African Union AMISOM force, engaged in other combat operations earlier this week, carrying out a raid against the Somali village of Toratorow. They have been operating from their headquarters inside the fortress-like international airport in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, where they have organized a special proxy unit known as the “Lightning........... read more One thing that keeps me puzzled.........
Raquel Larnyoh Added 20 May 2016 
The BRICS New Development Bank and Africa
Added 2 May 2016 This set of three little essays is intended to outline the context in which the recent widely publicised BRICS initiatives have been taking place. In particular, the inauguration of new international banks is seen as a response to the dominance of Western finance capital and the failure of the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’ neoliberal orthodoxy that has produced negative economic effects worldwide, but nowhere more so than in developing countries. Africa, which has about 16 per cent of the world’s population but only about two per cent of GDP and trade, has been particularly badly affected by the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) demanded by the IMF and World Bank as the price of ‘ensuring macroeconomic stability’ in indebted developing countries. The European Commission (EC) has ensured compliance with the SAPs by making such programmes a condition of aid and trade with the European Union. This has been secured through formal agreements with African governments, starting with various phases of the Lome Convention, and continuing through the Cotonou Agreement and various Economic Partnership Agreements.......... read more  Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele
Nigeria China Currency Swap Agreed
Added 21 April 2016 Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele, has expressed optimism that the agreement reached between Nigeria and China last week on a currency swap will strengthen the naira and help reduce the strong demand for the US dollar in the country. President Muhammadu Buhari last week travelled with a high-level government delegation to China where he signed a $6 billion deal to fund joint infrastructure projects. During Buhari’s visit to Beijing, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC), the world’s biggest lender, and Nigeria’s central bank signed a deal on yuan transactions......... read more 
UK firm 'employed former child soldiers' as mercenaries in Iraq
Added 20 April 2016 A former senior director at a British firm says that it employed mercenaries from Sierra Leone to work in Iraq because they were cheaper than Europeans and did not check if they were former child soldiers. James Ellery, who was a director of Aegis Defence Services between 2005 and 2015, said that contractors had a “duty” to recruit from countries such as Sierra Leone, “where there’s high unemployment and a decent workforce”, in order to reduce costs for the US presence in Iraq........ read more 
Resistance, Crisis and Workers in Zimbabwe
Added 17 April 201 ROAPE’s Leo Zeilig talks to Antonater Tafadzwa Choto about the ongoing economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the impact on ordinary people, and some of the factors that are likely to worsen or mitigate the crisis in forthcoming years. Choto is a well-known labour activist, researcher and currently director of the Zimbabwe Labour Centre. Can you please give us a few details about the history of your own activism? I have worked for years as a social justice activist after having participated in a number of workers and social justice struggles from the mid-1990s. Initially I was involved in a feminist group that campaigned against discrimination against women, with women harassed and attacked. Later I became a socialist active in the labour struggles of the 1990s. I am currently the director of the Zimbabwe Labour Centre. The ZLC stands for the justice for working people in the work place and society at large. We also campaign against neo-liberal policies that, we believe, have had a disastrous impact on Zimbabwe......... read more 
Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, research reveals
Added 14 April 2016 The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy. James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has conducted groundbreaking new research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group – sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts to construct an alarming picture that shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system........ read more 
84% of World Bank's private investments in Sub-Saharan Africa go to companies using tax havens
Added 13 April 2016 Fifty-one of the 68 companies that were lent money by the World Bank's private lending arm in 2015 to finance investments in sub-Saharan Africa use tax havens, Oxfam revealed today. Oxfam's new analysis focused on International Finance Corporation's (IFC) investments in Sub-Saharan Africa. It shows that together these 51 companies, whose use of tax havens has no apparent link with their core business, received 84 percent of IFC investments in that region in 2015. It also reveals that the IFC has more than doubled its investments in companies that use tax havens in just five years - from $1.2billion in 2010 to $2.87billion in 2015........ read more 
Migration and brain drain from Africa acute – Report
Added 12 April 2016 One in every nine people who are born in Africa and have a university degree is a migrant in one of the 34 member states of the OECD – the world’s most developed countries. According to a joint report on global migration released by the United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs, or UN DESA, and the OECD secretariat, there are about 30 million African migrants out of the global total of 232 million migrants. The emigration rates of highly educated citizens to OECD member countries is a major concern for the developing world. ....... read more 
How the EU starves Africa into submission
Added 10 April 2016 It is estimated that Africa imports nearly 83 per cent of its food. African leaders are seeking ways to feed their peoples and become players in the global economy. In the second edition of The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa, I argue that Africa can feed itself in a generation. However, efforts to achieve such an ambitious goal continue to be frustrated by policies adopted by Africa’s historical trading partners, especially the European Union. ....... read more 
The EU is keeping Africa poor
Added 10 April 2016 In all the arguments over the EU and Britain’s continued membership, most centre around the self-interest element of membership. And of course, it is right in many ways that it does so, each has a responsibility to his own – his family, his neighbour, his fellow countryman. But although the arguments about the interest of the British people receive much coverage, the wider effects of the European Union have received little attention. There is a moral dimension to the way that the developed world, and especially the EU, makes policy in respect to its links with the developing world. In the 1970’s, and agreement was reached with a number of African countries which created a fairly laudable system of preferential sectoral access agreements, tariff free import quotas for the signatory nations and access to aid via the European development fund. The Lomé Convention began with a number of countries which had previously been colonies of the European powers, which had previously based trade on links to the old world. It increased to encompass 71 African and Caribbean countries by the time of its last renegotiation in 1989 (Lomé IV). The ulterior motive though was clear – this gave EEC nations guaranteed access to raw materials and agricultural products, which helped to maintain price stability. Bu the moral aspect of it should not be underestimated. The sense of responsibility to former colonial possessions was still fresh in the mind of the former world powers, Britain foremost among them. ....... read more 
More than 100 Females — Mostly Minors — Say They Were Forced to have Sex with UN Peacekeepers and a Dog in Central Africa
Added 9 April 2016 More than 100 girls and women have come forward with new sexual abuse accusations against international peacekeepers in Central African Republic, the U.N. said Thursday, calling allegations that a French military commander forced three girls to have sex with a dog “shocking to the core.” The revelations dramatically expand an already alarming scandal involving troops sent to protect civilians in the world’s hotspots who become predators instead. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said 108 alleged victims of sexual abuse have been interviewed by a U.N. team in Kemo prefecture, east of the capital Bangui, the vast majority of them minors. The allegations date from 2013 through last year and far eclipse the 22 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in Central African Republic in 2015 that the U.N. reported earlier this month. ....... read more 
Mozambican Workers and Communities in Resistance
Added 8 April 2016 The chill effect from the Mozal strike notwithstanding, the first decades of the 21st Century have seen a growing number of popular protest actions at workplace and community levels, both urban and rural. Work stoppages and wild cat strikes involving small numbers of workers have been frequent, neither organized nor sanctioned by the unions. Workers were faced with a government intent on luring foreign investors by offering implicit, if not explicit, promises of cheap, compliant labour. Noted Mozambican economist Carlos Nuno Castel-Branco captures succinctly how the labour system was, and is, negatively articulated to the broader political economy. … the dominant political economy of Mozambique is focused on three fundamental and interlinked processes, namely the maximization of inflows of foreign capital – FDI or commercial loans – without political conditionality; the development of linkages between these capital inflows and the domestic process of accumulation and the formation of national capitalist classes; and the reproduction of a labour system in which the workforce is remunerated at below its social cost of subsistence and families have to bear the responsibility for maintaining (especially feeding) the wage-earning workers by complementing their wages… (Castel-Branco: 2015) ....... read more 
Corruption threatens to derail Africa’s defences
Added 7 April 2016 Seeking to counter emerging threats, African states have not only enhanced their coordination through the African Union (AU) and its newly formed African Standby Force (ASF). More than two thirds of countries have also increased defence expenditure. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that overall military spending in Africa has increased by 91 percent since 2005. But despite improvements in capabilities and organisation of some of the continent’s armies, new research by anti corruption watchdog Transparency International shows that many still struggle with significant weaknesses that stem from corruption across the defence sector. ....... read more  US drone over Cameroon
The U.S. Extends Its Drone War Deeper Into Africa With Secretive Base
Added 21 March 2016 GAROUA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, proclaimed the sign on the concrete and glass terminal building. The designation was something of a misnomer, because only three or four planes land each week in this sleepy outpost in northern Cameroon, near the Nigerian border, all of them domestic flights. The schedule of the flights tends to be unpredictable. The aging jet that had just flown me to Garoua from Douala, for example, had made an unscheduled stop in N’Djamena, the capital of neighboring Chad, so that a government minister could attend a funeral nearby. As a result, the plane had touched down in Garoua five hours late. But that wasn’t the only unusual thing about this Cameroon Air flight. Inside the cabin I had noticed several young men who were unmistakably U.S. military — close-cropped hair, athletic builds. And as I descended from the plane and set foot on the tarmac into the blast furnace heat, I spotted a curious triumvirate waiting for them: a middle-aged, sunburned white man wearing cargo pants and a green T-shirt, flanked by two U.S. soldiers in camouflage gear.. ....... read more 
Ndaitwah clarifies Namibia’s withdrawal from ICC
Added 17 March 2016 International Relations and Cooperation Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has explained government’s reasons for withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a signatory, saying Namibia joined the ICC immediately after Independence due to the weakness of internal institutions at the time. She said government in 1990 inherited weak institutions from the architects of apartheid, hence the decision at the time to look abroad for interim assistance. She was responding to the news that Cabinet, on the request of the Swapo Party, has resolved that the country should withdraw from the ICC – whose recent actions are seen as a deviation from the original mandate. ....... read more The recolonisation of Libya
Added 16 March 2016 In 1911, Italy occupied Libya with an expeditionary force of 100,000 men. Shortly after the invasion, the Italian army shot and hanged 5,000 Libyans and deported thousands more. In 1930, on the orders of Mussolini, half of the population of Cyrenaïca, about 100,000 people, were deported into about fifteen concentration camps, while the aviation crushed the resistance by bombarding the villages with chemical weapons, and the army surrounded the area with 270 kilometres of barbed wire. The head of the resistance, Omar al-Mukhtar, was captured and hanged in 1931. So began the demographic colonisation of Libya ....... read more Kwame Nkrumah : The Coup That Set Ghana and Africa 50 Years Back
Added 13 March 2016 A few days after the overthrow of the Convention People’s Party government of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s pioneer president, in a bloody coup d’état on February 24, 1966, our primary school teachers hurriedly organized a crash course on public demonstration for us. We were taught a song, which has etched indelibly on my mind till now. The lyrics of the song roughly translate as: “Kotoka, drive him away; Nkrumah is coming!” We were then sent on a march through the main streets of the town, chanting the newly-minted and hurriedly taught song in praise of the coup plotters and in vilification of Nkrumah. As we sang and waved flags, I vividly remember singing what I thought was the song we were taught on the assembly grounds that fateful morning. “Drive him away, Konkonte; Nkrumah is coming!” Unsuspectingly, I had mistaken the name of the coup leader, Lt. General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka with “kokonte,” a Ghanaian dish, which is made from dry cassava flour....... read more The London Fix: Price-Making in Capitalism
Added 26 February 2016 Barring some resources in Russia and elsewhere, South Africa claims more than 70% of global platinum production, and over 95.5% of known global reserves of this metal. In 2014, the country’s platinum sales totaled over R84 billion (upward of 7.5 billion USD). Despite its global dominance at the level of resource ownership and production, South Africa (from government to industry) has little input in the price-making process. Indeed it is a price taker. Instead, the ‘value’ and price of platinum is determined primarily by large banks in an institutional set-up that is a de-facto insider racket. Historically, four entities largely determined the pricing process during two daily teleconferences. These proceedings were confidential and inaccessible to the public including traders, refiners and other participants. Some of the four members were involved in every aspect of the trade from warehousing to buying and selling it, laying the field wide open to anti-competitive behavior including price-fixing...... read more Envoy: Iran to grow rice, wheat in Africa
Added 08 February 2016 Iran is reportedly looking to lease land in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania for large-scale food production to serve local and export markets. More than 10 Iranian companies have expressed interest in growing and processing rice, corn and wheat in East Africa, Iranian Ambassador to Kenya Hadi Farajvand has said. He said Iran is supporting mechanized agriculture beyond its borders, with companies leasing huge chunks of land and applying modern agricultural methods to grow food for export to Iran..... read more Canadian special forces from Petawawa headed to Africa next month for counter-terrorism exercise
Added 29 January 2016 As many as 100 soldiers, most of them special forces from Petawawa, will be heading to Senegal to conduct counter-terrorism training for African commandos. The training comes in the aftermath of the killings of six Canadians in Burkina Faso and as western nations try to shore up African militaries to battle Islamic extremists. Maj. Steve Hawken, a spokesman for the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, said the military personnel are taking part in Exercise Flintlock,..... read more China Moving Toward Reaching Deal With Djibouti on Building Military Base
Added 29 January 2016 China and Djibouti have “reached consensus” regarding the construction of logistical facilities in the African state. The deal that has been hinted at for months has finally been confirmed. ..... read more US, Global Companies Buy Cobalt at Mines That Pay Kids $1 a Day
Added 25 January 2016 Multinational companies, including some from the United States, are under fire after two nongovernmental organizations accused them of indirectly fomenting child exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where minors are paid around US$1 for 12-hour days mining cobalt, a highly toxic chemical used in lithium-ion batteries for cell phones and laptops. ..... read more Why America Should be Worried About China's New Military Base in Africa
Added 18 January 2016 Last year, China began talks with Djibouti to install a "logistics hub" and airfield in the east African nation. The United States, which also has military installations in Djibouti, raised concerns about China’s expanding sphere of influence. According to James Poulos, writing for The Week, Washington is right to be worried..... read more Nestle Faces Lawsuit over Child Slavery in Ivory Coast
Added 18 January 2016 Three of the world’s leading food companies are to face a lawsuit in the United States over child slavery in the Ivory Coast after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to dismiss the lawsuit. Nestle, Archer-Daniels-Midland and Cargill are being sued for turning a blind eye and contributing to human rights violations by purchasing cocoa from the Ivory Coast in full knowledge of the country’s child slavery problem. The Supreme Court decision Monday backs up a 2014 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that had also refused to dismiss the lawsuit against them..... read more Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libya Intervention
Added 14 January 2016 The New Year’s Eve release of over 3,000 new Hillary Clinton emails from the State Department has CNN abuzz over gossipy text messages, the “who gets to ride with Hillary” selection process set up by her staff, and how a “cute” Hillary photo fared on Facebook. But historians of the 2011 NATO war in Libya will be sure to notice a few of the truly explosive confirmations contained in the new emails: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S. backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil, the nefarious origins of the absurd Viagra mass rape claim, and concern over Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves threatening European currency..... read more In Mali and Rest of Africa, the U.S. Military Fights a Hidden War
Added 06 January 2016 THE GENERAL LEADING the U.S. military’s hidden war in Africa says the continent is now home to nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit groups” that threaten U.S. interests. And today, gunmen reportedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital and seized several dozen hostages. U.S. special operations forces are “currently assisting hostage recovery efforts,” a Pentagon spokesperson said, and U.S. personnel have “helped move civilians to secured locations, as Malian forces clear the hotel of hostile gunmen.” ..... read more China seeks navy base in Namibia
Added 21 December 2015 IS China set to secure another naval base on the continent, weeks after it finally confirmed that it was in talks with the strategically-located city state of Djibouti? Namibian president Hage Geingob has left the region none the wiser on an issue that has been widely speculated on this year after he this week in an interview said that while his country had been approached, he was not aware of a specific proposal. ..... read more AFRICOM’s Secret Empire: US Military Turns Africa Into ‘Laboratory’ Of Modern Warfare
Added 21 December 2015 The Obama administration has overseen an unprecedented expansion of American military might on the African continent, with dozens of bases and outposts opening there since he took office. A Nov. 17 investigation by Nick Turse, a journalist and American military scholar, found that the United States maintains at least 60 bases or military outposts throughout Africa, although not all are actively used at all times..... read more In Senegalese shoe capital, Chinese not welcome
Added 21 December 2015 “If I see a Chinese person, I put my hand up like this,” said Mactar Gueye, his palm open, in the universal gesture for stop. “It’s not that I’m afraid of them. I just won’t sell to them.” In a veiled swipe at China’s role in Africa, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a university audience in Senegal on Wednesday that the US will tie investment to human rights and sustainable development. Though she did not mention China by name, it’s clear that Africans are being asked to ponder their relationship with China, which recently became the continent’s main trading partner...... read more Is Europe Complicit in the Plundering of Western Sahara?
Added 21 December 2015 Western Sahara, formerly a Spanish colony, has been occupied by Morocco since 1975. Although the decolonization of Western Sahara has been on the U.N.’s agenda for 40 years, Morocco (together with its allies) has managed to freeze this process, while further entrenching its hold of the occupied territory. One of the reasons behind Morocco’s aggression and annexation was Western Sahara’s abundance of natural resources, and ever since the occupation began, Morocco has plundered these resources for economic profit. Western Sahara has one of the largest phosphate reserves in the world and is famous for its rich fishing waters, perhaps the richest along the African coast. Furthermore, the prospects for locating oil and gas deposits has attracted exploration in the territory..... read more China Seeks Wider Global Reach With African Loans, Naval Presence: Analysts
Added 12 December 2015 China on Friday announced it would extend $60 billion in debt facilities to African countries as well as writing off existing loans in a three-year plan to extend its influence in the region. President Xi Jinping unveiled the plan in conference with leaders at a meeting of the African Union, while pledging at the same time not to “interfere in the internal affairs” of sovereign African nations........... read more In Mali and Rest of Africa, the U.S. Military Fights a Hidden War
Added 12 December 2015 THE GENERAL LEADING the U.S. military’s hidden war in Africa says the continent is now home to nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit groups” that threaten U.S. interests. And today, gunmen reportedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” stormed the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital and seized several dozen hostages. U.S. special operations forces are “currently assisting hostage recovery efforts,” a Pentagon spokesperson said, and U.S. personnel have “helped move civilians to secured locations, as Malian forces clear the hotel of hostile gunmen.”.......... read more In the Wake of The Mali Terrorist Attacks: Escalation of U.S. and French Military Interventions in Africa?
Added 24 November 2015 Despite the presence of French and United States Special Forces inside Mali, the siege of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako on November 20 has resulted in the deaths of over two dozen people. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) leader Army General David Rodriguez continues to maintain that the purpose of Washington’s military policy on the continent is to assist nation-states in their efforts to enhance the security capacity of various governments.......... read more Africa’s Children Return! Cuba and Southern African Liberation
Added 23 November 2015 “The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the peoples of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice, unparalleled for its principled and selfless character … Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricultural experts, but never as colonizers. They have shared the same trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment, and apartheid.” – Nelson Mandela......... read more The GCC Is Expanding To Eritrea, And It’s Not Good For Ethiopia
Added 23 November 2015 Recent media reports indicate that Saudi Arabia and the UAE have contracted Eritrea’s government for assistance in the War on Yemen, using the East African state as a transit and logistics base for their operations, as well as 400 of its troops for cannon fodder in Aden................read more The world does not aid Africa – Africa aids the world!
Added 18 November 2015 Foreign developed nations often wax lyrical about their generous donations of aid to Africa. But a coalition of UK and African researchers has released research findings that illustrate how the continent actually loses over six times the amount it receives in aid....... read more Dr Hakim Adi - The New Scramble for Africa
Added 13 December 2015
Empire - The New Scramble for Africa
Added 23 November 2015
Huge demonstration in Africa against foreign intervention
The Coalition Against Foreign Intervention (CAFIA) was borne to express Africa's dissatisfaction to U.S. and French interference in the governance and politics of African countries, most especially situation in Libya and La Cote d'Ivoire. CAFIA organised a mammoth demonstration across some principal streets in Accra to show solidarity to the victims of foreign interventions in Libya and La Cote d'Ivoire which suffered not only in terms of property loss but human casualties as well. The peace and stability of African countries is paramount to quest to economic freedom.
New Scramble for Africa - slideshow
The Dumping of e-waste in Ghana |
