Increasing women’s ability to procure financial services is not just a boon to economic development, but is beneficial to society as a whole, the President of the United Nations General Assembly today told participants at a panel discussion on women’s economic empowerment in New York.

United Nations officials have called for increased efforts – by Governments, civil society, law enforcement agencies, the private sector and international organizations including the UN – to curb human trafficking, especially in women and girls.

"At the time of his death Chima was the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) where he worked for 15 years. A committed human rights activist, Chima was remarkable for his unwavering dedication to social justice for ordinary Nigerians. Since his university days, Chima had been actively involved in shaping political events in Nigeria."

The election campaign in Mauritania is heating up, with less than a week left before citizens go to the polls to choose their new president. As Maghrebia reports, the country's NGOs have deployed 800 observers to monitor campaigns by 19 candidates in various parts of the country.

For the first time in years, national and international observers are genuinely optimistic about the possibilities of a peace process in Côte d'Ivoire. The government of President Laurent Gbagbo and his rivals of the ex-rebel Forces Nouvelles signed a peace deal in neighbouring Burkina Faso that may create a more credible transitional government and finally break the deadlock in the split country.

On February 12, a young South African man was accidentally shot outside the Bafana Bafana spaza shop in Motherwell township in Port Elizabeth’s Nelson Mandela Municipality. Police claim he was shot by Somali shopkeeper Hassan Alow. Alow said thieves who had robbed his shop shot the boy.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/broadcasts/fikeleportrait.jpgFikele Vilakaz, director of the Coalition of African Lesbians, talks to Sokari Ekine in the first of our .

The interview is part of an online exhibition produced by Gabrielle Le Roux and Sokari Ekine which combines audio content with portraits drawn during the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi. It pays tribute to the inspiring activists who risk their lives in the fight for sexual rights in Africa, India and Latin America.

Music in this podcast is brought to you by Busi Ncube from Zimbabwe, kindly provided by Thulani Promotions.

Zimbabwe's struggling agriculture sector can be turned around with more "nuanced" government support targeting smaller-scale farmers, agricultural experts said. Reserve bank governor Gideon Gono this week signalled an end to preferential loans and inputs for wealthier black commercial farmers in the next growing season.

More than 80 percent of under-sixteen’s working the streets in Ghana left home because of family problems, such as neglect or parents' separation, according to Catholic Action for Street Children (CAS), an NGO based in Accra. Other causes cited by CAS are the collapse of rural livelihoods as traditional industries like fishing go into decline, lack of jobs, poor schools outside the cities, and forced marriage.

Alarming figures released by a South African provincial education department indicate that schoolgirl pregnancies have doubled in the past year, despite a decade of spending on sex education and AIDS awareness.

Abundant rain, a seemingly endless canopy of dense vegetation and full rivers give the impression that there is no threat of deforestation in the Central African Republic (CAR). Yet the country loses up to one million hectares of forest a year to loggers and firewood collectors

About 43,400 Congolese expelled from diamond mines in northern Angola are living in precarious conditions near the Congolese border, humanitarian officials said. Angolan authorities began expelling the Congolese in 2006, accusing them of being illegal diamond miners.

AIDS activists in Burundi are up in arms over a nationwide shortage of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs, and are demanding immediate action from the government. Health workers said delays in the government's procurement process had caused the shortages.

A Nigerian human rights activist has been attacked by thugs and received death threats after accusing government officials in the nation's top oil-producing state of corruption, he said on Thursday.

African countries may not meet the millennium development goals on health, former President for Mozambique Joaquim Chissano has said. Although progress had been made in the health sector, more effort and resources were necessary in the remaining seven years to ensure the goals, popularly known as MDGs, were realised.

A one-year prison sentence has been imposed on Mburu Muchoki, the editor of the tabloid weekly The Independent, for libelling the justice minister and called on the government to amend the laws so that judges in future can pass fairer sentences for press offences.

European Union (EU) Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels on 5 March failed to follow the lead of the European Parliament by imposing tougher measures against the genocidal regime in Khartoum.

World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz has pressed Burundi’s leader to crack down on corruption and reduce red tape to speed the recovery from a 13-year civil war. The cost of opening a business, at twice the average income, curbed economic growth, Wolfowitz told Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza when they met this week.

Reuters reports that a Nigerian court has reinstated a central state governor on Thursday nearly five months after he was impeached over allegations of corruption. Joshua Dariye is the third governor to be reinstated by the courts in the last four months in a sign the judiciary is not comfortable with a series of impeachments that swept across Nigeria, raising tensions ahead of landmark polls in April.

Kenya's justice assistant minister has accused the European Union (EU) members states of putting in place barriers to Kenya`s bid to recover over US$1 billion allegedly stashed in foreign banks by corrupt leaders.

Reuters reports that a rising number of unaccompanied Zimbabwean children are entering South Africa, according to a nongovernmental organisation that provides assistance to refugees and displaced people.

The Thembeka High School in Mpumalanga unveiled three new classrooms Thursday, designed entirely by three innovative learners in the province. Thulani Ndlovu, Mbali Dladla and Mduduzi Mashigo won the Public Works National 2014 Youth Foundation competition last year and were given an opportunity to improve the existing structure of their own school.

The High Court of Swaziland has dismissed a E750,000 (approx. US$100,000) lawsuit against the "Times of Swaziland" newspaper filed by the Minister for Education, Themba Msibi. The case was dismissed on grounds that the wrong parties were cited in the particulars of claim.

According to a World Bank press report, the Democratic Republic of Congo's Environment Minister Didace Pembe Bokiaga has committed the newly-elected government to a revolutionary package of reforms to boost the country’s nascent conservation efforts, and focus attention on Africa’s imperiled forests.

On International Women's Day, local and international women's and human rights groups have urged donors to devote more funding to HIV/AIDS programmes aimed at reducing women's vulnerability to infection.

The Forum on the Participation of NGOs in the 41st Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, and 15th African Human Rights Book Fair will be taking place from 12 - 14 May, 2007 in Accra, Ghana.

Home-based care in Swaziland is increasingly being relied on to compensate for the inadequacies of a public health system buckling under the weight of the country's HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The issue of lesbian and gay Africans' human rights again came to the fore recently as Anglican Church leaders met in Tanzania amid the continuing row over the consecration of a gay United States bishop in 2003. An ultimatum was sent from the conference in Dar es Salaam to US bishops to make a commitment that same-sex unions would not be blessed.

what if you were a flower
and your roots were lodged
on that part of earth that
separates Israel from Palestine?

would you give your scent to Israel
your beauty to Palestine
or withhold both?

what if you were a bee
and at some point in your buzzing about
you stopped to draw nectar
from the flower rooted on the edge
of the green line that separates Israel from Palestine?

would you make your nest
in Tel Aviv maybe Bethlehem, or on no strip at all?

what if you were a honey farmer
and you made a living selling
honey that you got from the hive
in which lived the bee
that got its nectar from the flower
that struggled for six days to sprout
and take root along the frame of the wall
that separates Israel from Palestine?

would you sell its texture to Israel
its sweetness to Palestine,
or forfeit the sale?

what if you were a tongue
and on you rolled the taste of the honey
you bought from the farmer
who got it from the hive, in which lived the bee
that got its nectar from the flower (watered by blood)
and rooted on that part of earth
that separates fear from hope?

would you savour its sweetness
spew out its bitterness, or plain ignore the taste in between?

what if…

* Lindiwe Nkutha is a poet, storyteller and film maker based in South Africa

A Nigerian-based organization is looking for candidates to fill the post of CEO. Send all CVs and evidence of research experience to [email][email protected] on or before 5 p.m. on March 6th, 2007. Preferred Start Date: On or before May, 2007.

I just read the article 'The mis-representation of Africa' by Selome Araya and largely agree with its point of view. However, Ms Araya is one of the many, many people, Africans and non-Africans, who have written similar articles denouncing those campaigns and organisations that, despite being mostly well intentioned, do more to perpetuate myths and sterotypes about Africa rather than afford African peoples the dignity and accuracy of representation that any of us non-Africans would expect. What I think would be much more poignant and instructive is if writers like Ms Araya would themselves produce materials that report on African events, peoples, etc. in the manner they feel does them justice. Perhaps Pambazuka News could run a series of articles that intentionally do this. Why not run some mock ad campaigns by mocking NGOs that work to address issues in African countries but that represent those countries and peoples in the manner Ms Araya and many of us would prefer? It's called teaching by example.

* Gary Kenny Program Co-ordinator for Southern Africa Justice, Global and Ecumenical Relations Unit, United Church of Canada

Nigerian elections have always been surrounded by intrigue, corruption and violence. Nnimmo Bassey says that as the country prepares for the first elections where one civilian government hands over to another, it appears little has changed.

April 2007 looms near as the month in which Nigerians expect to go to the polls to elect a new set of political officers. Even as the days get closer, the entire exercise is shrouded in uncertainty and Nigerians have been left guessing who the candidates of the various parties would be.

Candidates whose names had been submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have to contend with the fact that clandestine clearing procedures are being conducted by any number of agencies and panels. It is a curious situation that with less than two months to go before the elections, the Nigerian people do not know their electoral choices.

One of the presidential candidates of one of the political parties is still battling to be cleared by INEC. That candidate is Atiku Abubakar, currently vice president of Nigeria. Mr Abubakar’s attempt to run on the platform of Action Congress after decamping from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has been strenuously fought by the PDP and the presidency. The presidency has so far unsuccessfully tried to declare the seat of the vice president vacant on account of his changing parties, and for being disloyal to the president. In a judgement on the matter at the Appeal Court, the judges ruled among other things that the loyalty of the vice president is primarily to the nation and not the president.

Judiciary interventions have helped to curb the rabid rush for the impeachment of governors by state legislators. The courts have been heroic in their handling of thorny political matters in the build up to the elections. In fact, the judiciary appears to be the real hope for salvaging the forthcoming elections, even before they are held.

The rift between the president and his vice climaxed as they attacked each other in full public glare, in a manner that would shame writers of soap operas. They threw mud at each other over which one of them corruptly handled funds from the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF). While the vice president accused the president of having diverted funds for less than official purposes, the presidency accused the vice president of making unauthorised bank deposits with resources of the PTDF. So far even the investigations of the Senate have not managed to settle the dust.

The conflict between the two top citizens of the country has largely overshadowed the real issues that ought to be addressed by politicians on campaign trails at this moment. With so far unproven corruption charges flying both ways, the episode has taught election watchers that the Nigerian electoral processes are a long way from being on track. As at the time of writing this piece the Atiku Abubakar’s name had not found its way onto the ballot, even though the electoral body asked for and received his photographs, ostensibly for that purpose.

The 2007 elections may well be one in which candidates spent more time struggling to have their names on the ballot papers than on the soap box enunciating their manifestos and programmes. Only recently, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) released a list of persons it considers to be corrupt and who should not be allowed to seek elective office in the country. While some analysts insisted that EFCC had no statutory powers to screen candidates, the presidency went ahead to set up a committee who reviewed the EFCC list. Out of their activities, it released a somewhat moderated list of persons who will not bee able to run for office at the forth coming elections.

The names on the ballot are not the only names to worry about. The names on the voters register may prove to be another headache. For example Nigerians were apathetic during the voters’ registration exercise. There were a number of reasons for this. People did not have a clear sense of where the registration centres were. Where the spots were known, there was a dearth of registration equipment. It was not until the last few days of the exercise, declared work free days for public officers, that people thronged to the registration centres. Registration of voters has historically offered corrupt politicians the opportunity to engage in multiple registrations, inclusion of fictitious names and the accumulation of voters’ cards with which they perfected their ignoble acts. The recent registration exercise had at least one incident in which registration equipment was allegedly found in the house of a chieftain of the ruling party. While some of the chieftain’s staff were reportedly arrested, the chieftain has not been brought to account.

One may call this selective justice, but that would pale in comparison with the spate of selections that seem to have overthrown elections among the political parties. The parties had to hold primaries aimed at nominating candidates for the forthcoming elections. It turned out that in many instances, the primaries were exercises in futility. How could that be? This happened in two ways. In some cases, the primaries were simply occasions for selection rather than election of candidates. The winners were predetermined by political godfathers even before the primaries were held. The primaries were thus a rubber stamping process. The parties wasted more precious energies in the primaries after candidates who had been announced as winners at the primaries had their names erased and substituted by others, either at the party headquarters or with any other person with sufficient clout to twist the arms of members of such parties.

It was rather intriguing when all the governors, for instance, who wanted to run for the office of the president suddenly, stepped down for Mr Yaradua, governor of Katsina State. Governors of Akwa Ibom State, Rivers, Cross River and a number of other states stepped down for Yaradua at the convention field. Observers wonder why they had spent so many millions in preparation and campaigns if they were not seriously seeking to contest the election.

Throughout this process, persons who never wanted to be on the ballot found themselves there. And it does appear that some of them are depending on the parties that threw up their names to also conduct campaigns and win them the elections as well.

In this perilous situation we cannot avoid mentioning the volatile Niger Delta, where it is difficult to predict whether people will be able to vote freely. The Niger Delta remains an example of a festering ulcer that the nation has failed to heal over the years, and which may infect the entire body politic, if left for much longer without the needed political treatment. Armed resistance is not new in the Niger Delta. It was first utilised in an organised manner by the Isaac Adaka Boro’s led Niger Delta Volunteer Service (NDVS) in 1966. In that struggle, they NDVS declared an independent state of Niger Delta Republic that lasted only 12 days before it was crushed by the Nigerian state. Today the armed groups are not declaring secession but are insisting on political negotiation and that the social-economic and environment debasement visited on the region be addressed.

One would have expected that the question of the Niger Delta would dominate the campaign trail. This has not been the case. In fact only a few of the parties are making any serious attempt to address it. In a situation where candidates are busy struggling to place their names on the ballot and where others are struggling to keep their names off the corruption list, very little energy is expended on issue-based campaigning. It could also be said that campaigning on issues is also difficult because many of the parties are effectively only different in name.

The Niger Delta issue, has however, resonated in a way watchers never expected. On 30 January 2007 while commissioning his campaign headquarters in Abuja, the vice president announced to the world that the government was spending the sum of US$2 billion in arms acquisition in order to crush the insurgents in the Niger Delta. He was quickly accused of playing politics. There was oblique denial of any arms build-up in the region. But not long afterwards the president stated while campaigning for the PDP’s presidential candidate that there were many militia camps in the Niger Delta, to which no government could turn a blind eye.

Investigation by some journalists revealed that a huge investment in arms has indeed been made by the government with the Niger Delta in mind. The sum mentioned is 100 billion Naira, about US$800,000. This sum was allegedly provided by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) through an extra-budgetary arrangement.

Recently the president was quoted as saying that the election would be a do or die affair, or a matter of life or death for his party, and for the nation. This declaration sent shivers down the spine of a nation reeling in violence and insecurity. There have been no retractions. It is thus an open question if the spirit of sportsmanship will be anywhere near the election field when the whistle is blown - or when the gun is fired, for that matter.

The build up to the 2007 election has seen more high profile assassinations and murders than have been seen in other elections in the country. This has raised considerable concern among election watchers as to what level of violence will be unleashed during the actual voting, whether the ballot will count this time around, or whether political thugs will rake up fictional votes. According to Priscilla Achakpa, executive cirector of the Women Environmental Programme (WEP), a Nigerian NGO, 'the whole world is watching Nigeria and it is likely that the politicians will exercise some caution and not act with impunity. We cannot say categorically that the peoples’ votes will not count. What we can say with full confidence is that the electorate is much more enlightened today than they were in 1999 and in 2003'.

This election is not just another election in Nigeria. It is an election with deep historical significance. It will mark the first time a civilian government has handed over power to another civilian government. With dark clouds over the transition route, many are asking: will votes count? Will the electorate stand up to defend their votes? Only time will tell.

* Nnimmo Bassey is the director of Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth, Nigeria) Visit

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at pambazuka.org

The US is increasing its military presence in Africa under the guise of fighting the war on terror and protecting US commercial interests in Africa, especially oil, writes John Bellamy Foster.

Capitalism is a system that is worldwide in its economic scope but divided politically into competing states that develop economically at different rates. The contradiction of uneven capitalist development was classically expressed by Lenin in 1916 in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism:

'There can be no other conceivable basis under capitalism for the division of spheres of influence, of interests, of colonies, etc., than a calculation of the strength of the participants in the division, their general economic, financial, military strength, etc. And the strength of these participants in the division does not change to an equal degree, for under capitalism the development of different undertakings, trusts, branches of industry, or countries cannot be even. Half a century ago, Germany was a miserable, insignificant country, as far as its capitalist strength was concerned, compared with the strength of England at that time. Japan was similarly insignificant compared with Russia. Is it “conceivable” that in ten or twenty years’ time the relative strength of the imperialist powers will have remained unchanged? Absolutely inconceivable.'[1]

It is now widely acknowledged that the world is undergoing a global economic transformation. Not only is the growth rate of the world economy as a whole slowing, but the relative economic strength of the US is continuing to weaken. In 1950, the US accounted for about half of world GDP, falling to a little over a fifth by 2003. According to the projections of Goldman Sachs, China could overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2039.

This growing threat to US power is fuelling Washington’s obsession with laying the groundwork for a 'New American Century'. Its current interventionism is aimed at taking advantage of its present short-term economic and military primacy to secure strategic assets that will provide long-term guarantees of global supremacy. The goal is to extend US power directly, while depriving potential competitors of those vital strategic assets that might allow them eventually to challenge it globally or even within particular regions.

The National Security Strategy of the United States of 2002 gave notice that 'our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equalling, the power of the US'. But grand strategy extends beyond mere military power. Economic advantages vis-à-vis potential rivals are the real coin of intercapitalist competition. Hence, US grand strategy integrates military power with the struggle to control capital, trade, the value of the dollar, and strategic raw materials.

Perhaps the clearest ordering of US strategic objectives has been provided by Robert J. Art, professor of international relations at Brandeis and a research associate of the Olin Institute, in A Grand Strategy for America. 'A grand strategy', he writes, 'tells a nation’s leaders what goals they should aim for and how best they can use their country’s military power to attain these goals'. In conceptualising such a grand strategy for the US, Art presents six 'overarching national interests' in order of importance:

• first, prevent an attack on the American homeland
• second, prevent great-power Eurasian wars and, if possible, the intense security competitions that make them more likely
• third, preserve access to a reasonably priced and secure supply of oil
• fourth, preserve an open international economic order
• fifth, foster the spread of democracy and respect for human rights abroad, and prevent genocide or mass murder in civil wars
• sixth, protect the global environment, especially from the adverse effects of global warming and severe climate change

After national defense proper, i.e., defense of 'the homeland' against external attack, the next three highest strategic priorities are thus: (1) the traditional geopolitical goal of hegemony over the Eurasian heartland seen as the key to world power, (2) securing control over world oil supplies, and (3) promoting global-capitalist economic relations.

In order to meet these objectives, Art contends, Washington should 'maintain forward-based forces' in Europe and East Asia (the two rimlands of Eurasia with great power concentrations) and in the Persian Gulf (containing the bulk of world oil reserves). 'Eurasia is home to most of the world’s people, most of its proven oil reserves, and most of its military powers, as well as a large share of its economic growth.' It is therefore crucial that the US imperial grand strategy be aimed at strengthening its hegemony in this region, beginning with the key oil regions of South-Central Asia. [3]

With the wars on and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq still unresolved, Washington has been stepping-up its threats of a 'preemptive' attack on these states’ more powerful neighbour, Iran. The main justification offered for this is Iran’s uranium-enrichment programme, which could eventually allow it to develop nuclear weapons capabilities. Yet, there are other reasons that the US is interested in Iran. Like Iraq before it, Iran is a leading oil power, now with the second largest proven oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia and ahead of Iraq. Control of Iran is thus crucial to Washington’s goal of dominating the Persian Gulf and its oil.

Iran’s geopolitical importance, moreover, stretches far beyond the Middle East. It is a key prize (as in the case also of Afghanistan) in the New Great Game for control of all of South-Central Asia, including the Caspian Sea Basin with its enormous fossil fuel reserves. US strategic planners are obsessed with fears of an Asian energy-security grid, in which Russia, China, Iran, and the Central Asian countries (possibly also including Japan) would come together economically and in an energy accord to break the US and Western stranglehold on the world oil and gas market—creating the basis for a general shift of world power to the East. At present China, the world’s fastest growing economy, lacks energy security even as its demand for fossil fuels is rapidly mounting. It is attempting to solve this partly through greater access to the energy resources of Iran and the Central Asian states. Recent US attempts to establish a stronger alliance with India, with Washington bolstering India’s status as a nuclear power, are clearly part of this New Great Game for control of South-Central Asia—reminiscent of the 19th century Great Game between Britain and Russia for control of this part of Asia. [4]

The New Scramble for Africa

If there is a New Great Game afoot in Asia there is also a 'New Scramble for Africa' on the part of the great powers. [5] The National Security Strategy of the United States of 2002 declared that 'combating global terror' and ensuring US energy security required that the US increase its commitments to Africa and called upon 'coalitions of the willing' to generate regional security arrangements on that continent. Soon after the US European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany—in charge of US military operations in sub-Saharan Africa—increased its activities in West Africa, centering on those states with substantial oil production and/or reserves in or around the Gulf of Guinea (stretching roughly from the Cote d'Ivoire to Angola). The US military’s European Command now devotes 70 per cent of its time to African affairs, up from almost nothing as recently as 2003. [6]

As pointed out by Richard Haass, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations, in his foreword to the 2005 council report entitled More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa: 'By the end of the decade sub-Saharan Africa is likely to become as important as a source of U.S. energy imports as the Middle East.' [7] West Africa has some 60 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Its oil is the low sulfur, sweet crude prized by the US economy. US agencies and think tanks project that one in every five new barrels of oil entering the global economy in the latter half of this decade will come from the Gulf of Guinea, raising its share of US oil imports from 15 to over 20 per cent by 2010, and 25 per cent by 2015. Nigeria already supplies the US with 10 per cent of its imported oil. Angola provides 4 per cent of US oil imports, which could double by the end of the decade. The discovery of new reserves and the expansion of oil production are turning other states in the region into major oil exporters, including Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Principe, Gabon, Cameroon, and Chad. Mauritania is scheduled to emerge as an oil exporter by 2007. Sudan, bordering the Red Sea in the east and Chad to the west, is an important oil producer.

At present the main, permanent US military base in Africa is the one established in 2002 in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, giving the US strategic control of the maritime zone through which a quarter of the world’s oil production passes. The Djibouti base is also in close proximity to the Sudanese oil pipeline. (The French military has long had a major presence in Djibouti and also has an air base at Abeche, Chad on the Sudanese border.) The Djibouti base allows the United States to dominate the eastern end of the broad oil swath cutting across Africa that it now considers vital to its strategic interests—a vast strip running southwest from the 994-mile Higleig-Port Sudan oil pipeline in the east to the 640-mile Chad-Cameroon pipeline and the Gulf of Guinea in the West. A new US forward-operating location in Uganda gives the US the potential of dominating southern Sudan, where most of that country’s oil is to be found.

In West Africa, the US military’s European Command has now established forward-operating locations in Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Gabon — as well as Namibia, bordering Angola on the south — involving the upgrading of airfields, the pre-positioning of critical supplies and fuel, and access agreements for swift deployment of US troops. [8]

In 2003 it launched a counterterrorism program in West Africa, and in March 2004, US Special Forces were directly involved in a military operation with Sahel countries against the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat—on Washington’s list of terrorist organisations. The US European Command is developing a coastal security system in the Gulf of Guinea called the Gulf of Guinea Guard. It has also been planning the construction of a US naval base in São Tomé and Principe, which the European Command has intimated could rival the U.S. naval base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Pentagon is thus moving aggressively to establish a military presence in the Gulf of Guinea that will allow it to control the western part of the broad trans-Africa oil strip and the vital oil reserves now being discovered there. Operation Flintlock, a start-up US military exercise in West Africa in 2005, incorporated 1,000 US Special Forces. The US European Command will be conducting exercises for its new rapid-reaction force for the Gulf of Guinea this summer.

Here the flag is following trade: the major US and Western oil corporations are all scrambling for West African oil and demanding security. The US military’s European Command, the Wall Street Journal reported in its April 25th issue, is also working with the US Chamber of Commerce to expand the role of U.S. corporations in Africa as part of an 'integrated US response'. In this economic scramble for Africa’s petroleum resources the old colonial powers, Britain and France, are in competition with the US. Militarily, however, they are working closely with the US to secure Western imperial control of the region.

The US military build up in Africa is frequently justified as necessary both to fight terrorism and to counter growing instability in the oil region of sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2003 Sudan has been torn by civil war and ethnic conflict focused on its south western Darfur region (where much of the country’s oil is located), resulting in innumerable human rights violations and mass killings by government-linked militia forces against the population of the region. Attempted coups recently occurred in the new petrostates of São Tomé and Principe (2003) and Equatorial Guinea (2004). Chad, which is run by a brutally oppressive regime shielded by a security and intelligence apparatus backed by the United States, also experienced an attempted coup in 2004. A successful coup took place in Mauritania in 2005 against U.S.-supported strongman Ely Ould Mohamed Taya. Angola’s three-decade-long civil war—instigated and fueled by the United States, which together with South Africa organized the terrorist army under Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA—lasted until the ceasefire following Savimbi’s death in 2002. Nigeria, the regional hegemon, is rife with corruption, revolts, and organized oil theft, with considerable portions of oil production in the Niger Delta region being siphoned off—up to 300,000 barrels a day in early 2004. [9]

The rise of armed insurgency in the Niger Delta and the potential of conflict between the Islamic north and non-Islamic south of the country are major US concerns.

Hence there are incessant calls and no lack of seeming justifications for US 'humanitarian interventions' in Africa. The Council on Foreign Relations report More than Humanitarianism insists that 'the United States and its allies must be ready to take appropriate action' in Darfur in Sudan 'including sanctions and, if necessary, military intervention, if the Security Council is blocked from doing so'. Meanwhile the notion that the US military might before long need to intervene in Nigeria is being widely floated among pundits and in policy circles. Atlantic Monthly correspondent Jeffrey Taylor wrote in April 2006 that Nigeria has become 'the largest failed state on earth', and that a further destabilisation of that state, or its takeover by radical Islamic forces, would endanger 'the abundant oil reserves that America has vowed to protect. Should that day come, it would herald a military intervention far more massive than the Iraqi campaign'. [10]

Still, US grand strategists are clear that the real issues are not the African states themselves and the welfare of their populations but oil and China’s growing presence in Africa. As the Wall Street Journal noted in 'Africa Emerges as a Strategic Battlefield', 'China has made Africa a front line in its pursuit of more global influence, tripling trade with the continent to some $37 billion over the last five years and locking up energy assets, closing trade deals with regimes like Sudan’s and educating Africa’s future elites at Chinese universities and military schools'. In More than Humanitarianism, the Council on Foreign Relations likewise depicts the leading threat as coming from China:

'China has altered the strategic context in Africa. All across Africa today, China is acquiring control of natural resource assets, outbidding Western contractors on major infrastructure projects, and providing soft loans and other incentives to bolster its competitive advantage.'[11]

China imports more than a quarter of its oil from Africa, primarily Angola, Sudan, and Congo. It is Sudan’s largest foreign investor. It has provided heavy subsidies to Nigeria to increase its influence and has been selling fighter jets there. Most threatening from the standpoint of US grand strategists is China’s US$2 billion low-interest loan to Angola in 2004, which has allowed Angola to withstand IMF demands to reshape its economy and society along neoliberal lines.

For the Council on Foreign Relations, all of this adds up to nothing less than a threat to Western imperialist control of Africa. Given China’s role, the council report says, 'the United States and Europe cannot consider Africa their chasse gardé [private hunting ground], as the French once saw francophone Africa. The rules are changing as China seeks not only to gain access to resources, but also to control resource production and distribution, perhaps positioning itself for priority access as these resources become scarcer'. The council report on Africa is so concerned with combating China through the expansion of US military operations in the region, that none other than Chester Crocker, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Reagan administration, charges it with sounding 'wistfully nostalgic for an era when the United States or the West was the only major influence and could pursue its...objectives with a free hand'.[12]

What is certain is that the US empire is being enlarged to encompass parts of Africa in the rapacious search for oil. The results could be devastating for Africa’s peoples. Like the old scramble for Africa this new one is a struggle among great powers for resources and plunder—not for the development of Africa or the welfare of its population.

A Grand Strategy of Enlargement

Despite the rapidly evolving strategic context and the shift to a more naked imperialism in recent years, there is a consistency in US imperial grand strategy, which derives from the broad agreement at the very top of the US power structure that the United States should seek 'global supremacy', as President Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski put it.[13]

The Council on Foreign Relations’ 2006 report on More Than Humanitarianism, which supports the enlargement of US grand strategy to take in Africa, was co-chaired by Anthony Lake, National Security Advisor to Clinton from 1993–1997 and Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Bush. As Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Lake played a leading role in defining the U.S. grand strategy in the Clinton administration. In a speech entitled 'From Containment to Enlargement', delivered to the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University on September 21, 2003, he declared that with the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States was the world’s 'dominant power...we have the world’s strongest military, its largest economy and its most dynamic, multiethnic society....We contained a global threat to market democracies; now we should seek to enlarge, their reach. The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement'. Translated this meant an expansion of the sphere of world capitalism under the US military-strategic umbrella. The chief enemies of this new world order were characterized by Lake as the 'backlash states', especially Iraq and Iran. Lake’s insistence, in the early Clinton era, on a grand 'strategy of enlargement for the United States is being realized today in the enlargement of the US military role not only in Central Asia and the Middle East, but also in Africa.[14]

US imperial grand strategy is less a product of policies generated in Washington by this or that wing of the ruling class, than an inevitable result of the power position that US capitalism finds itself in at the commencement of the twenty-first century. US economic strength (along with that of its closest allies) has been ebbing fairly steadily. The great powers are not likely to stand in the same relation to each other economically two decades hence. At the same time, US world military power has increased relatively with the demise of the Soviet Union. The United States now accounts for about half of all of the world’s military spending—a proportion two or more times its share of world output.

The goal of the new US imperial grand strategy is to use this unprecedented military strength to preempt emerging historical forces by creating a sphere of full-spectrum dominance so vast, now encompassing every continent, that no potential rivals will be able to challenge the United States decades down the line. This is a war against the peoples of the periphery of the capitalist world and for the expansion of world capitalism, particularly US capitalism. But it is also a war to secure a 'New American Century' in which third world nations are viewed as 'strategic assets' within a larger global geopolitical struggle
The lessons of history are clear: attempts to gain world dominance by military means, though inevitable under capitalism, are destined to fail and can only lead to new and greater wars. It is the responsibility of those committed to world peace to resist the new US imperial grand strategy by calling into question imperialism and its economic taproot: capitalism itself.

* John Bellamy Foster is a journalist, sociologist, essayist as well as editor of the (US) Monthly Review.

* Please send comments to or comment online at pambazuka.org

Notes

1. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1939), 119.
2. Richard B. Du Boff, 'U.S Empire,' Monthly Review 55, no. 7 (December 2003): 1–2; Dominic Wilson & Roopa Purshothaman, 'Dreaming with BRICs', Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper, no. 99 (October 1, 2003), 4, http://www.gs.com/
3. Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 1–11.
4. Noam Chomsky, Failed States (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 254–55; Lutz Kleveman, The New Great Game (New York: Grove Press, 2004).
5. See Pierre Abramovici, 'United States: The New Scramble for Africa', Le Monde Diplomatique (Engish edition), July 2004; Revealed: The New Scramble for Africa', The Guardian, June 1, 2005.
6. Fred Kempe, 'Africa Emerges as a Strategic Battlefield', Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2006.
7. Council on Foreign Relations, More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa, 2006, xiii.
8. Council on Foreign Relations, More Than Humanitarianism, 59.
9. Center for Strategic and International Studies, A Strategic U.S. Approach to Governance and Security in the Gulf of Guinea, July 2005, 3.
10. Council on Foreign Relations, More Than Humanitarianism, 24, 133; Jeffrey Taylor, 'Worse Than Iraq?', Atlantic, April 2006, 33–34.
11. Council on Foreign Relations, More Than Humanitarianism, 40.
12. Council on Foreign Relations, More Than Humanitarianism, 52–53, 131.
13. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 3.
14. Anthony Lake, 'From Containment to Enlargement', speech to School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, September 21, 2003, http://www.mtholyoke.ed/
The above is a shortened version of the piece originally published in the Monthly Review.

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