A 10-million-dollar feasibility study was recently launched for the extension of the Lobito corridor which connects the Atlantic Ocean through Angola to the democratic republic of Congo. This study was signed between the European union and the African development Bank AfDB recently at a secret function in Brussels. The United States, Japan and other western countries are majority owners in the AfDB therefore the bank is only African in name, which is a topic for another day.
What is being trumpeted as a victory and triumphant return of the west to Africa is nothing but a sham-lie compounding the colonial legacy of the collective west as I will elaborate further below.
Africans did not participate in choosing the project and does not own any of it.
It is unfortunate that What is in the interest of Africa has not been considered, Africans have not been consulted to establish whether this is a priority project for the continent, rather, the west in its overbearing is imposing a project majorly in its benefit for the extraction of Africa’s resources. The project was signed off by president Tshisekedi of DRC and Hichilema of Zambia but before that, an MOU which demonstrates Africa’s interests and desire to own supply chains for the refinery of resources including benefits such as job creation and technology transfer was signed between the United States of America and the two African countries during the Joe Biden hosted US-Africa summit in 2022.
What is interesting in the MOU-Memorandum of Understanding is that the United States refused to commit itself to a binding agreement which would address the demands of the African continent, which was the building of a full Lithium battery supply chain, vehicle electric motors form Copper, and Magnets made from Cobalt between Zambia and DRC. Therefore, the signing was a hoodwinking process of the African heads of state in order for the West to continue the pursual of their maximum extraction strategy, to continue creating high value jobs in the west while leaving the African people to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.
It is a reactionary propaganda project.
While this Lobito project has been touted as a victory for the west’s so called PGII – Partnership for Global infrastructure initiative program, as a response to the Chinese BRI – Belt and Road Initiative projects in Africa and across the world, it is indeed a reactionary project of only about 600 million US dollars, compare that to the massive Chinese infrastructure in Africa worth billions with the 4.5 billions US dollar standard gauge Madaraka express railway in Kenya as a case study. The west cannot point to a single project worth mentioning in Africa even within its known vassal states like Zambia and Ghana. In Ghana alone China is completing a 3 billion US dollar oil refinery after the United States and western Puppets in the country have succeeded in destroying and making dysfunctional an oil refinery that was built by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in 1960. This goes to show you that, the behaviour of the west is as unrepentant as it is unchanging towards Africa since the last 600 years with the Lobito Corridor railway line to Zambia as a case study.
The Lobito railway line was signed off for 30 years of operation to a neocolonial corporation called Trafigura, it is known globally for massive tax evasion and corruption and is registered in the Singapore tax haven. In this ownership arrangement there is no Africans present. While the financing is taunted to come from Europe and the United States as was announced by the US president Joe Biden on the sidelines of the 2023 G20 summit, the operator of the railway is in Singapore and the construction company to carry out the rehabilitation on the Lobito corridor and supply of the more than 1500 wagons before extension to Zambia was awarded to Mota-Engil of Portugal. Here is a glaring example of the mechanism of neocolonialism as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah called it in his book, neocolonialism the last stage of Imperialism.
The West is Doing the same thing it accuses China of but much Worse.
While on one side the collective west has been accusing China of bringing its own labour to Africa, which is sensible if it is being done by Africans, a look at the arrangements of this Lobito project tells us they are doing the same thing, this not only speaks to their hypocrisy and arrogance but goes on to confirm that; they are doing what All Africans have known them for regardless of pretense. What the West is doing with the Project is in fact worse than what China did with the ceasing of the Sri Lankan port. Worse because, unlike the port, the West is stealing Africa’s resources using Africa’s own railway just rehabilitated. They will further control the railway for the next 30 years. Today, experts tell us that it takes less than 30 years to transform a country from Poor to a developed one as we have seen with China, Singapore, Dubai and the Middle East etc. This is how much Africa is being robbed. Africa is therefore being robbed of Transformation, jobs and taking care of its People.
The Railway line is not for the benefit of Africa at all.
As if these exploitative tactics are not enough, the worst of all is that the Lobito Railway Corridor rehabilitation and its extension to Zambia is for the extraction of Africa’s minerals like Cobalt used for the manufacturing of magnets for motors used both in trains, electric cars, aircraft and other industrial applications, the resource is present in the D.R. Congo at 70% of global reserves. Copper which has already been extracted for centuries from Zambia by Glencore, another western tax evading and environment destroying neocolonial cooperation.
The other angle which makes this project reactionary is that the west is behind China in the manufacturing of electric vehicles, recently BYD overtook Japan to become the biggest vehicle exporter focusing on pure electric vehicles and hybrid electric, the company went on to overtake Tesla as the biggest electric car manufacturer at the end of 2023. The west feels that securing the Cobalt for the motors and batteries, Copper for electric engines / motors and the Lithium in resistant Zimbabwe would be a game changer for them to compete with China. Of course, another western neocolonial organization Atlantic lithium signed a Lithium deal in Ghana recently, a very bad one for the African people in Ghana. This is coming as Ghana has been boxed-in to beg for a loan from the IMF. Here is another naked example of the mechanisms of neocolonialism which John Perkins a former world bank and CIA contractor penned in his book confessions of an economic hitman. The use of the IMF, world bank and western neocolonial corporations as a double-edged sword to rob the poor countries. Ghana is to earn around 16% as royalties from its Lithium and the neocolonial agent politicians are unashamedly calling it a victory for the African people in Ghana.
A closer Look at the Nature of the trains being Procured by Mota-Engil of Portugal points to something much more sinister and confirms that the project far from anything substantially beneficial to the African continent, is to benefit the west by the extractive stealing of Africa’s resources. I quote from the railtech.com “The concession includes investing into rolling stock and involved securing 1,555 wagons and 35 locomotives for the Angolan side of the corridor alone.” Wagons are not anywhere in the world used for transporting people, they are used for transporting minerals and other goods, the west has made a good promise to itself as we can see, it is bringing 1555 wagons. There is no sign of any increased economic activity especially agriculture from Africans in this region, it can only be for stealing out Africa’s Cobalt, Copper, Lithium and other minerals in the region.
Explanation of increased US Military in the Gulf of Guinea and Copper Belt.
This Further explains the increased Presence of the US military in the Gulf of Guinea and its recent establishment of the US AFRICOM (US Military Africa Commend) in Zambia in 2022. It is of course very Unfortunate that African Heads of State without any significant fight are facilitating the continued exploitation and syphoning off of the Continent’s wealth, which belongs to the African People without our knowledge. It points to the total failure of leadership across the expanse of the continent and therefore what belongs to the African people has been left for the colonialist vultures’ ravaging.
Continued failure of African neocolonial heads of state and an urgent need for a new approach.
These events are further symptomatic of continued failure by the African puppet and neocolonial heads of state. Regardless of how we look at it, and indeed there may be some successes on the African continent, but the general verdict is that this generation of heads state of the African continent have completely failed. The continent has been overrun by neocolonialism and they have embraced it, they are concentrating on completely wrong things, and the right things which would have helped them to overcome the wrong things they are concentrated on have been neglected. This is further visible in how many young Africans are leaving and desire to leave the continent. If we are to rebuild our continent, we need these young people to work in Africa not to die in oceans while going to Europe or America.
To urgently change this miserable state of affairs and address the persistent failure, the ACUP-Africa Continental Unity Party has accepted the challenge of re-organising the African youth so we can rebuild the continent with our own hands.
This requires us the ACUP to create a power base for the African people. This is indeed to come from support given to the ACUP in all or majority of the continent. It will then help the ACUP to reorganize all the resources or factors of production on the continent and deploy them for the benefit of the African people. From the 1.5 billion human resources, the 3.5 trillion US dollars of African combined GDP and Africa’s material resources worth between 300 to 700 trillion USD, which are currently being used to build and rebuild the west and east. All will be deployed to achieve a GDP Per-capita of 22,000 USD in the next 20 years from when the ACUP unifies the African continent.
In order to transform Africa, the next generation of Leaders must be daring, determined and operate on new political, economic and social infrastructure designed by Africans and driven by Africans.
AFRICAN SOLUTIONS TO AFRICAN PROBLEMS.
©Kwame Gonza
ACUP -Africa Continental Unity Party
Dept of Technology, Industrialisation, and International Relations
+2330265594451
kwamegonza@africanacup.org
www.africanacup.org
Kwame Gonza is A Pan Africanist member of the African Continental Unity Party (ACUP), a Mechanical Engineer and the Pioneer of the Africa Railway Triangle Network Master Plan (ARTNMP) which aims to Connect the Whole African Continent. He is a Geopolitical analyst who has been a guest on SABC News South Africa, Press TV Iran, TV Africa Ghana, Oromia Broadcasting TV in Ethiopia and Channel TV Nigeria to Comment and advice on the future of Africa and Pan African Issues.