Geopolitics of Africa (T. Marshall), Guide, Progetti e Ricerche di Geopolitica

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The Geopolitics of Africa Facts about Africa: ● 90% of the world’s malaria cases occur here ● There’s a small country within South Africa’s borders, it’s called Lesotho ● More than 50% of the world’s French-speaking population lives here on the continent ● Ethiopia is the only African country with its own alphabet, it’s called Ge’ez ● The world’s biggest frog lives in Cameroon, it’s known as the Goliath frog ● About 30% of the Earth’s natural mineral resources can be found here ● Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Americas ● Niger has the youngest population on average at 14,5 years ● Angola has more Portuguese speakers than Portugal ● The Second Congo War claimed over 5.4 million lives ● Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s only Spanish-speaking country ● Almost 40% of adults in Africa are illiterate, two third of them are women ● Some of the African countries are known as the most corrupt countries in the world, such as Somalia, South Sudan, Libya, Guinea Bissau, Angola, Eritrea, and Burundi just to mention a few examples. Mercator map true proportions (animation image) https://preview.redd.it/96ptbqzyfrr11.gif?overlay-align=bottom,left&overlay-pad=8,16& crop=800:418.848167539,smart&overlay-height=0.10&overlay=%2Fv9vyirk6hl221.png %3Fs%3Db466421949eb723078743745ce6421609d7a9c66&width=800&height=418.848 167539&s=27175644b5a9e185b9e14449ab5729211d998747 Distorted vs. Undistorted view (CNN) https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/18/africa/real-size-of-africa/index.html Book Africa is not technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe, for many reasons: ● First runners, developed in isolation (​Jared Diamond​) — ideas exchanged east-west but not north-south. ● Different cultures in isolation (being a continent) ● Rivers (waterfalls) and coastline without harbors. Distortion: the standard mercator map (puts everything on a flat surface). If we don’t consider the real shape of the continent, we are unable to understand how important it was to round the Cape of Good Hope or the Suez Canal. ​Africa is three times larger than the United States​. Greenland seems the same size as Africa, while it is fourteen times smaller! The African continent covers an area of 30,065,000 square kilometers, with a 30,539 kilometer long coastline. It comprises 54 countries, with an overall population of over one billion people. How to understand its geography: divide in the first one-third and bottom two-thirds. ● TOP THIRD​ (Mediterranean coastlines — Sahel) ○ North African Arabic-speaking countries ○ Sahara (world’s largest desert) ○ Sahel region (semiarid, more 3000 miles, from Gambia on the Atlantic to Niger, Chad, Eritrea and the Red Sea. Sahel (arabic ​sahil​) = shore (of the sand sea of Sahara). In the first top third the majority of people are ​muslims​, and the influence of Islam diminishes as we go south. It includes what for the arabs is called ​Maghreb ​(​the western part of the Arab world​). Usually a distinction is made between North Africa and Sahel ● BOTTOM TWO THIRDS ○ Jungle ○ Congo and Central African Republic ○ Great lakes in Uganda and Tanzania (EAST) ○ Desert in Angola and Namibia (WEST) ○ South Africa (almost 5000 miles from Mediterranean) Africa is where all humanity originated. With the resources it had, Africa could have surpassed the few European tribes since the beginning. However, what changed everything was a set of ​diseases ​(malaria, yellow fever) brought by the heat and fueled by crowded living conditions and poor health-care infrastructures. Sub-Saharan africa has been more hit than South America for the presence of mosquitos, for example. RIVERS. There is a waterfall every few miles, since they begin in highland and descend fastly — this is a problem for ​navigation​ (can’t be used as trade routes). This has ​hindered contacts and trade between the regions ​(in Europe we have Danube and Rhine). The continent’s great rivers (Niger, Congo, Nile, Zambezi) don’t connect, this means: ​no unifying language​ (no lingua franca for helping trade). EXCHANGE OF IDEAS AND TECHNOLOGY. This exchange did not touch sub-Saharan Africa for thousands of years. However, many empires did arise (ex. Mali Empire). However, these were isolated to relatively small blocs. How have the Americans and French responded? ● American bases ● Francophone africa ● Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad currently coordinating their military with US. — ​ANGOLA Angola​ ​is the second largest oil producer (former portuguese colony). 22 million population mostly in the western part. American companies own the rings on the atlantic, but more than half of the output ends up in China. ​Angola is second (after Saudi Arabia) biggest supplier of crude oil to the Middle Kingdom​. ● War for independence ended in 1975 ● Civil war between tribes — proxy war: ○ Russia+Cuba supported the socialists (most from the Mbundu tribe) ○ US+South Africa supported the rebels (tribes Bakongo and Ovimbundu). ● Mbundu with geographical but not numerical advantage. Prevailed in 2002. CHINA​. ⅓ of Chinese oil imports comes from Africa (along with metals). European and American oil companies are involved too, but China is gaining more and more sace. ​China Road and Bridge Corporation​, which is state-funded and aims to build this $14 billion railroad to c​onnect Mombasa to Nairobi​. 36 hours reduction to 8 hours in time to travel between the two cities, 60% less in transport costs. There are other plans regarding connections Nairobi-Sud Sudan, etc. Examples (p.134-5): ● China and TANZANIA. ​Contracts signed with the Chinese to assume a position of leader state in the area, for example regarding the port of Bagamoyo, which will be able to handle 20 million cargo containers in a year. ● KENYA​. Powerhouse of the five-nation East African Community (40% of the region’s GDP). More efficient industrial system and destined to become the dominant regional power, if can maintain regional stability. ● China and NIGER​. National Petroleum Corporation (chinese) investing in the oil fields of Tenere in the center of the country. ● China and Luanda​, Constructing an international airport, with huge apartments building. Chinese involvement is attractive for many countries in the continent. Big Chinese Companies don’t ask for too many human rights protections, don’t demand economic reforms, etc. Example: China is Sudan’s biggest trading partner, and China protects Sudan in the UN, especially president al-Bashir even when there was an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Western criticism: ​hypocrisy? Problems: ● Fueling local tensions ● Chinese workforces often brought in to assist big projects. SOUTH AFRICA​ is China’s biggest trading partner. It is second largest after Nigeria. Way more developed than other states due to: ● Access from two oceans ● Gold natural wealth ● Climate and land allowing for large-scale food production ● Highland, population not suffering from malaria (mosquitoes find it difficult to breed there) South Africa possesses an efficient transportation system, and the Chinese railway from Katanga to the Angolan coast is also a challenge to its dominance. However, it looks destined to maintain its advantage. Angola is trying to catch up with South Africa, but the competition is quite impossible. In the past, controlling South Africa meant controlling Cape of Good Hope ad thus sea-lines between Atlantic-Indian oceans. In Ethiopia, China has funded two railways projects;​ Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit ​and Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway​. Massive projects funded by China: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/here-are-150-million-rand-projects-in-africa-funded-by-chi na-2018-9 THE NEW SCRAMBLE​, two-prolonged: 1. From the outside (China) 2. “Scramble within”, South Africa Scramble of South Africa: ● Dominates the SADC (Southern African Development Community) ● Permanent place in the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (NOT even a member) ● EAC member (rival to SADC) Tanzania closer to South Africa (?). ● South African National Defence Force sent in DRC under the UN, but practically to ensure that South Africa is not left out from the soils of war in that mineral-rich country. ...TODAY? ​Huge progress despite all these problems. The same rivers creating problems for trade are now used for electricity, oil richness, etc. Nevertheless… ● Poverty, healthcare and education problems Economic point of view. Many countries are english-speaking, being an advantage, but note that ​economic growth in many countries is dependent on global prices for minerals and energy​. A fall in prices has huge consequences. Manufacturing-output levels are close to the 70s. ​Corruption ​remains a problem in the continent. But railroads connect very diverse spaces. Estimate: Sub-Saharan Africa currently holds 1.1 billion people, by 2050 they may double to 2.4. “The New Scramble for Africa” (The Economist) https://www.google.it/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2019/03/07/the-new-scramble-for-a frica The first great surge of foreign interest in Africa, dubbed the “​scramble​”, was when 19th-century European colonists carved up the continent and seized Africans’ land. The second was during the cold war​, when East and West vied for the allegiance of newly independent African states; the Soviet Union backed Marxist tyrants while America propped up despots who claimed to believe in capitalism. ​A third surge, now under way, is more benign.​ Outsiders have noticed that the continent is important and becoming more so, not least because of its growing share of the global population (by 2025 the un predicts that there will be more Africans than Chinese people). Governments and businesses from all around the world are rushing to strengthen diplomatic, strategic and commercial ties. This creates vast opportunities. If Africa handles the new scramble wisely, the main winners will be Africans themselves. The extent of foreign engagement is unprecedented. Start with ​diplomacy​. From 2010 to 2016 more than 320 embassies were opened in Africa, probably the ​biggest embassy-building boom​ anywhere, ever. Turkey alone opened 26. Last year India announced it would open 18. ​Military ties are deepening​, too. America and France are lending muscle and technology to the ​struggle against jihadism in the Sahel​. ​China is now the biggest arms seller to sub-Saharan Africa and has defence-technology ties with 45 countries.​ Russia has signed 19 military deals with African states since 2014. Oil-rich Arab states are building bases on the Horn of Africa and hiring African mercenaries. Commercial ties ​are being upended. As recently as ​2006 Africa’s three biggest trading partners were America, China and France​, in that order. ​By 2018 it was China first, India second and America third​ (France was seventh). Over the same period Africa’s trade has more than trebled with Turkey and Indonesia, and more than quadrupled with Russia. Trade with the European Union has grown by a more modest 41%. The biggest sources of foreign direct investment are still firms from America, Britain and France, but Chinese ones, including state-backed outfits, are catching up, and investors from India and Singapore are eager to join the fray. The stereotype of foreigners in Africa is of neocolonial exploiters, interested only in the continent’s natural resources, not its people, and ready to bribe local bigwigs in shady deals that do nothing for ordinary Africans. The stereotype is sometimes true. Far too many oil and mineral ventures are dirty. Corrupt African leaders, of whom there is still an abundance, can always find foreign enablers to launder the loot. And contracts with firms from countries that care little for transparency, such as China and Russia, are often murky. Three Russian journalists were murdered last year while investigating a Kremlin-linked mercenary outfit that reportedly protects the president of the war-torn Central African Republic and enables The comparison with Shenzhen may not be so far-fetched, says the China-Africa specialist Lauren Johnston of New South Economics. “Would visitors to Shenzhen in 1980 have believed what would be unlocked by that sleepy port?” she says. “Bagamoyo could become an industrial gateway not only for youth-filled Tanzania but half a dozen landlocked African countries. There are parallels.” The proposed radical transformation of the Bagamoyo coastline is an unofficial extension to east Africa as part of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative – and is just the latest in a long line of China-in-Africa projects. Ahead of next month’s China-Africa summit, foreign minister Wang Yi is inviting African leaders to “get on board the fast train of development”. It is now nine years since China overtook the US as Africa’s largest trading partner. Although Kenya and Ethiopia were the only two African nations among the 30 countries signing economic and trade agreements at the Belt and Road Forum (Barf) in Beijing in May last year, China has been busy on the continent. The flagship Belt and Road project is Kenya’s 290-mile railway from the capital, Nairobi, to the port city of Mombasa, which opened to the public last year. There are plans to extend that network into South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi; it was already the country’s largest infrastructure project since independence. Meanwhile, landlocked Ethiopia got a 470-mile electric railway from its capital, Addis Ababa, to the port in the neighbouring dictatorship of Djibouti. The £2.5bn project – financed by a Chinese bank and built by Chinese companies – opened in January. Addis’s new light rail system, too, was funded and built by China, and operated by Shenzhen Metro Group. And Djibouti, in exchange for major investments, preferential loans, a pipeline and two airports, got China’s first overseas military base. While east Africa has been the main focus of Belt and Road on the continent, Chinese infrastructure projects stretch all the way to Angola and Nigeria, with ports planned along the coast from Dakar to Libreville and Lagos. Beijing has also signalled its support for the African Union’s proposal of a pan-African high-speed rail network. Where does China in Africa end, and Belt and Road begin? Professor Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute, says the definition is vague – but getting too caught up in that misses the point. “If you’d like a project to be Belt and Road, it can be Belt and Road,” he says. “You can fit anything into it. It’s a way of getting support for your project.” Mao’s mega-project reborn? The new port of Bagamoyo could see the revival of what Tsang calls “the very first China in Africa mega-project”: the Tazara railway line, stretching from the copper mines of Zambia to Dar Es Salaam. Tazara dates back to the 1960s, when Chairman Mao Zedong won friends on the continent by supporting anti-colonial movements such as that of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. The 1,100-mile railway opened to much fanfare in 1976 – it was the first infrastructure project conceived on a pan-African scale. Four decades later, the once-grand station in Dar Es Salaam stands empty most days, its missing ceiling panels exposing rotting beams and allowing water to pool on the floor. Two rusty trains a week rattle up and down the line. In the cavernous main hall, a few people wait under broken TV screens for an express service which is running nine hours late. But the old line could “shine again”, promised former Chinese ambassador Lu Youqing. There is a proposed extension to Bagamoyo, and a plan to link a revamped Tazara to landlocked Malawi, Rwanda, and Burundi. The railway’s chief executive has talked excitedly of 125mph trains. The key difference is that Tazara was mostly paid for by Chinese aid money – a significant investment given how impoverished China was at the time. Whether branded Belt and Road or not, virtually every new project is now funded by Chinese commercial loans. There have been concerns about these loans. Research by the Centre for Global Development found Djibouti was among eight Belt and Road countries significantly or highly vulnerable to debt distress from the loans – with IMF figures showing its public external debt swelling from 50% to 85% of GDP in two years. Before his visit to Africa in March, former US secretary of state Rex Tillerson accused China of predatory loan practices; when she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton warned of China’s “new colonialism”. Four months into the job, Tillerson’s successor Mike Pompeo is yet to visit. Though China loaned a whopping $95.5bn on the continent between 2000 and 2015, researchers at the China Africa Research Initiative found most of this was spent addressing Africa’s infrastructure gap. Some 40% of the Chinese loans paid for power projects, and another 30% went on modernising transport infrastructure. The loans were at comparatively low interest rates and with long repayment periods. “The risk for African borrowers relates to the project’s profitability,” says Cari director Deborah Bräutigam. “Will they be able to generate enough economic activity through these projects to repay these loans? Or are the projects seen more as ribbon-cutting opportunities? The Chinese believe that ports and special economic zones are a ‘win-win’ development tool. It’s what they did at home at an earlier stage of their development.” Many African people certainly see grounds for optimism. Almost two-thirds of Tanzanians view China favourably, compared with less than half of Europeans and Americans, according to the Pew Research Center. As Bagamoyo readies for a seismic transformation from sleepy town to mega-port, the residents seem to feel unanimously positive. From the taxi drivers in the old town in their starched white kanzu cotton robes to the fashionable young restaurant manager, all were confident they would profit from more businesses, more offices, more jobs, more money. The original masterplan includes talk of schools and health centres, playgrounds and fibre-optic broadband. Even the fishermen – whose quiet lives look set to be turned upside down – seem optimistic. Despite concerns that the compensation already paid in connection with the special economic zone was not enough to relocate, most thought the new wealth would somehow trickle down. “It will bring many benefits,” says Ibrahim Chamume as we shelter under a thatched roof from a tropical downpour. His first child died young but he and his wife hope to have more. “Even if I do not prosper, they will.” SEE: CHINESE SILK ROAD PROJECT