By Norm Dixon
In 1884-85, the European powers sat down at the Berlin colonial conference to formalise Africa's carve-up into colonies. The orgy of brutal invasions that preceded the conference was aptly dubbed "the scramble for Africa" by the London Times. Today, US imperialism is aggressively challenging European — especially French — economic and political influence in Africa. This rivalry will increasingly shape African politics.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have meant that western powers are no longer compelled to suppress their rivalries in the face of a common threat. African liberation movements and radical governments can no longer turn to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for aid, trade and solidarity.
Relieved of the need to put common interests first, the US and European powers are free to assert their own economic, political and military interests in Africa and other parts of the Third World.
In early 1996 Ron Brown, then US secretary for commerce, announced during a five-country tour of west Africa that Washington would encourage US corporations to push aggressively into Africa. He told a meeting of business people in Ghana, "From now on, the US is not going to give way on African markets to the old colonial powers".
A 1996 US government document, "Comprehensive Trade and Development Policy for the Countries of Africa", described Africa as the "last frontier for American businesses" and charged that former European colonial powers "continue to use their ties with these countries to maintain influence and win business".
The clear message was that Europe, particularly France, would no longer have Africa to itself.
During the Cold War, the US was prepared to cede sub-Saharan Africa to the economic sphere of influence of the European imperialists — primarily France and Britain, and to a lesser extent Portugal and Belgium. As a result, European capital has the upper hand there.
Third World Network Features' Accra-based correspondent Tetteh Hormeku points out that direct US investment in Africa is small and narrow compared to Europe's. In the early 1990s, the US accounted for just 15% of direct investments from the industrialised countries. US direct investment stood at US$200 million at the end of 1993, compared to the European Union's $1.1 billion.
Of the 50 largest foreign-based corporations in sub-Saharan Africa's industrial and tertiary sectors, only six are from the US; they are concentrated in distribution and transport, petrochemicals and metal processing. European corporations number 38 — mainly from France, Britain and the Netherlands — and are involved in food and beverages production, tobacco, rubber, petrochemicals, petroleum, metals and minerals processing.
Of the 25 largest multinationals in the finance sector, just two are US-based; most of the rest are European. Mining is dominated by South African, European, Australian and Canadian capital.
US exports to Africa account for only 7% of the market, while the European Union supplies 41%.
Important market
Earlier this year, a task force sponsored by the US establishment-backed Council on Foreign Relations urged the US government to move quickly to take advantage of "the most promising period since the onset of African independence 40 years ago".
The task force pointed out that the US exports more to Africa than to eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics combined. Since the US generates more than 30% of its economic growth from exports, Africa will become increasingly important as a market.
The World Bank's vice president for Africa, Callisto Madavo, told a Hong Kong seminar in September that investment returns in Africa range between 25 and 30% compared with a worldwide average of 16-18%.
The end of the Cold War and the demise of the apartheid regime have opened new opportunities for big business. Southern Africa has at last begun to rebuild after decades of imperialist-sponsored war, sabotage and destabilisation.
Since 1989, the wars and insurgencies — backed by South Africa, the US and other western powers — that devastated Namibia, Mozambique and Angola have ended (although in Angola Jonas Savimbi's UNITA remains active).
The destabilisation of the "front-line" states by the apartheid regime has also ended. The Southern Africa Development Community, which groups 14 southern African countries reported on November 18 that intra-SADC trade jumped from 7% of the region's total trade to 17% during 1996.
In Uganda in 1986, the rebel National Resistance Army overthrew the corrupt regime of Milton Obote, which rivalled the 1971-79 Idi Amin dictatorship in its brutality. In 1991, the long-running civil war in Ethiopia and the liberation struggle in Eritrea came to an end when the brutal Mengistu dictatorship was overthrown following the withdrawal of Soviet support.
The return of peace and relative stability in many parts of the continent has fuelled an economic mini-boom. Ethiopia and Uganda registered growth last year of 11.9% and 9.4%. Malawi led southern Africa with 16.1%, followed by Zimbabwe with 8.1% and Mozambique with 6.8%. Almost all African countries topped 4%.
Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole recorded an average 5% growth rate in 1996, the highest in more than a decade. This makes it the second fastest growing Third World region, after Asia. Per capita growth rates increased in both 1995 and 1996.
The collapse of the Mobutu kleptocracy in Congo in May — which passed its use-by date with the end of the Cold War as far as the US was concerned — promises further progress for the region.
Mobutu and his cronies' systematic plunder over 30 years resulted in Congo's economy shrinking to its 1958 level. Simply ending this grand larceny will be a tremendous boost.
The demise of Mobutu is also a blow to reactionary terrorist movements that still operate against Rwanda, Uganda and Angola. It also leaves the unstable, brutal and corrupt "dinosaur" regimes of Nigeria and Kenya further exposed.
South African capital
Key to US imperialism's hopes is a partnership with South African capital to jointly exploit Africa. As Africa's only resident imperialist power, South Africa is seen as the continent's economic and political powerhouse and "gateway" to markets. South Africa's annual GDP of more than $120 billion is three times the combined GDPs of the other SADC countries.
Freed from the international isolation resulting from sanctions — and awash with capital — South African big business is expanding outside its borders. South African corporations have been involved in offshore acquisitions and mergers worth more that R8 billion (US$1.6 billion) in September and October alone and R40 billion since 1994. Projects worth R65 billion are in the pipeline.
According to World Bank figures, private investment capital — led by the US — has surged into southern Africa since 1990, tripling in the space of a year to US$11.7 billion in 1996. In the early 1990s, private investment was barely US$1 billion a year. US and European capital are competing for the South African ruling class's favours.
Earlier this year, Texas-based SBC Communications Inc and Telekom Malaysia Berhad bought a 30% stake in Telkom, South Africa's state-owned phone company. The deal was worth $1.26 billion. Seven other international consortia were also vying for the prize.
In August, the US Trade and Development Agency urged US investors to study 45 major South African projects in transportation, industry, power and telecommunications that the agency said had the potential for generating US$8.2 billion in US exports.
US Secretary of Commerce William Daley has been aggressively promoting US investment in South Africa. He told a Washington investment seminar that South Africa is the "launching point for exploring the other African markets that US firms may have overlooked".
The Europeans are not about to left out. A conference in Cologne in October, chaired by Daimler Benz CEO Jürgen Schrempp, sought to boost links between German business and the SADC. Germany's economic affairs minister Günter Rexrodt told the German big business leaders that South Africa's accession to the SADC had strengthened the importance of the regional organisation and improved economic opportunities in the region.
"With 135 million people and a GDP of $170 billion, southern Africa is an important market, and with increasing integration, the region's attractiveness will grow further ... For companies from Europe, America and Asia, South Africa is increasingly becoming a springboard for the entire region", Rexrodt said.
While the First World's corporate rich — urged on by their governments — wax lyrical about the prospects for enrichment in Africa, the continent's poor are unlikely to share in the boom. More than half of Africa's 500 million people subsist on less that a US$1 a day.
Provisions in the bipartisan Growth and Opportunity Bill, currently stalled in Congress, make duty-free access for African products to the US market conditional on African governments dropping restrictions on US imports and private investment, minimising government economic intervention and dismantling the state sector.
This is simply a repeat of the damaging IMF-World Bank structural adjustment policies that have undermined local industry and destroyed public services and infrastructure.
US secretary of state Madeleine Albright told the UN Security Council in September that the Clinton administration's policy for Africa was all about "promoting self-help through capitalism". Given the sorry record of capitalism in the Third World, the people of Africa have little to look forward to.