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Africa

Nicaragua’s Remarks At Reparations International Conference

The Transatlantic Trade of Enslaved Africans was a perverse industry fueled by the cruel ambitions of governments, companies and individuals, who for the most part, still refuse to make reparations for the terrible damage inflicted upon the African Continent, on more than 20 million human beings, who for more than 400 years were victims of this scourge, as well as upon all of us, the more than 200 million Afrodescendants, who currently live in the Americas. This blatant crime against humanity was an industry, given its motivation were supply and demand, profit maximization and cost efficiency. Slavery constitutes the most brutal version of capitalism, dehumanizing human beings, legally modifying the status of an individual, to categorize him or her as an object and property of another individual or group of individuals.

The International Decade For People Of African Descent

The International Decade for People of African Descent (IDPAD) is coming to an end on December 31, 2024; there are 2.5 years left to bring it out of the invisibility in which those who decided to organize it have kept it. This invisibility can be seen by consulting the website of the decade . Each entry occupies barely a page in the 7.5 years of its existence. The way it has been treated is a symptom of a structural racism that refuses to tell its name; for this reason, it has not been able to go beyond the boundaries imposed by the international community, some of whose members have shown real opposition to it, on the pretext that their state is free of racism, even if they concede some racial discrimination, but that is where it ends.

Africa Remains At The Center Of A 21st Century Cold War

United States President Joe Biden announced during July that he would host a summit with African leaders at the White House in December. This announcement by Biden comes in the aftermath of several important political developments which have exposed the ineffective foreign policy orientation of the world’s leading capitalist country. Within the United Nations, many African states abstained from two resolutions which condemned the Russian Federation during the early phase of Moscow’s special military operation in neighboring Ukraine. In addition, most African governments have not made pronouncements in favor of the war program of the U.S. Compounding these complicated relationships is the reliance by several AU states on Russian and Ukrainian agricultural products and inputs.

Africans Decry Europe’s Energy Hypocrisy

Europe, one of the largest consumers of Russian gas, is scrambling to find African alternatives as Russia threatens to permanently turn off the taps. Russia’s gas supply to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline was halted for routine maintenance last week, and there are concerns that Russia may not restart it. Moscow has already cut natural gas supplies to Poland, Finland, and Bulgaria, which refused Russia’s demand to pay in rubles. The Bavarian Industry Association forecasts that Germany could lose almost 13 percent of its economic performance in the latter half of this year if Russian gas stops flowing. Facing an energy crisis, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Senegal in May to pursue the development of a gas field that’s expected to open next year.

Behind The Drought And Food Deficits In Africa

There has been a deteriorating situation within various African states related to the impact of drought and the consequent lack of food for hundreds of millions of people. These events on the continent cannot be analyzed separately from the broader international economic and security crises which has impacted the ability of the existing global markets to provide adequate food to the peoples of the world. The acute shortages of food in various regions across Africa have not yet reached the officially designated category of a famine. However, if food assistance is not provided soon, estimates from the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) suggest that tens of millions of people will be on the verge of starvation. WFP officials indicate that their efforts to address the current crisis, particularly in East Africa, would require an additional $192 million to provide the necessary food to prevent hunger.

Global South And North Unite To Stop East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline

On last month’s annual celebration known as Africa Day, activists in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and elsewhere held demonstrations targeting French oil giant TotalEnergies’ involvement in African fossil fuel extraction projects. A main focus of the protests was Total’s proposed East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, which would transport 200,000 barrels of oil per day from western Uganda to export terminals 1,445 kilometers away on the Tanzanian coast. Grassroots organizers in Uganda and Tanzania have been speaking out against EACOP for years, sometimes at great risk to their own safety.

Brutal Attacks On Africans In Morocco Highlights Crisis In Africa

On June 24th, approximately 2000 African migrants made a desperate attempt at a mass border crossing, climbing the iron fence separating Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Footage of African bodies piled up at the foot of the fence, many lifeless, while others were being savagely beaten by Moroccan Security Forces, went viral. To date, the number of African migrants who lost their lives has climbed to 37. We join with those all over the world, to condemn, in the strongest possible terms, this horrific attack by Moroccan security forces.

New Bill That Passed House Reinvokes Old Russian Bogeyman As Pretext For More US Intervention in Africa

During the Cold War, the U.S. government invoked the pretext of Russian interference to justify a range of crimes, including the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the overthrow of Pan-Africanist hero Kwame Nkrumah, the arrest of Nelson Mandela and intervention in the Angolan civil war. Just when we thought that that era had passed, the House of Representatives on April 27 passed the “Countering Malign Russian Influence Activities in Africa” Act by a 415-9 vote. The bill in part would direct the U.S. Secretary of State, using “detailed intelligence,” to identify in Africa “local actors complicit in Russian activities.” The U.S. in turn may very well seek to punish those actors through economic sanctions or even regime change.

Land Grabs And The Propaganda Of Conservation

Amid the unprecedented global ecological crisis, Africa still supports one quarter of the world’s biodiversity and the largest assemblages of megafauna. Indigenous Africans of the rangelands, desert, and forests have always protected their fauna and flora. Land where they exercise traditional rights has proven to be central for global biodiversity conservation. But today they are facing the threat of a colossal land grab by Western conservation agencies, and their corporate and state allies, who advocate to double the coverage of protected areas around the world by setting aside 30 percent of terrestrial cover for conservation by 2030. Protected areas are the national parks, forests, game reserves, and other places from which states evict original inhabitants for biodiversity conservation.

Land In South Africa Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It

In March 2022, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of a ‘hurricane of hunger’ due to the war in Ukraine. Forty-five developing countries, most of them on the African continent, he said, ‘import at least a third of their wheat from Ukraine or Russia, with 18 of those import[ing] at least 50 percent’. Russia and Ukraine export 33% of global barley stocks, 29% of wheat, 17% of corn, and nearly 80% of the world’s supply of sunflower oil. Farmers outside of Russia and Ukraine, trying to make up for the lack of exports, are now struggling with higher fuel prices also caused by the war. Fuel prices impact both the cost of chemical fertilizers and farmers’ ability to grow their own crops.

Chad Declares Food Emergency, International Agencies Sound Alarm

The World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have identified numerous states warranting immediate attention as the problems of climate change, internal conflict, economic downturns and the continuing war in Ukraine are exacerbating the current crisis. In the Sahel region of Africa, the nation of Chad, is challenged by grain supplies which have dropped to dangerous lows forcing the transitional military-dominated government to declare a food emergency requesting that aid be sent into the country to avoid further food deficits. Chad has been severely impacted by drought leaving large areas of farmland unproductive. A landlocked country in Central Africa consisting of 16.4 million people, historically the former French colony has suffered from political instability engendered by its ongoing dependency on Paris and the United States for economic assistance and military involvement.

Africa, The Collateral Victim Of A Distant Conflict

On 25 May 2022, Africa Day, Moussa Faki Mahamat – the chairperson of the African Union (AU) – commemorated the establishment of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) in 1963, which was later reshaped as the AU in 2002, with a foreboding speech. Africa, he said, has become ‘the collateral victim of a distant conflict, that between Russia and Ukraine’. That conflict has upset ‘the fragile global geopolitical and geostrategic balance’, casting ‘a harsh light on the structural fragility of our economies’. Two new key fragilities have been exposed: a food crisis amplified by climate change and a health crisis accelerated by COVID-19. A third long-running fragility is that most African states have little freedom to manage their budgets as debt burdens rise and repayment costs increase.

The Rise Of NATO In Africa

Anxiety about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine. But this is not the only attempt at expansion by NATO, a treaty organization created in 1949 by the United States to project its military and political power over Europe. In 2001, NATO conducted an “out of area” military operation in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years, and in 2011, NATO—at the urging of France—bombed Libya and overthrew its government. NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Libya were the prelude to discussions of a “Global NATO,” a project to use the NATO military alliance beyond its own charter obligations from the South China Sea to the Caribbean Sea.

Biden’s Troop Deployment To Somalia Confirms Africa Is Not Free

The Biden Administration's recent decision to return  U.S. troops to Somalia represents another effort on the part of the U.S. to deny agency and independence to African people. On the 59th commemoration of African Liberation Day, the Black Alliance for Peace expresses its unequivocal opposition to this redeployment. The 500 U.S. troops sent to Somalia are the latest to violate that nation’s sovereignty. As is the case with all U.S. interventions, the underlying reasons are not only depraved but also indifferent to the constant suffering of African people caused by western-induced militarism and war. The reintroduction of the U.S. military (AFRICOM ) on the ground is related to a dispute between Somalia and the U.S. oil company, Coastline Exploration Ltd, over the validity of an oil exploration agreement.

Pan-Africanism Yes! US AFRICOM And NATO No!

We are honored to participate in this annual commemoration of Africa Liberation Day some 59 years after the founding meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Much has transpired since 1963 when more than 30 independent African states held this gathering and pledged to work towards the total liberation of the continent and greater unity among governments throughout the region. Today, the African Union (AU), founded in 2002 in Sirte, Libya, is facing one of the most profound challenges of the post-colonial period. The struggle for the unification of the AU member-states cannot occur absent of the removal of foreign military forces now occupying several geo-political regions.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.