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| Sub-Saharan Africa |
21st century Colonialists go home; Give up gutting, gunning
and running
Editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett
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mira Woods is Global Client Principal for Social Impact
Programs at a technology firm committed to social and economic justice (ThoughtWorks).
From 2003 to 2014, she was co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the
Institute for Policy Studies and an expert on US foreign policy with a special
emphasis on Africa and the developing world. She has written and interviewed in
a variety of media on a range of issues from debt, trade and development to
U.S. military policy. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Africa
Action (Chair), Just Associates, Global Justice and the Financial Policy Forum. She is also a member of the
advisory committee of the Zimbabwe Alliance, the Humanity United/Trustafrica
Liberia program, and the Network Council of Jubilee USA.
Emira Woods’ many subject/issue interests include Africa,
Debt Relief, Democratization, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Financial
Flows and Investment, Food Aid, Foreign Aid, G8, International Financial
Institutions, International Gender Issues, International Monetary Fund,
Liberia, Organization for African Unity (OAU), US State Department, Structural
Adjustment, Sudan, treasury, US Agency for International Development (USAID), US
Economic/Trade Policy. Emira Woods took
academic credentials at US universities, Columbia and Harvard.
Colonial
past meets “Modernity”
In the days of colonialism, European colonizers looked to Africa’s resources to drive Europe’s (the British Empire’s) economies and “the quest to dominate” expressed itself “most directly through military power and military might,” explains Emira Woods. And in contemporary times there is “a thirst for key resources for the global economy and access and control of those resources have often been the key determinant of foreign policy” — an old happening.
What is happening is “not a new phenomenon,” Woods says, “but
it is increasingly worrisome in this twenty-first century that the dependence
on vital resources, particularly natural resources coming from Africa – this
dependence is not only a US dependence; but also European and Chinese and many
other countries “looking to Africa’s resources as a means of growing their own
economies.”
Rising extraction
Rising
aggression
In a January 2013 interview with Press TV, Emira Woods said there
has been “an extended US military footprint in and around the African continent
that coincides with the increased significance of resources from Africa over
the past few years.”
Although countries of the continent such as South Africa, Algeria
and Nigeria have opposed the militarist deployment of US Africa Command (AFRICOM)
and the command has moved its headquarters to Stuttgart, Germany, US-Africa
policy has grown in militarism commensurate with Africa’s growing significance as
producer of oil, natural gas, and other vital resources. “The programs of
AFRICOM,” Woods said, “have extended from training and equipping African armies
to … increased use of drone technology — not only for intelligence gathering
but also, particularly in places like Somalia, for more lethal purposes.”
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| War/Conflict-Forced Migration Poverty Disease |
As the colonialists of old, the Americans today take (plunder,
pillage) using lethal occupation, force and threat of force; yet Woods persists
in asking the rhetorical “if”, “If the ultimate objective here is to secure
African natural resources, whatever happened to investing within the economy,
opening it to foreign market and investment?”
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ad Europe, the British Empire, the United States, any one of
these, invested in vital infrastructures on the continent of Africa, there
would be no dire poverty today, no preventable and curable disease, no deplorable
living conditions on the continent. What the West has done, and continues to do
against the peoples of Africa is brutal, UNCONSCIONABLE. This is my opinion.
Africans are disappointed with the Obama tenure. What this
government has done and failed to do, Woods says more moderately than I, has caused “concern and
actual resentment.”
Africans’ “high hopes have been … dashed” in the absence of “bold
leadership needed to actually change the status quo of how the United States
engages with Africa to create a truly mutually beneficial relationship” – a
mutually respectful foreign relations ethic “where Africa’s rise …is
actually supported and bolstered by visionary US leadership from the White
House and beyond.”
Beyond
colonialist past
The United States is out of step with the contemporary world
and needs to embrace real change, Woods has suggested in other contexts.
If the United States wants to be in step with the
twenty-first century and centuries to come, she says, its leaders must not only
“pay attention to Africa,” but must also adopt new approaches: “trade and
investment” policies with the continent that step “away from policies that favor extraction of Africa’s
resources and militarization of the continent.”
Sources and notes
Emira Woods bio brief, http://www.ips-dc.org/authors/emira-woods/
Press TV
“Oil-hungry US planning drone bases across Africa: Emira
Woods” Press TV interview with Emira Woods, January 29, 2013, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/01/29/286251/us-militarizing-africa-in-pursuit-of-oil/
Real News
“Is Obama’s Trip to Africa about Investment or the
Extraction of African Resources?”
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10366
“For Africa Trip, Obama Urged to Prioritize Development” – WASHINGTON,
June 24, 2013 (IPS) – “Advocacy groups here are urging U.S. President Barack
Obama to focus on more than just economic development during his upcoming trip
to Africa” by Cydney Hargis, http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/for-africa-trip-obama-urged-to-prioritise-development/
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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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