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President Obama has been widely criticised for the late timing of this summit, 14 years after China started holding its regular Africa summits, and his failure to prioritise the continent earlier in his presidency. In the eyes of many commentators, this is Obama’s attempt to etch out a legacy in Africa.

Indeed, as a recent report from Oxford Research Group and the Remote Control project shows, for all the talk of the US lacking engagement with Africa, military forces under the new US Africa Command (AFRICOM, a legacy of the late Bush administration) have been pursuing a quiet but sustained “pivot to Africa” under the Obama administration.

September 11 is the key date for US engagement in the Sahel-Sahara, but 2012 not 2001. This was the date that jihadist militants stormed US diplomatic compounds in Benghazi, Libya, killing the US Ambassador and three other citizens.

It is obvious that in the conceptual framework of the sub-imperialist theorists there is simply no room for regionalism in Africa or regional struggles against the imperialist countries of the US and Europe. I find this most disempowering. For the last almost 30 years some of us have been actively engaged in battling against Europe’s attempt to impose a totally iniquitous ‘Economic Partnership Agreements’ (EPAs) on our countries – among them, for example, that our countries stop all domestic production and export subsidies. The latest deadline for signing the EPA is October 2014. If we fail to sign it, Europe will impose sanctions on Africa. Civil society organisations – such as the Southern and Eastern African Trade and Information Institute (SEATINI) and the human rights organisations in the region - have been carrying out a sustained struggle against the EPAs and have so far succeeded in holding back their governments to signing the EPAs. Should they stop doing their campaigns?

the real reason I suspect Tandon is so vociferous is the inconvenience Bond’s analysis creates for his faux pan-Africanism, for the delusion that local elites are in some way spearheading an indigenous Southern anti-imperialism.

Dating at least a half-century to when the idea of sub-imperialism was introduced, in Brazil, the concrete settings are vital because contingencies arise that may divert from the twin logics of capital and expanding territorial power relations.

For rhetorical purposes the sub-imperial powers’ foreign, trade and even finance ministries may be less than flattering about global governance, and in the case of the BRICS in 2013-14, may even launch new multilateral initiatives with the stated aim of challenging power. But standing by the IMF even in times of crisis – e.g. the institution’s recapitalization in 2009 and 2012 occurred with notable BRICS support ($75 billion in coordinated aid in the latter case) – reflects the overall role that sub-imperial regimes play: to lubricate, legitimize and extend neoliberal political economy deeper into their regional hinterlands.

In this context, what may emerge from the networking of the sub-imperialist elites, as witnessed in the BRICS bloc in its initial formation period, 2008-14, is an agenda that more systematically confirms super-exploitative practices within their hinterlands.

With the weight of its recent past and in particular its long struggle for independence that served as a model for several liberation fronts across the globe and given its assertive diplomacy and audacious foreign policy in the 60s and 70s, the Algerian capital was to become a Mecca for all revolutionaries. As Amilcar Cabral announced at a press conference at the margins of the first Pan-African Festival held in Algiers on 1969: “Pick a pen and take note: the Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Christians to the Vatican and the national liberation movements to Algiers!”

Fanon’s concern with what the masses do and say and think and his belief that it is the masses, and not leaders nor systems, who make and determine history, is at the centre stage in his books.

Reading Fanon’s words and especially ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ his famous chapter in The Wretched of the Earth (based on his reflections on his West African experiences as well as his concerns about the Algerian revolution),[v] one cannot help being absorbed and shaken by their truth and foresight on the bankruptcy and sterility of national bourgeoisies in Africa and the Middle East today; bourgeoisies that tended to replace the colonial force with a new class-based system replicating the old colonial structures of exploitation and oppression. Today we can see states across the formerly colonised world that have ‘bred pathologies of power’ as Eqbal Ahmad has called them, giving rise to national security states, to dictatorships, oligarchies and one-party systems. [vi]

He forcibly removed blacks to native reserves through the 1894 Glen Grey Act, which presaged apartheid’s notorious Bantustan policies by half a century. Rhodes further pushed the Cape parliament to introduce hut and labour taxes on blacks to force them into the cash economy; packed over 11,000 black miners into inhumane, dog-patrolled, wire-protected barracks; and supported draconian labour laws (including the legal flogging of “disobedient” black labourers through the notorious “strop bill”) that facilitated the continued supply of human fodder to his mines, and impoverished the black population.

Price’s fifth claim was that Rhodes was a great philanthropist. Aside from the difficulty of being generous with stolen booty, it is important to note that, though 7,688 Rhodes scholars have studied at Oxford University since 1903, the scholarship scheme excluded women until 1976 and had clearly been designed for a “heaven’s breed” of largely Anglo-Saxon white males. The Rhodes trustees themselves today remain mainly white men, while most of the scholarships still go disproportionately to white Americans, Canadians, Australians, and South Africans. Contrary to Price’s statement that Rhodes did not graduate from Oxford, the imperialist - not reputed to have been a particularly good student or a potential Rhodes scholar! – took eight years to achieve a “gentleman’s pass” in law from Oxford. The South African scholarships – from which Price himself benefitted - have been particularly controversial, since they have effectively served as a form of white “affirmative action” for over a century, disproportionately going to schools that did not admit blacks or girls until the 1980s. Only four of the first 80 scholars were black.

can this requirement be fulfilled this year? For many pressure groups like the Committee of Actions for Ivory Coast in the United States (C.A.C.I-USA), there cannot and should not be any election in Ivory Coast in 2015, unless the political body wants to trigger new violence and erase the democratic gains that Ivorians have enjoyed starting April 1990.

The second reason is that accepting a presidential election in 2015 would legitimate the regime in power, condemn Laurent Gbagbo, approve violence as a means to access power, and negate Ivory Coast’s right to sovereignty and democracy.

The relative obscurity for Ivory Coast is the uncertainty of durable peace and independence. There are two ways to end this obscurity: refraining from a presidential election in 2015 and installing a political transition. There are ample constitutional reasons to object to the presidential election now. The most important is avoiding further chaos and giving the political body sufficient time to install a political transition. Indubitably, a political transition is the golden alternative for peace in Ivory Coast.

In Zimbabwe’s land debate nearly everyone at different times disagreed with him, but they all listened. Whether inside the state and party, among opposition groups or with the World Bank and other donors, no one could ignore what Sam had to say. And his influence in seeking a more sensible line has been enormous.