By Jide Akinsemoyin
A report issued in 2020 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) cited a figure of $89 billion, equivalent to 3.7% of Africa’s GDP, “lost to Africa annually through various forms of corrupt practices by Western multinational companies that do business in Africa.” This statistic represents the end game of the Western narrative that has supported Western policy towards Africa over the years since independence. It’s an end game that could not have been achieved and sustained without the co-operation of corrupt, self-interested African leaders, supporting the pursuit of Western interests over and above the national interest of their own countries.
That narrative has been one of a broken continent, where Africans lack the basic skills, capacity, or interest to fix Africa, and whose only recourse is to look to the superior West for help and money to solve its problems. It is a narrative that leverages the legacy of Africa’s colonial past. It is also a narrative that borrows heavily from white supremacy ideas and belief in the natural superiority of lighter skinned races over other racial groups. All this has played a pivotal role in ensuring that the people of the world’s potentially richest continent, remain poor and destitute so that Western multinationals can continue to get unhindered low-cost access to the continents resource wealth.
According to the United Nations Environment programme, Africa, the continent with the world’s youngest population (60% of the continents population is below 25), is home to some 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, 8% of the world’s natural gas and 12% of the world’s oil reserves. It has 40% of the world’s gold and up to 90% of its chromium and platinum. The largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum and uranium in the world are in Africa, along with 65% of its arable land and 10% of its internal renewable fresh water sources.
These statistics tell us why Africa, rather than being the basket case portrayed in the Western media, represents the greatest potential threat to the continued global economic dominance of Western economies. As a result of this threat, the west’s interest cannot be in the prosperity of Africa. The West’s interest can only be in maintaining Africa’s position in the global supply chain as the source of cheap raw materials, and ensuring it remains at the very bottom of the global value chain.
Persuading African people that their continent, despite its huge resource wealth, represents nothing more than a perpetual humanitarian crisis, is made much simpler when those you are persuading are the victims of a colonial legacy that relegated their own culture below that of their European colonisers. It becomes even simpler when ownership of the media organisations creating, controlling and distributing the information underpinning this negative Western narrative to the world, are concentrated in the hands of a few private companies or governments that benefit from that same narrative.
Ben Bagdikian, the Armenian-American news media critic and commentator noted that in 1992, 22 companies owned and operated 90% of the mass media in the USA. By 2014, this number had fallen to just 6 companies. What this indicates is a high level of media ownership concentration in the West today and in the past, whereby a few companies or individuals are able to influence governments and how billions of people think, through the information they create, control and distribute. With no similarly large media organisations on the African side to counter the negative Western narrative, the West was able to impose their version of the African story on the world without challenge. That is until the arrival of social media.
Social media has had a major impact on how we access, share and consume news and other related information. It has also empowered individuals around the world, including Africa, to become “citizen” journalists, through the creation and distribution of news, commentary and information content via social media platforms. With multiple news and information sources available on social media to gain validation or deeper understanding of most issues, social media has been instrumental in countering the previous dominant narrative on Africa that was delivered via Western traditional media.
As a result of social media, African’s now know more about their continents strategic importance to the world and why the world needs Africa more than it needs the world. Apart from its abundant natural and human resources, there is also its rich cultural diversity, its wildlife and its renewable energy sources. An increasingly self-confident Africa now knows more about the famous Benin bronzes, looted by British colonial troops from the Kingdom of Benin in 1897 and of Mansa Musa, the 14th century ruler of the Kingdom of Mali who is widely reputed to be the richest human being who ever lived. They now know more about French colonial legacy and interest in Africa, fueling a wave of anti-French sentiment in its former colonies in West Africa, most recently the coup in Niger in July this year. They have Nollywood and Netflix telling alternative African stories, and blockbuster Hollywood movies like Black Panther: Wakanda forever, portraying a world where it is not too much to believe that a country in Africa can be the most technologically advanced nation in the world. African musicians like Burna Boy, Wizkid and Davido are now global superstars, winning Grammys and taking the Afrobeats music genre to previously unseen levels of acceptance around the world, whilst writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie and Ben Okri are responsible for works that have earned them prestigious literary prizes in Western countries. The role of social media as an enabler for the sharing of these stories cannot be underestimated, specifically as the catalyst for the development of a new African mindset that now demands greater accountability from its leaders, and is no longer influenced by the old Western narrative on Africa.
If negative Western narrative on Africa has become unsustainable then the Western policy on Africa that the narrative supports, must also have become unsustainable. Social media has succeeded in creating a more informed citizenry in Africa that has resulted in a fundamental shift in the relationship that exists between the leadership and the followership. Africa’s leaders, used to promoting the interests of the west and ignoring the development of their own countries, will need to change course in order to align with their people’s demands and the changing landscape of Africa’s economic development. Unlike the Arab spring (a wave of protests and uprisings that took place in North Africa and the Middle East between 2010 and 2011), the pressure for change this time is largely coming from the non-tangible impact on effective governance when the people’s hearts and minds are directly opposed to the policies of the leadership. The alternative then is to use coercion, intimidation and money to govern the populace, an option that may only postpone or worsen, but not ultimately resolve the problems of that country. My own assertion is that given the importance of narrative in supporting Western policy towards Africa over the years, it is inevitable that now that that narrative is broken, Africa will be released on an unstoppable march towards the fulfilment of the very potential the West has denied Africa since the period of independence. There are caveats: African countries need to start acting in their own national interests and believing that together they are stronger as one single economic bloc. They need to do away with the colonial concepts of Anglophone and Francophone Africa forever and begin selecting competent leadership that has the vision to transform the continent from a beacon of under development to a beacon of industrialisation. Only when these conditions are met will Africa be able to finally break free of the legacy of its colonial past.
In response to a changing Africa, the West will need to re-assess its future relationship with African countries and begin developing a new strategy for engagement with the continent. They need to be prepared for tougher negotiations over continued access to the continent’s resources, when a new era of visionary, self-confident, leadership begins to emerge in Africa.
You can reach Akinsemoyin on: +234 706 882 9262 / +44 7887 984382
Email: jide.akinsemoyin@hotmail.com
