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Relief agencies estimate that nearly 1.4 million Somalis have been displaced since the 1990s, and nearly half the country’s population – more than 3 million people – is still in need of relief aid and assistance. But this is the story of the Somalia that we all know. The less known story is that of a country that was systematically destroyed by international NGOs, UN agencies and donors who undermined the local economy by flooding Somalia with aid, especially since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991.

His main argument is that the aid industry undermined development in Somalia by stifling the local economy through relief supplies that killed industries, and which were routinely stolen by warlords, merchants and government officials.

A leaked UN report states that roughly half of the $485 million of aid provided to Somalia by the World Food Programme (WFP) in 2009 has gone to corrupt contractors, rebels and even UN staff members. This is not so unusual. A recent BBC report claims that more than 90 per cent of the money raised by Bob Geldof’s famous 1985 Live Aid concert for famine victims in Ethiopia was siphoned off by rebel fighters.

Without Barre’s iron fist, the clan-based political rivalries which had been artificially repressed for two decades bloomed and a country swimming in foreign arms and local animosity was plunged into a vicious civil war.

Where international peacekeepers and foreign soldiers had cut and run, the UIC, working with the local population, struggled to extract peace and order from chaos.

By 2007, a weak Somali transitional government called for international military action to help destroy the Islamic courts. Ethiopian forces – bolstered by the United States’ blessing and with the support of some its arms – entered the fray to destroy an organisation supposedly linked to al-Qaeda. However, this same organisation had won the respect of many Somalis by rescuing parts of the country from chaos and random violence. Although Ethiopia’s military action in Somalia decimated the UIC, it also forever de-legitimised the Transitional Federal Government.

The World Bank’s public sector lending arms (the IDA and IBRD) announced their withdrawal from the project in 2008 stating “Chad failed to comply with key requirements” of their participation, though the World Bank’s private sector lending arm (the IFC) had no problem staying on board to reap the benefits of its $200 million commercial loan.

Despite receiving minimal “transit revenues” from Chad’s oil, the pipeline’s social and environmental impacts are just a harsh for Cameroonians living along the pipeline route. 248 villages are directly impacted by the pipe and dozens more by roads, operations centers, and employee living bases all built expressly for the project. Unlike in neighboring Chad, no oil revenues have been set aside for development spending in the affected villages. The Cameroonian government claims it only receives $25 million per year and some of that money returns to impacted villages via increased social spending in the national budget. But the truth is no one knows where the $25 million is spent (or if that’s the true amount) and there is no accountability for the use of the revenues.

The Chief of Dompta signed a contract with Exxon for the construction of a health clinic as “community compensation.” When the health clinic wasn’t built, he wrote to the oil consortium demanding they follow through on their written agreement. One of Exxon’s directors cordially replied that the health center would be built and the village could use health clinics in neighboring villages until then. Dompta’s chief died in 2007 and was replaced by his son as tradition requires. The new Dompta chief claims Exxon built a health center in Dompla (notice the difference in spelling), a village about 30 kilometers away and even proudly posted a sign that read “Dompta Health Clinic.” We will never know if this is a cruel joke or corporate idiocy because no one from the oil consortium has yet to comment on the issue. For the people of Dompta, it doesn’t really matter.

In Africa there have historically been two types of civil society, those that have collaborated with the colonial power and those which have opposed it.

Are the big NGOs (non-governmental organisations) harmful towards Africa? FIROZE MANJI: Let’s not talk about their motivations, which are often good. The question is not about evaluating their intentions, but rather the actual consequences of their actions. In a political context where people are oppressed, a humanitarian organisation does nothing but soften the situation, rather than addressing the problem.

I have become anti-development. This wasn’t the case before. Let’s have an analogy: did those enslaved need to develop themselves, or to be free? I think that we need emancipation, not development.

According to the subject-title itself, the presumption is that there is a possibility for US–China cooperation in assistance to Africa. However, to turn that possibility into reality needs a lot of work. The reason is simple: how could two parties discuss an important issue concerning the third party without the third’s knowledge? How could the two parties carry out this kind of cooperation without the third party’s participation at the very beginning? How could we start the cooperation without much understanding, let alone agreement, of each other’s concept of the issue?

The status of China and Africa is equal, not a relation of superior and inferior. Although the relation is strategic, it is equal and friendly. Both China and Africa appreciate each other and cooperate with each other.

The principles guiding China–Africa relations can be summarised as equality and mutual respect, bilateralism and co-development, no-political strings attached and non-interference of domestic affairs, and stress on the capability of self-reliance.

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.

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.

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.

Consider the biases in academic reward and promotion. Teaching is undervalued. Peer-reviewed publication is rewarded, particularly if it appears in high-ranking journals that prefer certain methodologies and questions. Those methods are typically quantitative. They build beautiful castles in the air or palaces on foundations of sand.

Supervisors in foreign universities rarely have the subject matter expertise, so they tend to guide students towards more theoretical approaches. Examiners and peer reviewers likewise reward and reinforce their own disciplinary biases. On the other hand, it is common to see junior Western scholars doing rather uninteresting quantitative studies or superficial case studies. Despite their shortcomings these studies are published. These scholars, then, become the group that undertakes peer review.

To become an academic in a Western university she or he may be obliged to unlearn important knowledge, and learn frameworks and skills that are actually irrelevant to the situation at hand but are necessary for being considered a professional academic.

Another one would be to require that a president is not electable unless he or she has a minimum of multi-regional support.  It is not enough that a head of state has a majority of the people of his or her side; that majority must also be distributed nationally.  Perhaps the president should demonstrate a strong support in at least three regions out of Ethiopia’s current nine regions

There is also the novel concept of electoral polygamy which in principle dis-ethnicises politics and creates strong ethnic checks and balances.  It requires that every member of the house of representative have two constituencies – one primary which may be his or her own ethnic group and the other constituency distant from his or her own roots.