In a recent interview on “TV5MONDE”, Guinean President Alpha Condé, whom a journalist was questioning about democracy in Africa, answered bluntly “Why Europeans do not teach democracy to Asian countries». For his part, Congolese President Joseph Kabila had a scathing reply to the Spiegel ONLINE journalist (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-congo-president-joseph-kabila-a-1150521.html) who wanted to inform him that Germany has the idea to promote a Marshall Plan for the continent: “… as for the Marshall Plan or whatever it is, I don’t believe in that. Africans have been fed this kind of language for the last 50 years… “. There are many examples of African leaders who are annoyed by the perpetually haughty attitude of European leaders who taught lessons.
Mr. Kabila has rightly pointed out that Europeans are simply looking for a way to curb the flow of refugees in large numbers for Europe fleeing poverty and hunger, which are reminiscent of the consequences of European colonization of Africa. This poverty may seem atypical in that the countries of our continent, which have been independent for more than half a century, are potentially rich in resources. But the African countries are the only ones to rely excessively on sales of their raw materials which are processed mainly in Europe. And, instead of diminishing with time, this anomaly continues to strengthen. The situation, which carries on for centuries, is not fortuitous but the result of a plan skillfully carried out and maintained by European powers. There are many examples of the shields that the EU has developed over the past two decades, which are composed of norms and standards that have become practically independent of Codex, backed by well-studied technologies, that enable the EU to filter out the products that it willing to accept and to reject those that it does not desire on “regulatory bases” unassailable. This highly elaborate approach makes it possible for the caciques of Brussels, depending on how they appreciate that a government adhere or not to «their sibylline messages”, to gratifying one exporting country, or to penalize another, as they wish.
But we can ask ourselves the reasons for this quasi-visceral dependence of Europeans on our agricultural resources. The explanation is perhaps to be found in the increasingly competitive turn of international trade, especially in the agro industrial sector, in addition to the unwillingness of our leaders to take their destiny into their hands. As a reminder, Switzerland, a rich country, experienced during the Second World War the pangs of food rationing and understood, like other European countries that depend on imports to cover their food needs, that this can be an enormous brake on the development. Of course, when you have the resources you need, you can trustily plan for the production of processed foods for local use and for export. This is what the Americans and Asians do and that the EU wants to compete by counting on a massive, continuous and cheap importation of African resources.
We must not delude ourselves, our neighbors in the North will not let go of these vital resources that help maintain for their standard of living nor before the Americans or Chinese or anyone else foreign to the continent. Salvation will come, according to the saying “one is never so well served as by oneself”. We need to develop an African expertise of this sector to help its industrialization and the processing of our raw material resources on the spot.
