Foreign investment in Africa is not all roses or an opportunity to open a bottle of champagne; it is a sober moment to carefully reflect on what we are getting ourselves into.
In the past, we used to decry what we called “conditionalities” to roll back on foreign aid, paring down on our sovereignty, but signs appear we are more willing to exchange that for a chance to spur vacuous economic growth.
This article investigates the impact of foreign investment on African soil and whether we need to tread carefully before we become second citizens in our own countries. The scramble for Africa never ended in Berlin in 1885 but started then and has been unstoppable.
African wealth in natural resources enmeshed in poor leadership that is self-seeking has conspired to ensure exploitative regimes keep deepening their clout without letup.
Now, Africa faces a bigger threat as it embraces more foreign investment. First, it is the enslavement of the mind, attitudes and behaviour, which is a downside of overdependence on foreign investment that goes unnoticed.
We have lost faith in our people’s resourcefulness and believe only foreign intervention can lead us to the Promised Land!
Foreign countries investing in Africa primarily view us as a launchpad to solve their problems. Farmlands are being purchased not to solve African hunger but to ship food to their countries. Other nations look at Africa for diversification from their mono-cropping.
Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE have invested more than USD 110 billion in Africa in the last decade, including in areas such as forest conservation for carbon credits exchanges, farmlands, ports, airports, mining, and others.
The role of Africans in determining their destiny is significantly restrained. In some of those investments, Africans have no role to play, and the contribution of those investments to national economies is still too low to justify the erosion of sovereignty and its accompanying impoverishment.
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As foreign countries continue to invest in Africa, they become “quasi-citizens”, and their interests are affected by what is happening there.
Whether it is politics, elections, civil wars, taxation regimes, or other sensitive policy issues, such investors feel they have a role to play in protecting their interests.
When there is a regime change or a threat of a regime change, foreign investors may feel compelled to take sides to protect their investments. In such situations, sovereignty is the mainstay casualty.
Foreign investors are funnelling campaign funds to support competing sides in local and national elections, becoming unregistered foreign agents whose interests are not declared.
When there is conflict, such as civil wars like those in Sudan, Ethiopia or Libya, some foreign investors pick sides which are deemed to protect their interests.
The Sudanese civil war could have ended a long time ago had foreign investors not meddled and armed warring sides, pitting one side against the other.
While foreign interests play out in the Sudan civil war, what is little acknowledged is the human carnage and life-changing circumstances imposed on the victims of investors’ interests unfolding in their own countries.
Some of the victims end up dead, maimed, dislocated in refugee camps with families torn apart. Some are raped, robbed of their prized assets and reduced to poverty.
Local and national elections perverted by foreign interference cease not being a determinant of the electorate’s will but a stratification of foreign interests.
Such a toxic environment produces puppets that purport to be true representatives of the world’s voters but, in fact, advance, safeguard, and entrench the interests of foreign investors.
We have witnessed cases where local leaders verbally swear loyalty to foreign investors, and the reason given is that they are simply obeying orders from “above” to protect and defend foreign investors.
Since local authorities are on the payroll of foreign investors, perennial ownership of prime assets is common, and insidious extensions are very much on the cards. Cases of government officials picking kickbacks monthly seem to be part of the stratagem to recolonize African prime assets.
As neocolonial vassals across the continent take centre stage, we should expect forceful land expropriation, dislocations and disruptions to assume alarming proportions.
Our leaders will continue crafting laws that will impoverish most of us to accommodate foreign investors.
That will exacerbate social tensions, and since elections will be compromised, the puppets’ pride, arrogance, and avarice will lead to unpopular policies and laws, perpetuating the likelihood of civil wars.
It looks like a possibility that in our generation, Africa will slide into civil wars and commissions of violations of human rights never seen before to shield the unaccountable political class from confronting the negative impacts of their policies.
Foreign investors will take sides, as in the case of Sudan prolonging civil wars that have little to do with the citizens under the fireline.
Elections, if carried out correctly, may pacify Africa. Still, concerted efforts will be made to ensure that most African elections are sham ones: people pretend to vote while the verdict is predetermined.
Strangely, African leaders have been urging their subjects to reproduce without considering that their policies are anti-reproduction.
The population explosion that is landless, jobless and tenting on the outstretches of leased lands to foreigners ends up being a petrol bomb waiting to implode.
As self-induced poverty overwhelms Africa, internal factionalism will tear apart weak institutions of governance, which in turn will stoke civil wars.
Can Africa circumvent internal implosion? Foreign investment ought to be restrained with credible and verifiable elections. If authorities exceed, overstep, or abuse their positions, there must be a legitimate way to contain them.
Without checks and balances, Africa is doomed. Without a mechanism to leash runaway leaders, foreign investors will rule us through their proxies, posing as our democratic representatives while they are not.
Management of African natural resources without accountability, transparency, interactive dialogue, and genuine democracy is akin to lighting a tinderbox in one’s bedroom.
Will we not burn our own houses, whether directly or indirectly, through inaction or dismissing the threats as outside our business? That is an individual decision to consider and make. Real democracy is a choice between forever wars or embracing peace.
Those who call for peace while perpetuating electoral fraud do not know what peace is about. Peace is earned by doing the right thing, but lip service will neither secure nor defend it.
