New wave of resource colonialists wish to prey on Africa
The world is facing a new age of quasi-colonialism where, instead of seeking to control land, they are focused on resources. And once again, Africa is the perceived prize.
That’s the view of veteran security expert Simon Carnegie, who spoke to Global South World at the Crans Montana Forum in Casablanca.
Carnegie, founder of risk management firm Thouwd, paints a grim picture where the U.S., Turkey, China and others are competing for agricultural and mineral wealth without regard to the people whose livelihoods those goods represent.
“It's a bit like if you go back to 150, 200 years to the 1860s and that sort of land grab for Africa. And that causes friction and tension … with the countries where are rich in minerals or commodities that people need,” he observes, warning that powerful nations are not looking for sustainable relationships," he told GSW.
“You have the various different countries that are looking to get into some of these Africa, Middle East, wider areas, Central Asia. They compete against each other. You've got the Turks, Turkish, Chinese, you know, American, European and It's essentially the influence that China can have in terms of repaying or paying national debts, taking stakes in land, and they know that some of these countries will never be able to pay that debt back,” he added.
This new form of colonialism may have apparent upsides - Donald Trump’s US administration is brokering peace talks between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to gain access to mineral deposits in the conflict zone - but the long term damage will persist for years if states sign away the future revenues they need to develop.
Several African countries, including South Africa, are enforcing much stricter rules on foreign businesses in a bid to keep wealth onshore. Mali’s foreign minister, Adboulaye Diop, explained to GSW that his country was also implementing tough rules to stop miners from draining all their profits to foreign shareholders.
And Carnegie sees mutual mistrust being one of the key threats to businesses operating in Africa.
“The perception will be that this foreign company will want to come in and take their mineral assets and their perception is it will go back to that sort of colonialism, that period where they come in, take the land, take everything out of it and leave them with nothing."
“And the perception of the investor will be when we go into this country. We're going to be met with hostility, we're gonna be met with bureaucracy, we've got to be met with corruption, we got to be met, you know, and the list goes on."
“If you were to take a step back and look at that and manage that perception from the outset. I think it would be a very different picture.”
Carnegie, a former senior British soldier, points out that the United Arab Emirates, where he is based, is trying to take a more collaborative approach with its investments to avoid tensions and future crises.“They look at it very much from a collaborative approach, where essentially they can go in and work with governments, rather than trying to take advantage of a disadvantaged situation to their long-term gain, so it destabilises,” he says.
