With support from Moscow, Washington, and the former imperial capitals no longer assured, armed groups in Africa now compete for riches in diamond mines, gold pits, oil wells, and rare earth deposits.
The British government’s offer of monetary compensation of £20 million to over 5,000 living Kenyan survivors of systematic torture during the Mau Mau anti-colonial revolt is a historic reckoning with an ugly past. It also dispells the myth that the British were more enlightened, benevolent, or liberal in their self-anointed “civilizing mission” than their imperial European counteparts.
China’s imminent replacement of the West as the dominant international economic and political force in Africa epitomizes the most dramatic shift in geopolitics since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet the United States and Europe, Africa’s traditional trading partners, seem incapable of responding to the challenge and retaking the initiative. Instead, their response has been to wring their hands in despair and make ineffectual noises about human rights and democracy.
Despite official Indian denial that there is no competition between the two Asian giants (The Economic Times 2010) in Africa, India’s foreign policy swings between attempting to catch up with the Chinese, who have made major inroads in Africa over the past decade, and accommodating the aspirations of China, India and the western world in the context of India’s enduring relations with the continent. This competition centres on three major issues: energy security, access to Africa’s untapped markets and diplomatic influence.
Kenyan scholar Firoze Manji gives his thoughts on the ‘aid industry’, an industry which hampers Africans’ recovery of their continent, made rotten with corruption and the pillaging of natural resources.
In 1954, acclaimed novelist and thinker Richard Wright published Black Power about his visit to the Gold Coast (later Ghana) and his observations concerning the rise of the Pan-African movement. On the 100th anniversary of Wright’s birth, the American University of Paris is holding a centennial conference on June 19-21. In the lead-up to this conference, FPIF’s E. Ethelbert Miller discusses the novelist’s views on Africa and colonialism with James Miller (English and American Studies, George Washington University), Michele L. Simms Burton (African American Studies, Howard University), and Jerry W. Ward (English, Dillard University).