A brutal war since April has left at least 10,000 dead and displaced 6 million but remains a mere footnote on the international agenda.
I’ve been trying to add “Horn of Africa” when I talk about Ukraine, Gaza, etc. It’s an awful situation. I know people only have the capacity for so much horror but the same refugee charities are going to have to work there too. I do a monthly donation to Refugees International and Doctors Without Borders in part because they go anywhere, sometimes before journalists.
The victims are the wrong colour, the perpetrators are the wrong religion, the west is distracted, Africans aren’t great fans of former colonial powers getting involved in their former colonies, and it’s in the Russian/Chinese sphere of influence.
Although the root causes of the conflict are domestic, Russia’s working on building a naval base there, there’s evidence of Wagner involvement, and according to some media Russia is using Sudanese gold to help fund the war in Ukraine. Which probably doesn’t help or give the Russians much of a motive to weaponise the conflict for propaganda purposes, unlike other conflicts.
Yep, and it will continue to be since it’s China’s and Russia’s territory. Most of the underdeveloped African nations are these days. The west gave up a while ago and often weren’t wanted anyway.
https://apnews.com/article/china-russia-xi-putin-brics-south-africa-f596f2362aa11c42d17d26ba739e56f2
I think it was the head of the African Union who said, addressing the EU, “when I talk to you I get a lecture, when I talk to China I get an airport.”
Of course, China expects payback. Quickly. Or else.
No, that’s the genius in their strategy: They don’t expect payback quickly. It’s perfectly fine for them if you lease your new infrastructure for 99 years and pay nothing. They’ll then happily take it away from your great-grandchildren.
Yes, completely different from how the IMF and World bank behave.
China’s debt-trap diplomacy is on a whole other level.
Is it though? To me it seems they just took the post/neo colonial playbook and started applying it too. I’ve never seen a straight comparison of terms for similar investments. In either case, the country ends up loaded with debt it can’t repay, and they have to privatise something (or in the case of China, they get the asset?).
I think there are two things I would point to. One is that neither the IMF nor the World Bank are nation states, which makes their predatory lending a little different. The other is that China brought Sri Lanka’s economy to the brink of collapse through predatory lending and I don’t know that the IMF or the World Bank has gone that far with a nation’s economy, but feel free to correct me on that.
Here’s a top 10 list of debtors to the IMF, on top of which is Argentina, which, as you know isn’t doing great economically.
I’m not going to claim there’s a causal effect, as I don’t think the case of Sri Lanka can be attributed solely to debt to China either (Sri Lanka was run by kleptocrats, and had to import a lot of goods and energy, making it vulnerable to external market conditions).
Weren’t wanted is an understatement. France and the UK were robbing whole Africa dry. Africa would have been extremely developed by now if their population saw some of the money the west was stealing from them.
Well, let’s see how things will be different now that it’s china and russia extracting wealth from them.
Not much, but it’s pretty easy to get the locals riled up to overthrow the current government.
China might do some minor projects to get them into debt like our IMF has but it won’t amount to much either
France and the UK were robbing whole Africa dry.
Were robbing? France still controls the currency of like 7 or 8 African nations. America gets most of the blame for foreign meddling but the French never stopped colonialism. Fucking assholes
I feel so bad for not knowing about it before.
It’s hard to know about all the wars and genocides, if they aren’t in the standard westernized nations. I only learned of the Rohingya genocide this year.
The best that most of us can do is be like ShittyBeatles and donate to legit charities of your choice.
Hell even with western nations it can be forgotten, plenty of folks dont know about the Armenian genocide for example. Frankly speaking I think at best you can get most to list off the Holocaust, Armenia, and maybe the Holodomor or Cambodia.
Sorry, people keep telling me Africans need to solve their own problems.
I’ve done my part and told a few people about it. It hasn’t helped, so far.
Don’t stop trying.
Okay, but nobody wants to talk to me anymore?
You need a captive audience, like holding a bank hostage.
I’m talking them through Sudan, but they won’t. Stop. Screaming!
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This is a beautiful photo.
The burned remnants of an MSF health post destroyed in fighting at Wunpeth village, Abyei, Sudan, August 2023.
