How does the diversification of African partnerships with the East and West obstruct the continent’s development path?

Even as the Euro-American stellionate collapses under its own weight and two-faced diplomacy signs its own bankruptcy, at the same time, Africa is charting its own paths to sovereignty beyond the impasse of hybrid partnerships.

How can we seek advice from those who theorized the partitioning of a continent in Berlin in 1884-1885 without inviting a single African? How can we compare ourselves, in terms of development, to powers that have prohibited local industrialization to preserve their markets, as the French Colonial Pact imposed from the eighteenth century onwards and the Indigenous Code extended into the twentieth?

The heresy of hybridization

Africa has been making a major strategic error since the sham independences of the 1960s. Equating the former colonial powers with Eastern actors is sheer blindness. The simultaneous diversification of partnerships neutralizes any development dynamic, especially since it forces historical arsonists and pragmatic builders to coexist. On the one hand, colonial Europe and its American shadow deploy a sophisticated extortion apparatus, disguised under the worn rags of liberalism, thus perpetuating structural mechanisms of subjugation. On the other hand, Eastern powers deploy an economic pragmatism based on tangible achievements, effectively breaking the captivity of the continental market. This juxtaposition clearly creates a clash of systemic incompatibility. Strategies for national emancipation directly collide with historically maintained networks of dependence.

This naive balancing act is a fatal obstacle, since no nation builds its sovereignty with those whose model is based on its own subjugation. The West seeks to subjugate Africa by transforming it into an exclusive supply reserve. Every African industrial initiative is subjected to subtle sabotage. Every euro supposedly “invested” by the transatlantic bloc is a grappling hook driven into African sovereignty to paralyze any industrialization. Conversely, the arrival of Eastern partners breaks up postcolonial monopolies. However, persisting in maintaining the former guardians in decision-making processes negates the benefits of this openness. For, trying to reconcile these two worlds is a tragic dilettantism. One does not negotiate one’s emancipation with the master........

© New Eastern Outlook