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The CDKN consortium includes PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano (FFLA), SouthSouthNorth, LEAD International and INTRAC. I know some of them well from previous interactions with them. The ODI, for example, advertises itself as an ‘independent think tank on international development and humanitarian issues’. From my knowledge of the ODI (on matters related to development aid, trade and EPA negotiations, for example) I can say without a moment’s hesitation that it is really an arm of British foreign policy. It is the ‘soft arm’ of British imperial diplomacy whose ‘strong arm’ comprises of instruments of force, including sanctions and war.

The ICs take advantage of these differences in order to ‘divide and dictate’ to the DCs the terms of the climate change negotiations. What makes Africa vulnerable is its dependence on the West for the so-called ‘development aid’ and ‘technical experts’. One significant illustration of this is the manner in which the industrialised West has used money and ‘technical assistance’ as a means of ensuring an outcome at COP-16 in Cancun after they had failed to do so at COP-15. Europe and the US mounted a coordinated offensive to break the ranks of the countries of the South. Some of this was quite overt and open, for example, through the use of ‘development aid’ and other financial incentives. Others were covert and secretive, such as the use of US spy network – exposed, partially, by WikiLeaks (see Pambazuka issue 510, Dec 2010).

This, in brief, is the first point. Africa is run by a global kleptocratic system, a system which enriches a minute number of economic and power elites in Africa and the global bankocrats and corporatocrats at the one end of the pole while impoverishing the masses of African people at the other. Economists call this ‘rent seeking’, but it is, bereft of linguistic and technical finesse, simply looting.

As Gaddafi finds new ways to attack Libyans, Libyans unleash their fury against his deployment of mercenaries from West and East Africa as migrant workers from south of the Sahara face increasing attacks and are prevented from leaving the country. Given the racism in Libya and low status of foreign black workers, it was only a matter of time before innocent people were attacked.

The language and subtext being used in some of the reports is cause for concern. In a video by Al Jazeera, ‘Immigrant workers under suspicion’, the US-based Frontlines of Revolution uses the headline ‘White Arab supremacy: Revolution or Moor black oppression?’ There is no doubt that there that racism is rife in Libya and that black foreign workers are being targeted, but language like this and lack of historical or political context only inflames the situation

Nonetheless, the assault on black Africans is disturbing, not least because the uprisings in North Africa have been framed within an Arab/Middle East context, not just by Western media but more importantly by Al Jazeera, which itself has become part of the revolutionary story. This in itself further antagonises Arab–African/Arab–black tensions and also raises the monumental question as to who is an African and what do we mean by Africa. Pambazuka News editor Firoze Manji addresses this in a recent interview with Al Jazeera – could this possibly be a response to growing criticism of their framing the North African uprisings solely in an ‘Arab’ context?

instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends’

Sorry, but we recall Washington’s deregulatory support for Wall Street’s market-driven binge, which in 2008-09 contributed to the worst global economic crash in 80 years, resulting in around a million South African job losses. We know that only the wealthy recovered so far, and that in the US, the top 1 percent received 93 percent of all new income since 2009, because the system wasn’t fixed. And who can forget White House hypocrisy when it comes to vast and often illegal US agro-corporate subsidies which continue to thwart African production? And is there any capital city whose political system is more corrupted by corporate (especially banking) campaign contributions than Washington, resulting in such extreme malgovernance that Obama cannot even make an effort to convict a single banker for world-historic economic misdeeds?

incorporating the wasting of Africa’s ‘natural capital’ (a silly phrase but one used increasingly by powerbrokers eyeing the ‘Green Economy’). Measuring this loss is something that 10 African leaders agreed to start doing so in May, in the Gabarone Declaration initiated by Botswana president Ian Khama and the NGO Conservation International. The adjustment entails counting the outflow of natural capital (especially non-renewable mineral/petroleum resources) not only as a short-term credit to GDP (via ‘output of goods’ measuring the resources extracted and sold), but also as a long-term debit to the natural capital stocks, as non-renewable resources no longer become available to future generations. Number-crunch the resource depletion, and net wealth declines in Africa as well as the Middle East.

In short, Inoni’s new agenda was perceived as a storm in the ethnocentric teapot that Cameroon has become in this day. Let me be clear on this: I am not prescribing ruthlessness as a qualification for leadership in Cameroon. Far from it! What I am saying is that Cameroon is not beyond repair.

The malaise that should incessantly haunt our leaders (but does not) is that they have betrayed irretrievably Cameroon’s destiny in the community of nations. The countless billions that a generous Providence has poured into our national coffers in the last three decades (1982-2012) would have been enough to launch Cameroon into the middle rank of developed nations and transformed the lives of our needy compatriots.

Nothing in Cameroon’s politics captures her problem of aborted national integration more graphically than the mixed fortune of the word tribe.

The redeeming feature of the Swazi monarchy is that it is largely characterized by peace as compared to many of Africa’s ‘multi-party’ states. Swaziland has never experienced a humanitarian catastrophe such as those which took place in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, and Libya. This is one of the chief reasons as to why many Swazis believe in the monarchy.

From this distance, the problem of Swaziland is thus the status of the monarchy. The issue here is not openly the legitimacy of the King, but whether in this modern era (an age of political and structural transformations, and the respect for basic human rights) he should continue enjoying the archaic and traditional privileges that previously defeated communities reserved for sovereign potentates during the last two centuries.

One of the many areas in which history is known to be foolproof is that when it has changed, it does not matter how long a certain establishment has been in place. This is one way in which the successes of the Arab Spring can be explained.

In the U.S. itself with the advent of Cold War ideology and political repression under McCarthyism, perspectives and political organizing around Africa became a highly contentious arena of struggle. The Council on African Affairs (CAA) and the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) during the early 1950s came under fierce attack by the U.S. government and were driven out of existence.

Later during the 1960s when the various national liberation movements and independent African states embarked upon the armed struggle as a necessity to fight the U.S. and NATO backed colonial and settler-colonial states in Africa, Pan-Africanist and socialist strategist Kwame Nkrumah identified U.S. imperialism as the major force in the movement for genuine territorial sovereignty on the continent. The U.S., although paying lip service to supporting the anti-colonial movements, sought to stifle and manipulate the national liberation movements for the benefit of Wall Street and the Pentagon.

The postponement of these internal crises has apparently run its course. Imperialist war no long delays the impact of the inherent failures of capitalism related to its incapacity to provide housing, jobs, medical services, education and municipal services to the majority of its people. Nonetheless, in its destructive character, imperialism continues on the path of endless war and pursuit of ever-rising rates of profit.

I believe that at this stage in our collective development, youth in many African countries are still seized by flawed ideas of what progress looks like. We hold ourselves to impossibly high standards of “development” that have only been truly achieved in a handful of countries, none of which are particularly vocal about the need to achieve these goals.

I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that my trip to Burkina Faso was one of the most memorable experiences that I’ve ever had. Aside from the beauty of the country in all its complexities, the incredible warmth of the welcome I received took me by surprise. Strangers opened up their homes to me. I never paid for transport. I rarely paid for food.

Borrowing from X, I would ask African youth: who taught us to fear each other? I’m inclined to believe that we are in fear of an Africa that does not exist save in the mind of an overzealous elitist journalist in search of a sexy by-line or adventure. I challenge you: gather all of your friends who have a passport and have ever used it and ask them where they’ve used it.

Both former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited Africa during their second terms in office. When Clinton and Bush made their journeys to Africa, the US foreign policy establishment had been guided by a three-pronged mantra. These were: (a) the notion that Africa was facing a “threat” from international terrorists, (b) that the United States had strategic interests in Africa (especially with the flow of petroleum resources), and (c) the emerging competition with China. The crisis of capitalism since 2008 and the hype about petroleum and gas self-sufficiency as a result of shale oil and new gas finds in the United States have added another layer to all. More importantly, the US plans for confronting China in Africa have been tempered by the reality that the US policy makers have to beseech China to continue to purchase US Treasury Bills. [3]

Obama would appear hypocritical in making these panned statements about supporting democracy in Africa. While that has not stopped past presidents, this time the cat is out of the bag. The multiple scandals surrounding the banks and the extent of the corruption of Wall Street exposed by Matt Taibbi and others have dwarfed any discussion of corruption in Africa. America’s inability to rein in the mafia-style activities of the bankers is open and in full view of the world audience.

The main drivers of US foreign policy: Wall Street Bankers, petroleum and the military planners (along with the private military/intelligence contractors) have now been overtaken by a sharp shift in the engine of the global economy coming out of Asia. As more news of the corruption of the rigged financial architecture is revealed, all of the states of the G77 are looking for an alternative financial system that can protect them from the predators of Wall Street.[5]

Syrian women are suffering an epidemic of gender-related violence, both at home and in the countries where they have taken refuge. Rape is widespread on the battlefield, but even in the relative safety of the Diaspora, women and girls are increasingly subject to domestic violence, prostitution and early marriage, say NGOs.

To combat this issue, Abaad will be working with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) to provide psychosocial treatment for perpetrators of domestic violence. ‘We have to work with the men as much as we do with the women,’ said Roula.

With minimum labour wages decreasing and housing costs mounting, immense poverty has pressured families to determine the worth of their children.

Liberia Rising 2030, a national vision whose aim is to make Liberia a middle-income country by the year 2030. This vision, projected to replace the Lift Liberia Poverty Reduction Strategy, has as its core macro-economic policy reforms, as well as lofty goals aimed at strengthening social cohesion, democratic consolidation, and governance reform.

One of the problems with state-building as a post-conflict reconstruction agenda is its myopic focus on building state institutions, with the core assumption that no positive institutional practices existed before the ‘post-conflict moment’—a fallacy of terra nullius as articulated by Cliffe and Manning (Cliffe and Manning, 2008: 165).

In this analysis, the post-conflict state represents a ‘blank slate,’ a tabula rasa to be foisted upon by donors who function as social engineers, in which policy makers conflate the ‘state idea’ (our imaginations of what the state should be) with the ‘empirical state’ (how the state actually functions in practice) (Abrams, 1988).

Some will say that there is no connection between the violence of Atlantic slavery and that which happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In one as in the other, the objective was humanity. Those responsible for the decision to drop the atomic bombs might argue that they did not realise it, but violence as a means to control, to subject humankind to a system founded on its systematic violation is that which leads to slavery; from its alleged abolition to a slavery even more violent, modernised, and explained by the exculpatory arguments of its beneficiaries.

Aristide is not a dog. How many times must we remind the watchdogs of a system that continues to torture and to liquidate humanity, that the poor of Haiti (and elsewhere) are not dogs? Aristide is not a dog. Undoubtedly, these watchdogs would have liked Aristide to disappear like a dog that has been run over, without any newspapers ever writing about it, and without any grave marker, just like what happened to heroes such as Patrice Emery Lumumba, Osende Afana, Ruben Um Nyobe and so many others whose remains are scattered on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Now that Aristide is back in Haiti, the propaganda that had been used to get rid of him is happening once again. The accusations are the same: corruption, drug trafficking, etc. Some charges are no different from those that were made against, for example, the head of Hezbollah, Sayyid Nasrallah.

On the side of the accusers, the motivation remains the same: keep in place the system that made Saint Domingue the economic pearl of the French colonies, through the use of slavery.

Sankara vehemently and publicly denounced odious debt and rallied African political leaders to do the same.

What distinguishes Sankara from many other revolutionary leaders was his confidence in the revolutionary capabilities of ordinary human beings. He did not see himself as a messiah or prophet, as he famously said before the United Nations General Assembly in October of 1984. It is worth quoting from Sankara at length, when before the delegation of 159 nations, he said: ‘I make no claim to lay out any doctrines here. I am neither a messiah nor a prophet. I possess no truths. My only aspiration is…to speak on behalf of my people…to speak on behalf of the “great disinherited people of the world”, those who belong to the world so ironically christened the Third World. And to state, though I may not succeed in making them understood, the reasons for our revolt’.

Meaningful social transformation cannot endure without the active support and participation of women. While it is true that women have been deeply involved in each of the great social revolutions of human history, their support and participation has historically often gone relatively unacknowledged by movement leaders.

Of course, in that position, he was the chief organizer of electoral fraud in Cameroon. But I am not one of those who would want to use the past misdeeds of Marafa to detract from what he is saying in his letters. In his letters he has raised many important issues, including corruption related to compensation for the victims of the 1995 Camair plane crash and the incompetence of some of those appointed as government ministers.

This transformation had to be the work of politicians. Yet, many in the leadership of the SDF who were supposed to transform intentions to reality seemed to see politics more in the context of demagoguery, petty rivalry, and time-wasting. Politics was never taken for what it is: an art that provides an alternative to violence and bloodshed; an art that provides formulae that allow people to overcome past failures and provide solutions to seemingly insoluble problems.

That in Côte d’Ivoire left the people Mugabe’ed or Kibakied, whichever you like. Do not mind the motions of support trickling there from ‘social democratic’ and ‘leftwing’ groupings. The Biyas, Wades and others of the same feathers are chuckling in amusement at the fact that they are usually confronted by noises about commitment to values like social justice, democracy, liberty, mutual obligation, opportunity for all, responsibility… The ‘left-wingers’ may retort that it is precisely because of these values that they refuse to hand-over power on a platter of gold to the other side, whatever the decision of the people. Pity for those who thought that ‘leftwing’ politics could bring progress to Africa; pity for Africa and the prospect for continental peace and tranquility…”

AFRICA’S CONTRIBUTION TO EUROPEAN CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT According to Rodney, Europeans went through several phases of desire in Africa: first it was gold, through ivory and camwood to human cargo (slavery). He sketches the slow conquest and penetration due to shipping superiority and the slow breakup of African kingdoms and states in the 16th-17th century leading to the Portuguese slave trade and decision-making role for Europeans in Africa. While dissecting the slave trade he drew parallels between the rise of the European seaport towns of Bristol, Liverpool, Nantes, Seville and the Atlantic slave trade. In a passage that vividly explains the impact of Europe on Africa and its subsequent underdevelopment Rodney asserted that: ‘the European slave trade was a direct block, in removing millions of youth and young adults who are the human agents from whom inventiveness springs. Those who remained in areas badly hit by slave capturing were preoccupied about their freedom rather than with improvements in production’. Rodney pursues the notion that colonisation gave Europe a technological edge and addresses the exploitation of African minerals important for making steel alloys, manganese and chrome, including columbite – critical for aircraft engines. Significantly, in the course of this orbit of exploitation there was incessant African resistance. But European firearms, after reaching a certain phase of effectiveness, as in the use of the Maxim (machine gun) against the Maji Maji and the Zulus and others, in concert with the use of Africans in colonial armies tipped the military balance in favour of Europe and subjugated a continent.

Rodney also attacks the notion, which unfortunately still persists, that there is some universal nexus or equal relationship between ‘hard work’ and great wealth, a myth peddled in the West today. In his tome Rodney swats away this ‘common myth within capitalist thought that the individual through hard work can became a capitalist’.

Barack Obama’s weekend trip to South Africa may have the desired effect of slowing the geopolitical realignment of Pretoria to the Brazil-India-Russia-China-SA (BRICS) axis. That shift to BRICS has not, however, meant deviation from the hosts’ political philosophy, best understood as ‘Talk Left, Walk Right’ since it mixes anti-imperialist rhetoric with pro-corporate policies.

White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, ‘What we hear from our businesses is that they want to get in the game in Africa. There are other countries getting in the game in Africa – China, Brazil, Turkey. And if the US is not leading in Africa, we're going to fall behind in a very important region of the world.’ Over a century earlier, another Rhodes – Cecil John – explained that very game: ‘We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.’ Although there is no longer formal slave labour within formal colonies, this sentiment readily links the neoliberal agenda of both the BRICS and the US.

This must have raised cynical eyebrows, because he added, ‘China's primary interest is being able to obtain access for natural resources in Africa to feed the manufacturers in export-driven policies of the Chinese economy.’

As one of the perpetrators explained, “When I returned to the community, I was worried about the way people would conceive me. I learnt about the Gacaca and I went to confess and ask for forgiveness. I was living with the guilt of what I committed and I wanted to let it out. I served a term in prison and got to know that some people I harmed were still alive. I wrote to them asking for forgiveness. Some of them visited me in prison. We talked and they forgave me. I took me a long time to be able to live in peace with myself”.

As one of the perpetrators explained, “When I returned to the community, I was worried about the way people would conceive me. I learnt about the Gacaca and I went to confess and ask for forgiveness. I was living with the guilt of what I committed and I wanted to let it out. I served a term in prison and got to know that some people I harmed were still alive. I wrote to them asking for forgiveness. Some of them visited me in prison. We talked and they forgave me. I took me a long time to be able to live in peace with myself”.

In the foregoing few words, Hailemariam Desalegn actually revealed his (I mean the TPLF’s) entire three-pronged strategy on how they plan to organize the theft of the 2015 election and repeat the 2010 crushing victory: 1) use state media and all other resources to hoodwink the people of Ethiopia that the 2015 election process will be democratic, free, fair and credible; 2) implement “our institutional process and our laws and regulations [that] are perfect” by 3) imposing on all political parties “the code of conduct” that his party has “put in place”. The TPLF's three-pronged strategy is actually the perfect game plan for the perfectly rigged election. The late Meles Zenawi wrote the perfect election rigging rulebook and “implemented” it in 2010. As a result, his party won the perfect election with 99.6 percent of the parliamentary seats.

Prof. Hagmann’s observations also point to the total absurdity and futility of any “elections” in Ethiopia in light of the dogmatic belief of the leaders of the TPLF (and its handmaiden the “EPDRF”) in their birthright to rule: This is visible in the way EPDRF sees itself – namely as a vanguard party that has earned the right to lead the state, to determine what development is and how democracy is to be organized. Therefore, whoever is against the EPDRF is ‘anti-development’ or ‘anti-peace’ and whoever opposes its policies is anti-state.

It is a known known to me that President Obama gave his implicit blessings in 2010 when the TPLF regime declared victory by 99.6 percent. He turned a blind eye and deaf ears. (Not so when he lectured Robert Mugabe for winning the presidential "election" in Zimbabwe in 2013 by 61 percent: “Zimbabweans have a new constitution. The economy is beginning to recover. So there is an opportunity to move forward but only if there is an election that is free and fair and peaceful so that Zimbabweans can determine their future without fear of intimidation and retribution.”) An election that was won by 61 percent is not "free and fair" and deserves public condemnation but an election won by 99.6 percent is free and fair and deserves private accolades?!