The Future of Africa: Unification or Continued Exploitation?
Three Types of Coups and a Single Unified Cryptocurrency Will Determine Africa’s Future.
INTRODUCTION
Africa, composed of 54 recognized nations with 42 distinct currencies, is the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. It spans approximately 30.3 million square kilometers (11.7 million square miles), including adjacent islands. This size constitutes 20% of the Earth’s total land area and 6% of its overall surface area. As of 2021, its population stands at approximately 1.4 billion people, accounting for nearly 18% of the global human population.
The demographic makeup of Africa is notably youthful compared to other continents. The median age in 2022 was 18.8 years, in stark contrast to the global median age of 30.2 years. Despite its wealth of natural resources, Africa holds the unenviable position of being the least affluent continent on a per capita basis, and the second least affluent in terms of total wealth, superseded only by Oceania.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 600 million people in Africa, or 43% of the total population in the continent, lack access to electricity.
THE CONCEPT OF A UNITED AFRICA
The idea of a “United States of Africa” has been discussed at various times throughout history, often in the context of Pan-Africanism and African unity. It’s important to note that while there have been various proposals and discussions related to this concept, no such political entity has been officially established.
The concept in its more modern form was popularized by Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, in the mid-20th century. Nkrumah was a key advocate for Pan-Africanism and the creation of a union of African states. He first proposed the idea of a “United States of Africa” in the 1960s.
During the closing years of the twentieth century, Muammar Gaddafi, driven by the collapse of his pan-Arab aspirations and the Arab world’s reluctance to contest the international air embargo on Libya, progressively distanced himself from Arab nationalism, pivoting towards Pan-Africanism and accentuating Libya’s African identity. In a 1998 interview, Gaddafi declared the Arab world as “finished,” expressing his desire for Libya to evolve into a “black country.”
Between 1997 and 2000, Libya forged cooperative agreements and bilateral aid arrangements with ten African nations and, in 1999, joined the Community of Sahel-Saharan States. Gaddafi, in June 1999, visited Nelson Mandela in South Africa and, the following month, attended the Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Algiers. At the summit, he championed for extensive political and economic amalgamation across the continent and promoted the creation of a “United States of Africa.”
Gaddafi was instrumental in the inception of the African Union (AU), which was established in July 2002 to supersede the OAU. During the inaugural ceremonies, he urged African nations to reject conditional aid from the developed world, a sentiment starkly contrasting that of South African President Thabo Mbeki. Gaddafi’s speculated ambition to become the AU’s inaugural chair sparked apprehension within Africa, with fears that his chairmanship could potentially tarnish the Union’s international reputation, particularly in the eyes of the Western world.
At the third African Union (AU) summit, hosted in Tripoli, Libya, in July 2005, Gaddafi pushed for an intensification of integration. He promoted the idea of a single AU passport, a unified defense system, and a common currency, rallying under the slogan, “The United States of Africa is the hope.”
AFRICA’S COUPS
“Coup Belt” is a geopolitical term which was coined in the 2020s after a string of coups in the early 2020s, including in Mali in 2020 and 2021, Chad, Guinea, and Sudan in 2021, two in Burkina Faso in January and September in 2022, and in Niger and Gabon in 2023. The region also saw attempted coups in Niger and Sudan in 2021, Guinea–Bissau and The Gambia in 2022, and Sudan and Sierra Leone in 2023. Since 1990, 78% of the 27 coups in sub-Saharan Africa have taken place in former French colonies. Gabon’s coup marks the 100th successful coup in post-colonial Africa. After the 2023 Nigerien coup, these countries formed a continuous belt stretching between the east and west coasts of Africa.
The military juntas which overthrow these African regimes often cite a number of reasons for the coups, including political corruption and economic hardship, poor institutional performance, anti-imperialism, electoral malpractice, and the failure of elected governments to tackle jihadist violence.
Given the unjustified extreme poverty in Africa and the fact that nearly one-half of the African continent’s total population lack access to electricity, the prevalence of military coups in Africa is hardly surprising.
AFRICA’S THREE TYPES OF COUPS
There are three types of coups in Africa: a real coup, a faux coup, and a “silent coup”.
A real coup d'état, or simply a coup, is the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group, i.e., the military, allegedly for the purpose of basic social, economic, and political change.
An African faux coup is the overthrow of an existing government by a U.S. or U.S. ally for the purpose of establishing a puppet government, a government which is endowed with the outward symbols of authority but in which direction and control are exercised by another power, which is more favorable to the overthrowing U.S. or U.S. ally puppet master. Beneficial social, economic, and political change is never an objective of a faux coup. Control and exploitation of the country’s resources and labor is all that matters to the puppet master.
The third type of African coup, a “silent coup”, is more insidious and rarely mentioned.
On September 23, 2023, Chris Hedges posted an article titled “Silent Coup”: How Capitalism Defeated Decolonization wherein Chris interviews Matt Kennard, the author of “Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy.” Chris points out that the crumbling of European empires after WWII didn’t usher in a new era of democracy - instead, we now live in a regime of international corporate rule. In his book, Kinnard looks inside the international architecture of global corporate governance that exists to flout and crush any attempts by the former colonial world to enact development on their own terms.
In their book, Claire Provost and Matt Kennard chart the way the corporate coup d’etat was orchestrated. The book examines the use of an international legal system to control and plunder the resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance.
Chris explains, “The authors expose the nefarious alliance between nonprofit organizations and corporations, one that prioritizes profit rather than justice. They document the weakening of labor laws and the evisceration of workers’ protections and rights. To enforce this predatory behavior, corporations have not only created, in essence, a global Supreme Court, but raised and funded private mercenary militias to crush labor movements and intimidate, and even murder, activists. The subversion of democracy abroad is accompanied, the authors argue, by the subversion of democracy at home. The mechanisms of control used to plunder the developing world are also used in the industrial world.”
Multinational corporations loot and pillage developing countries by forcing them to accept international agreements, investment treaties, and “corporate courts” that favor global corporations. This shadow legal system operates across the world and affects virtually every country in the world. It enshrines a system whereby multinational corporations can sue states for enacting policies they don’t like, which they say infringe on their “investor rights.”
This system was created in the heat of the decolonization movement. The main body where these cases are heard is actually an arm of the World Bank. It’s called the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The ICSID was the brainchild of a German banker, Hermann Abs, who was at Deutsche Bank. Abs argued that a legal system is needed that operates above states, it’s a supranational institution where “investor rights can be enforced.”
This very secret system is enshrined in free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties, which are called BITs, and other financial agreements or trade agreements between countries. The free trade agreements should be called corporate rights agreements. Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), a system where multinational corporates can sue states for billions of dollars, is often enshrined in free trade agreements. In his interview, Kennard explains “There’s a case now against Honduras that is getting some attention in the media where an American company is taking Honduras to ICSID for $11 billion, a third of the GDP of the current government of Honduras. Honduras is trying to shut down an SEZ, which was opened by the previous US-backed neoliberal regime. They’re trying to reverse that and they’re getting hit with this suit. The Honduran government doesn’t know what to do because this is such a huge sum of money that it could have a huge impact on the ability for them to survive.” An SEZ (special economic zone) is like a corporate utopia. Corporations don’t have to pay a normal tax, they don’t have to pay customs duties, they don’t have to apply the minimum wage.
Kennard gives another example. “We then went to South Africa for a second case which was maybe the craziest case of all, which was a case where Italian granite miners had taken the ANC government and the South African state to ICSID because of Black empowerment policies. These were policies that were enacted at the end of apartheid to correct the historical injustice of apartheid and part of it was to give 30% of every company to historically disadvantaged people. This Italian company said this is an attack on our investor rights. They took South Africa to court. And in fact, that was settled out of court. And the South African government said you don’t have to apply this policy to your company. So, they didn’t have to apply. And the reason the South Africans did that - We talked to ministers when we went to South Africa, or people who had been ministers at the time - and they said, ‘we wanted to keep it as quiet as possible because we didn’t want to incentivize other companies to do this because we knew that they could win or they could at least take a lot of money from us.’…. If you go to the Congo and you open a mine, you might get huge returns, but you might get expropriated or get your asset taken by a paramilitary force, but that’s part of the risk. This system ensures the corporation against that risk and de-risks capitalism for the global corporate transnational class. It’s a huge attack on democracy. It’s not only the cases that reach court, that are the problem here. In fact, that’s actually not even the biggest problem. The problem is the policy chill effect this has around the world because a lot of governments now when they’re considering taking policies that might infringe on corporate profits, that this is now getting hit with one of these cases is now a big consideration.”
In sum, as Kennard points out “the biggest political story in the world today is the fact that the corporate form, the economic instrument of corporations, has eaten the state that created it.”
The international legal system is now being used by corporations to control and plunder the resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance.
How the Beneficial Type of Coup and a Single Unified Cryptocurrency Will Determine Africa’s Future
Real coups, which focus on the interests and needs of the African people, are beneficial and regrettably necessary.
Real coups will hopefully:
(a) allow the African countries, which are run by U.S. or U.S. ally puppet masters, to remove their shackles and achieve independence from foreign corruption and exploitation; and
(b) terminate the regimes of international corporate rule whereby corporations use the onerous World Bank’s ICSID legal system to control and plunder the resources in Africa, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance.
It will take time for every African country to achieve independence from foreign corruption and exploitation. Therefore, a single unified cryptocurrency is the first step on the road to prosperity and economic freedom for Africa.
The primary purpose of the creation of the African Uhuru cryptocurrency is to replace the current 42 separate African currencies. The secondary purpose is to help address Africa’s lack of access to electricity by co-locating small-scale African Uhuru data centers with mini-grids powered by solar PV or modular thorium molten salt reactors.
Confronting the multifaceted challenge of these 42 currencies is a key step in unlocking Africa’s potential for greater prosperity and economic self-determination. In sum, the creation of a single cryptocurrency is intended to be the first step on the road to the founding of the United States of Africa. Initially, the 54 African nations do not have to trust one another. They merely have to trust the unparalleled security and dedication to decentralization of the African Uhuru blockchain code.
Further reading:
Chris Hedges on “Silent Coup”: How Capitalism Defeated Decolonization, September 23, 2023.
Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy by Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, May 4, 2023.