The West in West Africa
Patrick Marnham
The royal progress around the Third World which brought President Carter to West Africa coincided with the most serious setback to the Nigerian economy since the Biafran war. The days have gone, for a time at least, when Nigeria could drive a Secretary of State (Kissinger) to profanity first by refusing to see him and then by arranging for the last-minute cancellation of his visit to Ghana as well. At that time, 1976, the Nigerian economy was enjoying an oil boom. The country was boasting that. it was a net giver of aid to Britain. It was capable of causing a sterling crisis by threatening to withdraw its holdings in London, and it seemed impervious to all the normal disciplines of arms supply, long-term debt, falling commodity prices or endemic famine. Nigeria was on the verge of becoming the first truly independent country in black Africa. Now there is world overproduction of oil, and new sources of supply in Alaska, Mexico and the North Sea have proved particularly useful to Britain and America, Nigeria's two most important customers. The value of oil expressed in dollars has fallen. The country has been unable to reduce its massive domestic spending programme and it is reported to be increasing its international borrowing to £2,500• million this year. The United States will not be shedding many tears over this.
Not that Nigeria is truly poverty-stricken. The shortages which threaten it now as a result of cutting its expensive imports are relative only to its former standards. In Mr Carter's terms it remains the ideal developing country. There is no technical innovation or consumer product so gimmicky that Nigeria cannot eventually offer a market for it. It will continue to be the export salesman's dream, with vendor and purchaser straining every nerve to turn oil dollars into Swiss francs in numbered Zurich accounts. When Mr Carter says `strong growth and expansion in the developing countries are essential' to American prosperity, he is thinking of countries like Nigeria. Not just because they provide the West with a market but because development booms like the one which has just ended there raise expectations, and it is the need to avoid disappointing these which has at last given the Americans some sort of leverage over the Nigerian government.
The other issue which Mr Carter chose to highlight before his African tour was that of the Cubans. The State Department and the Club of Ten have recently combined to produce a peculiar African map in which about one quarter of this sizeable continent is covered with grey blotches representing Cuban influence. Close inspection reveals that the whole of Algeria has been shaded grey on the basis of 'thirty-five medical aides' from Cuba. Uganda has apparently succumbed to Cuban control following the 'possible' arrival of twenty-five military personnel. And the strategic Atlantic oil route to Europe is, it would seem, menaced by the activities of 'ten to fifteen medical aides' in the Cape Verde islands.
This extraordinary map which has been widely published under the headline 'The Cuban Threat to Peace' (and enthusiastically transmitted by the BBC's Tonight
programme, ever eager for the cheap illust ration for its uninformative researches) is the justification for the increasingly militant posture of the West in Africa. In fact the Cuban presence in Africa is trivial with the exception of two countries, Angola and Ethiopia. Here there is said to be a combined force of 30,000 troops whose attendance is doubly unsettling because many of
them are black and therefore indistinguishable from the natives. What has
Cuba gained in return for this substantial investment? In Angola it has arranged for the dominant political-tribal group to be the MPLA, an African Marxist party (whatever that means) which still does not control significant areas of the country. In Ethiopia, to date, a left-wing government which formerly received a large supply of American arms has with Cuban help repelled an invasion by a neighbouring state which is traditionally a client of the Soviets. The lawful international border has thereby been restored. At home the Cuban government has been criticised by its own black subjects who object to being singled out for active military service in this 'coals to Newcastle' adventure, which increases that burden Of disadvantage which they already feel to be too heavy.
Viewed as a threat to capitalist interests, or as a demonstration of communist superiority, the Cuban presence in Africa is thoroughly unimpressive. But with its importance exaggerated it helps to counterbalance the growing involvement of America and France in Africa — and in West Africa in particular. , Last year France offered combat assistance in Zaire, Chad and Mauritania. And, with America, France is the chief instigator of the L10 billion agricultural development programme in the countries of the Sahel. Since the drought of 1973 this has resulted in a situation where Chad, Niger, Upper Volta, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, the Cape Verde islands, the Gambia and now Ghana are more and more dependent on imported grain from North America to feed their populations. Their ability to pay for this food • by exporting commodities such as cocoa or (yes) peanuts is lessening. According to Dr Kissinger this development programme was going 'to roll back the desert'. But something seems to have gone wrong because the United Nations now reports that the food situation in the Sahel is worse than at any time since the drought. The
same degree of control is also exercised by the Americans over Zaire, the largest coun try in black Africa, whose urban population is dependent for its staple food on the art val of the next American grain ship, and whose government provides the most striking example of national debt-bondage with regular repayment of interest to New York banks.
A Nigeria with oil problems fits more comfortably into this West African pattern, and how appropriate that Mr Carter should have wound up his tour in Liberia, the orig inal foreign colony of the United States, governed by a population of liberated (or marooned) slaves in the interests of the Firestone rubber company. Writing of the Liberians in 1936 Graham Greene observed: `England and France in the last century robbed them of territory; America has done worse, for she has lent them money'. It is by the manipulation of credit and the regulation of the food supply that Africa like the rest of the Third World is most easily led to its proper position in Pres ident Peanuts's world pageant. And the disposition of small groups of Cuban mas seuses or chiropodists will not affect the outcome.
Previous page
