<\/b>\u201cSierra Leone\u2019s President Ernest Bai Koroma on Monday 24th June 2013 told a group of African diplomats, including Ambassadors that \u2018Africa is the Future of the World\u2019. He made these statements at a meeting with the African Diplomatic Caucus in Beijing shortly on arrival in the Chinese capital (Africa is the Future of the World”…President Koroma Tells Diplomats in Beijing) <\/i>n\u00a0 Jarrah Kawusu-Konte & John Baimba Sesay<\/i><\/p>\n
Africa needs a \u2018new Champion\u2019.\u00a0 A champion who can articulate the views, and face the challenges, of\u00a0 \u2018the new pro-business….economic-growth Africa\u2019: the mantle of \u2018Africa leadership\u2019 is falling on President Koroma.\u00a0 President Koroma has grown increasingly resonant, with obvious wisdom in every word he utters; burnishing his \u2018natural photogenic charisma\u2019, glossing his film star-like smile.\u00a0 \u00a0It has helped his leadership credentials that he is stimulating impressive economic growth in his country which is being hailed by the World Bank\/IMF, and, being deferred to on African affairs by the most powerful leader on earth, US President Barrack Obama.\u00a0\u00a0 It is significant that President Koroma spoke in China recently about \u201cAfrica\u201d- \u00a0which includes tiny Sierra Leone, of course.\u00a0\u00a0 It could be that President Koroma, awed by the sheer size of China (about 9,000,000 square kilometres! Put that against Sierra Leone\u2019s 71,000 square kilometres geographical space); astounded by the Chinese trillions of dollars economy , and overwhelmed by the 1.3 billion Chinese people (Pit Sierra Leone\u2019s about 6million people against China\u2019s 1 billion plus population), is reminding Africa, as Africa celebrates the 50th<\/sup> Anniversary of the African Union, that the only salvation for Africa in being competitive in the global arena (more like a global war field, really) would be to tighten the bonds of \u00a0meaningful unity.\u00a0\u00a0 Can President Koroma be bold enough to echo, or, amplify, Ghana\u2019s President Kwame Nkrumah?<\/p>\n We did not listen to Kwame Nkrumah!!<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Kwame Nkrumah\u2019s speech \u00a0\u00a0to the just budded\u00a0 OAU in the conference held in Ethiopia on 24th <\/sup>May, 1963, has been published\u00a0 in the May 2013 edition of NEW AFRICAN magazine.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0 Excerpt reads: \u201c…Our objective is African union now….. We must unite now or perish.\u00a0 …Our people supported us in our fight for independence because they believed that African governments could cure the ills of the past in a way which could never be accomplished under colonial rule.\u00a0 If, therefore, now that we are independent we allow the same conditions to exist that existed in colonial days, all the resentment which overthrew colonialism will be mobilized against us… We cannot afford not to cut down the overgrown bush of outmoded attitudes that obstruct our path to the modern open road of the widest and earliest achievement of economic independence and the raising of the lives of our people to the highest level<\/b>….What use to the farmer is education and mechanization, what use is even capital for development, unless we can ensure for him a fair price and a ready market? …\u00a0 We will be mocking the hopes of our people if we show the slightest hesitation or delay in tackling realistically this question of African unity….<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n Nkrumah was not listened to. \u00a0Of course!!\u00a0 \u00a0Africans forgot that the boundaries that made them \u2018Nigerians….Kenyans….Ivorians….Sierra Leoneans…\u2019 were made by Europeans who wanted to perpetuate the Atlantic Slave Trade in a benign form.<\/p>\n The Partition of \u00a0Africa in 1884\/1885<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n The Partition of Africa began in earnest with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, and was the cause of most of Africa\u2019s borders today.\u00a0 This conference was called by \u00a0\u00a0the then German Chancellor, Otto Von \u00a0Bismarck.\u00a0 The aim of the \u2018Blood and Iron\u2019 Chancellor was \u00a0\u00a0to settle how European countries would claim colonial land in Africa and to avoid a war among European nations over African territory.<\/p>\n All the major European States were invited to the conference. Germany, France, Great Britain, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain were all considered to have a future role in the imperial partition of Africa.\u00a0 The\u00a0 racist perception \u00a0that rationalized and sustained \u00a0Atlantic Slave Trade was dominant in the conference \u2013 \u00a0that Europeans believed Africans were sub-humans, and their thoughts and feelings should not be taken into consideration among \u2018normal human beings.\u00a0\u00a0 Not a single European was \u2018Christian\u2019 enough to even mildly \u00a0\u00a0stir the conscience of the \u2018Christian leaders\u2019 who assembled to dismember an entire continent of Africans.\u00a0 .<\/p>\n Africans have clung to their midget political status while the rest of the world that are not already giant nations (US, Russia, China) have grouped themselves into major political and economic blocks (European Union, NAFTA, OPEC, etc) with economies that are valued at trillions of dollars.<\/p>\n The 21st<\/sup> Century Scramble for Africa<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n In the 21st<\/sup> Century, there appears to be another \u2018Scramble for Africa\u2019 \u2013 for Africa\u2019s petroleum, iron ore….etc.\u00a0 \u00a0Some of the biggest retailers in the world \u2013 like Coke; Microsoft, etc. –\u00a0 see \u00a0great opportunity in the about a billion people who can be consumers in Africa.\u00a0 \u00a0Vijay Mahajan, author of Africa Rising: How 900 Million Consumers Offer More Than You Think<\/i> (Wharton School Publishing) postulates that the GDP of Africa – that is, looking at the continent as if it were a sort of United States of Africa – is actually higher than India’s. If all the countries in Africa combined forces, they would be the 10th largest economy in the world, one notch above India, and ahead of the other big emerging economies, Brazil and Russia.<\/b><\/p>\n Mahajan highlights another \u00a0sheen in Africa today:\u00a0 Africa has a young population. A little more than 40% of the population is younger than 15, compared with about 30% in India.<\/p>\n There are an estimated 735 million mobile subscribers in Africa who use their phone for various things such as banking, paying bill etc. A movement by experts, entrepreneurs and innovators called M-Health also popularly known as mobile health has taken advantage of these statistics by maximizing the use of mobile phone technology to help save lives.<\/p>\n The Chinese are Here: New Colonialists?<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n The Chinese have \u00a0marched into \u00a0the \u2018new Africa\u2019 boldly. \u00a0China has over 800 Chinese companies with 750,000 Chinese nationals operating in 49 out of 53 African countries. Since the 1990\u2032s, the Chinese have invested billions of dollars in African infrastructure, resource extraction, and other business ventures.. Trade between Africa and China went from $10 billion in the 1980s, to $100 billion in 2008. This was a rapid increase from $55 billion in 2006.\u00a0 By 2008, China exported $50.8 billion worth of goods to Africa, which was a rise of 36% from the previous year . The import of goods from Africa rose 54% or $56 billion . In Sierra Leone, Chinese companies have invested over a billion dollars in the giant African Minerals iron ore company.\u00a0 About a month ago, there was an announcement that billions of dollars more Chinese investments are in the pipeline for Sierra Leone.\u00a0 And it does appear as if the Americans and Europeans are worried.<\/p>\n Collin Spears, BFPR Chief Foreign Policy Correspondent in \u00a0Washington, D.C., US, <\/b>\u00a0writes that \u2018In 2005, the Western media began to express \u201cconcern\u201d with the increasing Chinese presence in Sub-Sahara Africa (Africa). During this period, many foreign policy observers began to promote the idea that China is plotting to take over Africa in some neo-colonialist attempt to gain unlimited access to natural resources. For example, Karin Kortmann, a German parliamentary state secretary stated in November of 2006, \u201cour African partners really have to watch out that they will not be facing a new process of colonization\u201d. The same year, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, Jack Straw, made similar allegations \u201cMost of what China has been doing in Africa today is what we did in Africa 150 years ago\u201d. This Sinophobic boilerplate is hyperbole, but the narrative suggests that the average African is impotent and their leaders are all iniquitous or ineffectual.<\/p>\n Sule Lamido, former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, recently expresses this \u2018Chinese fear\u2019: \u2018In much of Africa, they (the Chinese) \u00a0have set up huge mining operations. They have also built infrastructure. But, with exceptions, they have done so using equipment and labour imported from home, without transferring skills to local communities.<\/p>\n