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Africa

Crisis In The Democratic Republic Of Congo

December 30, 2023 Eugene Puryear, Liberation News. , , , , ,
Since 1996, at least 6 million people have been killed in successive conflicts in the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The same conflicts are largely responsible for the 6.9 million internally displaced people in the DRC today, one of the world’s largest populations of IDPs. Successive waves of violence have unfolded against a backdrop of a desperate struggle for the $24 trillion of mineral wealth embedded in Congolese soil. Despite immense wealth, nearly 60 million people — 64% of the country — live on less than $2.15 a day. One in six people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa are living in the DRC.

Kenya At 60: Field Notes From The Neocolony

December 20, 2023 Wairimu Gathimba, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Just four years after independence, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga published Not Yet Uhuru, a seminal political treatise of the new country. 60 years after independence, and 56 years after its publication, one might argue that nothing much has changed. As a nation, we find ourselves still grappling with the question of how Kenya became free with the greater portion of the arable land controlled by a handful of owners even as millions are squatters on their ancestral land.

Africans Should Expel All American Biolaboratories

December 12, 2023 Batko Milacic, Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
It has been learnt that the Pentagon plans to allocate about $34 million between now and 2025 to modernize four US Army Medical Research Department laboratories, a move that could make millions of Africans hostage to deadly biological threats. Biological laboratories, which will be assigned biosafety level four, play an important role in implementing this policy by enabling research on specific agents of deadly diseases such as Ebola, which has a 90 per cent mortality rate, as well as Marburg, Lassa, anthrax, cholera, malaria, yellow fever and chikungunya. That is why 30 microbiologists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Navy’s 3rd Medical Research Unit arrived in Kenya as early as October this year. 

New Mood In The World Will Put An End To The Global Monroe Doctrine

November 24, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , , , , , , , ,
Every day since 7 October has felt like an International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, with hundreds of thousands gathering in Istanbul, a million in Jakarta, and then yet another million across Africa and Latin America to demand an end to the brutal attack being carried out by Israel (with the collusion of the United States). It is impossible to keep up with the scale and frequency of the protests, which are in turn pushing political parties and governments to clarify their stances on Israel’s attack on Palestine. These mass demonstrations have generated three kinds of outcomes.

Why Africans / Black Folks Should Oppose Zionism

November 15, 2023 Djibo Sobukwe, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
Political Zionism is a racist ethno-nationalist imperialist ideology and movement founded in the late 19th century that mis-uses Judaism to justify the settler colonial occupation of Palestinian land as a state reserved only for Jews.[1] Christian Zionism, which actually preceded political zionism, is the belief that the biblical land of Israel should be controlled by Jews thereby ensuring the second return of Jesus which will bring salvation to Christians.[2] Zionism in Africa long preceded the founding of Israel, and the relationship goes back to at least the South African Zionist federation founded in 1898[3].  The Zionist movement considered east African countries for resettling Jews before agreeing on Palestine.

France Has Withdrawn From Niger

October 27, 2023 Ju-Hyun Park, The Real News. , , ,
As of October 23, France completed its military withdrawal from Niger following months of local protests. From 2013 to 2022, France deployed over 3,000 troops to the countries of the G5 Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) as part of a counterterrorism mission known as Operation Barkhane. After coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and now Niger, all three countries have expelled the French presence. While coverage in western media has fixed on the coups themselves, the story on the ground is more complicated. The actions of the coup governments are backed by broad social movements and popular opposition to France’s relationship to the region, which extends far beyond Operation Barkhane.

Eritrea’s Defiance And Independence Remain Its Supreme Crime

October 25, 2023 Dr. Fikrejesus Amahazion, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
During a recent trip to a popular local café in the heart of Asmara, Eritrea I met a tourist from a large Western country. As we sipped on rich, strong coffee, we discussed a variety of topics, ranging from history and the weather to culture, art, and sport. Our wide-ranging discussion also touched upon politics and the generally poor state of reporting by Western mainstream media. It was during this portion of our extended and lively conversation that the visitor explained that they were genuinely flummoxed and increasingly troubled by how so much of the reporting and discourse that they had been exposed to prior to their arrival in our nation had been extremely negative and, as they could now clearly see and judge for themselves first-hand, blatantly wrong. It was, to use their exact words, “as if Eritrea had been targeted.”

We Have, In Africa, Everything Necessary To Become A Powerful, Modern, And Industrialised Continent

October 6, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , , ,
In his 1963 book, Africa Must Unite, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, wrote, ‘We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent. United Nations investigators have recently shown that Africa, far from having inadequate resources, is probably better equipped for industrialisation than almost any other region in the world’. Here, Nkrumah was referring to the Special Study on Economic Conditions and Development, Non-Self-Governing Territories (United Nations, 1958), which detailed the continent’s immense natural resources.

Menendez Bribery Scandal: Egypt Versus Ethiopia

October 2, 2023 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Federal investigators caught New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and his wife Nadine with $180,000 worth of gold bars, $550,000 in cash, plus furniture and a $60,000 Mercedes Benz that they didn’t pay for. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York alleges that these were bribes from three New Jersey businessmen and co-defendants, and that one of them, Egyptian American businessman Wael Hana, also paid $23,000 to bring Nadine Menendez’s mortgage current and promised to put her on the payroll of his corporation for a “low-show-or-no-show” job.

Why Haiti Must Follow The Current Political Lead Of Francophone Africa

September 30, 2023 Pascal Robert, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
There have been nine coups in the past three years in former French colonies in Africa– Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Tunisia and recently Gabon. Some in Francophone Africa have realized something that Haitians once knew over 200 years ago under the leadership of Jean Jacques Dessalines: The meddling in the affairs of an independent nation will not be tolerated simply because the dominion of that nation is under the control of non-white people. This is especially true of people from the global south who have been plundered by the parasitic elites of Europe and their Western progeny since the age of Columbus.

For Peace In The Congo, US And UK Must Hold Their Allies Accountable

September 27, 2023 Kambale Musavuli, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Analyst Kambale Musavuli talks about the latest developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where anger is mounting against the presence of foreign forces. He talks about the recent repression of those protesting the presence of UN forces and explains that the country needs a political situation. This calls for the US and UK to hold to account their allies Rwanda and Uganda who are backing rebel groups in the Congo. Kambale also talks about the recent actions of DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, the distance between his words and deeds, and his close collaboration with Israel.

Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong

September 25, 2023 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Danish journalist Rasmus Sonderriis has spent seven of the last nineteen years living in Ethiopia, beginning in 2004. He just published “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong ,” a free Substack e-book, in which he gets it dead right. This is his account of Western media and officialdom’s disgraceful and deeply damaging deceptions and distortions about the November 2020 to November 2022 Ethiopian civil war, which is now commonly known as the Tigray War. Cutting straight to the chase, he notes that the war began when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked the Northern Command base of the Ethiopian National Defense Force on November 3, 2020, and the government responded, as any government would, by sending in troops to reestablish its legitimate monopoly on the use of force.

Is This The End Of French Neo-Colonialism In Africa?

September 23, 2023 Zoe Alexandra and Vijay Prashad, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , , ,
In Bamako, Mali, on September 16, the governments of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger created the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). On X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Colonel Assimi Goïta, the head of the transitional government of Mali, wrote that the Liptako-Gourma Charter which created the AES would establish “an architecture of collective defense and mutual assistance for the benefit of our populations.” The hunger for such regional cooperation goes back to the period when France ended its colonial rule. Between 1958 and 1963, Ghana and Guinea were part of the Union of African States, which was to have been the seed for wider pan-African unity. Mali was a member as well between 1961 and 1963.

What The Media Is Not Telling Us About West Africa

September 18, 2023 Ramzy Baroud, MintPress News. , , , , ,
What if the “epidemic of coups” in West and Central Africa is not that at all but a direct outcome of outright revolutionary movements, similar to the anti-colonial movements that liberated most African nations from the yoke of Western colonialism throughout the 20th century? Whether this is the case or not, we are unlikely to find out anytime soon, simply because the voices of these African nations are essentially and deliberately muted. For us to understand the real motives behind the spate of military takeovers in West and Central Africa – eight since 2020 – we are, sadly, compelled to read about it in Western media.

Nigerian Trade Unions Go On Two-day Strike Amid Economic Crisis

September 13, 2023 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous state and is listed as having the largest economy on the continent with huge deposits of oil, natural gas and other strategic resources. In possession of these material assets along with the 223 million people that inhabit the West African state, the achievements of Nigeria should be limitless. However, the system of neo-colonialism in Africa, where the national wealth of various states largely benefits imperialism, is still maintaining a dominant position over the labor and resources of the people. This system of exploitation constitutes the major impediment to genuine sovereignty, economic independence and social emancipation.
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