President Obama’s recent trip to Ghana, his first trip to Africa as president, drew a considerable amount of attention. As President Obama’s father was from Kenya, his first trip to the continent and his speech were highly anticipated.
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In similar terms to his speeches aimed at Black America, he paid lip service to historical oppression and underdevelopment, but incorrectly identified personal responsibility as the main factor in the continued underdevelopment of Africa.
While paying some lip service to Africa’s colonial legacy, he abdicates any responsibility for the West after the era of barbarous colonialism. He pays zero attention to neo-colonialist predations. For example, Obama said: “The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants.”
Role of imperialist powers in post-cold war period
While the first part of the statement about Zimbabwe is entirely false, to act as if the West has had zero culpability for issues on the African continent, particularly during the 1990s, is purposefully misleading. While of course there are plenty of Africans who have not acted in the best interests of their countrymen, we can not lose sight of the role imperialism played in Africa during the post-cold war period.
As is well documented, Western powers forced most African countries during the 1990s into structural adjustment programs. These economic attacks did everything possible to weaken the role of the state, promote privatization and sell-offs of state assets and de-emphasize spending on infrastructure—all policies that benefited Western corporations to the detriment of the people. Not exactly a hands-off approach.
Obama also fails to mention how one of the main reasons AIDS continues to ravage the African continent to such a degree is directly attributable to Western pharmaceutical companies, which zealously pursue their “intellectual property rights” no matter how many are dying. These corporations continually attacked the rights of countries such as India and Brazil to produce low-cost generic AIDS drugs, thus unnecessarily limiting the availability to millions of impoverished AIDS victims in Africa.
The president also could have mentioned how so many of the wars in Africa during the 1990s have involved the imperialist powers. One could fill many articles discussing various cases.
It is worth noting that the United States and Europe supported various sides of many destructive conflicts, from Sudan to Congo, to Chad and Somalia.
Somalia is a good example because of recent actions. In 2007, the United States destabilized the only government to unite the country since 1991 by supporting an Ethiopian invasion and occupation. The U.S. military has also launched a number of air attacks on civilians and whole villages in Somalia, striking at supposed “terrorist dens.”
It is beyond questioning that the United States played the key role in exacerbating and intensifying the current conflict in Somalia in order to keep the African country from developing independently of U.S. imperialism.
If democracy is so important to Obama for the future of the African continent, why has his government not denounced Meles Zenawi, leader of Ethiopia, as brutal as any other leader the world over? Where is the denunciation of the Swazi king, who has prostrated his entire country before Coca-Cola and textile companies from Taiwan, where women are banned from wearing pants, and the entire parliament is approved by King Mswati III?
President Obama was right in one sense: Africa’s future is up to Africans. However, it is also up to revolutionary-minded people to stand side by side with the progressive movements in Africa and oppose our own government’s attempts to use progressive-sounding cover to influence and control the direction of development in Africa.
