Show notes
Security analyst Ovigwe Eguegu gives us an overview of African geopolitics in the New Cold War and helps us make sense of U.S., European, Russian, and Chinese influence on the continent. He also looks at the African Union (AU), its 2063 agenda, and how Covid-19 is impacting Africa today.
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Geopolitics & Empire · Ovigwe Eguegu: African Geopolitics in the New Cold War #146
Transcript:
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Podcast: The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast is joined by Ovigwe Eguegu. He is an international security analyst based in Nigeria who specializes in security diplomacy, geopolitics, global system transformation, conflict, and peace. We'll be looking at Africa and geopolitics in the context of the New Cold War, including the numerous actors who are continuing to vie for influence, and which are not limited to the United States, the EU, Russia, China, Turkey, and Middle Eastern states. We'll also look at African debt relief and China decoupling.
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Ovigwe Eguegu: Yes, yes I'm in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria. I'm doing fine and you?
Podcast: I'm doing well, that's good to hear. So I thought before we start that you would educate us a bit on how Africans today view the foreign influences vying for economic, cultural, and political control in Africa. You know, for many years it's been my dream to go visit Africa but now with the economic problems that we're facing, the historic economic problems, and the whole Covid situation and the difficulty of travel I don't know if that's going to become a reality. But whether we're talking about the Western powers, Russia, China, the Middle East, we all know the history of imperialism in Africa and so maybe if you can enlighten us a bit on what is the opinion or feeling of Africans today regarding what's going on.
Ovigwe Eguegu: Yeah, it's been quite quiet you. I think Africa started making the news again for stuff other than poverty and humanitarian missions from around 2000. Because the 1990s were really like a lost decade or where what we had was quiet. I remember that New York Times article about the Forgotten Continent. There were so many negative headlines about the African story, but I think around 2000 was when we started getting some of our act together as a continent. First of all, because I think one of the good things we've done as a continent, was repurpose the OAU to get to the AU, the AU being quite committed to the new agenda 2063.
And during all of this background what it has been doing with its international partners was sort of like created it simply for a new Africa, including when the Chinese started coming into Africa. I think one of the first countries they or the first country that they started making waves in was Ethiopia and then Angola. So with the coming of China and Chinese investments, spreading from Ethiopia to Angola, forming a good partnership with South Africa, and South Africa eventually becoming a member of BRICS. Even in my own country in Nigeria and Kenya, with the coming of China, there was this new enthusiasm in Africa. What we now have in Africa is now China has overtaken other partners as the biggest trade country for many African countries and biggest trade partner for many African countries in I think for about 10 years.
But you know you begin to see this new interest in Africa not just from the Chinese both from all other big players, like the United States sees Africa something some of Europe's backyard or their cousin’s backyard where they have their own independent interest on the continent. But I have always looked at U.S. foreign policy through the lens of Europe because you know West Africa is seen as something like between France and UK. South Africa's seems to be Britain's sphere of influence and so on so for, but with the U.S. still being the preeminent power and it being in geopolitical rivalry with China there is this new competition or Cold War in the imagined in global space and Africa again is at the center of it because whether it’s in trade whether it’s in technology, the US and China are at loggerheads battling each other.
The Europeans are also still interested in Africa, but I think Europe, Europe-Africa relations has always been, very contentious. On one hand there is the talk of development, development, development, and support in Africa to develop but, nobody really sees much that's being done in terms of how that development is going to be done, is going to be achieved. What you get most of the time are massive donations towards maybe humanitarian war, there's some trade of course, and also it choose the core to Europe's interests like security, transfer, or migration into Europe. Europe...has been forced to externalize its border into North Africa.
So if you see, if you look at Europe's strategy, initial strategy for Africa which was launched two months back Ursula, the EU president and AU sat over a period of like two three weeks, you know, discussed and they announced it but the Africa Union is not happy about it because Africa is saying it wants to develop its own strategy, but if you only look at what Europeans are saying, things like sustainability, things like gender issues or gender equality, education, climate change, migration, all of these are already in our own African Union Agenda 2063, right. So the Europeans didn't really bring anything new in terms of goals, so what they might have brought is this is how we think Africa should, approach these issues. President or the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, mentioned a meeting in Europe of African leaders that she just wants, to listen. I mean what kind of, what kind of summit or conference are we talking about where we just want a listening party or what? We have a continent that is trying to become better and we want a case where the foreign players are looking to Africa's own collective approach to development as well as see how they can contribute or on how we can partner not coming from outside, until you know this is how you should do what you want to do. So looking at all of this, whether its China, whether its U.S., the United States whether it’s, France, you already called the bigger European Union.
It's a very interesting time to specialize in African affairs or be an African involved in politics because, there's always this battle of who is doing the most for Africa or who is not doing enough or who is just speaking and not really not necessarily doing anything but, of all of these issues, the most fundamental thing that everybody has to put in the back of their mind is that we Africans we also want to develop too - we may have issues with corruption, leadership and misrule, but the fundamental issue with us in the Sahel remains peace, right. But, if we pick an example, the United States and France, now they are locked in this tussle over who should lead MINUSMA- the UN Mission in Mali.
But let's not forget that in addition to the suffering today in the Sahel is as a result of the ousting of Gaddafi, right, because and it was very clear before the ousting of Gaddafi, before NATO started intervening, its intervention in the Libyan crisis then, the African Union should ... Jacob Zuma the president of South Africa, who went all the way to the African Union to decry NATO's involvement and there was a collective statement from the African Union condemning the attempt or the discussion that was coming out of Europe and United States that NATO is going to be involved in in the war. What happened, Africa was ignored, NATO got involved, bombed Libya out of oblivion, and then we had this case where there was a massive pouring of weapons from Libya, south into the Sahel. You could trace the increase in violence and activity of terrorist organizations in Sahel, from you know the point of Gaddafi's death all the way from 2011-2012, you know, the huge spike whether its Boko Haram activity, whether Al-Qaeda, you know in the Islamic Maghreb and then ISIS later came, we never had ISIS in a West African province all of these groups, they were they were either just festering then or they weren't even known, but the moment we had breakdown of law and order in, you know in Libya, in Libya, it was a huge disaster for the Sahel and then all of these groups began receiving cheap arms, you know, and fighting, and of course, terrorizing, within six to seven months of Gaddafi falling, Mali was almost was technically a failed state. It's very important and again then maybe they thought that would be the last of it because they were always suffering, but immediately either the issue in Syria ended up out of control, Libya became a point for migrants to take on the journey towards Europe so the problem started to impact the locals.
Before we knew it, it becomes a foreign policy disaster for them because that always backfires, and, it's something that I would say the Chinese have over, the Western counterparts in the content of Africa because there seems to be more rapp
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