Non classé

African Health Sovereignty

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

The concept of “legitimate defense” feeds a priori the idea that if someone finds himself in a situation of extreme danger, he is allowed to use any means to save his life, including if it is done at the expense of the life of the alleged adversary.

It therefore seems that when colonizing us several centuries ago, the Europeans considered that their citizens were in extreme danger because, among other things, they did not have enough food at home. It was supposedly simpler, cheaper and faster for them to come and take possession of our territories and our resources by force of arms and enslave our peoples rather than implement projects to improve agricultural or other yields at home. So, without our having done anything to deserve it, our European colonizers succeeded in making us Africans their adversaries.

This philosophy (seeking to live better at the expense of others) refers to the doctrine that the Nazis later defined under the concept “Lebensraum”, or “Living space”. The Germans felt that their own “living space” was too small for them. The Nazis therefore wanted to expand this space at the expense of other European countries to make their own citizens comfortable. Hitler then put forward this “argument” (increase in Germanic living space) to justify the progressive invasion of other European countries and, as a consequence, started the Second World War.

But times have changed a great deal since the last Great War and the discourse to call new soldiers to military work has reached its limits. The majority of young people no longer agree to embrace a military activity where the risk of losing one’s life is very real. The military tool to enslave others has therefore largely lost its appeal in favor of alternative economic and commercial methods that pursue the same goal. But these practices in question are always based, more or less, on some self-interested interpretation of the concept of Living Space mentioned above.

In this logic, apart from the Russia/Ukraine war which serves as an exception, confrontations by military means between the States have given way to muscular verbal contests within the WTO (World Trade Organization). In this respect, the Doha round of negotiations under the aegis of the WTO, focusing essentially on agriculture, will have been an interminable series of recriminations between the EU countries on the one hand and the Asian countries and American ones on the other before ending in a bitter failure for everyone. Today, the WTO is still handicapped to do its job properly. The de facto “spokespersons” of the EU in these Doha negotiations were the representatives of the French State, which has always shown itself to be intractable on everything concerning food control, as French standards (draped in EU) are self-considered superior to all other standards around the world, starting with those of the Codex Alimentarius on which France, like the other member countries, must obviously have given its approval.

But it is no coincidence that has established France as the omnipotent standard-bearer of the EU for everything relating to agricultural resources, including standards in particular. The gluttony of Europeans for African resources at low prices combined with the control of France over a large part of our Continent, West Africa in particular, through the CFA Franc and the French language, has favored France to become an unparalleled “EU hub” for what concerns the postcolonial control of inter-African trade and towards the EU. The purpose of these maneuvers, which has not changed since the colonial era and which all Africans now understand, is to extend at will the very asymmetrical trade between the countries of our Continent and the EU.

To contribute to this objective, many private organizations for the control of agri-food products, coming from different European countries, have concentrated in France — as an example, there is the SGS, Bureau Veritas, Intertek, Tüv Rheinland and many others — to continue, as in the days of colonization, the management of our African trade from afar.

However, by interfering in our controls of food and similar products, France and its associates acquire de facto access to working conditions within our companies, including information relating to prices, quality and working conditions such as purchases of Raw Materials and sales of Finished Products. This information, and others derived from it (equipment in place in the companies and manufacturing processes, etc.), are processed by the above-mentioned control bodies and others of their pro-European colleagues in serving their countries to maintain the stranglehold of countries of the EU on our wealth and, also, to steer the course of our trade in the direction that is even more favorable to them.

France derives the greatest benefit from its preeminent position over other EU countries on food control standards in trade with the former colonies of Europe. But this same Franco-European narcissistic attitude has infuriated other EU partners around the world including India, the USA, Latin America and others. At the same time, this French inflexibility has sometimes clashed head-on with the interests of Germany, whose agri-food trade is not, unlike France, at the top of its priorities.

In this regard, the condemnation in recent days by France of the candidacy of the American Mrs. Fiona Scott Morton as the next chief competition economist within the Brussels Commission has had no effect on the decision of the president, Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen, who confirmed the maintenance of the American candidate for this high position of responsibility within the EU commission, to the great displeasure of Paris. And Germany has not moved a finger to support France. In addition to being rejected here and there in the world, the French state must now feel quite alone if its EU partners are starting to turn their backs on him.

But France is known for having, and wanting to keep, this haughty attitude since the day after the Second World War. While France itself lost the war against Germany, the French state prides itself on being one of the great powers that guide the world. And it is true that some thirty years ago and beyond, the French trade balance was still in surplus and justified France’s enthusiasm to indulge in a role of great power. Today, France’s debt is close to that of Italy and is getting closer every day to that of Greece, the most indebted country of the EU states. And to make matters worse, more and more African countries refuse to cooperate with the French and ask them to leave Africa.

This rejection of the French presence in Africa has been accentuated since the involvement of France in the activity for recycling products imported originally from China, Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere has revealed to the great day the gloomy role that French operators, among a swarm of European speculators, assume in the resale of a very large number of products of non-European origin after their “redefinition” of form in the “Made in EU” mode for facilitating the sale in our African countries with fabulous profit margins for these intermediaries. The above certification bodies play a central role in this speculative but highly lucrative trade.

But nowadays, more and more countries have become aware of this rent economy that the Europeans have developed on our backs, with the active support of the expertise and certification bodies mentioned above, and want to put an end to this masquerade. Moreover, it would be highly surprising if this type of traffic could go unnoticed by our government officials. But if so, why are these people (our government officials) doing nothing to stop this hemorrhage of our meager corporate finances going into the pockets of these well-to-do but ever-hungry organizations to earn more from us.

Not being a civil servant ourselves, we do not claim to have the ultimate answer to this question. But, if there is no cabal here, there remains reasoning.

It is obvious that bringing some order to the work of these EU consulting firms, for advice, expertise and certification, which want to continue to dictate our conduct to us from their headquarters in Europe (in France) can be beneficial to the emergence of African national skills in the field. It cannot be otherwise. So, if our government officials (in Morocco and probably elsewhere in Africa too) concerned do not react, it is perhaps because they are unable to. For example, France has not stopped since the independence of Morocco to have our Moroccan government officials sign partnership agreements of all kinds on behalf of His Majesty’s Government and perhaps diabolical clauses have been slipped in here and there which handicap the liberation of some of our activities from French supervision. We think in priority of the ONSSA (National Office for Sanitary Safety of Food Products), the LOARC (Official Laboratory of Chemical Analysis and Research), Morocco Foodex (ex-EACCE, establishment created by colonial France), and organizations that perform the same type of function. The IMANOR (Moroccan Institute for Standardization), which certifies on behalf of the State and controls its own work outside of common sense and the standards in force at the international level, should also be part of these organizations to be overhauled.

Another scenario is more plausible for us. In this regard, one of our former prime ministers has just been sworn in as an expert psychiatrist in Casablanca. We highly salute this doctor who shows all Moroccans that he is capable of living from his own work outside the “politician profession”. Unfortunately, there are not many of them. The result is that among our rulers, and yet deciders on our behalf, many (not all) are specialists in politician politics. In other words, among these people there are some who would not know how to make a living if they were excluded from the political sphere. There are, however, many among this category of pseudo-leaders who decide on the choice of priorities for government action to redefine the place that belongs to Morocco today among other nations.

I personally have doubts that this category of people has sufficient awareness that there is no place for Morocco’s leadership among African nations without confirmed leadership on the health sovereignty of our nation. But, that would surely be beyond the comprehension of the spirits to which I refer.

Of course, if career politicians in our country do not show themselves capable of establishing (African) national health sovereignty on bases equivalent to those of the countries which oppress us economically and commercially, it is not a reason for us, civil society, to stand idly by. It is not too late to act, starting by reflecting on the methods of launching an African certification and expertise firm, very african, whose ultimate goal will be to aim for regulatory competition with other Pro-European firms, particularly in terms of honesty and the Quality/Price ratios of the interventions. It is in this way, and in this way only, that we will have a chance of succeeding in balancing the commercial and economic conditions of competition in our trade with other extra-African nations.

This blog will gladly welcome for dissemination any initiative that goes in the direction of this objective.

Non classé

The law and law enforcement

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

A past senior magistrate of our country, General M. M. (God rest his soul) — who usefully helped me when he was Colonel and effectively contributed to facilitating my reintegration some forty years ago into the Moroccan market in my return to the country after a first stay of university studies and post-doc work which was close to thirteen years in Switzerland — used to recall in connection with one question or another this precaution “You have to see what the law says”. Other leaders, whom I count among my friends, also have this attitude.

This being the case, during my work of decades past, among other things, on interventions as a legal expert in Casablanca and beyond, on hundreds of files, relating to the fields of food security and others, I was able to observe the recklessness or contempt that many players in the national agri-food sector repeatedly showed towards our regulations —  the embryonic one left by the French Protectorate and then the 28-07 law on food safety currently in force — frequently with the full knowledge of the supervisory authority, namely the fraud prevention services previously and the ONSSA (National Food Safety Office) currently. These are (Breaches of the law and passivity of the Supervisory Authority) proven facts that other observers have commented on in various national media without any notable action by the higher authorities appearing to have been taken to correct on the ground this grim observation.

On the other hand, there is no longer any doubt that today the Moroccan state is definitely determined to crack down on fraud, corruption, cronyism, wherever they come from. This robust consolidation approach — an essential requirement following the Kingdom’s great opening to foreign investors of all stripes — which continues to this day, will have concerned most of the nation’s public and private sectors of activity. But the civil servants assigned to the control of food products — who evolve in the nebula which brings together the supervisory authorities in the agri-food sector coming primarily from the Ministry of Agriculture and also from the hygiene offices and the Ministry of Trade and industry and independent official laboratories—seem to have been spared by this national sanitation and upgrading campaign.

Someone can deduce from this that the food and assimilated products control system is fine with us. But, in light of the many examples previously reported in several blog posts and hundreds of well-documented observations in my archives—dealing with food safety law violations in the presence of culpable passivity on the part of the ONSSA and others — the regrettable finding is that we are actually still very far from being close to a food control system comparable to those in force in countries with which we trade under free trade agreements.

But our food control officials believe, or let themselves be convinced, that their approach to working to reassure Moroccan consumers is sound. Their strategy, a kind of infantilization of us adult consumers, still and always consists in bringing out from time to time a list compiling a quantity of defective food products discarded by them. These officials forget, or pretend to ignore, that food fraud professionals, who brew colossal sums of money from their criminal business, do not care about the promulgation of anonymous lists of these officials. As long as their names are not disclosed for information to consumers, this will not prevent them from continuing their frauds or starting them again.

However, it is true that the Quality Control system is a highly sensitive subject. In the sense that if the exaction of a cop or a crooked judge only has an impact on one individual (a file) at a time, a defective food control immediately impacts all consumers, i.e. everyone. It is understandable that the State can make a clear distinction between a wrongful individual action in the first cases and the potential impact on all consumers in the event of the quality control system being called into question, as well as the risk of a slippage of popular reaction.

This was the case, for example, during the so-called Indian wheat affair which hit the headlines in the nineties of the last century and in which we have been, at the request of the courts, opposed to the Staff and technicians of the Ministry of Agriculture at the time. The objective elements in the file submitted to the courts do not provide any tangible proof of the presence of a contaminant which the officials used to block wheat at the port of Casablanca. It must be said that this type of lucrative transactions (imports of wheat shipments) has always previously been carried out by business men related to a known European country. These frustrated people then stirred up the national media with manipulated information that created a sense of confusion and dread among consumers and the agricultural community. To avoid an uncontrolled skid of popular reactions, the State then used all the regulatory means at its disposal to prohibit the official entry of this cargo of wheat into the national territory.

It is obviously very difficult to speculate on what would have happened if this wheat had had access to the Moroccan market. Similarly, it is difficult to speculate what would happen if ONSSA officials decide to add to their recurring lists, mentioned above, of discarded food products, the names of the fraudsters behind the offences.

Unfortunately, the dilemma does not end there.

The fact is that now Morocco is sort of between a rock and a hard place when it comes to upgrading our food control system. Internally, there is of course this question of the sensitivity of the subject and the fear of slippage which could be a source of disruption in the normal functioning of the cogs of the local market and the mood of the population which remains profane about questions related to health control. But, Morocco is now considered by international bodies, UN, World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank and others as a leader giving the way to other African brotherly and friendly countries to, in particular, industrialize and get out of poverty. This therefore becomes a heavy responsibility now for Morocco, which must assume it in its entirety. This includes the now urgent upgrade of our quality control system encompassing ONSSA, LOARC, EACCE (now Morocco Foodex to erase its colonial past), IMANOR, Hygiene offices and others.

The reason is that in short, Morocco is now experiencing its industrial and technological transformation on credit thanks to the money of the banks that will have to be repaid. But the money must first be earned by developing our exports, particularly where we have comparative advantages over competitors. This is obviously the case for agro-industry and cosmetics where God has served Morocco well with a great potential in agricultural and other resources and a favorable climate. We can produce as much as we want, but the limiting factor for export is the quality and credibility of the control. In this regard, it would be naïve to consider that our former colonizers will continue to watch us take commercial shares from them on the African market. They will use all honest and dishonest means (as was the case with the Indian wheat mentioned above) to curb the enthusiasm of our operators for exporting to the African market and elsewhere.

The best defense, the saying goes, is attack. So, we have in Morocco a string of operators of European obedience who work as if they were in their proper country on the sector of expertise and certification and other advice to companies in all illegality. For example, they allow themselves to flood our market with certificates produced and issued from abroad. However, the law on the exercise of the activity of expertise with us is clear. In particular, in the event that the opinion of an expert is questioned in a well-founded manner, the latter must be reachable to report on his work before “Anyone entitled” in general and the courts in particular. This seems difficult or even insoluble when the expert is domiciled abroad. So, the thing with which our authorities concerned by this subject must begin is to ask these firms of expertise referred to apply the law which exists in our country on the experts to practice with us. Otherwise, order them to cease all activity in the field of expertise. This is the price to pay for our supervisory authority to be taken seriously by professionals from here and elsewhere.

The application of the other measures mentioned above in this text will be greatly facilitated.

Africa/Expertise

Africa’s New Paradigm

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

Those who have an interest in it and follow Franco-Moroccan relations have recently been able to enjoy reading a large number of articles in Spanish, English, French and Arabic on, among other things, many online newspapers — https://maroc-diplomatique.net/; https://northafricapost.com/; https://atalayar.com/; https://fr.le360.ma/; https://fr.hespress.com/; https://medias24.com/; https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/; https://www.akhbarona.com/; https://alyaoum24.com/; https://24saa.ma/; https://es.rue20.com/  — which return to these relations since the preparation by France of the occupation of Morocco (protectorate treacherously turned into colonization) and the evolution of the French will of subjugation of our country by any means to allow a maximum of spoliation of our wealth and our property for the benefit of operators imposed by French state. The various speakers, each according to their specialty, have contributed to documenting and highlighting the degree of greed, deviousness and Machiavellianism shown by the French colonizers in Morocco during their military occupation of our country and how they continued their deceit, on the economic, financial, commercial and cultural level, after the independence of Morocco.

On a more personal level, my working documents are filled with examples (duly informed) of attempts to recruit myself, since my entry into private activity for my own account in Casablanca in 1988, with their objective for me to serve (first and foremost) the French economic and commercial interests in our country. Then, for not having adhered to the advances that were made to me (I suppose), multiple difficulties, coming from who knows where, arose on my path because, in essence, I was presumed guilty of wanting bring my contribution to the emergence of a Moroccan expertise activity independent of that of France. The examples are numerous but I will illustrate with only one case (duly documented in my archives):

About twenty years ago, I had been contacted by a large agri-food group in Fez (whose name I am not mentioning because the Moroccan group is well known in our country and I did not ask for its agreement for indicating their name) for support for HACCP certification. I spent two days with the managers and the staff who paid for two nights in a hotel in Fez for my stay. I then made a proposal for support (including one month of sustained work) including my presence in the company part of the time for the implementation (and validation) of control procedures (theirs had to be reviewed and reinforced) by involving their staff in the work. How a surprise for me then to receive afterwards an email (which I still have in my archives) from the quality manager of this group to tell me that they have a better offer by telephone (which they have endorsed) from someone else (whom I later learned was a French professional) who undertook to certify them HACCP for less than half of my offer and without going to their unit (condition indicated in the message I received!), which is unprofessional and contrary to the principles of HACCP which require the presence on site of the certifier selected to carry out the work. I have other examples documented in the same way which reinforce, in a way, the hypothesis that for neocolonial France, all deceitful means are good (and regardless of the price) to stop any attempt to decouple the activity of Moroccan expertise from that of France, the only one (exclusively) that these neo-colonizers are ready to recognize as valid for working in our country.

In fact, here and there in several articles of this blog, examples are mentioned which show, after the cessation of the military colonization phase of our country, some of the subterfuges that France used to firmly maintain its control over our economy, our finances, our trade and even our culture. But if Morocco in turn used force to oust colonial France, our senior officials have (supposedly) chosen a civilized approach to impress on French officials that Morocco was a confirmed nation-state before it was the case for France and that our country wants to recover that place in  the concert of nations. In short, the Kingdom seems to be telling them, you can stay if you wish and continue your activities in Morocco, at the same time as other EU countries, but by offering products and/or services that are correct and a competitive quality/price.

This is exactly the kind of language that the French refuse to hear while denying Moroccans the right to have such an attitude in economic and commercial relations with France.

The fact is that the relatively recent colonization of other countries is not exclusive to France. But, if Great Britain, Spain and other countries have subsequently renewed peaceful economic and commercial relations with their former colonies, this does not seem to be the case for France with all the countries of its former colonies. It is difficult for us to know the exact reasons for this specificity of colonial France. We can only hypothesize.

In this respect, while I was a student assistant in Lausanne (Switzerland) in the seventies of the last century (graduate student but not yet qualified), I earned a little money (by supervising the students of the first years) but not enough to pay me a plane ticket (which was expensive at the time) to return for the end of the year in question in Morocco (sensitive period to spend alone for a foreigner). I had then opted for an organized trip of a few days to visit, among other things, the Coliseum and the Catacombs of Rome. On the way back, the train was more than crowded. Exhausted with fatigue, I mechanically opened the door of a sleeping cabin. I then apologized and was about to close the door when the (German) customer who was sleeping asked me to stay. He said to me (in essence): “You can stay and sit down; opposite (on the other berth) there is my wife. We’ve been married for 49 years and don’t make a lot of noise anymore. Then he added “Excuse my French. When I was a soldier in Paris everyone spoke to me in German”.

It is usually said that the French speak foreign languages poorly. But there, in five years (German occupation of France), many were the French men and women who advanced very quickly in learning the language of the Germanic occupier. Then, it must be said, France had this (exclusive) particularity of having passed (without transition) from the status of a country subjugated by Germany following a degrading defeat to the privilege and the burden of sit among the limited number of world powers in the Security Council and have a veto. This is a dazzling, even exhilarating promotion that France would like to maintain at all costs, which is perfectly understandable. But, not having raw materials to put forward as is the case for Russia or industrial, economic and commercial know-how whose usefulness is recognized throughout the world like China, France is reduced to wanting to establish its status as a “great power” on the maintenance of a CFA Franc and commercial relations with its former colonies which are favorable to it, that is to say very detrimental for us, its former colonies. Careful observation of what is currently happening in the world in general and in Africa in particular, shows that there is no longer any country on this planet ready to submit to these French neocolonial conditions.

On the other hand, relations between countries, commercial and otherwise, are a necessity. But for them to last, they must be based on proven trust. However, the military, or subsequent economic and commercial colonial presence of European countries in Africa has lasted for centuries and has evolved from a colonialism based on military force towards an economic and commercial neo-colonialism based, among other things, on lies, deceit and hypocrisy. In this relationship, our African countries are always the losers.

Considering the duration in centuries of these deceptions, bad commitments, hypocrisies, deceits and other greed of Europeans with regard to us Africans, it is very difficult for the citizens of our Continent to trust again the European officials whose the word has lost all credibility on our Continent.

But, as civilized people, we must not make future European generations pay the equivalent price for the plunder and suffering that their colonial countries caused to our nations. However, this does not call into question the distrust that our countries harbor towards the current leaders of the countries of colonial Europe.

It will therefore be necessary, in our opinion, to find a new modus operandi to put our African relations with the Europeans back on new bases. That being said, someone (European colonial country) who has cheated for centuries will cheat again, which will continue to tarnish their credibility for a long time.

Under these conditions, why not make the acceptance of any future commitment by an EU country subject to the guarantee by another power (acting as an authorized third party) chosen by common agreement by Africa and the EU. We understand that they will find it difficult to accept Russia as a sponsor, but they will be able, for example, to choose between China and the USA.

The shaping of this new paradigm by Africa could better guarantee the success of the upcoming implementation of Zlecaf (African Continental Free Trade Area).

 

News

Rise of Africa

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

Since the announcement of the new American law called the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) of 2022, Europeans seem to be experiencing continuous headaches. Senior EU officials have all expressed, in their own nuances, their fears of the negative impact that the law in question would have on the industrial competitiveness of EU countries in what is agreed to be call Green Industry. Indeed, the American law grants, among other things, tax benefits to manufacturers who locally produce electric vehicles that they equip with batteries made in the USA. The EU countries consider that the net effect of this law would be to globally suck investments, and skills, in this sector of the future towards the United States to the detriment of EU competitiveness. This is currently resulting – Under the impetus of the French President, Mr. Emmanuel Macron – like a commotion led by Thierry Breton, European Commissioner in charge of the internal market and industrial policy, to push the EU authorities, which are very receptive, to implement reciprocal regulations to the above-mentioned American ones to prevent a supposed flight of capital and skills to America. As presented by European officials, this issue defines the EU as the champion of any category of innovation for Green Industry, while America, which would be jealous of the EU, would like to steal this privilege by dangling subsidies and tax benefits to lure major European skills, including manufacturers.

Obviously, it may be tempting to sympathize with the official European thesis mentioned above to consider the United States as a bad player who would dangle advantages of all kinds to attract EU industrial skills on its soil. In reality, nothing has been done yet and the mood swings of Europeans for the moment are not very convincing.

First, the Europeans offer no evidence that shows the US really needs EU capital or skills to advance their green industry projects.

Then, assuming (only) that the Americans have the idea of attracting European skills to the US market, the frown that the Europeans seem to show is more hypocritical than anything else. They themselves have always applied this practice to encourage our African skills to emigrate for the benefit of the EU to the detriment of Africa. So either the EU countries don’t know what they are talking about, which would be surprising, or, more likely, the reasons for their uneasiness lie elsewhere.

In this respect, last November, the French ambassador in Beijing openly criticized – contrary to the duty of reserve required of this type of function – the “Chinese policy of dynamic zero Covid” which “has repercussions on French companies present in China”. France seems to be the only European country to have distinguished itself by this declaration. Indeed, if China had breached the WTO rules, it was the EU Commission that should have stepped up, which was not the case.

Now, for grievances about the “Inflation Reduction Act”, another spokesperson for Mr. Emmanuel Macron, namely Mr. Thierry Breton mentioned above, is leading the charge, this time against the United States. This should suggest that French industry would be more negatively impacted by this law than other EU countries. However, according to an article of last January 13, Der Spiegel indicates that France is less industrialized than other EU countries and therefore less dependent on export markets. If so, and there is no reason to doubt Der Spiegel‘s assertion, why within the EU France is the country most vocal about the United States on ” Inflation Reduction Act” and on China regarding the “Zero Covid” policy. It is obviously not possible for us to know exactly. But the exacerbated attitude of France vis-à-vis China could have different motives from the grievances it would have vis-à-vis the USA. Indeed, while Germany has become much attached to the Chinese market first and foremost because it sells its cars and industrial equipment there; France does not export much industrial material there. The problem is that the Chinese strategy to enforce the “Zero Covid” doctrine has drastically reduced the movement of foreigners within the Chinese market. It is then assumed that French commercial operators have become accustomed to the flexibility of going where they want in China to, among other things, order all sorts of items likely to be refitted for a “Made in Europe” to be sold on our continent with juicy capital gains. The tightening of the conditions for the movement of foreigners within China will have constituted a brake on this commercial practice of a particularly lucrative and risk-free speculative nature.

But this hypothesis does not explain the rage of French officials on the American law of “Inflation Reduction Act“. Indeed, French exports of industrial products to the American market are, unlike Germany, far from being significant in explaining the exasperated reactions of French officials against this American law on the reduction of inflation. So, perhaps the goal of senior French officials is more to be heard in Africa than in America and Europe where American and European citizens know what to expect from France.

The truth is that France’s task – to maintain its place as the leading economic and commercial partner of more than a third of African countries with the role assigned to the CFA franc and thus embellish its role as a “great power” within the Security Council of the United Nations — is becoming less simple day by day.

While our continent is now coveted by everyone, it was easier for France to defend its positions against China and Russia by arguing the lack of respect for democratic principles or human rights. But now that Joe Biden is showing America’s interest in coming to Africa, the arguments will be harder to come by. The “Inflation Reduction Act” will have provided a good pretext to stand up, without appearing to do so, against the USA and kill two birds with one stone: To appear as a European leader in the eyes of French public opinion – in front of which Mr. Macron has been harshly judged lately – and at the same time leave the impression to Africans in general, and to a Morocco which is distancing itself in particular, that France is of a size to measure up to the greatest of this world.

In reality, the problem of our time today can be summed up in the fact that the rules that articulate our current world were established almost 80 years ago and have had their day. And when something has had its day, we go back to the source to establish new rules. But our industrial world has its source in the discovery of energy resources, coal and oil in the first place. But, in the absence of duly established know-how to properly exploit these resources, our predecessors had to work hard to define ways to develop them. Today, the data to value anything is available, accessible and varied. The entry into play of our African countries which have great resources will change the face of the world in general and Africa in particular. Indeed, we have on our continent many Raw Materials, agri-food and others, which are just waiting to be valued by existing methods and techniques that are available and accessible.

Africa is able to recover to turn the page of the miseries of colonization definitively and become an actor that counts in this new world as long as Africans agree to free themselves from the yoke of postcolonial propaganda.

Africa/News

The food industry is on the rise

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

In essence, the severe turbulence that postcolonial Europe has been experiencing for some time, without being able to find solutions to them, show that the rules and principles, which have governed international relations since their establishment under Western aegis after the Second World War, have become obsolete.

That being said, if there is a Continent that did not have a voice during the implementation of the aforementioned rules, it is Africa. And for good reason, almost all of the territories of our Continent were at that time still under European colonial occupation. Then, in preparing for the fictitious independence of our countries, the Europeans took the Machiavellian precaution of replacing their military presence with a strategy of monopolizing the economic and commercial wealth of our colonized countries for their own profit. Nothing will have been left to chance in this strategy of greedy appropriation of our economic, financial, commercial and even cultural wealth by the master colonizers.

Thus, as for what matters to this blog, the health and similar standards — that the Europeans continue to impose on us directly for our exports to EU market or even in our inter-African trade through private organizations that are totally acquired to European standards — were designed, written and regularly updated and fine-tuned thereafter to the present day to (only) give the impression of scientific objectivity. The reality is that — by combining standards developed for  EU market with recommended use of specifically designated European procedures, laboratory equipment, chemicals and standards tailored to benefit European operators in the EU market — these specialists for drafting ambiguous standards have systematically managed to, while appearing neutral, reinforce their leeway to retain, whenever they wish, the decision that best suits them for the processing of our commercial exports (blocking, rejection, acceptance etc.) of food products (our archives).

In the end, the result is that our countries are still forced to sell their natural resources almost as is, for peanuts. When it comes to fresh fruit and vegetables, our weakness as exporters is even more marked due to the increased risk of rapid spoilage of these perishable foodstuffs. For example, although Morocco is well endowed by nature for the agri-food sector, today we are still selling our fresh products to Europeans who optimize them for their commercial life and resell them to us in Africa and elsewhere at speculative prices. It must be said and repeated, contrary to a perception of totally false French propaganda, it was never the intention of colonial or postcolonial France to initiate an agro-industry on a sound basis for a benefit shared with the Moroccans. We can recall that we had to wait for the end of the Cold War and the establishment, at the beginning of the 1990s, of a program of American assistance and aid, through USAID, so that Morocco became better informed on the structural weaknesses which have always hindered, among other things, the industrial processing in our country of aromatic and medicinal plants, that of olives and others. It is impossible that colonial France was not fully aware of these obstacles on the path of development desired by Morocco. But, in our view, the successive concerned officials of French State, who received money for their advice, have always chosen to overlook these and other obstacles in order to continue to benefit exclusively from our wealth.

This behavior is applied by other European decision makers in colonial Africa, notably West Africa, previously under French domination. It is useful to remember at this level that, with regard to agri-food sector, the French position on standards within the EU is preponderant.

Today, there is a broad convergence of views internationally on the fact we are making great strides towards a new balance between nations to replace the world order imposed by the West nearly eighty years ago. The United States of America and China are expected to have the lion’s share in the economic and commercial management of this new international order to come. Also, taking into account its geostrategic status and the considerable amount of its natural resources, Russia will, in all likelihood, continue to play an important role on the international level, perhaps momentarily alongside China.

On the other hand, Europe, without notable own resources and at the end of its rope, should be left behind in this new division which is looming for the world of tomorrow.

In this regard, the authors of an article in Der Spiegel dated September 22 (see here), frankly predict the inevitable impoverishment of Germany and, consequently, that of Europe as a whole in the years to come. However, some European officials, French in particular, continue to dream of the maintaining of European prosperity by betting on improved trade with Africa. Knowing that currently France and the EU use all the goods we have at will, it is not clear what this improvement in Europe’s trade with our Continent really means if not more impoverishment for our African citizens.

Be that as it may, Europeans forget, or pretend to have amnesia, that after several centuries of an occupation that borders on outright slavery, we Africans now wish to taste other economic and less toxic commercial partnership than those people have continuously subjected us to for centuries.

For example, Mr. Joe Biden, the American President, will host next December in Washington, D.C., African Heads of State and Government for a summit which lists among the priorities to be discussed food security. The availability of food in an equitable manner is very important to us in Africa since it is in our continent where there is the greatest number of famines and malnutrition. In this context, it may be reasonable to consider that during this summit, the Americans will gladly accept to offering aid and assistance to improve the circuit of inter-African trade in food products and other goods to give a boost to the establishment of Zlecaf (African Continental Free Trade Area). Morocco is obviously a fervent defender of the establishment of this free trade area with fellow African countries. This is evidenced by the hundreds of cargo trailers, many of which are loaded with fresh fruit and vegetables that leave our country every day for sub-Saharan countries. But again, these products must be consumed quickly before they are lost. It would be different if these foodstuffs had received treatments to guarantee their commercial life. But, this is where the shoe pinches. Knowing that Zlecaf is not yet operational and that moreover, and for lack of an alternative, it is still the aforementioned colonial norms that still govern our inter-African trade in processed products through private bodies imposed by EU, we remain doubly at the mercy of principals in Paris and Brussels. To get out of this straitjacket, it would be necessary to put on the table alternative standards to the standards imposed by EU which are more objective and better.

In this regard, FDA provided assistance to Europe after World War II to rebuild official European control bodies that had lost everything during the war. It would be surprising, if asked formally, that Americans would decline to help Africa set up its own adult and objective control bodies. The request should, in our opinion, be formulated in the rules by an equivalent body to FDA in which African countries and America have complete confidence. Of course, Morocco has a free trade agreement with the US which has been running since 2006. Someone can assume that ONSSA (Office National de Sécurité Sanitaire des Produits Alimentaires), has had plenty of time to prove itself to be a credible partner to FDA. It seems the reality is unfortunately quite different.

Among the nonsense committed by ONSSA, I remember having had in my hands copy of a note sent by this supervisory body on the Moroccan agri-food sector to embassies in Rabat asking them to send it notices written in French relating to food articles they wish to export to Morocco!

The approach is firstly inappropriate for an organization of the stature of ONSSA to address ambassadors directly, without going through its hierarchies. Then, pseudo ONSSA officials are unaware that if France itself has something useful to say in scientific field, it hastens to publish it first in English. So, do we want to be more royalist than kings within ONSSA! Luckily ridicule does not kill. Also, it is not with this kind of behavior that our supervisory body will improve its brand image with FDA or before other equivalent African bodies.

But it may not be too late for Morocco to correct the situation.

Finally, we recall about the title of this article that Europeans began to emigrate to our countries and to America because they were cold and hungry and their countries could not feed their inhabitants. Once gentrified, these European emigrants then reduced the importance of the agri-food sector to feed them cheaply at our expense and, on the contrary, sell us a large part of their junk at speculative prices fixed by them. Today, they feel that the danger of being cold and hungry again is once more back home. It is up to us not to be fooled for the umpteenth time and to demand fair compensation for our work and for our export.

Africa/Expertise

Disillusionment with European colonialism in Africa

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

About ten years ago, the late French President Jacques Chirac humorously summed up certain reversals of fortune with the formula “Disasters always fly in squadrons”. If the expression has since entered French common parlance, it is likely that the situation that Europe is currently experiencing is the one that best represents this image. Indeed, the countries of the European Continent are currently facing at the same time multiple difficulties and obstacles such as the Covid-19, which appeared before the Russia / Ukraine war but is still relevant, shortage of gas and other raw materials, galloping inflation, unprecedented rise in food prices, growth at half mast, severe drought, forest fires, plummeting of the Euro against the Dollar, claims and strikes by workers for wage increases and so on. The possible entry of EU countries into recession is now on everyone’s lips.

Considering this situation, the current French President, Mr. Emmanuel Macron, has just announced, in particular, during his first Council of Ministers of the present return to work, that era of abundance for which France-EU1 has been accustomed until now is thing of the past. Abundance is effectively over for all of Europe with a feeling that can vary from one country to another due to their different degrees of dependence on energy and other imported raw materials.

1: We use this term on purpose because French officials who come to Morocco regularly remind (the two flags next to them) that they speak on behalf of France and the EU.

That being said, it is hard to believe that this unprecedented profusion of disasters, which are hitting EU countries hard today, is the result of chance or the result of the Russia/Ukraine war stricto sensu. But, for lack of knowing the real reasons for this European economic and commercial rout, a probable prelude to a rocking of the EU towards the unknown, we can always conjecture to try to see it a little more clearly.

First of all, to enjoy the abundance and the feeling of carelessness that France-EU has enjoyed until today, at the expense of our African populations, our northern neighbors initially resorted to political of the gunboat, then enriched by a cleverly organized strategy of several centuries of appropriation, for their exclusive benefit, of the commercial and economic circuits of the countries of our Continent. This has allowed them to maintain a standard of living that is far above their current industrial and technological potential. Indeed, these countries mostly lack their own energy resources and the majority of consumer goods they produce can be purchased elsewhere in the world at better Quality/Price ratios.

Despite this evidence, the perception of the average African citizen — probably haunted by a complex of submission inherited from the colonial period, combined with massive, diffuse, recurrent, regularly updated and embellished France-EU propaganda — is that Europe is prosperous, in particular by its agri-food resources and therefore able to help Africans to feed themselves at the lowest cost. This also explains the still large number of hunger migrants trying to reach Europe. On the same subject, a message was broadcasted a few weeks ago, on a loop on the France-EU media, on the Russia / Ukraine war which is seriously disrupting the supply of cereals to African countries and the Middle East. Curiously, the message did not mention any disruption to EU supplies (see below).

But, since Europe has not received mandate to speak on behalf of United Nations, one can wonder about the possible reasons underlying the remarks of Mr. Josep Borrell, head of European diplomacy, in its declaration of last July 22 that  resumption of    exports of grain from Ukraine is a “matter of life or death”. The concerns of Mr. Borrell in his announcement to the press seem to go far beyond those of the WFP (World Food Programme), a United Nations organization whose mission is to fight against hunger in the world. It may only be altruism on the part of the representative of France-EU. But colonial past of these powers – which is strewn with looting, theft and greed at our African countries and elsewhere – can plead for other less glorious reasons, although perhaps more difficult to unveil (see below).

To illustrate our point, we refer to this example taken from our personal archives. At the end of the eighties of the last century, we decided, for reasons not reported here, to invest in the valorization of essential oils. In this context, I was received by the first administrative manager (Caïd) of the largest rosemary oil production area in the eastern region of Morocco. This official was kind enough to bring in the largest artisanal producer of rosemary oil in the region and brought us together in his office with the aim of fostering the birth of collaboration. But the producer in question simply told me that he had no product to sell to me because all his production (several tens of tons per year) was bought from him and paid for a year in advance by his French customers.

It is perhaps in this way that France includes in its lists of exported articles products that it does not have on its soil.

Now back to our cereals. All those who are interested know that Geneva, which is home to a multitude of companies specializing in  trade of agricultural raw materials, is the hub of the grain trade in the Africa/Middle East zone, which remains an (agrifood) hunting ground for France-EU. So, like the France-EU customers of the Moroccan distiller mentioned above, these speculation companies buy cereals well in advance, even if they can keep them in stock in Ukraine or elsewhere. Usually, it is these companies that resell the cereals in Africa and the Middle East, who invoice them and collect the money with the option of possibly indicating the origin of the goods. For this reason, many African citizens have probably seen for the first time grain loaded in a port in Ukraine directly bound for Africa/Middle East and realized the importance of this country as a major supplier of cereals outside our France-EU “reference supplier”. As a consequence, it is not necessary to be Albert Einstein to deduce the real role previously played by France-EU on a good part of the cereals which were sold to us in Africa and the Middle East. That role is essentially of intermediation and speculation under the guise of saving our populations from hunger. In this regard, we do not exclude that comments of Mr. Josep Borrell, reported above, are sincere. However, we do believe that these statements must have been prompted by France-EU cereals lobby, whose members have indeed reason to be furious for having been excluded from their lucrative market, which they risk never to see again. We assume that concerns of these speculators in Geneva and elsewhere in France-EU must be immense after they realize that EU had no role to play in unblocking Ukrainian grain exports and that, on the contrary, their exclusion from these markets was at the initiative of Russia, helped in this by Turkey, the archenemy of France-EU, and with the blessing of Mr. António Guterres, Secretary General of UN.

Today, the prices of foodstuffs of animal origin have increased significantly almost everywhere in France-EU, which has led the relevant officials to recognize that disruptions in the supply of Ukrainian cereals is largely responsible for the increase in the price of household basket in France-EU. As a consequence, and to limit the negative impact of higher food prices, France-EU has been forced to show more flexibility on health standards for the import of these basic products.

Obviously this upsets the French strategists who had planned to further tighten health standards for all countries  who wish to export to the EU market by requiring them to put in place what they call “Mirror clauses”, namely standards copied from those in force in France-EU.

In Morocco, we are directly affected by changes in control standards imposed by France-EU. Without going into too many details which would not necessarily be useful to any reader of this article, it is worth recalling here that Morocco, a member of the Codex Alimentarius (hereafter the Codex) is still reluctant to apply the spirit and letter of the recommendations of this UN organization on the control of food products. For example, since the mid-nineties of last century, the Codex has advocated the use of the HACCP approach to assess the degree of safety of food. In essence, this involves ensuring that the health risk during the production of these foods is as low as possible. However, the implementation of these recommendations refers explicitly to the control of the manufacturing process and its reproducibility over time. The most suitable basic instrument for verifying that Codex recommendations are met is the application of the principles (now widely known) of the HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) system. The 28-07 Act on food safety in force in Morocco goes exactly in the same direction as the Codex. But, in everyday work, HACCP is little requested by our national companies. Then, contrary to what is practiced elsewhere, the absence of the implementation of HACCP is not considered prohibitive by ONSSA (National Office for Sanitary Safety of Food Products). On the contrary, officials of this organization (it’s an open secret) use intermediaries who lead the registration of companies with ONSSA regardless of the implementation of HACCP system. This obviously poses a risk that is difficult to assess for the health of Moroccan consumers. If the people from France-EU who accredit the work of ONSSA have not realized this major defect in the services of this supervisory body, they themselves should change jobs or go and do their work elsewhere.

For example, the Moroccan government is committed to attracting Moroccan professionals (particularly in the food industry) working abroad to come and invest in their country of origin. Among these fellow citizens, there are obviously Moroccan Jews who work in Jordan and Israel and export with great success to the large American market. It should be noted that it is not possible for a company to export to this extremely lucrative market in the absence (at least) of the implementation of HACCP system. Knowing that Morocco – which has much greater potential in agribusiness than Jordan or Israel – enjoys a free trade agreement with United States, there is every chance that the aforementioned Moroccan citizens will want to come and invest in the agri-food sector in Morocco. But if these export specialists realize that ONSSA turns a blind eye to companies that do not apply the HACCP law, they would be entitled to consider this as unfair competition and seek compensation.

To return to the title of this article, we will recall that the myth (illusion) of colonialism which consisted in conquering a country to appropriate the work force of its population and its natural resources can now be considered over. France-EU adherents to this doctrine must now prepare for a long apprenticeship to relearn how to work hard and rely on oneself. These people would be well advised to get started now.

Expertise/News

Trial by Fire for our food exporting industry

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

The visible efforts that our country has been making for several years leave no doubt about Morocco’s intention to move towards the industrial development of our agricultural resources as finished products. The stated goal is to make a better export profit on our African continent and elsewhere. It follows that our farmers will logically have to be properly supervised and better paid in the future for a regular supply of industrial processing units allowing them to work regularly and calmly. Some of these Units are in the making while implementation is underway for others across the Kingdom. A huge effort has also been made in terms of preparing or upgrading infrastructure, roads, highways, ports and other logistical needs.

In view of all this, we are tempted to conclude that, for us professionals in the national agri-food sector, the goal of exporting more finished products “Made in Morocco” is already in our pocket. But that would be, in our opinion, premature to say the least.

Indeed, just a few weeks ago, the Minister of Industry and Trade, Mr. Ryad Mezzour, complained before Moroccan senators that our fellow citizens disdained “Made in Morocco” products, of superior quality according to the Minister, in favor of imported products  of lower quality.

We recall that the 28-07 Act on food safety is quite clear in requiring industrial units to produce their food items in compliance with the law regardless of the destination of the products (local market or export). However, it is obvious that if our compatriots disdain the products made here, foreign customers will not be rushing to buy them either. There is therefore no doubt in our eyes that the Minister’s disappointment, which we share, is sincere. The insufficient sales in our national market of locally produced food products is an indisputable fact. But if the statement recalled by the Minister is correct, the “diagnosis” he makes as a member of the government may be questionable. Because his “diagnosis” could mean, for example, that Moroccan consumer prefers buying imported food on principle. And that would amount, in a way, to questioning the civic behavior of Moroccan customers. Except that such an assumption is largely contradicted by eloquent examples where Moroccans have not hesitated to show their full and complete solidarity with any national cause that won their support. If this adherence is currently lacking in terms of “Made in Morocco” food purchases, it is probably because the shortcomings have more to do with the very quality of the industrial foods that are offered to the Moroccan customer.

To better understand the issues underlying the food purchasing process, it is useful to remember that we live in a world where communication channels are very open. Moroccans therefore see, via one media or another, that in our European neighbours, those in America and elsewhere, the regulatory authorities regularly announce the withdrawal or recall of defective food products which are either in the commercial channels (not yet sold) or already purchased by the consumer. In this context, it should be noted that the statistics of organizations specializing in the management of the quality of food products show that on average a proportion of 5% of the products manufactured then turn out to be non-compliant. It is this category of products that is being withdrawn or recalled by our European and other partners. That being said, Moroccan consumers have so far not had the chance to see this approach applied by the supervisory authority over the agri-food sector in our country. In fact, and on the scale of a country like Morocco, this can represent tens of thousands of samples of products which are in the distribution channels and which pose a potential danger to the health of the consumer. So, in the absence of a guarantee of the possible removal by the supervisory authority of such defective products, the Moroccan consumer prefers to direct his purchases towards products from other import competitors.

These observations suggest that  suspicion of the Moroccan consumer with regard to food “Made in Morocco” would find its origin in  lack of confidence in the work of  supervisory authority on the agri-food sector.

However, according to the law, this responsibility falls formally to  ONSSA (National Office for Sanitary Safety of Food Products), under the Ministry of Agriculture, which oversees the application of 28-07 Act on food safety.

Now, appearances are sometimes deceiving. The reality is that quality control of what we eat is the responsibility of a scattered authority of which ONSSA is only one of the components. Alongside, other organizations get involved in the control of food products without it being known who depends on whom and whether these officials are really connected to each other. For exemple,

There is  Morocco Foodex —  this is the new name of the EACCE (Etablissement Autonome de Contrôle et Coordination des Exportations), an organization created in the forties of the last century by the French protectorate to ensure the quality of imported products of Morocco by the metropolis — which is still there and does a job in principle suppressed by the 28-07 Act on food safety.

There are the Municipal Hygiene Offices, which come under the Ministry of the Interior, which give licenses to caterers, restaurants and others.

There is  LOARC (Official Laboratory for Chemical Analysis and Research), not directly linked to ONSSA. This laboratory assumes full responsibility for the analytical control work of the products submitted to it, including collecting of samples. That said, LOARC has subscribed to delegating its responsibility for sample collection to private entities without well-defined responsibility from a food safety perspective. The laboratory justifies this measure by a work overload. It’s possible. But this organization, which has a de facto monopoly on laboratory analyses, is perfectly profitable and can of course recruit more sampling technicians if it wishes. In our opinion, the reason for this subterfuge (delegation of sample collection to separate bodies) – inherited from the defunct Fraud Repression service working under the defunct coercive law 13-84 of the same name – lies elsewhere. In the event of a failure in the analytical control results, the determination of the source of the error, between the act of sampling and the laboratory analysis operations, proves compliated. This allows these civil servants to justify many years of service without having ever been worried by disciplinary or legal measures.

There is also the organization called Imanor, under the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Mr. Ryad Mezzour, which distributes all kinds of certifications to all those who wish. However, the certification of private Units by a state body (i.e. the State) runs counter to  Good Practices in force elsewhere in the world.

Indeed, certification represents service that an authorized service provider provides to a company that meets the regulatory conditions for this service. This is contract work. In this context, in the event that one of the contracting parties is not satisfied with its relationship with the partner,  eventuality that occurs in commercial activity, there is a dispute. That one can be resolved amicably or, failing that, before the commercial courts. These courts have the mission to act quickly to keep fluid commercial circuit. But in the event that an operator is led to lodge a complaint against the certifying State, it will have to do so before the administrative courts, the work of which deviates notoriously from the speed of execution assigned to the commercial courts. Then, dispute with the State can drag on for years, which is contrary to the expectations of operators. In addition, the company certified by the State may have false impression of being in a comfortable position which does not require it be insured for cases of its defected products. This impression is false, because according to the law it is the judge who decides, with regard to the damage suffered, the compensation to be provided to the plaintiff. Without insurance, the Unit can therefore be pushed into bankruptcy and state certification will be of no help.

If we look at things from the other side, a foreign customer, for example, harmed by a Moroccan private supplier certified by the State, would have, in the absence of insurance, less guarantee of being compensated correctly in the event of commercial litigation. The thing is, this prospect is part of the reviews that importers do before making their choice on the successful supplier from one country or else.

What we have just mentioned in the foregoing is a succinct summary of the inconsistencies and deficiencies that tarnish the work of those responsible for monitoring the quality of the food we consume.

It goes without saying that the organizations of European obedience, including the accreditation, certification, lobbying and other bodies, which abound in our country, are well informed of these weaknesses in our system of control and expertise.

For the moment, Morocco does not pose commercial risk to EU exporters since the Raw Materials that we sell to them serve them rather to fill their pockets. But the moment Morocco begins in earnest, as it has planned, to export processed products, it will be regarded as competitor that will have to be knocked down. There is no doubt that the inconsistencies and weaknesses mentioned above will then be carefully highlighted to affect the quality and safety of our products for export.

The reality is that we, as a nation, lack credibility with our work of control and expertise for the agri-food sector. So, it becomes urgent to correctly set up these structures in question and think, at the same time, of the accompanying measures to perpetuate them while making them more robust.

Our ambition as a future exporting country that counts for processed food products is at this price.

 

Africa/News

The democratization of knowledge

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

Over the past two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has largely exhausted the energy, resources and patience of most states on the planet. Then, just when the acuity of the scourge seemed to be weakening, and the affected countries foreseeing a gradual return to normal life, the Russia/Ukraine war upsets these optimistic forecasts and plunges many nations back into uncertainty of the next day. But unlike Covid-19, the origin of which is not known for sure, the outbreak of war on Ukraine, which Russia sees as a mere “special military operation” to stabilize ethnicity Russian-speaking neighbor, is indeed claimed by Russia.

Now, behind the horrors and the indescribable human drama of this war (not considered here), which intensify day by day, there are, in essence, reasons and calculations of  political and geostrategic order, but which do not fall within  the purpose of this Blog.

On the other hand, the publicly available information data, which this armed conflict is bringing to light in the European agricultural and agri-food sectors and beyond, are of great interest for this article. We are therefore going to try to shed light on some facets of the upheaval underway within Europe, which are already affecting their trade in the agro-industrial, energy and other sectors, in order to better appreciate the considerable changes which undoubtedly prefigure the arrival of a new world order. The change in question, which in our view meets the goal of the NDM (New Development Model) whose implementation is progressing in Morocco (see here), is expected to bring more balance to the exchanges between the current principals, the EU in particular, and our various African States.

We can already deduce at this stage that the current planetary order, over which the EU countries continue to largely reign, based on the unbridled exploitation (spoliation) of  raw materials of poor countries, notably African — for us maintain in a situation of perennial vassalization vis-à-vis European lobbies — can already be considered obsolete.

Let us not forget that European countries which colonized us, plundered our resources and keep the economies of our territories under their tutelage to this day, have always proclaimed loud and clear, hand on heart, including before authorities of the UN, that they simply want to help our African countries and their actions are to enable progress and development in Africa. Obviously, we do not understand why, contrary to this thesis, Europeans have systematically refused to invest in the improvement of our public colleges and universities. They continue to prefer the training of our local elites in their own structures. Looking more closely, it must have been easier for them under these conditions to sort out, among the candidates on formation, between those who agree with the paradigm of “Independence in interdependence” (another form of subordination), who must then be helped by any means to allow them to have a successful integration into their country of origin (vassal) — to serve the interests of our principals — and those who are refractory to this diktat and must be kept in check.

We have robust information in our records showing the use of the latter practice.

On this level, we can also mention that  aid that EU states provide for the training of good part of the elite of our resigned Continent, to make them sort of “spokespersons” of EU cooperation with our countries for  benefit of European lobbies, is definitely a colonial vision. This approach, which EU countries are trying to maintain at all costs, has been closely linked to the availability and conditions of circulation of information (or knowledge), particularly of a scientific and technical type.

In this context, and until recently, knowledge was obtained mainly through specialized state bodies: Colleges, Universities, Libraries and others. However, the Europeans, who have actively worked on the decay of our societies for centuries, know very well that services of our above-mentioned structures have rarely been efficient, mainly because of lack of means. Therefore, for members of  EU, the upholding of our institutions in question as they were was in itself a guarantee of the continuity of our vassalization vis-à-vis our former colonizers. This obviously with the additional precaution of keeping under control the “refractory elites” mentioned above for not disturbing this “status quo” by favoring the transmission of knowledge once they return to their country. In other words, the leaders of European countries, “modern equivalents” of Romans of ancient times, seem to have defined once and for all the place of the countries of our Continent and those of the countries of EU. We Africans must devote ourselves to informal, sloppy and underpaid labor for local consumption and they, the “knowledge-rich” can concentrate on supposedly structured, quality and well-paid work, eligible for export. It follows that EU countries feel as vitall need for them to continue having exclusive know-how, for example on the processing of raw materials to keep them longer and make the most of them commercially, and that we, the incompetents, should continue to content ourselves with selling them these resources for peanuts.

Then, of course, we are obliged to buy back our own Raw Materials from them in the form of “Finished Products” paid in Euro and at speculative prices.

That said, the world is changing and the questioning of the “status quo”, so feared by the former colonizers, has finally come from where we did not suspect it. It is the development of the Internet where the United States of America has invested the most heavily. This global computer network has largely contributed to democratizing knowledge and know-how. In this respect — considering that the performance of electronic platforms for importing agri-food products into US market has a good head start on European portals supposed to play the same role — it is educationally easier to export African food products on the US market than on the EU’s one. We understand by this that a producer and/or manufacturer and/or supplier and/or distributor, who has made a small effort in English, who works according to the rules, who is able to use some of the tools provided by Internet, can very well manage the registration operations of its products and obtain without delay on the FDA portal the corresponding code numbers for export. Then, the interested party is entitled to canvass potential buyers of his choice to sell and dispose of the products in question internationally on the US and other markets of FDA obedience which are the most numerous in the world. This professional can, at the same time, inquire about the validity of manufacturing protocols  of interest to him and retain the Process that best suits his product in accordance with the law.

All this can be done through Internet for free and without intermediaries

On the contrary, exporting to EU market is far from offering, in our opinion, so much useful and didactic information as well as such quick and free access conditions. In addition, going through the human factor (intermediary) remains very widespread for access to European market. This handicap generates additional costs for the producer/manufacturer, increases its cost price and reduces its competitiveness.

In addition, the forced passage through intermediaries can also constitute an open door to all kinds of fraud or financial and other abuses. In this respect, this example taken from our archives: A Moroccan exporter, with whom we had previously performed a service, told us (and showed samples of the product in question) that at the express request of a buyer domiciled in Paris, he was led to prepare and sell him argan oil under special conditions. The product exported in half-liter bottles (common packaging for food) was supposed to go for human consumption. However, the intermediary repackages it on the spot in smaller formats for much more profitable sale  as a cosmetic product*. The operation is obviously fraudulent but it is interesting to note  the initiation of the fraud comes from the very people who reproach us  our lack of adherence to the law! All this under the nose and beard of their fraud prevention services.

*: Vitamin “E”, whose virtues are sought in the cosmetic version of argan oil, is in fact destroyed following the heat treatment required by regulation for the food version of the oil.

In reality, the vision that Europeans continue to have of us Africans derives from the fact these people persist, contrary to all common sense, in seeing us through the prism of the colonizer and, for them, we must remain eternally a milking cow. With this in mind, maintaining the aforementioned status quo is meant to reassure these people that they still have the upper hand over our resources and economic activities.

Curiously, this is also where, in our opinion, lies the miscalculation of Europeans. The bad idea will have been to believe that they can indefinitely prevent, in particular, the entire African continent from accessing knowledge we need to make ourselves proper place among nations. In this regard, several West African countries have been striving for decades to create dairy industry in this part of our region, but without success. The ex-colonizers not only kept the possibility, by means of the management system of the CFA Franc they put in place, of blocking bank credits for projects of this type which they do not want; But they persist to this day in flooding the markets of this area with commercially dumped milk powders to bury any prospect of making the emergence of such a local industry profitable.

Today we know, according to  information revealed during this Russia/Ukraine conflict, that the overabundance of EU milk powder was possible because, in large part, the Europeans were stocking up on Ukrainian cereals (corn, barley and others) for their dairy cows at ridiculous prices, like the ones prices they pay for our African raw materials. We also know that since the outbreak of the aforementioned war, the possibility of buying Ukrainian grain at a low price imposed by EU structures has definitely ended. Worse still for Europeans, it is highly unlikely that the EU will be able to find these types of opportunities anywhere in the world in the future.

In short, West Africa will finally be able to consider building its dairy production units and other industrial projects away from EU interference. Indeed, our neighbors to the north will probably be very busy in the next few years thinking about how to survive under the coming rules that the new world order is sure to impose on everyone.

Ultimately, the Europeans are not really modern equivalents of the Roman Empire. The latter lasted eight hundred years while the “EU Imperial Ambition” will have been stopped after less than four centuries.

By way of conclusion, the EU countries must henceforth, in our opinion, prepare themselves seriously — as China made them understand before and Russia currently — to accepting, in the new world order being put in place, the position that their own resources will allow them to occupy. And for us Africans, the time has come to understand that our entrepreneurial ambition will have a better chance of succeeding by drawing our (reasonably verified) information from the Internet network, including the Codex-Alimentarius, the FAO and others, than by relying on Europe’s deficient assistance.

Africa/Expertise/News

Morocco at the crossroads

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

In Morocco, and probably elsewhere too, we all know that conflicts over inheritance issues are among the hardest to resolve. This is because many of us know, directly or indirectly, story of inheritance that has altered the sense of belonging to a family or a tribe.

That being said, the problem of inheritance in its global sense, independently of any other consideration, derives from codes and customs that go back a long way in time, both here in Africa and among our neighbors on the northern shore of the Mediterranean. Thus, among Europeans, it was accepted that someone could claim land as his property (and enjoy it as an inheritance) if he exploited the place in question for a few decades in the absence of another formal complaint. Taking this perspective, we can deduce that the descendants of European peoples, who colonized for several centuries and divided the African continent according to their wishes, by stifling in the bud any hint of protest — before granting our countries often superficial independences — have come to consider our territories as theirs without sharing. We then understand better how these people can find it unbearable that other powers such as China, Russia, Turkey, India, Japan and others are trying, in their eyes, to challenge them for pre-eminence over economic and commercial exchanges with our Continent. The EU seems to have developed feeling of suffocating possessiveness towards our African countries.

In this perspective, the 6th EU-AU (European Union-African Union) summit this month of February (initially scheduled for 2020 and postponed twice) should serve the EU, according to preliminary information available, to keep out of its way the other pretenders to trade with Africa, which have continued in recent decades to gain market share in Africa at the expense of Europe. The greatest beneficiary of trade and economic exchanges with our Continent at present is China. As a result, the Middle Kingdom now poses the most serious risk to the continuation of EU trade with Africa as before, particularly through its ongoing « Belt and Road Initiative ».

The EU claims to wanting to compete with this Chinese project and, to this end, has promised to put on the table several hundred billion Euros of investment over the medium term for the benefit of African countries through their project called “Global Gateway“.

But, coinciding with the many issues raised by the unwanted presence of soldiers from several European countries in Mali and elsewhere, there is little echo here in Africa of the aforementioned European solicitude. Our countries do not seem to give much credence to these proposals and instead seem to be adopting a wise “wait and see” attitude for now. There is no formal explanation for our leaders lack of enthusiasm for these promises of future EU funding in our territories. This leaves us free to speculate on the reasons behind what can be perceived as African reservations about possible future investments by Europeans in our Continent.

Among the possible reasons for this reluctance, there is obviously the Covid-19 pandemic, which is still there without anyone knowing when it will end. In itself, this uncertainty handicaps normal economic activity, complicates decision-making on investments and therefore forces reflection on the part of our African countries about the choice of our future partners for our international trade.

There are also the sounds of boots at the borders in the East of the EU. The media talk about it without it being clear if continental Europe will find common ground with Russia or, if not, how long this tension will last or if we are on the eve of a war that will really break out. But for the EU, this is a major problem with their largest supplier of energy products to which they must urgently find a solution before thinking about economic activity in normal times through the “Global Gateway” or other. At the same time, this gives arguments to our African leaders to defer the pressing demands of the EU countries, led by France, who wish, according to our assessment, to extend as they please commercial practices with the countries of our Continent, but where they are the only ones to benefit.

On another level, Africa was willing to believe for a time in the promises that the Europeans have constantly repeated to us for more than half a century that Europe is an agro-industrial superpower and, consequently, will act as a strong locomotive to pull behind it the agri-food sectors of our African countries. But, to see the exploitation, solely for their profits, that Europeans make of the wealth of our sectors in question, no one believes in these illusions any longer. Then comes the fact that the self-proclaimed standards that the EU has created to shield its advantages around thousands of products that they have grouped under the themes of CDO and/or PDO and/or PGI — respectively Controlled Designation of Origin, Protected Designation of Origin, Protected Geographical Indication — and other self-assigned privileges have ceased to deceive international markets, which are gradually beginning to ignore them. For example, the withdrawal of such protections for Champagne in Russia and Gruyère cheese in the United States.

These elements, and others reported every day in the international press, clearly show that the EU has long since lost the means of its prestige policy, even if its propaganda aimed at Africa on its stature continues as if nothing had happened. The EU as a locomotive is in reality out of breath but still holds because towed by a fiduciary currency, the Euro that, outside of Europe, we are in Africa its main users in the world. Even better, the EU has pegged the CFA Franc to the Euro to allow them to keep much of the African economy and trade under more control.

In this context, the example of Ukraine, country that the media are talking about a lot at the moment, is instructive. Here is a country which has done everything possible to side with the Europeans and which ultimately finds itself facing the risk of being reabsorbed by Russia and returning to the situation of enslavement in which it was at the time of the soviet empire. All because the EU “lacks punch” and has chosen the easy (Phoenician) route of trade and profit (one country out of 27 wants to stand out), to further optimize their trade profits, leaving to other responsability of the credible defense of borders. However, if Ukraine is so coveted by both sides, is because it is, in essence, an agricultural and agri-food power of international stature. The country has a larger arable area than that assumed for  metropolitan France and is therefore one of the main world exporters of cereals. According to a general assessment, Russia does not pay much attention to the European attitude in the current conflict over Ukraine and, if it has not already taken action to annex its neighbor, it is simply because  she is not sure of the degree of harm that the United States can create for Russia in such a scenario.

The case of Morocco is, in our view, comparable to the situation in Ukraine. Our country is also an emerging power in the agricultural and agri-food sector, including the fishing industry sector, and is the focus of many countries around the world. But the network woven around our economy by Europeans for more than century has made us slave to the EU market. The NDM (New Development Model) aims to free us from this enslavement and we are eagerly waiting for this wish to be fulfilled.

In this regard, those responsible for supervising the implementation of the NDM must, as far as we are concerned, remember that our agri-food exports, with a view to diversifying our outlets abroad, will remain weakened as long as Morocco lacks his own expertises. Proof of this is the following example, taken from our archives.

At the beginning of the nineties of the last century, a cargo of condensed milk, arriving in Casablanca, had been blocked by our customs. The milk from Ukraine was actually destined for the English market. But the authorities of that country had turned it back on the grounds that it posed a health risk of nuclear origin (presumed consequence of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster) on the health of the British consumer. The Director of the SGS in Casablanca at the time contacted me for an interview and then provided a copy of the file for a possible expertise with judicial extension. I had then discussed the subject at that time with senior magistrate friend of mine to get his point of view. We discussed it at length (details not reported in this article) after which I declined the offer to do that work. The product was also rejected from the Moroccan market.

But the Casablanca SGS had not appraised the product either. Information taken, it turns out that this organization, and other equivalent structures, which are all of them subsidiaries of European organizations that exercise on the same niche of expertise in Morocco, do not have the legal competence to plead this type of case before our courts. Our law, like those in force elsewhere, reserves this privilege for national experts.

That said, all professionals know that these organizations of European obedience make rain and shine in Morocco on the niche of agri-food expertise. In this regard, the documents they issue are taken into consideration by our supervisory authorities for the sector in question, starting with ONSSA. We can then ask ourselves whether our national authorities in question, whose mission is defined by Moroccan law, obey to some extraterritorial laws each time they have to decide on the validity of a document or another issued by these organizations that have got into the habit of acting like “cowboys” in our country.

This leads us to ask the question if our parliamentarians know how to deal with something other than politician politics?

Incidentally, the title of this article could also have been “Africa at the crossroads”.

Africa/Expertise/News

The NDM for boosting export

Posted on by Ahmed ESSADKI

Morocco has started the implementation of the New Development Model (NDM) to which His Majesty King Mohammed VI called and which we talked about in a previous article (see here). Thus, the new Minister of National Education, Preschool and Sports, Mr. Chakib Benmoussa, has just overhauled the conditions for recruiting teachers to teach in Moroccan public schools. It is true that school training in Morocco requires urgent upgrading as this deficiency in Moroccan public schools has accompanied all governments for more than fifty years.

But other skills are better placed than us to comment on the ins and outs of this syndrome.

What holds attention for the moment is the serene and calm, but firm pedagogy with which Mr. Benmoussa approaches the overhaul of this complex project, which has been highly politicized by different political parties relayed by their respective unions. To use an image, we would say that the minister tries to make understand to whoever wants to listen that, in short, when a body is sick, that the diagnosis has been correctly made, the patient (here the teaching) must, for recovering, take the prescribed remedies without any other consideration.

Mr. Benmoussa argument seems reasonable and the Minister is already starting to have people of good will on his side.

That being said, we must not forget that NDM has brought to light many “other diseased bodies” in our economic fabric. It follows that, in addition to Mr. Benmoussa, it will be necessary to provide as many solvers to restore order in many of Morocco’s vital business sectors.

Regarding the poverty of our education, the Minister indicated, during an interview recently with a national television channel, that 70% of Moroccan fifteen-year-old students could neither read nor write correctly or perform operations of mathematics. In this respect, the level of performance of our agrifood sector is just as lackluster! Indeed, it only takes a quick stroll in a supermarket to see that more than 75 percent of the industrially produced food offered for sale is of foreign origin, or manufactured under license. This gives the measure of our very high dependence on the import of this important category of products and, as a consequence, the enormous delay that we must make up for in order to move closer to food sovereignty.

It is legitimate to recall here that the cruciality of food sovereignty for many countries has come to light during the current Covid-19 pandemic.

When it comes to Morocco where food raw materials, and other substances that go with them, are produced on our soil and in abundance, the impression that the average national consumer may have is that we are not good at implementing Processes to have food products with long shelf life. In a way, we would be dunces for this type of operation. This is all the more so since the processes for manufacturing such products are in the majority of cases in the public domain, and therefore accessible to everyone. As a corollary of this observation, opportunists, mainly Europeans, buy from us vegetables, fruits and other materials, very inexpensively (because they are perishable), make them long-lasting finished products and resell them to us at speculative prices generating for them amazing profit margins.

In this regard, in the trade agreement that binds us to the Europeans, our exports of agricultural products (of plant origin) are subject to quotas which limit our possibilities of exporting these products in volume and, being obliged to sell them off because they are perishable, the sale of these fresh products does not bring us much in value either. The agreement in question does not limit us for the export of long-lived processed products. But here too, our performance in the EU market is poor.

On this subject, it is interesting to note the divergence between the praise that the EU accreditation bodies, especially French ones, occasionally give for the work of our official food control bodies on the one hand and, on the other, the frequent blocking of entry into their markets of these same finished products already controlled in Morocco.

However, the mediocrity of our export services can also be seen in other foreign markets. Thus, Mr. Hassan Sentissi Idrissi, President of the Moroccan Association of Exporters (ASMEX) indicated in an interview dated February 2019 to the electronic newspaper Morocco World News that : “The free trade agreement between Morocco and the US has not been beneficial to Moroccan exporters, given the size of the US market and the complex procedures yet unfamiliar to Moroccan companies,”. Mr. Sentissi adds that: “This agreement should be reviewed in such a way as to consider the reality of Moroccan [small and medium-sized enterprises]”. In short, it is a call to the Americans to ask them to relax, and even water down, their rules for accessing the US market to make these rules more accessible to the exporting members mentioned by Mr. Sentissi.

Obviously, a manager is not prohibited from campaigning on behalf of the members of his association for more flexibility in the standards of access to a given market. But, Mr. Sentissi is well placed to know that the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), American regulation for fresh and processed products in the agri-food sector, already in force at the time of his aforementioned interview, has provided innovative solutions to facilitate the access to US market for all companies in the agri-food sector, on an equal footing with their American colleagues. In fact, the FSMA has reduced administrative procedures and allowed companies to register with the FDA, directly and immediately, the compliance of their products without intermediaries and at no cost to them. This means that a person designated by the company, defined in the FSMA under the qualifier Preventive Control Qualified Individual (PCQI), is simply invited to introduce on the dedicated electronic platform of the FDA the products that his company wishes to export to the US market indicating the regulatory characteristics of these products. Once this is done, the company is free to offer the products, which will then have received a registration code, for sale to US importers of their choice on commercial terms that are convenient to the producing company.

In addition, if previously the questions and answers of the FDA (in English), to determine the quality of the products, could somewhat dampen the enthusiasm of certain potential national exporters; the command of English is now widespread. For those who are still behind on this, the FDA has set up the Chapters of Interest for Foreign Exporters in this regard in translated versions in several languages to choose from.

It is clear, however, that the information on access to the American market, those mentioned above and others must be better relayed by ONSSA and Foodex-EACCE, supervisory bodies on the national agrifood sector, to enable our food companies to take advantage. ASMEX is therefore right to recall the archaism of the services of these supervisory bodies in this area.

It is useful to recall that the failure of the supervisory authorities over the agro-industry to provide the desired assistance to operators to better break into new foreign markets is the result of laxity observed also in other fields of activity. There is, for example, this popular joke, correlated in the field, which consists in distinguishing two categories of lawyers. There are lawyers who know the law. And there are lawyers with connections to the judges. They know how to forge more or less incestuous relationships with magistrates in order to influence court decisions outside the law. The result is a biased justice that loses its credibility and ends up tarnishing the entire economic system of the country.

Fortunately in Morocco, our judicial system has begun to fully reclaim its credibility thanks, among other things, to a benchmark magistrate (solver), Mr. Mohamed Abdennabaoui, First President of the Court of Cassation, appointed by His Majesty King Mohammed VI as Deputy President of the Superior Council of the Judicial Power and whose work is widely praised in Morocco.

To come back to our national agrifood sector, among our numerous expert interventions compiled over thirty years, there are observations recorded in our archives which point to the existence of more or less incestuous relations between operators accustomed to doing their own thing on the local market, and wishing to extend these practices to foreign markets, with certain officials of our supervisory authorities. This is, in our opinion, a residue of the colonial legacy that laid down the economic model that ruined Morocco and which the NDM is now seeking to replace for more equity for us Moroccans.

In conclusion, if a solver is appointed to bring some order to this sector which is particularly vital for the Moroccan economy, he will, in our opinion, have to work on weaning operators addicted to checks of convenience. It probably won’t be easy. But this weaning, there is no doubt, will be easier to accomplish compared to the task of try convincing the competent American authorities to modify their FSMA to adjusting their controls to the way of work of national operators addicted to laxity.