Book Review
Reconsidering Africa
Four new books battle old clichés about the continent
Africa is conspicuously absent from the current globalization discourse. Among economists, advocates of neoliberal transformation speak eagerly of Asian tigers and South Asian dragons but, as Stanford University ethnologist James Ferguson notes, they “have a problem finding lions among the African states that took the bitter IMF medicine and liberalized their economies.” Nor is Africa interesting to antiglobalization critics who fail to find evidence of unbound capitalism-caused devastation. Even critical studies of the IMF and the World Bank concentrate primarily on Asia and eastern Europe, despite the fact that Africa has suffered most from these organizations’ policies. Somehow Africa does not “fit” in the ongoing globalization debates. Why is this?
Four new books about Europe’s failed interventions on the African continent attempt to both explain this oversight and offer remedies for it. Ferguson’s new collection of essays, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, argues that Africa’s recent history effectively challenges theories that assert that developing states are best off mimicking Western models. He differentiates between the contemporary paradigms of “globalization” and “the global.” As seen from Africa, the global is not an all-encompassing totality or a seamless world without borders, but rather a conglomeration of hierarchically ordered spaces whose boundaries are carefully managed and guarded.
Africa’s image as a perpetually troubled continent is closely linked to the rapid spread of the HIV/AIDS virus. Cambridge historian John Iliffe has produced an excellent synthesis of the history of this epidemic on the continent, The African AIDS Epidemic: A History. His historical perspective underlines the geographical and temporal factors that made HIV/AIDS such a devastating force on the continent. The virus emerged in the Kinshasa region of central Africa at the end of the 1950s; it mutated into an epidemic in the course of the 1970s as it spread rapidly across a labyrinth of sexual networks and collapsed economic structures. The virus spread at a different pace from region to region, but so insidiously that countermeasures remained timid and uncoordinated for much too long. HIV/AIDS is also significantly different from other epidemics in Africa: it is longer-lasting than influenza, less dependent on the environment than sleeping sickness, and more fatal than tuberculosis. In conclusion, Iliffe argues that HIV/AIDS in Africa—and globally as well—has contributed significantly to social transformation: new AIDS medicines exacerbate the divide between poor and rich everywhere in the world.
In their books, both Ferguson and Iliffe conclude that without help soon, Africa could be lost. But are the raft of dark diagnoses valid? The continent is not only top on the agenda of good Samaritan rock musicians and baby-adopting film stars. The international community has recently deemed this written-off part of the world as a “continent in crisis” and pledged to focus on it. Rhetorically at least, it is all about democracy, good governance, and helping people help themselves—but obviously there are also strategic and economic interests at stake. Africa’s raw materials are more sought after than ever and Washington, London, and Paris are concerned about “China’s drive toward Africa”—the new presence of Beijing south of the Sahara. Africa not only offers China attractive new markets and raw materials but also back-up to pursue its interests in international foras. Beijing has diplomatic support in the region because it chooses not to interfere in the “domestic affairs” of other states. This, in turn, makes it easier for African potentates to circumvent Western demands for democracy and human rights.
Learning from the Past
So, what role can the European Union play in Africa? German political scientist Gisela Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet and her co-authors have published a rich volume on this issue, Die Afrikapolitik der Europäischen Union. Neue Ansätze und Perspektiven. Ulrike Kessler charts the European Union’s approach to Africa over the last 40 years and sums it up in four words: “theory good—implementation substandard.” While the key goals such as “stemming and overcoming poverty” are fundamentally worthy, there is today neither a clear strategy nor sufficient financial resources for an effective approach vis-à-vis the continent. Siegmar Schmidt claims that only since the 1990s have Europe’s Africa policies even deserved the label of “policy”—defined as “the active pursuit of political goals, principles, and interests.” Schmidt focuses on EU security policy in sub-Saharan Africa and here he definitely has something positive to report. Nevertheless, Schmidt writes that the future of the European Union’s Africa policies depend not least upon how far the new EU member states (those that joined since 2004) go along with the European Union’s current development and Africa strategies. Without the same historical ties as the western Europeans—and with very few interests in Africa—it is conceivable that these countries could prompt a fundamental rethinking- of EU policy toward the region.
In fact, the Africa policies of the different EU member states are already quite diverse. Of the former colonial powers, France above all is often castigated for its “neo-colonialist” approach. Under Jacques Chirac’s 1995-2007 tenure, France’s Africa strategy—long overdue for updating—plodded along as usual. The government vacillated between the intention to withdraw from Africa and the desire to maintain its privileged status there; between cautious steps toward Europeanization and exercise of an imposing bilateral influence; between nurturing a Francophone “forecourt” and searching for new political and economic partners; between a modernization of military cooperation and a tradition of intervention; between insisting on democratic structures and supporting undemocratic rulers.
One key moment in contemporary French Africa policy was the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Paris not only failed to prevent the genocide of the Tutsi and select Hutus, it even facilitated the slaughter. Still today it is impossible to forget then-President François Mitterrand’s cynical remark that “in countries like these genocide is not so important.”
In Silent Accomplice, English journalist Andrew Wallis spares the world’s great powers nothing in his blistering critique. He debunks the story that the international community was well-intentioned in its efforts to prevent the massacre but simply ineffective. He emphasizes France’s calamitous role in this dark chapter of human history: Paris provided the mass murderers with military, financial, and diplomatic support. Wallis argues that the main reason for this was France’s fear that Rwanda could fall under “Anglo-Saxon rule.” But Wallis’s charge remains unsubstantiated. Without a doubt though the author provides—mostly already known but also some new—evidence of France’s “open complicity.” Even today Paris dodges a full-scale, critical coming to terms with this episode. A 1998 parliamentary investigation conceded that although France “contributed to make mass murder possible,” it is not “guilty” for the crimes perpetrated during the Rwandan genocide.
Download as PDF (615.788 Bytes)
Prof. Dr. ANDREAS ECKERT, geb. 1964, lehrt Neuere Geschichte, Schwerpunkt Geschichte Afrikas an der Universität Hamburg. Zu seinen Büchern zählen „Die Duala und die Kolonialmächte“ (Neuausgabe 2005), „Grundbesitz, Landkonflikte und kolonialer Wandel“ (1999) sowie „Herrschen und Verwalten. Afrikanische Bürokraten, staatliche Ordnung und Politik in Tansania“ (2005).
Professor for African History at Humbolt University Berlin
