Africa Is a Bad Investment

By Rich Kozlovich

I subscribe to a number of geopolitical sites, and Geopolitical Futures is one of them, but it's a paid subscription site so I can't link this article.  On December 5, 2024 one of their analysts, Ronan Wordsworth, posted an article entitled, "The US Re-Engages With Africa, saying how Washington is trying to gain three decades of lost ground in Africa from China and Russia".  But now, the man who failed to get one geopolitical issue right in over 40 years, Joe Biden, is going "to focus on pragmatic engagement".  

Why?  And why did America walk away for all these years?  It's really quite simple. 

When the Cold War ended, Africa tumbled down the list of U.S. foreign policy priorities. In most cases where it became involved, Washington tended to stress adherence to Western ideals like democracy, transparency and human rights, which often clashed with the interests of authoritarian African regimes. With Washington offering less but demanding more, growing numbers of Africans questioned whether the U.S. could meet their countries’ needs.

And what exactly were their needs?  I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that.

China is getting access to mineral rights and is spending a lot of money on infrastructure.  Really, infrastructure?   What exactly does that mean?  Well, if it means the same thing in Africa that it means in America then infrastructure is a code word for massive corruption and cronyism.  Little of that money will get into the hands of the people or will it provide better conditions for their societies. Basically China is offering a form of colonialism:

More and more “less-developed” countries are responding favorably to China’s political and financial offers of investment, conflict resolution, an alternative financial non-dollar system, and all-around benign, benevolent, Big Brotherhood.  The Chinese pitch is that it will help you by investing in your roads, ports, and resource development. China sells this in the name of trade: they will provide a market for the resources and pay you for them and you will use that money to buy manufactured products from China...............

Xi is using trade and investment to make the world dependent on China and will exploit that dependence to impose a global system of Communist subjugation on the world. If China’s internal policies are any indication, that subjugation will be brutal, overpowering, omnipresent, inescapable, and genocidal. Xi is quite open about it. He gives speeches about his plans and objectives. If you want to do business with China, you will do as China says about everything, all the time, including in your own country.........

The United States has now offered:

"to invest $55 billion in the continent over the next three years. In year one, the U.S. and Africa signed hundreds of deals worth at least $14.2 billion. These included U.S. investments in minor infrastructure projects, local industrial development and green energy projects. Washington also established Prosper Africa, an initiative that connects U.S. and African businesses to facilitate trade and investment."

It's not the job of America's government, or America's business communities to enrich these other nations.  IF we do business with them, we need to do so because it's profitable, their social issues are not our fault, nor are they our responsibility.  

While I believe in free trade in principle, in practice, what's called free trade ends up being free to them and costly to us more often than not.  As for America's business community, they are at best leaky vessels.  They believe in money, not principle, or societal values.  They believe in the next quarterly report, and would easily and quickly sell the nation down the river for another good quarterly report.  I am in total agreement about the valuelessness of foreign aid. That's a system rank with untold corruption.

There's all this talk about the mineral richness of Africa, but we need to ask ourselves this: Given the corrupt lack of civil rights in these nations what are the consequences for this?   Well, here are the consequences no one is mentioning.   Paul Driessen in his article, Cobalt Slavery, Child Labor, Ecological Destruction and Death, addresses this saying:

But almost one-third of Congo cobalt is gouged from the earth by artisanal miners: men and women, and boys and girls as young as six. They and their families live and work in a treeless “hellscape of craters and tunnels patrolled by maniacs with guns.”  Noxious clouds of gas permeate air that even infants must breathe. Families fish, play and bathe in – and drink from – rivers and lakes contaminated with metals and industrial chemicals.  They labor ten to twelve hours a day in sweltering heat and toxic mud, water and dust.....Injured miners may get initial medical care; then nothing......Almost everywhere, breast, kidney and lung cancers are rising, because adults, children and babies are exposed constantly to heavy metals and uranium in everything around them. High lead levels cause permanent neurological damage....

“Fair living” wages? Male artisanal miners receive around $2-4 a day – for output that might reach two 90-pound (40-kilogram) sacks of heterogenite cobalt ore. Women and children are typically paid half that, regardless of how much they produce or the purity of the ore they mine.  Those who disobey mine overseers can get “locked in a shipping container with no food or water for up to two days.” At Kanina, two boys who tried to get more than the usual pittance for their 65-pound bags of ore were gunned down – murdered – by security guards.   “Here it is better not to be born,” a mother lamented. A miner reflected, “Here we work in our graves.” Of course we fear the dangers, said another, “but if we do not work, we do not eat.”

This is what goes on all through Africa.  So, is America now going to say all this is just fine now?  Will China and Russia say to these corrupt monsters this is unacceptable?  Don't bet your life on it.

I keep seeing this kind thinking that can only be called a Kissinger Syndrome Mental Disorder.  Globalism is a mental disorder because it requires believing the unbelievable, and I keep coming back to the same question. How does this benefit America? 

After the European powers were kicked out of Africa, leaving behind established stable institutions for the first time in African history, Africans turned these nations into such crap holes of corruption they makes Washington look honest.  Dystopia rules Africa, poverty, misery, suffering, disease, and early death.  Not to mention unending levels of violence.   These nations may talk harmony but that's a delusion, the locust plagues of 1986, 1988, and 2020 are classic examples of what's wrong with Africa, and it's leadership.

South Africa is the perfect example. A once economically and socially stable nation, it is now a violent corrupt mess devoid of the rule of law, and is such an economic mess they're needing loans from the The World Bank and International Monetary Fund.  Billions have been sent to these nations only to have the "leadership" steal it propping up their corrupt leadership. 

There's no rule of law that pervades any of their societies, because stability is not a societal cultural paradigm in Africa. It's claimed their populations all yearn for democracy, but the first time they have the opportunity to vote, they vote in the same kind of vile characters they kicked out. 

These nations have always been violent primitive tribal societies, and that's never going to change. The fact they have modern communications, transportation, and arms doesn't alter their foundational social paradigms. 

So, why do we care if China, Russia, or anyone else wants to send them billions, or make investments there? It will be wasted. These corrupt nations are going to take the money and give nothing of value in return, and all these investment schemes will become corrupted and rot. Unless China or Russia intend to literally take over these countries.  And if that happens that will be even better for America, because they will go broke all the faster, and make no mistake, China's economy is all smoke and mirrors, and Russia can't even produce it's own military equipment.  They're buying drones from Iran. 

Let China and Russia waste their investments and let America stay home and mind our own business.  And what is that business?   Paying off the national debt, balancing the budget, stop borrowing, seriously reduce spending, cutting regulations, reduce the size of government, cut taxes, returning to energy independence, reimposing the rule of law, secure the nation's borders, and make education work once again.  America is capable of doing all of that, and if we do, we don't need anyone, they'll need us.

That's what should be our focus instead of wasting our money on Africa, or for that matter, any other of these corrupt unappreciative disloyal crap hole nations, where slavery is still being practiced, but then again, so too does China.  

It was a waste decades ago and it will be a waste now.