In many African states, each borrowed dollar creates less than a dollar. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGA
Last week I was reading about a lucky Spanish
woman – a centenarian who survived the great flu of 1918 and recently
recovered from Covid-19. But then I realised millions of us in Africa do
not have to be envious of her. For if you were born before 1979 when
Zimbabwe became Africa’s last country to get independence from an
external force, then you too are living through two great episodes:
Decolonisation and now the recolonisation of Africa.
Understandably,
the local agents of the second colonisation can argue for hours, days,
or even years that it is not taking place. Why shouldn’t they? After
all, the second colonisation does not look like the first one. Just like
the ‘new normal’ of changing lifestyles and work methods after
Covid-19, the new colonisation which is underway is executed differently
from the first. But the key elements are the same.
First
of all, as pan Africanists do not tire from telling us, colonisation
was made easier by the slave trade which preceded it. They argue that
Africa was easy to conquer because many of its strongest had been taken
away into slavery. At least two sad parallels here.
During
the slave trade, local rulers collaborated with the slave traders by
selling them our own people. Some of the rulers did not see them as
“our” people because they would raid the victims from rival chiefdoms
whom they never viewed as brothers and sisters. In their myopic view,
these were enemies. But some idiots of rulers actually sold their own
people.
Under the ‘new normal’
slavery, incompetent rulers have failed to creatively harness their
resources and economies to create employment for their youth, who in
turn are taking themselves on hazardous journeys across the desert and
the shark infested Mediterranean to deliver themselves to their ‘new
normal’ slavers.
Secondly, just like
there weren’t enough strong people around to resist colonisation after
the slave trade, today a lot of skilled manpower that would have
strengthened African economies has gone away under the so-called
brain-drain. Many relatives and friends of African rulers who have
ruined or neglected their countries’ health systems go abroad for
treatment only to end up in the hands of compatriot medical experts who
fled their mismanaged motherlands. Such rulers’ intellectual friends
then accuse the West of stripping Africa of even its expertise. Whether
the blame for this is on the African rulers or the Western employers,
the result is the same – Africa has been sufficiently weakened enough
for recolonisation.
It would have been tempting to absolve African
leaders of collaboration in the weakening of Africa – the way you can
blame the rich guy for buying your family home for peanuts and rendering
you destitute. But how about blaming your father for selling it for a
song because of his thirst for liquor?
In
my days of active journalism, I interviewed many African officials in
different capitals of our continent. I also had the good fortune to
interact with real human beings in the head offices of big lenders in
Washington DC. What goes on during negotiations for loans to African
governments can be interesting. Forget our perennial complaints of
unfair terms or irrelevance of the loans. The real sinners are the
representatives of the wretched African taxpayers in those technical
meetings. The African officials tend to be so meek, so submissive and in
some cases bored, exhibiting outright disinterest in the negotiations.
Some Africans are keen and firm, but half are not. Those African finance
ministers who talk tough as they deliver annual budgets can be
tongue-tied in London, Paris and Washington.
The
result? Africa contracts loans without any idea how they will be paid.
The very first job of a loan should be to create the capacity to pay
itself directly or indirectly. Development bankers always know how many
dollars each borrowed dollar will create in the economy. In many African
states, each borrowed dollar creates less than a dollar. In some
immorally negotiated loans, the local counter fund put down by the
borrower is actually enough to finance the whole project. But the
‘modern’ loans can even be so evil as they can be collateralised; you
fail to pay on time, the project is taken over by the lender for maybe
99 years. At least these days in Uganda you cannot borrow against your
house without the family members’ consent. Africa’s loans should also
first be subjected to a referendum if the new colonisation is to be
rolled back. Otherwise, it could be over so fast that we might even see
the third episode – the second decolonisation of Africa. But it would
most probably be a futile one – I mean the second decolonisation.
Joachim Buwembo is a Kampala-based journalist. E-mail:buwembo@gmail.com
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