Colonial Africa: The World’s First Great Power Competition

>> Jendayi Frazer: Good morning, good afternoon, sort of in between both, it's very good to be here and I'm looking forward to our discussion. I have a whole continent to cover, so I will try to keep it within 40 minutes, if not less, okay, let's see where we are, so great competition in Africa, it's nothing new.

>> Jendayi Frazer: Really, if we think about it, competition has been in Africa for centuries now, and what I wanted to do is put today's competition in context. So, starting with sort of the historical context of external competition in Africa, then I'll go on to look at our current great power competition.

Especially focusing on the US and China, because those are really the only two great powers as such. But this is not to ignore the role of Russia, the Gulf states, India, Turkey, that are also very active in Africa. Then what I'll do is go on and look at what are the stakes in brief, what's at stake in the competition, what's the rivalry by the numbers, and what are african perceptions of the two rivals.

So, when we look back historically, European imperialism and the scramble for Africa leading to its colonization was really the first great power competition. Mainly between seven European countries, France, England, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Italy and Spain. So, this led to the colonization of the continent, which really didn't end until the 1970s, 1960s, 1957 with Ghana, but well into the 70s, and then, if you consider South Africa, the 80s, 1980s.

But what was the lasting impact of this first sort of global great power competition? A fragmented continent, 54 countries, many of them very small and landlocked, without much economic prospect. Very difficult today, even with the African Union, to bring about a unified voice on global issues, each of these countries have their own set of strategic interests.

It led to a continent where the economies are oriented toward extractive raw material, export mainly to the metropol, rather than dealing with internal, interior integrated trade with their neighbors. Africa, if you look at regional trade, is the lowest of all regions in the world, again, the infrastructure was geared toward export to the metropole.

And we normally don't think about this, but there's a sort of colonial mentality, this is both on the part of the former colonized and on the part of the colonizers. And so essentially, there's a pattern of engagement that's very much based on a dependency relationship that persists today.

Following imperialism, colonization is the cold war starting really right after the end of World War II, this is the second global competition of great powers on the continent. And here we're talking about the US and especially the USSR, the Soviet Union, which after 1945 the World War II, basically the European colonial powers were diminishing in their power.

The United States was propping them up, but basically the United States, the Soviet Union and to a less degree, China, but still in the game, were trying to increase or expand their spheres of influence. And this led to really what was an ideological battle between communism, capitalism, authoritarianism and democracy during the Cold War.

Each of these countries, the great powers, were trying to get more friendly governments where there, if they went back to war, because remember, World War II was a global war. So there were many theaters of conflict on the African continent. So they were looking for places where, if it went back to a global war, where they could stage or base their forces, where they could have overflight and also where they could extract minerals.

This especially played out in the Congo, where uranium was needed to develop the nuclear arsenal of the United States and the Soviet Union. I haven't yet seen the Oppenheimer project, but I'm certainly hoping they talk about Congo, because that's where the uranium came from. So, essentially what would happen with these sorts of ideological, propping up friendly regimes and extracting resources as necessary.

Was an alignment of the US, which typically supported the former colonial powers vis a vis African nationalists. And the USSR, which typically supported guerrilla movements or independence movements, particularly in southern Africa. Where the United States was pro-independence and always had been, but it was moderated by its alliance with the Europeans and saying, well, we need to go slower.

And particularly when they saw a soviet threat, they didn't want these newly independent countries becoming independent in 1960s to fall in the hands of communism. So, these proxy wars, and I won't go into this very, I think there's an Alexi here who, I looked at your bios, who does his work.

Yeah, so he can talk to you more about this, I won't go into great detail on the decolonization, but where these proxy wars took place in the hotspots, really in Africa, were in Congo, as I said, 1960s, 65. Then you also had Ogaden 1977 to 78, you can see Ethiopia is a bit red, it shows the alignment of the blocs, also in the Angola war of 1975 to 2002.

And of course, the South African border war, or the, depending on how you see it, the Namibian independence war. And so that's really where this cold war, proxy war, basically hot wars in Africa. It typically took the form of providing arms, providing money, sometimes covert, sometimes overt, the different sides of conflicts.

And so, one of the lessons learned for African countries, if they don't want a global competition to become proxy wars, is this normally happened where there was already internal conflict, right? The global powers took advantage or could leverage that conflict. So civil wars that led to destabilization of whole regions, large refugee flows, increased ethnic tensions and grudges based on former political allegiance, which is why South Africa has a hard time with the United States today.

And even though it's a democracy, is supporting Russia implicitly in its war in Ukraine because it feels like Russia was its comrade during its independence. You see the two hands up there, 1989, basically coming to the end of the Cold War, where Bush 41 and Gorbachev basically decided globally that they were gonna do rapprochement and that included in Africa.

And so, in Angola and other places, they decided the Soviets now Russia, was going to stop supporting their side in the United States, was gonna stop supporting and arming its side. But these cold wars had Cuban soldiers on the ground, soviet military advisors, us military advisors, arms coming from both of our countries, and quite a lot of money.