BY GIRMACHEW GASHAW
Africa is endowed with natural resources of various kinds which are not found in other continents. This is a reality no one denies. However, we are still named the third world as we are by far distant from the richest countries. Lack of technology, expertise, limited financial capacity that is highly dependent on foreign aid, war as a result of disparity of ideologies between two or more forces, prolonged famine and others could be blamed for this.
By our own willingness and desire to become wealthy, we have been and are inviting others with better knowledge and understanding to see the accumulated natural resources that the almighty bestowed to Africans. Using the limited capital we have, in the form of conducting research, our enemies have properly understood the potential and site of our resources.
After they have identified the resource potential that we slept over for centuries, the greedy and selfish developed countries think about how they can cheat Africans so as to commit fraud until they get hold of Africa’s resources. Accordingly, they devised a strategy. One is funded in the form of a loan and grant. They know how Africans have limited financial capacity to exploit their resources. Thus, using this loophole as a good mechanism, the developed countries made an accord of various kinds with a given African country to provide loan if it fits with their policy and strategies over Africa.
As the saying goes, “A friend in deed is a friend indeed, considering them as friends established smooth and win-win cooperation, we (Africans) opened our hearts and proved what we have. Using this window of opportunity, the developed countries hired their own experts with mammoth dollars. Mostly, the Aid went astray paying the salary of the man or women hired to do the task as per the agreement without looking something important in the ground and this is the very reason why many African projects had failed. Whoever causes the failure, the debt is recorded as the burden on that African country.
The other means developed countries do over Africa is, lend the loan as other countries did and do all the projects as per the agreement hiring their importing the materials and manpower directly from their own country so as to gain foreign currency. Once they finished the project, they milked the country borrowed like a dairy cow. Imagine, we paid the loan with the raw materials nature bestowed to us.
Some African Countries escaped from this trap, they never ran away from exporting their raw materials for western countries. Looking the desire of exporting our pursuable agricultural yields with best quality and some industrial products of African countries, they stretched another ensnare like the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). No one misunderstood that it has been at the core of U.S. economic policy and commercial engagement with Africa.
This is another tool they put for African countries to question their sovereignty and independence. The recent deed of the US over Ethiopia is a typical example for this. The US terminated the three countries from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) “putting the actions of countries taken as violation of the AGOA Statute”. Apart from that if countries stand in their firm stance, the developed countries may put sanctions of various kinds until the political, economic and social chaos rise and overthrow the incumbent from its throne and put up a puppet government for them.
Even if African countries export their own raw materials to the rest of the world, just like the ancient bartering system, Africans are forced to buy their own raw materials again, expanding huge amounts of dollars as they do not have the-state- of-the-art technology, expertise and the like to do that. They also played in our perception using various psychological makeup and influence ours children to adore their instead of developing its own.
The very painful and cunning task of them is, conduct study and find where African resources are set up and deploy their own expertise in the name of consultancy. Then, they clearly identify the ethnography of every society so as to blow up variation between them. Without refraining from that, developed countries have been provoking violence among two or more groups of the same society magnifying their differences and selling armaments. Apart from selling armaments for those groups, this is also an excellent window of opportunity for them to illegally transport the precious minerals of Africa.
Wake up Africa! This is the time that we need to stand in unison more than ever before so as to understand our history and learn from that. Stand up Africans! This is the time to change the continent via developing our resources. Rise up Africa! This is the time to cooperate with one another to step up the #No more# challenge to bury those who want to re-colonize Africa.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The
The February 1/2022
