An infant depends on suckling from his mother. Optionally, it can settle for a bottle. But when it comes time to wean, he can go through a severe resistance that all parents have experimented. The colonial powers live a bit the same anxieties and undertake them also the same kind of resistance when being weaned from their colonies. The British were the first to suffer from this syndrome but it enabled the French to learn a lesson. Thus, when the turn of metropolitan France has come to give back their freedom to African States, they gave these countries a semblance of independence while maintaining their grip on their economies, particularly on trade of agricultural raw materials and mining. Afterwards, the French have negotiated hard with their European counterparts, as we suspect, for the privilege to “supervise” the agricultural aspects of trade relations between European Union (UE) and Africa. Britain, the other former great colonial power on the continent, had to acquiesce in this pre-established European consensus at the time of its late accession to the EU.
Regarding the EU’s policy towards the African agribusiness sector, the position of France was preeminent. This is a huge lever that Metropolitan France has used strongly to maintain their lifestyle, otherwise largely unjustified for a power that has continued to lose its luster for seventy years. But the declared Brexit risks actually putting an end to that kind of « windfall economy » dating back to colonial times. This could have been ended in the late seventies already. At that time, Great Britain (GB), with an economy in free fall, resigned itself to accepting the help of the IMF. The average salary of an English engineer was the equivalent of three hundred Swiss francs, a monthly sum allocated in Switzerland in these times to a young apprentice. So, many countries in the world have recruited English engineers at will, for their fundamental research, application or in operational businesses. Switzerland was in this case. But India also who has not regretted because the engineers involved were among the best trained internationally in large schools and British universities that have been, and remain at the cutting edge of scientific progress and technique in the world. If India has managed the feat of feeding a population equivalent to that of China for a territory just above one third of the middle kingdom with unfavorable weather conditions, this is thanks, in particular, to an approach inspired the expertise and the British engineering. But because of a tight stranglehold of metropolitan France on our economy, we have not been able, here in Morocco or in West Africa, to take advantage of this windfall of highly skilled British workers. It would have helped to shape our policy in the agro-industrial sector more in favor of Africa.
Of the three basic needs of human beings, love, food and water, only the first has been sublimated. The Taj Mahal, for example, was built by an emperor for the love of a woman. As for need of food and drink, we share them with the other mammals. For this reason, the person who has nothing to eat, or drink, is willing to risk his life for sustenance. This is what is happening for some time now with the migration of African youths to Europe. Many factors contribute to this distress that was, in many of our countries, simply masked by kind of asymmetrical barter designed and implemented by colonial France for its African colonies that the metropolis has extended beyond the “semblance of independence”. But when the other EU countries realized that the main winner of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) was France for their own African policy they, the British in forefront, initiated a sort of revolt to change things; that is to say, to pay less for CAP so less money to go to French pockets. Since then, France has begun to feel the limits of its policy labeled “Françeafrique” which was in part possible thanks to the permissiveness of the EU policy, led by Germany, towards the metropolis. The British were a net contributor to the CAP while the French have been a net recipient. Now that the GB slammed the door, the Germans soon realized they would have to dig deep in their pockets so actual CAP policy can continue. In this respect, the “Spiegel Online” reported in its international delivery of 25 June « … The common agricultural policy, for example, has for decades been nothing but a gigantic money redistribution machine without a discernible added benefit for Europe…». It is understood that France has been the main beneficiary of the CAP and it is high time that such a system be stopped.
There is still something not so orthodox in the reaction of France on Brexit, relayed by the President of the EU Commission. For if, as the French do not cease to repeat, the UK is heading towards a catastrophe, and then the matter is heard. People will see it and they will be discouraged to follow suit. There is no need to add anything requiring the British to finish now and immediately in haste their union with the EU while regulations gives them two years to do it. It seems more likely that this overreaction is rather a reaction of someone who loses his temper on occasion a greater danger than he imagined without that one knows exactly what it might be. Could it be the fear of an accelerating mechanism towards the removal of the French stranglehold on the economy of much of Africa? We beginning to suspect that France would like to see are applied to the UK as soon as possible the simple rules of international trade without further privilege as is the case for the USA with the difference that the UK does not weigh too heavy. And, above all, to make the “Brits” suffer by applying the rules on non-tariff barriers as it do for other African countries, for example. But then, we must remember that at the base, ISO standards that the French require loudly for the export of African food products on the EU market come to more than two thirds of British standards and the GB has quite right to claim authorship. It therefore seems premature, in this case, the student to lecture the Master at this stage of the showdown.
But if the “Brexit” calls into question the entire EU policy to date, it is there a dimension that could play favorably for us Africans. First, the British will be released from their attitude of reserve vis-à-vis the policy that France, in the name of the UE, carry out in Africa and the UK could then give us the benefit of interesting initiatives to develop African trade internationally outside the EU. Then it is a country of roughly the same population as France for an area of only about a third of the latter, which is a big importer of large amounts of food and has a great purchase power. Indeed, the GB is the fifth industrial power in the world, ahead of France. In addition, the British pay our products cheaper outside other intermediaries Franco-European. Finally, closer collaboration of the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Morocco would facilitate our commerce with countries of East Africa, where GB is present, which will benefit the entire continent.
