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Beyond the Sahara

Partridge Africa

It is six months since Joe disappeared, not a word have we heard from him or about him. We have seen neither friend nor traveller who claimed that they saw him or anyone who resembles him anywhere; however, he is a man with very distinct features: tall, slim, very fair skinned, and with shifty eyes. He is a near albino. Today, in Africa and some other parts of the world, the tendency is to go, to leave, to vamoose, to disappear, to take off, to piss off ... to scram. Why are children suddenly running away from home? Where are they going? What are their chances of getting to their destination? What are their chances of turning stone into gold in the wilderness?

To look at the current migration trend from the African continent and the Middle East, it seems to me that we must go back to examine the socio political and economic dynamics of most of these African and Middle Eastern countries. At independence, the young African statesmen and women were full of ambition; they set out to right the wrongs of colonialism. Political speeches across the board in the world's second largest continent were made in different colonial languages: English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. They all had one main theme: criticism of the coloniser and promises of freedom, education, economic prosperity, improvement of living standards, and you name it — a continent has truly been born, born from the ashes of slavery and colonisation! Listening to the early African leaders, one would imagine that they were well equipped to turn Africa into a paradise. '... Fellow countrymen,' they would say, 'our country was, for many centuries, deprived of its manpower when millions of our brothers and sisters were captured and taken into slavery to work in plantations in the Americas and to build the city of Paris. They toiled in Europe, suffered in the sugar plantations of the Americas from dusk to dawn, they were tortured in Alabama, and some were killed in Araouna sold like objects to either die in the sea or arrive in chains to work as slaves. This was followed some centuries later by the partition of Africa in the Berlin conference of 1884 when colonial powers shared our continent and plundered our resources: gold from Ghana the gold coast, ivory from the Ivory Coast or Cote D'Ivoire, uranium from Niger, copper from the Congo, timber from Cameroon, Gabon, and Congo, diamonds from South Africa and Namibia, and copper from Zambia! They even took the liberty to name our countries and referred to our continent as the 'Dark Continent.' You are all living witnesses of the scourge of colonisation; the coloniser came to our continent under the pretext that he was on a mission of civilisation. They came with the Bible in one hand and the gun in the other. Where our people refused to give in to their wishes, they used brute force to subdue them leaving thousands dead. For close to a century, they plundered the resources of our continent. Some colonisers adopted a divide and rule policy while others adopted a policy of assimilation, yet there were others who never considered us as human beings. To them, it was a matter of exterminating the African as they did to the American Indians and the Aborigines of Australia. All these had just one objective — plunder our resources....

Today we are free! Oh, thank God we are free! We shall lay emphasis on the education of our children by building schools and colleges and social infrastructures. We shall make agriculture the base of our economy. The future of our economy lies in the exportation of raw materials for European industries. We shall develop agro-based industries because political independence without economic independence is meaningless. My government has initiated a five-year development plan, which will lead our country to its development. God bless Africa!"

The intentions of the newly independent African leaders were undoubtedly very good. What really went wrong? Were they poorly educated? Were they inexperienced politicians? Did they run short of resources or ideas to foster the development of their countries? Was there any struggle for power in the newly independent African states? Were these African leaders given the free mantle to rule or did they come under the influence of the former colonial empire? It is true that the first African leaders were not all university graduates; this was not only common to Africa because many European leaders at the time did not really need to acquire university education to become good leaders. The level of education could, therefore, not be the measuring rod. There were African leaders like Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal, or Chief Doctor Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria who were very well educated. They all had the interest of their people at heart. They embarked on the building of schools, colleges, and universities in their respective countries. Civil servants worked across borders in different African countries to foster the development of the continent, Ghanaians worked in Nigeria, and Senegalese did the same in Côte d'Ivoire.

Talking about experience, it will be wrong to say that these African politicians did not have the requisite experience to rule their countries. Just how experienced were European leaders who ruled their own countries? European countries were driven by frustration after the Second World War to grant independence to African countries. We saw European leaders who plunged the world into disaster and brought misery to their own people. Europe was a heap of rubble at the end of the Second World War. African leaders were as experienced as they needed to be. They took stock of the past of their countries, worked to solve the problems of illiteracy, poverty and disease, and had a vision for their people. But what went wrong? What really went wrong?

Africa is endowed with a lot of natural resources; it is completely wrong to refer to it as a poor continent. From Cape to Cairo, the continent is endowed with riches which accounted for more than 70 per cent of Europe's source of raw materials even before the beginning of the twentieth century. Europe took cognizance of the fact that Africa was a very important source of raw materials for its industry. Consequently, the Europeans did not leave Africa bag and baggage. The French, for instance, signed doubtful security and economic agreements with their former colonies, which gave them access to the natural resources of these countries; they control the currency of these countries. In fact, the French held their former colonies by their balls. Britain and the rest of Europe were quick to come up with economic groupings, which defended their interests; it was a stranglehold on the continent. The consequence of this was that African countries produced a lot of natural resources with the risk of depleting most of these resources. They had no say in determining the prices of the raw materials they produced. This, undoubtedly, was to have dire consequences on their economies. In certain cases, it led to serious economic problems followed by political upheavals. We can, therefore, trace some of the earliest military coup d'états in Africa to the unfair world economic order in the 1960s and 1970s. There may be other causes to these coups, I must admit. Most of them were however, provoked by the deplorable economic situation in many of these African countries, poor governance, the ambition of the military and interference from the former colonial powers.

Because these raw materials are of tremendous importance to European industries, some European countries went as far as instigating social unrest in some African countries so as to implant puppet leaders, who would yield to their demands. This led to the era of coup sponsors in the continent. If Nigeria were to be taken as an example, this country was one of the world's leading producers of some natural resources: palm oil, groundnuts, timber, oil, cotton, etc. Between 1965 and 1975, the country experienced nothing less than three coups and one of the bloodiest civil wars on the continent. The situation in Ghana was very similar. Indeed, each time Europe sneezed, Africa caught a cold, irrespective of the climatic conditions.

If Europe's greed for natural resources accounted for a fair share of the woes of the continent, Africans themselves are not exempt from blame. In many of the independent African countries, many politicians wanted to enrich themselves and their family members to the detriment of the rest of the people. This caught the attention of the increasingly educated Africans. Political leaders realised that it was necessary to satisfy their entourage, members of their political party or the ruling junta, tribes' men, and other influential members of the society. It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous situation in a continent with a multiplicity of tribes. The danger of tribalism cannot be overemphasized. It was one of the root causes of the civil war in Nigeria, when Colonel Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu declared the secession of Biafra from the rest of Nigeria. It was 'to save his people from persecution.' It must be admitted that Ibo greed in Nigeria pushed the Ibos to monopolise some of the key positions in the country. Tribalism is also responsible for one of the greatest massacres, i dare say genocide in the Great Lakes region of the continent.

Is tribalism the only weakness of African leaders? Well I do not think so. Let us look at governance. At independence, no one in Africa heard anything about transparency international. As bribery and corruption grew beyond leaps and bounds, it became evident that some African countries were among the most corrupt in the world. We insist that Europe is partly responsible for Africa's poor economic situation today, and the poor economic situation gave rise to bad governments and civil strife.

The overriding question is how do we get the continent out of this quagmire? There have been several suggestions; there are some who believe that Africa's problems can only be solved by Africans themselves. I do not think these people have answered the question. Some say Europe and America should pay reparations for colonisation and slavery. I do not think this will solve Africa's problem either; there are yet others who call for increased development aid for the continent. This is far from being a solution, if we consider the fact that development aid accounts for less than 0.005 per cent of the continent's development.

From the way I see it, there can be no development without the will to develop. This must stem from good leadership. For a good leader to succeed, the grounds must be prepared to carry out his set objectives. There is a need to overhaul the administrative, traditional, educational, and social machinery everywhere on the continent. Every effort must be geared toward development. Africa does not lack resources. These resources must, however, be utilised judiciously for the continent's development. Europe must cease to play a pretentious role, that of solving Africa's problem through development aid while at the same time draining the continent of its only source of foreign exchange. Europe must desist from supporting corrupt African politicians, who serve Europe's interest to the detriment of their own people. How do we explain the fact that some European countries and even the United States of America claim that they have a mission to promote democracy in the world, yet they extend the red carpet treatment to African dictators, who have been ruling and plundering the economies of their countries for more than twenty four or even thirty years?

Many Africans think the rise of China may work in their favour; this is wishful thinking. China needs raw materials from Africa just as the Europeans. Of course, they will compete for Africa's diminishing raw materials, and if care is not taken, it will only give rise to more conflicts. China's rapid expansion in the next ten years will require almost all of Africa's natural resources; unfortunately, this must be shared by all the wolves. Perhaps China could propose fairer trade deals with African countries, but Africa must be able to come up with the right economic, political, and social solutions to its present problems.

Some of the consequences of the economic and political situation on the continent can be seen in the lives of the citizens of these countries. People are forced to flee their countries as a result of war, starvation, unemployment, tribalism, natural disaster, persecution, and brain drain. Yes, brain drain. It is common knowledge that Europe will implement a selective immigration policy, where only educated Africans will be allowed into Europe; thereby, depriving the continent of its skilled manpower. We know that America has been carrying out the same policy for many decades. I, therefore, cannot understand why Sarkozy's proposal for France to adopt a selective immigration policy shocked so many people. He was simply trying to let people see what has been going on for several decades.

Europe is facing the spectre of a declining population and will need to turn to Africa or Eastern Europe to fill the gap. The question is, must it be the educated Africans? If all educated people left the continent, it would worsen the socio-economic situation of Africa and make no mistake about it, this will lead to more migrations towards Europe; this phenomenon has already started. If young Senegalese and Malians come up with a slogan 'Europe or death,' it is because they have been made to believe that Europe has the panacea to all their problems. Boatmen with overloaded wooden canoes, which are barely sea worthy, leave the coast of Mauritania and recently even the coast of Senegal for Spain. The Spanish government had in the past exerted a lot of pressure on Morocco and Libya, which were the main transit points for African immigrants, most of them, from Africa south of the Sahara. Overwhelmed by the situation, the same Spanish government regularised the situation of several thousands of illegal African immigrants. Many perished in the high seas and never got to Spain, some were alleged to have been killed by Moroccan and Libyan security forces. This is a continent with plenty of natural and human resources; a continent plundered by colonisation; a victim of the slave trade, this is a continent that is now a victim of neo-colonialism; a continent that is once again losing its sons and daughters- this time into an economic Diaspora through the Sahara and the Mediterranean.

A young man aged about eighteen, thin, tall dark, and dressed in a pair of very old dirty and torn jean trousers and a tee shirt, whose original colour could not be determined with precision, entered the house at about 5.30 p.m. His hair was overgrown, unkempt, and his body was scaly and dirty. I thought I smelt something strange once he entered the house; I mean he came in with on odour. Frida and I raised our heads and looked at the strange figure.

He smiled and said, 'Good afternoon!'

I thought a mad man wouldn't be that civil. 'I am Joe's friend,' he announced.

'Hey! You mean Joe?' Frida asked, reassured that she did not have to deal with a mad man in her parlour.

'So you know Joe? Where is he? Where did you meet him? Is he dead?' She asked the stranger all at the same time.'

'Joe is my friend. We have been living together for the past six months, and he is alive and kicking. I just decided to come and see my old father in the village. I met a traveller who told me he was very sick, and I managed to raise transport money with the help of friends and sympathisers. I got to my village at Dikome Baliwe on Tuesday last week, and the first thing I saw was a mound of red soil in front of our compound and a crowd of people. He was buried a few hours before I got there.'

'Rose! Rose! Come and greet Joe's friend.' Frida's younger sister rushed into the house and stopped all of a sudden when she saw the strange figure.

'Give him some food,' Frida added then she turned to the young man and said, 'Accept our sympathy.'

The young man swallowed the fufu and eru in record time. He was undoubtedly famished. It was a traditional meal made of cooked cassava that was pounded and made in lumps. It was eaten with some wild vegetable from the equatorial forest prepared with palm oil, prawns, and fish or meat. It is a very popular meal in Nigeria and Cameroon and some West and Central African countries.

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Excerpted from Beyond the Sahara by Agbor Emmanuel. Copyright © 2016 Agbor Emmanuel. Excerpted by permission of Partridge Africa.
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