Investing in Africa’s Future: Reversing the Effects of Historical Exploitation
This post relates to our need to understand that racism in America is a global phenomenon because, as countries, we are all connected by using our resources via trade. You have seen these ads:
“Each time you purchase a [pick your luxury product], a portion of the proceeds goes into programs that help restore the land and lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, we do more than just that. We donate endless hours to build schools, empower communities, and teach them about modern Western ways.”
The ad is usually stamped with images of an African woman with a child on her back, a group of black people dressed in their dusty work clothes all lined up for a group photo, or the one where black people are made to hug white people with great appreciation on their faces for their gratitude of whiteness. The ads usually do not show when these same people are dressed for a date to hang out with their friends or go to church when they look clean and fresh.
First of all, those photos are racist and misleading. They do not tell the whole story. None of those ads and commercials begging for donations for African countries in conflict ever talk about how they get into conflict and how many wars have been orchestrated to ensure they remain poor. I have yet to see a commercial for donation to Africa that says how they will reverse the effect of the plundering of African resources, crimes committed by Europeans during colonialism and often still committed today by their descendants.
Where are the ads about European countries destabilizing African governments so they could keep their military in force to protect their extraction of minerals needed for nuclear weapons, power plants, metal companies, minerals, precious metals and stones, and commodities on a stock exchange that they control, not the Africans who produce it? Where are the commercials that point out that without Africa, much of Europe and America would be in darkness or without their precious stones?
Why do they need the precious stones anyway? Is this a spillover from the decked gowns and diamond-studded crowns of the various European royal families and the aspiration of their loyal subjects to look and live like them? I read this once in a book called Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. It was a eureka moment because I could not understand why the plundering was necessary. White people could pay a fair price for the resources they need. But the plundering and conquering create desperation, so we end up with regions in civil conflict and pictures where the white people seem to be giving back to the poor helpless black Africans.
This centuries-old practice of looting and returning to give donations and aid after one has colonized and carved up the continent only feeds the need to play the good Christian hero — the great white hope trope. It does not truthfully help, as decades of this behavior of pirating, then giving aid have proven. Leave Africa alone and stop stealing, and it will develop. Stop sending missionaries and other soldiers of subjugation into the continent to brainwash as a prelude to taking resources.
Also, be genuinely anti-racist. Pay the Africans a fair market price for their commodities. Work with them in the lead to forge systems and institutions they never had a chance to develop because they were always fighting to survive the onslaught of pillaging. Stop taking pitiful pictures of the poorest black people you can find for your social media and company website to show how ethical you are.
Get the African-white people you do business with to be your on-the-ground anti-racist advocates as part of your business model. Let the African producers decide on the price of their products, not some faraway MBA-white graduate in a stock market exchange in one of the major financial capitals. These guys (and they are typically white guys) often never stepped foot on the continent, much less on a cocoa field, for which they are determining the global commodity price. If you want to donate to schools, use the same institutions to teach them how to price their output so your white company pays a fair price.
Stop showcasing their culture, clothes, and languages as if they are the weirdest and their governments the most corrupt in the world. Instead, let them teach you about African traditions, technology, architecture, and history. You may learn something valuable. White plundering and land grabbing from indigenous people are no less corrupt. If you want to donate, share technology and innovations that you have used their inputs to feed on for centuries. Set up investments like Silicon Valley at the source of the minerals most used in technology.
To be authentically anti-racist, we must educate ourselves on these issues to understand our decisions. We vote for the world we want through our spending patterns. Buy from black companies whenever feasible. I encourage black and white people to visit different African countries with a view to learning, not judging. Sure, some are poor, and the people are desperate because of centuries of colonial looting.
However, despite this, many have prospered. They are doing well despite interference in their culture and economy by foreign religions, the private sector, foreign governments, and do-as-I-say strings attached to development aid. Some visionary leaders still exist, while many from the past have been murdered for trying to free themselves from neo-colonialism. We must understand how these work to be authentically anti-racist.
