Imperialism in Africa, and How to Fight It
Anyone who has not been living under a rock realizes that the inter-imperialist contradictions of the world are becoming more intense. Concretely, we see these in the “games” America and China play in the South China Sea, the geopolitics of West Asia regarding the numerous proxy wars there, the situation in Ukraine as Russian imperialists attack Ukrainian compradors of US imperialism, the splits between German and Anglo-American imperialists (who were only temporarily brought together in the new war on Russia), and other divisions that are widening right now. We will focus on what is happening in Africa, with an explanation of the contradictions at play in the continent and its states and the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist position on what is to be done for Africa’s liberation.
Brief History of Africa’s “Decolonization”
Every African country is semi-colonial. This is the result of European capitalist powers’ colonization in the 19th and 20th centuries and the “decolonization” of the continent in the second half of the latter. Thanks to World War Two and the rise of national liberation struggles, the biggest colonial empires, Britain and France, began to let go of their direct colonies. In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the existing socialist states and people’s democracies supported these fights. However, after their triumphs, most of them failed to truly free their nations from colonialism; they simply replaced direct colonialism with semi-colonialism, also called neo-colonialism. Their governments were seemingly independent (though they became de facto puppets of one or another imperialist power), but their economies were clearly still tied to their old colonial masters. On top of that, the United States increased its presence and power over these new countries, seeking to use them against socialism and communism.
U.S. imperialism is the common enemy of the people of the whole world. It is engaged in aggression against South Vietnam, it is intervening in Laos, menacing Cambodia and blustering about extending the war in Indochina. It is trying everything to strangle the Cuban revolution. It wants to turn West Germany and Japan into two important nuclear bases of the United States. It ganged up with England in creating so-called Malaysia to menace Indonesia and other-southeast Asian countries. It is occupying South Korea and China’s Taiwan province. It is dominating all Latin America. It rides rough shod everywhere. U.S. imperialism has over-extended its reach. It adds a new noose around its neck every time it commits aggression anywhere. It is closely surrounded by the people of the whole world.
In their just struggle, the Congolese people are not alone. All the Chinese people support you. All the People throughout the world who oppose imperialism support you. U.S. imperialism and the reactionaries of all countries are paper tigers. The struggle of the Chinese people proved this. The struggle of the Vietnamese people is now proving it. The struggle of the Congolese people will certainly prove it too. Strengthening national unity and persevering in protracted struggle, the Congolese people will certainly be victorious, and U.S. imperialism will certainly be defeated.
People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.
The U.S. imperialist armed aggression against the Congo (Leopoldville) is a very grave matter.
The United States has all along attempted to control the Congo. It used the United Nations forces to carry out every sort of evil deed there. It murdered the Congolese national hero Lumumba, it subverted the lawful Congolese government. It imposed the puppet Tshombe on the Congolese people, and dispatched mercenary troops to suppress the Congolese national liberation movement. And now, it is carrying out direct armed intervention in the Congo in collusion with Belgium and Britain. In so doing, the purpose of U.S. imperialism is not only to control the Congo, but also to enmesh the whole of Africa, particularly the newly independent African countries, in the toils of U.S. neo-colonialism once again. U.S. aggression has encountered heroic resistance from the Congolese people and aroused the indignation of the people of Africa and of the whole world.
[Source]
When said countries attempted to have national-bourgeois leaders, the US either made them compradors in one way or another or supported coups to overthrow them and replace them with compradors; this proved Mao’s theory of New Democracy correct, for the national bourgeoisie was incapable of maintaining their countries’ independence. (Despite said critiques, socialist states supported most national liberation struggles since they weakened imperialism and were overall progressive.)
The usual method of struggle of the national bourgeoisie is military coups and similar forms that do not rely on and arouse the strength of the workers and peasants. Once in power, the national bourgeoisie is in quite a bind. On the one hand, it faces sabotage and economic blackmail from imperiaiism which seeks a return to the old ways. It lacks sufficient capital to adequately develop the productive forces in a capitalist way. And because of its nature as an exploiting class, the national bourgeoisie., cannot mobilize the workers and peasants to fully practice self-reliance and take the destiny of the country into their own hands. This can only be done in a socialist system where the working class rules.
While the national bourgeoisie is a vacillating class caught between imperialism and the masses of the oppressed people, it can stitl play a progressive, anti-imperialist role. Where the national liberation struggle is led by the proletariat, the national bourgeoisie can be won to participate in an anti-imperialist, new democratic united front. Within such a united front, representatives of the national bourgeoisie can play an important role in making revolution.
Where the national bourgeoisie comes to power on its own, it has often continued to stand up to imperialism—winning concessions which at times are even of benefit to the masses of oppressed people and which strike real blows at imperialist power. When the national bourgeoisie in a given country does stand up to imperialism, it is strengthened by the support and encouragement of socialist countries like China and by the growing unity among the Third World peoples.
[Source]
America cannot seriously claim it supported the national independence of nations at any point in its history. In every instance of its support for national liberation, it sought to push rival imperialists out so that it could seize control of the colonies; otherwise, it supported established colonial and imperial powers against movements for national liberation.
On 22 April four French generals in Algeria seized power in an attempt to maintain the country’s union with France. The putsch, which held out but four days, was a direct confrontation with French President Charles de Gaulle, who had dramatically proclaimed a policy leading “not to an Algeria governed from France, but to an Algerian Algeria”. …
Reports from all sources were in agreement that if the CIA had indeed been involved in the putsch, it had been so for two reasons: (11 the concern that if Algeria were granted its independence, “communists” would soon come to power, being those in the ranks of the National Liberation Front (NLF) which had been fighting the French Army in Algeria for several years—the legendary Battle of Algiers. It was with the NLF that de Gaulle was expected to negotiate a settlement; (2) the hope that it would precipitate the downfall of de Gaulle, an end desired because the French President was a major stumbling block to US aspirations concerning NATO: among other things, he refused to incorporate French troops into an integrated military command, and he opposed exclusive American control over the alliance’s nuclear weapons. …
Between 1958 and the middle of the 1960s, there occurred some 30 serious assassination attempts upon the life of Charles de Gaulle, in addition to any number of planned attempts which didn’t advance much beyond the planning stage. A world record for a head of state, it is said. In at least one of the attempts, the CIA may have been a co-conspirator against the French president.
[Source]
The reason for the US’s imperialist actions was that its bourgeoisie wanted to maximize its profits and especially its rates of profit; it took advantage of the destroyed world economy, exporting capital to areas which had much of their own capital eliminated and exploiting their cheap labor-power.
The U.S. has been an imperialist power since the turn of the century, but it has only been since World War ll that it was temporarily able to dominate virtually the entire capitalist world. As far as the imperialist powers were concerned, WWII was essentially a fight to determine which imperialist powers would control the lion’s share of the world’s resources—raw materials, sources of cheap labor, markets for the export of capital, etc. The war developed principally from the rivalry between British, French, and U.S. imperialism on the one hand, and German, Italian and Japanese imperialism on the other. Throughout the 19th century. Britain had been the kingpin imperialist power. But imperialism develops unevenly, with some imperialist nations growing stronger and others growing weaker through inter-imperialist competition, and soon Germany was in a position to challenge this supremacy. This challenge was defeated in WWl, which shackled German imperialism with chains of debt and war reparations. …
U.S. imperialism was not strong enough to establish colonies in the traditional sense and fly the stars and stripes over the parliaments of the newly independent African and Asian nations. Instead, U.S. imperialism had to adapt itself to political realities and seek forms of exploitation based on the changing world situation. ln fact, in some cases the U.S. supported the independence of the former colonial countries since it didn’t want the special privileges of the former colonial powers to restrict the flow of U.S. finance capital into those countries. (This was not the case, however, in those colonies like Vietnam where movements for independence were led by Communists who were determined to go beyond simple political independence and drive all imperialism out of the nation.)
U.S. imperialism banked its strategy on indirect rule through puppets representing the reactionary classes in the Third World countries who would keep the workers and peasants suppressed while allowing an open door to U.S. penetration. This penetration took many forms—direct loans to reactionary governments, arms sales, and most importantly, direct investments by the U.S. monopolies. Thus, the form of U.S. domination over many Third World countries differed considerably from the previous outright colonialism of Britain and France, yet the content—export of capital, seizure of raw materials, etc.—remained the same.
[Source]
It would be foolish to think the Western imperialists were the only exploiters of Africa, though. As anti-colonial fights struggled through the 1960’s and 1970’s, the USSR and most people’s democracies left the socialist road because they restored capitalism and turned revisionist. The USSR became a capitalist-imperialist country with a “socialist” face, and most of East Europe became its semi-colonies; real revolutionaries and socialist states (China and Albania) thus called the USSR social-imperialist. Just as most people’s democracies became semi-colonies, many countries that experienced national liberation became semi-colonies of the USSR; their leaders, not wanting to fall under American imperialist domination, fell under Soviet imperialist domination, aborting real national liberation.
Soviet social-imperialism is a new and rising imperialist force in the world, trying to take the place of the United States in dominating other countries. Just as Britain shoved out the Dutch or Portuguese, and just as the U.S. shoved out Britain and France, now the Soviet Union is doing some shoving of its own. And just as the British sometimes appeared “anti-imperialist” by siding with some “natives” against the Portuguese and Spanish in the West Indies, just as the U.S. tried to appear “progressive” in. pushing Britain out of India, so the USSR tries to look “progressive” and “anti-imperialist” in contesting U.S. imperialism in India, Latin America, the Middle East, etc. But the appearance of anti-imperialism, covered by talk of democracy, independence, development, or even socialism, must not be allowed to hide the reality of inter-imperialist rivalries and a continuing redivision of the world as Lenin described almost 60 years ago. …
As the home of the October Revolution and the first workers’ state, which under Lenin and Stalin consistently’ supported the struggles of the peoples of the colonial and semi-colonial world for national liberation, the Soviet Union enjoyed immense prestige. The present day rulers of the USSR have tried to capitalize on the internationalist stand of the Soviet Union before Khrushchev’s coup, masking their policies of oppression and plunder. For this reason also, it is important to rip the façade of socialism off the hideous features of Soviet social-imperialism. …
The social-imperialists have also made use of the revisionist parties in a number of Third World countries to further their imperialist ends. It is well known that the attempted coup in Sudan in 1971 was precisely an effort to establish another pro-Soviet regime through the auspices of the Sudanese CP. In other countries, for example Egypt, the Soviets have ordered the “Communist” Parties disbanded if this furthers their imperialist designs. …
Of course, the new tsars of the Soviet Union are not ready to declare themselves imperialists: they go to great lengths to “prove” that they can’t be. …
Aside from asserting that the USSR is “socialist” and not imperialist, the only real proof Rimalov offers for his contentions is that the Soviet Union indeed charges less for loans than was the practice of the Western imperialists prior to the entrance of the USSR into the capital export market. …Numerous studies have revealed the exorbitant prices charged by the Soviet Union. One such study showed that in 1965, of 65 commodities exported by the Soviet Union to both industrial nations as well as developing countries, 53 commodities were sold at a higher price to those countries “lucky” enough to be receiving Soviet “aid.” On the average, the developing countries paid 13% more for the same goods than did the industrial countries. More recent figures published by the Chinese indicate that the figure has grown to 20-30%. Clearly this unequal exchange is a vast source of profit for the Soviet Union.
Some people are quick to point out that imperialist profit in the developing countries is obtained from the export of capital and not from unequal trade, and on this basis challenge the assertion that the USSR is, in fact, exporting capital and extracting surplus value from the Third World and other countries.
However, this argument is actually quite hollow. Mao Tsetung wrote, “When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing; this is the only reliable and scientific method of analysis.” While the appearance is that the Soviet Union gets a very low rate of return on its investment, even if they do rake it in through unequal trade, the essence of the matter is that it is through unequal trade that the Soviet Union realizes the surplus value generated by the export of capital. In essence, it is little more than a book-keeping arrangement as to whether the profit comes back to the USSR, in the form of interest or in the form of superprofits from sales when the sales are tied by trade agreement to the export of capital. …
In the real world and not the fantasy, propaganda world of Soviet apologists, India, the largest recipient of Soviet “aid,” has only gone deeper and deeper into debt to the Soviet Union add can hardly “pay off foreign debts . . . without detriment to economic progress.” Egypt, another beneficiary of Soviet “aid,” still has to import millions of tons of grain while concentrating on growing cotton to pay off the Soviet Union for this grain and for the Aswan Dam. …
Some people, including many sincere revolutionaries, point to the fact that the Soviet Union supports liberation movements in various parts of the world and argue therefore that the Soviet Union’s actions are not those of an imperialist. … But this does not change the fact—which we believe we have clearly demonstrated—that the Soviet Union is a state monopoly capitalist-imperialist-power; nor is it at all times inconsistent for an imperialist power to support liberation movements. In particular, the Soviet social-imperialists have provided some military and economic assistance to liberation movements aimed at U.S. imperialism because the Soviets hope in this way to gain some advantage in their contention with the U.S.
[Source]
China’s foreign policy in the 1970’s was not perfect, either. It was overall decent, and its economic relations with the third world were not capitalist-imperialist like the USSR’s were. However, China’s leaders did make errors in foreign policy, especially with what amounted to their tailing of bourgeois-nationalist and even some comprador-bourgeois countries. These were generally focused in Asia, in countries close to China, but the policy did extend into Angola’s affairs. In Angola’s civil war in 1975, the “People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola” (MPLA) and the “National Union for the Total Independence of Angola”—once united against Portuguese colonialism—fought each other on behalf of the USSR and the US, respectively. While they may have started off as national-bourgeois groups, they eventually sought to become comprador capitalists, and so they each sought one of the imperialist superpowers for support. China, seeing the USSR as its main enemy, backed the UNITA against the MPLA. This was a mistaken policy caused by China’s fear of the USSR—which was never fully unjustified on its own due to the USSR’s aggression years earlier—and the rise of closeted revisionists like Deng Xiaoping. [Source] China’s reduction in support for real revolutionaries contributed to Africa’s de facto continued and intensified neo-colonization.
After the USSR’s dissolution, the Russian Federation replaced it in imperializing Africa. Just as the USSR’s imperialism was never stronger than the US’s, Russian imperialism today is relatively weak. Likewise, China turned capitalist and imperialist over time, so it has started exploiting Africa as well. Still, the longer-established imperialist countries of Western Europe and North America were and are the biggest supporters for comprador-bourgeois groups, so they were and are the most responsible for Africa’s problems. Now that we went over the basics of Africa’s “decolonization”, we can discuss Africa’s current status.
All African Countries are Semi-Feudal and Semi-Colonial
As part of the third world, Africa faces exploitation from capitalist-imperialists. From their first colonization efforts right through today, imperialism has maintained feudalism while creating bureaucratic-comprador capitalism to work alongside it. This is how imperialism works in all oppressed countries, and thus it is how it works in Africa.
Regarding bureaucratic capitalism, Chairman Gonzalo states that comprehending it is essential to the understanding of Peruvian society. Taking up Chairman Mao’s thesis, he teaches us that it has five characteristics: 1) that bureaucratic capitalism is the capitalism that imperialism develops in the backward countries, which is comprised of the capital of large landowners, the big bankers, and the magnates of the big bourgeoisie; 2) it exploits the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petty bourgeoisie and constrains the middle bourgeoisie; 3) it is passing through a process in which bureaucratic capitalism is combined with the power of the State and becomes State monopoly capitalism, comprador and feudal, from which can be derived that in a first moment it unfolds as a non-State big monopoly capitalism and in a second moment, when it is combined with the power of the State, it unfolds as state monopoly capitalism; 4) it ripens the conditions for the democratic revolution as it reaches the apex of its development; and, 5) confiscating bureaucratic capital is key to reaching the pinnacle of the democratic revolution and it is decisive to pass over to the socialist revolution. …
Furthermore, Chairman Gonzalo generalizes that bureaucratic capitalism is not a process peculiar to China or to Peru, but that it follows the belated conditions in which the various imperialists subjugate the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, at a time when these oppressed nations have not yet destroyed the vestiges of feudalism, much less developed capitalism.
[Source]
While the imperialists export capital, thereby developing the productive forces to an extent, they exploit Africa with that exported capital. By forcing countries into debt with their numerous loans, the imperialists are able to enrich themselves parasitically.
The deepening of the general crisis of bureaucratic capitalism as part of the process of decompositioning of imperialism is once more revealed by a report of the “UN GLOBAL CRISIS RESPONSE GROUP“ called “A world of debt – A growing burden to global prosperity“. This report estimates that global public debts skyrocketed to an all-time high of 92 trillion US-Dollar. This means that public debts five-folded from the year 2000. The global GDP in the same period tripled. This underlines a very unhealthy imbalance of the economy of the world’s imperialist system. …
The oppressed countries are in a situation where they are forced to borrow money to impulse their economy and restructure the old state but for exorbitant interest rates. In general countries in Africa have to pay average rates that are four times higher than those of the United States and even eight times higher than those of Germany. Countries in Asia pay four time higher rates and Latin American countries pay five times higher rates than Germany.
[Source]
In addition to collecting interest from loan capital, the world imperialists extract surplus value from extremely cheap and profitable labor-power found in the third world. They export their industrial capital to take advantage of low costs and high rates of profit in Africa.
… [T]he 2005 restructuring of the world’s second-largest oil company, Royal Dutch Shell, increased the UK’s inward [foreign direct investment (FDI)] by $100bn, causing it to leap above the United States to become that year’s prime destination for FDI. Yet, wherever they may book their sales and their profits, the great majority of the 98 countries hosting Shell affiliates (second only to Deutsche Post AG with majority-owned affiliates in 111 countries) are in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle east. …
… [A]gricultural employment in the Global South has declined to 48 percent of its [economically active population (EAP)], down from 73 percent in 1960, and from “approximately one-third” to just 4 percent of EAP in developed countries. yet the [International Labor Organization (ILO)] reports: “Despite the declining share of agricultural workers in total employment, the absolute numbers of those engaged in agriculture are still rising, most notably in South Asia, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.”
[Source]
These facts are all understandable to anyone that understands the theory of capitalist-imperialism that Lenin put forth. Now, we must go over which imperialist powers in particular exploit Africa, and how much they do so.
“European investors remain, by far, the largest holders of FDI stock in Africa, led by the United Kingdom ($60 billion), France ($54 billion) and the Netherlands ($54 billion)” [Source]. This FDI is used to buy cheap labor-power and exploit it very profitably, and it is one way imperialists exploit Africa, but not the only one, as said above. In terms of loan capital, France controls its semi-colonies’ currencies via the CFA:
France created the French Colonies of Africa (CFA) franc in the wake of World War II, when it oversaw the world’s second largest colonial empire. With help from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, this exploitative system of monetary control has outlasted colonialism, which largely ended in the early 1960s, and allowed France to farm a vast African territory for strategic resources and secure lucrative export markets. Historically, the CFA system has also generated additional revenue for France by requiring CFA nations to deposit initially 100 percent and, in recent years, 50 percent of their reserves in France’s Treasury, where it served as productive interest-bearing capital. Between 1945 and the introduction of the euro in 1999, French authorities devalued the CFA franc against the French franc by 99.9 percent, increasing French purchasing power against African nations and subsidizing the French way of life.
Today, the CFA zone encompasses 12 former French colonies—Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, the Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Togo—as well as newer entrants Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea. Paris also holds similar sway over Comoros’ currency through the Comorian franc. To put this in perspective, France’s monetary control extends over more than 965,000 square miles of African territory and more than 180 million people. That is an area 80 percent the size of India—larger than the European Union—and home to more than the combined populations of France and Germany.
[Source]
The CFA is a tool of French finance capitalism that is really under the control of French monopoly capitalists, and it facilitates the unequal exchange of commodities and the profitable export of French capital to Africa.
As France ratified the Bretton Woods Agreement on 26 December 1945, it established the Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA) franc zone, enabling France to update pre-war colonial monetary arrangements.
The ostensible intent of the ‘Franc of the French Colonies of Africa’ (FCFA) was to cushion France’s colonies from the drastic French franc (FF) devaluation required to peg its value to the U.S. dollar, as agreed at Bretton Woods. …
First, France could pay for imports from CFA countries with its own currency, saving foreign exchange for other international obligations. This became especially advantageous when the FF was weak and unstable.
Second, the French Treasury often paid negative real interest rates for CFA reserves. Thus, CFA countries have been paying it to hold their foreign reserves! Investment income accruing is deployed as French aid to CFA countries in the form of loans to be repaid with interest! …
The CFA not only benefits France, but also elites in CFA countries. Their appetite for faux French lifestyles explains their preference for overvalued exchange rates.
[Source]
American imperialists claim they are behind in their influence on Africa. This is partly true since America’s involvement has always been in support of other imperialists rather than for its own direct profit; this is a bit different from America’s involvement in Latin America and Asia, where it generally fought for its own finance capitalists.
It is almost impossible to find out any news of what is happening in Africa. It’s as though the continent is completely off the media’s radar, yet what is happening there will have consequences for the whole world. The reason why this region is subjected to so much political meddling needs to be understood.
The Horn of Africa consists of eight countries: Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia. These countries are victims of international interventions and interference that is causing extreme destabilization in the region, from Djibouti and Eritrea to Somalia and Ethiopia. Western imperialists continue to support dictators and block any attempt at independence, while the Western-backed Gulf States are transforming the region into a battlefield against not only Iran but each other. …
Though Djibouti is a point of particular concentration, the U.S. has a military presence in virtually every African nation. According to June 2021 figures from the Pentagon, most nations have at least a handful of active-duty personnel temporarily deployed to them. The U.S. strategy in Africa is mainly to equip African forces and help allies like France abroad to build those nations’ security capacities and stabilize the region. …
Africa is underdeveloped and destabilized because of centuries of European colonialism and decades of U.S. and Western European neo-colonialism, not for internal and domestic factors alone, as the propaganda tries to make us believe. …
There needs to be a just peace with genuine security demands and a strategy to demilitarize the region. Cultures need to be developed that transform the destructive legacies of militarism currently permeating African societies at so many levels. This is impossible while U.S. bases criss-cross the continent.
[Source]
Nevertheless, the US has started its own neo-colonial projects as well. Late last year, the government made a plan to export $55 billion in “aid” programs:
The United States plans to commit $55 billion to Africa over the next three years, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday. …
The Biden-Harris administration has invested and committed to provide nearly $20 billion in health programs in the Africa region, the White House said on Tuesday. …
Since January 2021, the administration has invested and plans to provide at least $1.1 billion to support African-led efforts in conservation, climate adaptation and energy transitions. …
U.S. President Joe Biden highlighted $15 billion in trade and investment partnerships and deals at the summit on Wednesday, the White House said.
[Source]
This sort of “aid” is never sustainable, of course, nor does it really help the people of the countries receiving aid. A lot can be, and usually is, lost thanks to corruption among comprador governments, and the rest that is “properly” invested is mainly to covertly extract resources and surplus value from African labor. The US has been losing its grip in Asia and even in Latin America, so it is not surprising that it has looked to Africa in recent years; it is unlikely that it or its Western allies will make much progress, though, because they are decaying empires with slowing economic growth compared to rising imperialist powers’ growth.
China is one such rising imperialist country that rivals America for world dominance. It in particular has been gaining influence in Africa; like the revisionist USSR, it poses as a “friendly” country that supposedly charges low interest rates on loan capital, provides aid in the form of hospitals and other infrastructure to help people, and does not exploit cheap labor as much. The “socialist” face of this imperialism does not change its essence, though.
China has been making a special focus on Africa, and this has drawn a lot of attention not only in Africa itself, but in the U.S., Europe and Japan. It worries the other imperialist powers that China is making such headway in the exploitation of a continent which they haven’t paid much attention to themselves. If you use Google to search for “China’s investments in Africa” you will find literally thousands of recent articles on the topic, and enormous numbers of briefer references.
One surprising thing is that not that large a fraction of China’s huge and rapidly expanding foreign investment is actually going to Africa! According to China’s official reckoning, only 2.2% of “outward foreign direct investment” (OFDI) from China, including both private and state-led investment, currently goes to Africa.
However, several things must be kept in mind here. First, even just 2.2% of a vast amount is still a pretty large sum. Second, Africa has been so undeveloped for so long a time that even relatively small amounts of investment can have a huge impact. Investing the equivalent of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in an African country can have a larger impact than investing billions might in major European countries. Seven of the fastest growing (though still quite small) economies in the world at present are in Africa, and Chinese FDI there is a major reason for this.
And third, China is considerably underreporting its levels of foreign investment, especially in Africa. It appears to be doing this because the Chinese penetration into Africa has become such a touchy subject. …
China, in the Maoist era, had a long record of genuinely supporting economic development in Africa, and made a lot of friends there. There were some famous infrastructure projects built by China in Africa for the benefit of the people there, such as the major Tanzania-Zambia railroad project. After capitalism was restored in China, the new ruling bourgeoisie, as is typical of that class, sought to “capitalize” on the good feelings that had developed in Africa toward China during the socialist era.
And China, even as the capitalist-imperialist country it is today, has mounted a significant media operation to portray its investments in Africa as being for the purpose of benefiting the people there. Moreover, China has paid much more attention to presenting the appearance of equality and friendship toward African regimes, rather than the typical arrogance of the U.S. and most European imperialist countries. China has the advantage of not having had a history of imperialist conquest and colonial rule in Africa (as is the case with Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, etc.), and—so far—of having had only limited military interference in Africa. And finally, China has not deigned to denounce undemocratic regimes in Africa and elsewhere (partly no doubt because it does not even have bourgeois democratic institutions itself!), nor to complain about the common violations of human rights in Africa (except in a few cases where these have fallen on Chinese citizens). As one South African businessman put it, China is the first big foreign power to come to Africa without acting “as though they are some kind of patron or teacher or conqueror.” …
A couple years ago in Zambia the Chinese managers of a coal mine shot two Zambian employees who were protesting their low pay, which caused tremendous anger across the country. In February 2013, the Zambian government revoked the mining license for a Chinese-owned coal mine after workers there rioted the previous November and killed a Chinese manager. The Zambian government said the mine had failed to comply with at least 15 laws.
The governor of Nigeria’s central bank, Lamido Sanusi, in an article in the Financial Times (London), recently noted that “China is no longer a fellow underdeveloped economy—it is the world’s second-biggest, capable of the same forms of exploitation as the West. It is a significant contributor to Africa’s de-industrialization and underdevelopment”, because of its flood of cheap manufactured goods now rushing into Africa. There is a “whiff of colonialism” about China’s approach to Africa, he said. …
Chinese “foreign aid” to Africa is substantial (perhaps as much as $3 billion this past year), and in 2009 45.7% of the Chinese aid budget went to Africa. In fact, there is in China some considerable public feeling that it should not be aiding other countries so much when it has so many poor people itself! (This is similar to right-wing ignorance and the typical sorts of complaints in this country about American “foreign aid” to the rest of the world.) These complaints assume that Chinese “foreign aid” actually constitutes strings-free gifts sent to foreign peoples, and fail completely to understand that this “aid” is actually for the purpose of promoting the Chinese economic exploitation of Africa.
Even if a portion of imperialist foreign “aid” ends up actually helping the people in the target country, overall it is really more like bribery on behalf of the corporations of the country sending that “aid”. One large part of Chinese “foreign aid” to Africa goes to government leaders and officials directly, or to their children for university study in China. This is in effect for the purchase and training of future compradors. Another large part of Chinese foreign “aid” to Africa is in the form of loans, which are most often at market rates. (This, as we mentioned earlier, is itself simply another method of exporting capital.)
[Source]
With this basic study of imperialism in Africa, we can finally get into what is to be done for Africa’s liberation.
For National Liberation, New Democracy, and Socialism in Africa!
The experience of Africa’s “decolonization” in the previous century shows that the proletariat must lead the efforts for freeing the continent from all imperialism, bureaucratic-comprador capitalism, and feudalism. In the era of capitalist-imperialism, it is no longer possible to rely on the national bourgeoisie’s leadership of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It can serve a role as an ally of the proletarian movement, but giving it leadership would kill the revolution since the national bourgeoisie is a vacillating class, not a committed revolutionary one like the proletariat and peasantry. Chairman Mao outlined this in “On New Democracy”:
What about the road to a capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship? To be sure, that was the old road taken by the European and American bourgeoisie, but whether one likes it or not, neither the international nor the domestic situation allows China to do the same.
Judging by the international situation, that road is blocked. In its fundamentals, the present international situation is one of a struggle between capitalism and socialism, in which capitalism is on the downgrade and socialism on the upgrade. In the first place international capitalism, or imperialism, will not permit the establishment in China of a capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship. Indeed the history of modern China is a history of imperialist aggression, of imperialist opposition to China’s independence and to her development of capitalism. Earlier revolutions failed in China because imperialism strangled them, and innumerable revolutionary martyrs died, bitterly lamenting the non-fulfilment of their mission. Today a powerful Japanese imperialism is forcing its way into China and wants to reduce her to a colony; it is not China that is developing Chinese capitalism but Japan that is developing Japanese capitalism in our country; and it is not the Chinese bourgeoisie but the Japanese bourgeoisie that is exercising dictatorship in our country. True enough, this is the period of the final struggle of dying imperialism—imperialism is “moribund capitalism”. But just because it is dying, it is all the more dependent on colonies and semi-colonies for survival and will certainly not allow any colony or semi-colony to establish anything like a capitalist society under the dictatorship of its own bourgeoisie. Just because Japanese imperialism is bogged down in serious economic and political crises, just because it is dying, it must invade China and reduce her to a colony, thereby blocking the road to bourgeois dictatorship and national capitalism in China.
In the second place, socialism will not permit it. All the imperialist powers in the world are our enemies, and China cannot possibly gain her independence without the assistance of the land of socialism and the international proletariat. That is, she cannot do so without the help of the Soviet Union and the help which the proletariat of Japan, Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy and other countries provide through their struggles against capitalism. Although no one can say that the victory of the Chinese revolution must wait upon the victory of the revolution in all of these countries, or in one or two of them, there is no doubt that we cannot win without the added strength of their proletariat. In particular, Soviet assistance is absolutely indispensable for China’s final victory in the War of Resistance. Refuse Soviet assistance, and the revolution will fail. Don’t the anti-Soviet campaigns from 1927 onwards provide an extraordinarily clear lesson? The world today is in a new era of wars and revolutions, an era in which capitalism is unquestionably dying and socialism is unquestionably prospering. In these circumstances, would it not be sheer fantasy to desire the establishment in China of a capitalist society under bourgeois dictatorship after the defeat of imperialism and feudalism?
Even though the petty Kemalist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie did emerge in Turkey after the first imperialist world war and the October Revolution owing to certain specific conditions (the bourgeoisie’s success in repelling Greek aggression and the weakness of the proletariat), there can be no second Turkey, much less a “Turkey” with a population of 450 million, after World War II and the accomplishment of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. In the specific conditions of China (the flabbiness of the bourgeoisie with its proneness to conciliation and the strength of the proletariat with its revolutionary thoroughness), things just never work out so easily as in Turkey. Did not some members of the Chinese bourgeoisie clamour for Kemalism after the First Great Revolution failed in 1927? But where is China’s Kemal? And where are China’s bourgeois dictatorship and capitalist society? Besides, even Kemalist Turkey eventually had to throw herself into the arms of Anglo-French imperialism, becoming more and more of a semi-colony and part of the reactionary imperialist world. In the international situation of today, the “heroes” in the colonies and semi-colonies either line up on the imperialist front and become part of the forces of world counter-revolution, or they line up on the anti-imperialist front and become part of the forces of world revolution. They must do one or the other, for there is no third choice.
[Source]
African countries need to wage protracted people’s wars. This means they need communist parties, people’s armies, and united fronts of their peoples. The communist parties must also settle the immensely complicated national questions of their countries; in their colonial and now neo-colonial division of the continent, the imperialists subjugated thousands of nations and national minorities, and they divided the land with no regard for the contradictions among those groups. The revolutions will have to have the proletariat as the leading class and the peasantry as the base, but the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie need to be won over as well. As we are not in Africa, we cannot give details for how all of this will work in each of the 54 African countries. Nonetheless, we do have the revolutionary experiences of communist movements all over the world to use as guidelines for all Africa’s people’s wars. For example, the Philippine comrades said this about their revolution in the “Program for a People’s Democratic Revolution”:
There is only one road which the working class under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines must take. It is the road of armed revolution to smash the armed counterrevolution that preserves foreign and feudal oppression in the Philippines. In waging armed revolution, the working class must rely mainly on the mass support of its closest ally, the peasantry. The peasantry is the main force of the people’s democratic revolution. Without the peasantry’s support, without waging an agrarian revolution that responds to the peasantry’s struggle for land, no genuine and formidable people’s army can be built and no revolutionary base area can be established. The peasant struggle for land is the main democratic content of the present stage of the Philippine revolution.
From the countryside, the people’s democratic forces encircle the cities. It is in the countryside that the enemy forces are first lured in and defeated before the capture of the cities from the hands of the exploiting classes. It is in the countryside that the weakest links of the reactionary state are to be found and the people’s democratic forces can surround them tactically before defeating them strategically. It is in the countryside that the people’s army can accumulate strength among the peasants by combining armed struggle, agrarian revolution and the building of revolutionary base areas. The Party and the people’s army must turn the backward villages into advanced military, political and economic and cultural bastions of the people’s democratic revolution.
A true national united front exists only when it is founded on the alliance of the working class and the peasantry and such alliance has been strongly welded by armed struggle, by the creation of a people’s army mainly among the peasants by the working class party, the Communist Party of the Philippines. A true united front is one for carrying out armed struggle. The urban petty bourgeoisie can join such a united front. The national bourgeoisie can also lend direct and indirect support to it although it always carries its dual character, its contradicting progressive and reactionary aspects. In a national united front of workers, peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, the proletarian revolutionary party can best guarantee its leadership, independence and initiative only by having the people’s army firmly at its command.
In the countryside, a revolutionary anti-feudal united front must also be created. The working class must rely mainly on the poor peasants and farm workers, then win over and unite with the middle peasants and neutralize the rich peasants. In its close alliance with the masses of poor peasants and farm workers, the working class undertakes armed struggle, agrarian revolution and the building of revolutionary base areas to build the strong foundations of people’s democracy.
[Source]
We can also study the Peruvian revolution to get some ideas for what to do in Africa’s struggles:
Chairman Gonzalo defines the social classes which must be united according to the conditions of the revolution: the proletariat, the peasantry (principally the poor peasants), the petty bourgeoisie and the middle bourgeoisie. The classes we aim against are: landlords of the old and the new mold, and the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie or comprador bourgeoisie. …
The proletariat is the leading class, and he teaches us that it is the class that guarantees the Communist course of the revolution, that united with the peasantry it makes up the worker-peasant alliance, the basis of the Front. It is a proletariat that is concentrated largely in the capital and is proportionally greater than in China, but in terms of percentage decreases day by day in Peru, a specific situation that presents itself as we apply the democratic revolution, for which we wage the People’s War in the cities as a complement. A class that has arrived today to the formation of a Communist Party, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought party that has generated a People’s Guerrilla Army which it leads absolutely and a New State which it leads in a joint dictatorship, a Party that through almost 20 years of reconstitution and seven in leadership of the People’s War has impressed a great historical leap upon the people. It is vital to understand its leading role in the democratic revolution, since it guarantees the correct course towards Communism. Without the leadership of the proletariat the democratic revolution would evolve into an armed action under the leadership of the bourgeoisie and would fall under the tutelage of a superpower or imperialist power.
To the above two classes are added the petty bourgeoisie, and taken together they are the solid trunk of the revolutionary Front, which is no more than a Front for the People’s War and a framework of the alliance of classes that makes up the New State, the People’s Committees in the countryside and the Revolutionary Defense Movement of the People in the cities.
Concerning the middle [national] bourgeoisie, today it does not participate in the revolution but its interests are respected. It is not a target of the democratic revolution; it is a class that suffers ever-greater restrictions from the reactionaries but it is of dual character and in the course of the democratic revolution can join the side of the revolution at any moment.
[Source]
What we do know is that communist parties in Africa must uphold Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, which is the highest development of Marxism to date. We also know that each party must have a guiding thought, a particular application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in each country. The parties must lead the people’s armies and the united fronts. While the movement needs the petty bourgeoisie and even the national bourgeoisie, it must not capitulate to them via revisionism, nor should it antagonize them with ultra-“leftist” policies. The enemies they face are all of the imperialists, the bureaucratic-comprador capitalists, and the feudal landlords; all of them will use brutal tactics and crimes, and they will inevitably ally themselves with reactionary militant groups as well. They may even utilize opportunist groups that, despite coming from the petty bourgeoisie or national bourgeoisie, refuse to join the united fronts, support the people’s armies, or follow the communist parties’ leadership. Thus, we believe the parties must maintain firm links with the masses, and they should likely ally and work with one-another; the people’s armies may fight alongside each other against common enemies, and the united fronts may unite and strengthen proletarian internationalism. Again, we cannot have completely clear visions for how these events will happen, and we cannot dictate what is to be done to our African comrades; we can only say what we think are important general guidelines.
We hope communists in Africa work to reconstitute their parties, create the organizations for revolution, form and maintain links with the people, create programs for their New-Democratic revolutions and national liberations, and initiate people’s wars that will truly free Africa from the burdens of imperialism, bureaucratic-comprador capitalism, and feudalism!