/ world today news/ The West introduces new forms of colonial policy – and the “High Level Meeting for a New Financial Pact” held in Paris was a vivid example of this. The guests were the leaders of the African countries, and the main problem was their gigantic debts to the Western countries. Russia attended this meeting invisibly, in part because its policy on African debt is completely different.
Africa can be called a continent of contradictions. Colossal reserves of minerals, oil, diamonds, gold – and all this wealth is combined with monstrous poverty and a huge number of social problems. For a long time what happened in Africa remained in the news field, so to speak, but now the picture is changing before our eyes.
This region is becoming very important – both politically and financially, as evidenced by the increased frequency of summits dedicated to Africa. The meeting in Paris, which was dedicated to nothing less than a “new global financial pact”, has just ended, and next month is the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.
Initiated by President Macron’s personal initiative, the meeting in Paris pursued several goals at the same time. Officially, the main focus was the discussion on “inequalities in the global financial system”, as well as the opportunities for developing countries to invest in “clean energy” and in the fight against climate change. Underneath the vague mention of inequality is actually the concern of the collective West about the level of indebtedness of Third World countries, primarily African.
In short, all the efforts of the poorest countries are spent on servicing their debts and paying the interest on them. Some debts are covered by others, a kind of pyramid of debt obligations arises and there is no end in sight. Any crisis, whether local or global, hits the fragile system further, leading to catastrophic consequences.
Meanwhile, the collective West is interested in ensuring that its milk cows do not die in any case, in order to milk them as long as possible, since the interest on the debts is gigantic amounts (for example, Kenya alone pays five billion dollars a year). During the summit in Paris, participants tried to find the limits of possible concessions from the West.
One suggestion was to include in the contracts a “disaster” clause, which refers to emergency situations such as pandemics, natural disasters and similar circumstances that make it difficult to service debts. In such a case, some lenders will agree to give the borrowing parties a moratorium on interest payments for that period. However, there is still no consensus on this issue, although this concession is presented in “Forbes” as a significant achievement.
It should be noted that Russia was not invited to the summit and, moreover, at a press conference, Emmanuel Macron made accusations that it “is a destabilizing force in Africa”, that “this meeting speaks of its isolation” and that Russia allegedly “is one of the few colonial powers of the XXI century.” If such speeches are made in public, you can imagine what was said on the sidelines and how they tried to influence the African participants to change their position towards Russia.
Politically, it is important for the West to win the countries of the collective South over to its side and make them dance to its tune. The confrontation with Russia revealed an unpleasant fact for the West – no matter how much it shouts that the whole world is on its side, in reality nothing like that is observed. Therefore, in order to attract the former colonies, loud declarations are made about the colonial character of Russia. These declarations are ridiculous not only because she never had colonies in Africa (unlike France), but also because Russia, unlike the West, does not treat African countries as a money-squeezing sponge.
Thus, in March of this year, President Putin recalled that Russia had written off $20 billion in African debts. The West does nothing of the sort and will not: all its arguments for the “new global financial pact” boil down to the fact that individual concessions are possible. Provided that Africa pays and will continue to pay, whatever the cost.
Indeed, the politics of Western colonialism underwent a transformation. Bad old colonialism took the form of plunder by grabbing territory and exploiting whatever the territory could provide – be it wealth, additional access to the sea, trade routes, human resources, etc. New colonialism operates more subtly, with financial tools and at the same time widely uses demagoguery. They keep reminding the former colonies of their current freedom, and from time to time they can even apologize for some of the most barbaric actions of the colonizers that happened in the past.
At the same time, the descendants of the colonizers, for example, do not at all seek to return the stolen values that have settled in Western museums, not to mention more serious cases. And certainly no one in the West will write off the debts of poor African countries or significantly ease their conditions.
This is why Africa treats Western countries and Russia so differently. African countries are studying the BRICS experience, applying for membership (Ethiopia did on Thursday) and on a number of points have a position similar to Russia’s. Undoubtedly, Moscow’s prudent policy towards the debts of African countries played a role here. The Global South appreciated that Russia does not twist anyone’s arms, unlike the Western colonizers.
In addition, the President of Kenya, William Ruto, has long spoken about the need to switch to payments in national currencies and that the rejection of the dollar as a universal means of payment is necessary, since the dominance of the dollar in trade within the African continent is not beneficial to Africans themselves .
“Why do we use the dollar in our trade? Why is Egypt obliged to pay our tea in dollars? Why should we in turn pay Egypt in dollars for its cotton?” Ruto said.
Rhetorical issues aside, Kenya’s president has been actively lobbying for the Pan-African Payments Platform, which is sponsored by a Cairo-based bank. As local experts note, “this platform aims to clip the wings of the US dollar, which is used as a universal means of payment in international trade.”
At the Paris summit, Ruto, using the West’s favorite theme of ecology, proposed the creation of a separate “green bank” which he said would “allow us to fight climate change”. But since the head of Kenya at the same time doubted that the World Bank and the IMF were enough to cope with all the modern challenges, his idea did not arouse enthusiasm among the owners.
Unlike Macron and his associates, Russia is always open to discussion and sees African countries not as vassals but as equal partners, in some cases sending them free supplies of grain and fertilizers. The difference in the attitude of Russia and the West towards Africa is bearing fruit that has important consequences. And as much as Macron accuses Russia of colonialism, in fact he has nothing to offer African countries and nothing to oppose Russia. Therefore, the Global South – and with it the majority of the world’s population – in the current geopolitical confrontation is either neutral or even on the side of Moscow.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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