The acacia is endemic to the Saharan regions like the south of Morocco. This tree is known to give gum arabic whose international demand is largely above supply. This is because the food industry is greedy of this substance, known by code E414, which is incorporated into an unlimited range of food preparations as an additive for its qualities as emulsifying, stabilizing, thickening and so on. Gum arabic is also known for its uses in the manufacture of pharmaceutical, cosmetic and other products. It is harvested from the tree as natural exudates or caused mainly during the drought period. The sap hardens in the open air to form nodules sometimes called “tears of gold” in reference to their color. There is no known adverse effect of the substance on consumer health, which is why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has classified this product on the GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) list, which implies that the substance is recognized as safe and its addition as a supplement in preparations of finished products does not need prior authorization, unlike other additives. It is a kind of green light for the export of this ingredient on the huge American market and other assimilated markets. This added to other properties like its ease of preparation and use make gum arabic a material particularly sought after by large international brokers. The volume exported annually is several tens of thousands of tons to the EU market where this commodity is “processed” for sale to end-users by means of juicy capital gains. As far as gum arabic generated in West Africa is concerned, France can be considered the big broker for the area. The country centralizes the gum from our regions and prepares it for export to industrialists from the rest of the world including the US market.
Indeed, our African dependence on Europe in particular for the development of our natural resources, first and foremost the PAM (Aromatic and Medicinal Plants), dates back several centuries and this fact is part of our socio-economic landscape at present. It might have been expected that the US would become more interested in the African continent after the Second World War, when America became the greatest Western power without question. But, presumably due to the choice of the US to contain the extension of the Soviet Empire as a matter of priority, the Americans had to leave the Europeans free on our continent. As a result, the former colonial powers, which have developed an intimate knowledge of the African economic potential, have designed and developed their positioning as an essential hub for the exploitation of the natural wealth of African countries. Acacia gum is one example among hundreds or thousands others.
The control of Europe over our basic wealth, well prepared and firm was probably designed to last very long. But the fall of the Berlin Wall will certainly have been a disruptive factor in this calculation. Indeed, this fall, the final result of the decay of the Soviet era, profoundly changed the paradigm that characterized the previous global equilibrium. The unrestrained race on the military field has shifted largely to the economic, especially agro-industrial, terrain. So if in the past the Americans were keen having to go through European intermediaries to buy raw materials from Africa or to sell us equipment and finished goods, they no longer can afford or want to do it today. There is no more justification for this “tithing” that they have to pay for each transaction they want to carry out with one or the other of our countries. Europeans on the continent have understood it and they are threatening now on their turn to settle in Latin America, the usual pre-square of Uncle Sam.
This “battle” for economic and trade leadership, which has broken out between America and continental Europe since the 1990s, suddenly accelerated with the launch of the Euro that European officials had indicated their desire to see it supplant the Dollar. President Trump did not fail to remind them of this premeditation during one of his last interviews. In this respect, the “power struggle over Africa”, on a backdrop of valorization of its natural resources, has only just begun between the US and the EU. But in this type of tussle, there is not a winner and a loser but only a first and a following. The eventual loser in reality is Africa. Morocco can also lose some of its luster in the sense that he is perceived as an African leader giving example to others on the way of the economic takeoff whereas it does not appear able to value the very large part of its natural resources, the acacia among others, to the benefit its own population first. In the case of gum arabic, this valorization means, more or less, collect the sap under correct conditions and then being able to crush and condition it. The Europeans do no better for perpetuating their cash economy on this substance by taking in the passage the greatest commercial added value on the distribution of this product to the international.
