Some historians estimate that between A.D. 650 and 1900, 10 to 20 million people were enslaved by Arab slave traders. Others believe over 20 million enslaved Africans alone had been delivered through the trans-Sahara route alone to the Islamic world.
Dr. John Alembellah Azumah in his 2001 book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa estimates that over 80 million Black people more died en route.
The Arab slave trade typically dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves. Black boys between the age of 8 and 12 had their scrotums and penises completely amputated to prevent them from reproducing. About six of every 10 boys bled to death during the procedure, according to some sources, but the high price brought by eunuchs on the market made the practice profitable.
Some men were castrated to be eunuchs in domestic service and the practice of neutering male slaves was not limited to only Black males. “The calipha in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th Century had 7,000 black eunuchs and 4,000 white eunuchs in his palace,” writes author Ronald Segal in his 2002 book, Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora.
In the beginning there was some level of mutual respect between the Blacks and the more lighter skinned Arabs. However, as Islam and the demand for enslaved Blacks grew, so did racism toward Africans.
As casual association with Black skin and slave began to be established, racist attitudes towards Blacks began to manifest in Arabic language and literature. The word for slave – Abid – became a colloquialism for African. Other words such as Haratin express social inferiority of Africans.
The eastern Arab slave trade dealt primarily with African women, maintaining a ratio of two women for each man. These women and young girls were used by Arabs and other Asians as concubines and menials.
A Muslim slaveholder was entitled by law to the sexual enjoyment of his slave women. Filling the harems of wealthy Arabs, African women bore them a host of children.
This abuse of African women would continue for nearly 1, 200 years. The Arab slave trade in the 19th century was economically tied to the European trade of Africans. New opportunities of exploitation were provided by the transatlantic slave trade and this sent Arab slavers into overdrive.
The Portuguese (on the Swahili coast) profited directly and were responsible for a boom in the Arab trade. Meanwhile on the West African coast, the Portuguese found Muslim merchants entrenched along the African coast as far as the Bight of Benin. These European enslavers found they could make considerable amounts of gold transporting enslaved Africans from one trading post to another, along the Atlantic coast
The Arab slave trade was the longest yet least discussed of the two major slave trades. It began in seventh century as Arabs and other Asians poured into northern and eastern Africa under the banner of Islam. The Arab trade of Blacks in Southeast Africa predates the European transatlantic slave trade by 700 years. Some scholars say the Arab slave trade continued in one form or another up until the 1960s, however, slavery in Mauritania was criminalized as recently as August 2007.Arab Slave Trade Not Limited To Africa or Skin Color
One of the biggest differences between the Arab slave trade and European slaving was that the Arabs drew slaves from all racial groups. During the eighth and ninth centuries of the Fatimid Caliphate, most of the slaves were Europeans (called Saqaliba), captured along European coasts and during wars.
Aside from those of African origins, people from a wide variety of regions were forced into Arab slavery, including Mediterranean people; Persians; people from the Caucasus mountain regions (such as Georgia, Armenia and Circassia) and parts of Central Asia and Scandinavia; English, Dutch and Irish; and Berbers from North Africa.
2. The Belgians (The Belgians were the worst European Colonizers, they ruled the Congo and Rwanda
The Aftermath – Poverty, and Divisions that were created by the Hutus and Tutsis that resulted in the Rwandan genocide)
The empire was unlike those of the major European imperial powers in that roughly 98% of it was just one colony (about 76 times larger than Belgium) — the Belgian Congo — which had originated as the personal property of the country’s king,Leopold II, rather than being gained through the political or military action of the Belgian state.
Colonial rule in the Congobegan in the late 19th century.King Leopold II of the Belgianspersuaded the government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopold’s creating a colony on his own account. With support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. By the turn of the century, however, the violence used by Free State officials against indigenous Congolese and a ruthless system of economic exploitation led to intense diplomatic pressure on Belgium to take official control of the country, which it did in 1908, creating the Belgian Congo.
Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the “colonial trinity” (trinité coloniale) of state,missionary and private company interests. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo and that individual regions becamespecialised. On many occasions, the interests of the government and private enterprise became closely tied, and the state helped companies break strikes and remove other barriers raised by the indigenous population. The country was split into nesting, hierarchically organised administrative subdivisions, and run uniformly according to a set “native policy” (politique indigène). This was in contrast to the British and the French, who generally favoured the system of indirect rulewhereby traditional leaders were retained in positions of authority under colonial oversight. The Congo had a high degree of racial segregation. The large numbers of white immigrants who moved to the Congo after the end ofWorld War II came from across the social spectrum, but were always treated as superior to black people.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the Congo had extensive urbanisation, and the colonial administration began various development programmes aimed at making the territory into a “model colony”. One of the results was the development of a new middle class of Europeanised African “évolués” in the cities. By the 1950s the Congo had a wage labour force twice as large as that in any other African colony.
In 1960, as the result of a widespread and increasingly radical pro-independence movement, the Congo achieved independence, becoming theRepublic of Congo-Léopoldville under Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasa-Vubu. Poor relations between factions within the Congo, the continued involvement of Belgium in Congolese affairs, and intervention by major parties of the Cold War led to a five-year-long period of war and political instability, known as the Congo Crisis, from 1960 to 1965. This ended with the seizure of power by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu.
Through 1893 and 1894, the first “Hottentot Uprising” of the Nama and their legendary leader Hendrik Witbooi occurred. The following years saw many further local uprisings against German rule. Before the Herero and Namaqua Genocide of 1904–1907, the Herero and Nama had good reasons to distrust the Germans, culminating in the Khaua-Mbandjeru Rebellion. This rebellion, in which the Germans tried to control the Khaua by seizing their property by artificially imposing European legal views of property ownership, led to the largest of the rebellions, known as the Herero Wars (or Herero Genocide) of 1904.
Remote farms were attacked, and approximately 150 German settlers were killed. The Schutztruppe of only 766 troops and native auxiliary forces was, at first, no match for the Herero. The Herero went on the offensive, sometimes surroundingOkahandja and Windhoek, and destroying the railway bridge to Osona. Additional 14,000 troops, hastened from Germany under Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, crushed the rebellion in the Battle of Waterberg.
Earlier von Trotha issued an ultimatum to the Herero people, denying them the right of being German subjects and ordering them to leave the country, or be killed. To escape, the Herero retreated into the waterless Omaheke region, a western arm of the Kalahari Desert, where many of them died of thirst. The German forces guarded every water source and were given orders to shoot any adult male Herero on sight. Only a few Herero managed to escape into neighbouring British territories.
The German official military report on the campaign lauded the tactics:
This bold enterprise shows up in the most brilliant light the ruthless energy of the German command in pursuing their beaten enemy. No pains, no sacrifices were spared in eliminating the last remnants of enemy resistance. Like a wounded beast the enemy was tracked down from one water-hole to the next, until finally he became the victim of his own environment. The arid Omaheke [desert] was to complete what the German army had begun: the extermination of the Herero nation.— Bley, 1971: 162
In late 1904, the Nama entered the struggles against the colonial power under their leaders Hendrik Witbooi and Jakobus Morenga, the latter often referred to as “the black Napoleon“. This uprising was finally quashed during 1907–1908. In total, between 25,000 and 100,000 Herero, more than 10,000 Nama and 1,749 Germans died in the conflict.
After the official end of the conflict, the remaining natives, when finally released from detention, were subject to a policy of dispossession, deportation, forced labour, and racial segregation and discrimination in a system that in many ways anticipated apartheid. The genocide remains relevant to ethnic identity in independent Namibia and to relations with Germany.
The Germans maintained a number of concentration camps in the colony during their war against the Herero and Nama peoples. Besides these camps the indigenous people were interned in other places. These included private businesses and government projects, ships offshore, Etappenkommando in charge of supplies of prisoners to companies, private persons, etc., as well as any other materials. Concentration camps implies poor sanitation and a population density that would imply disease. Prisoners were used as slave labourers in mines and railways, for use by the military or settlers.
The Herero and Namaqua genocide has been recognised by the United Nations and by the Federal Republic of Germany. On the 100th anniversary of the camp’s foundation, German Minister for Economic Development and Cooperation Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul commemorated the dead on-site and apologised for the camp on behalf of Germany.
To a much greater extent than those of other European colonial powers, Portugal’s African empire was woven deeply into the culture, politics, and economics of the metropole. Long after the more developed and industrialized states of Europe had decolonized, Portugal maintained its narrow centralized form of rule––from Mozambique to Angola in the south and from Guinea-Bissau in the west to the Atlantic archipelagos of Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. It did not do so easily; the last decade and a half of Portugal’s imperial presence––from the early 1960s until the final collapse of the empire in the mid-1970s––was marked by guerrilla warfare in the three continental territories and anticolonial agitation in the islands. The Lisbon regime’s official justification for this apparently irrational behavior was that Portugal’s five-hundred-year presence in Africa was part of a sacred national vocation. Portugal, in fact, was not a “colonial power”––or even, in a sense, a “European” one; it was a “pluricontinental” entity defined by language, culture, and history. There was in effect no empire, just “one state, single and indivisible” (um estado, uno e indivisível) parts of which were “overseas provinces” (províncias ultramarinas). This semi-mystical doctrine of “lusotropicalism” asserted that Portugal’s unique history and culture enabled it to transcend its continental limits to spread across the non-European world. The organization of this article reflects this self-conceived Portuguese sense of imperial exceptionalism. While the reality of the notion has been challenged (primarily by non-Portuguese writers), it was an article of faith among Portuguese imperial policymakers and a potent propaganda tool of successive governments––before and even since the 1974 revolution and decolonization. The bibliography also reflects the fact that “Portuguese colonial rule” was primarily a phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries. While there had been a Portuguese presence in Africa since the late 15th century in the form of coastal fortifications and Creole settlements, this could not properly be considered control from the metrople. In this sense Africa came relatively late in the narrative of Portuguese state imperialism. It was the “third” empire (o terceiro império) following the first in Asia (where Portugal was largely displaced by the Dutch in the 17th century) and the second in the Americas (which effectively ended with Brazil’s declaration of independence in 1822). While numerous works cited here deal with the earlier period of the Portuguese presence (see also the related Oxford Bibliographiesarticles on Kongo and the Coastal States of West Central Africa, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau), the principal focus is on the age of formalized control by the Portuguese state from the mid-19th century. After initial sections which consider general overviews, reference works, and bibliographies, the uniquely close interconnections between the African presence and European domestic concerns is explored in a section covering relevant publications on the Portuguese “nation,” broadly defined. The longer history of Portugal’s presence in Africa is then considered, followed by sections on the age of the “scramble” for Africa, the 20th century, the (contested) economic aspect of Portugal’s experience in Africa, the liberation wars, and then the international response to Portugal’s colonial policies. The subsequent sections deal in turn with each of the component parts of Portuguese Africa: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe. In the cases of first two––the larger continental territories––the entries are divided into sections dealing respectively with the generalities of the colonial experience and with nationalist resistance. The final section covers the febrile process of decolonization and the transfers of power to the new regimes in Africa which followed the sudden collapse of the authoritarian state in Lisbon in April 1974.
Central to Portugal’s assertion of its unique position in Africa was the long––and largely uninterrupted––duration of its presence in the continent. The now classic Boxer 1991 chronicles the history of Portuguese expansion from the 15th to the early 19th centuries in which Africa plays a significant role. The Birmingham 2004 collection is more tightly focused on the presence in Africa as is Chilcote 1967 (which offers a continuous narrative rather than, as in Birmingham’s book, individual studies). Finally, the social and cultural underpinning of Portuguese imperial doctrine––lusotropicalism––can be explored in the collection Freyre 1960, by its founding philosopher, the Brazilian anthropologist Gilberto Freyre.
5 . French
80% of the 10 countries with the lowest literacy rates in the WORLD among adults are in francophone Africa.
Namely: Benin (40%), Burkina Faso (26%), Chad (34%), Côte d’Ivoire (49%), Guinea (29%), Mali (23%), Niger (29%), and Senegal (42%).
This spectacular result is achieved after over 150 years of French colonization!
During the almost 200 years of French colonization in Africa and Asia, France has built only ONE university in their entire colonies. It was in Indochina.
After 150 years of French colonization of CAR (Central African Republic) there was only ONE person with a PhD degree when the country became independent in 1960.
However, France continues to collect rent on the colonial buildings they have left in these countries, and 14 african countries are still forced nowadays by France to pay colonial tax for the benefits of slavery and colonization.
Imagine the US still paying RENT to the British for the White House for instance, or Russia to collect rent from the vast public housing they have built through eastern europe during soviet union occupation.
Now take note of this. When Eastern European countries got their independence in the 90s from the Soviet Union Empire, ALL those countries without exception achieved 100% literacy rate, thousands of well trained engineers, doctors, many universities, etc. and lot of housing, transportation and energy infrastructure,…
Even today, after 20 years of these eastern europe countries independence, 99% of schools, universities, houses, transportation system, energy infrastructures in those countries are the ones left by the Soviet Union Empire.
Soviet Union occupation of those countries lasted only 50 years. Now, go to Africa, and check what the WEST left after 500 years of occupation and colonization!
When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the french administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which represented what they called the benefits from french colonization.
Three thousand French left the country, taking all their property and destroying anything that which could not be moved: schools, nurseries, public administration buildings were crumbled; cars, books, medicine, research institute instruments, tractors were crushed and sabotaged; horses, cows in the farms were killed, and food in warehouses were burned or poisoned.
The purpose of this outrageous act was to send a clear message to all other colonies that the consequences for rejecting France would be very high.
Slowly fear spread trough the african elite, and none after the Guinea events ever found the courage to follow the example of Sékou Touré, whose slogan was “We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery.”
It was the only conditions for the French not to destroy the country before leaving. However, the amount estimated by France was so big that the reimbursement of the so called “colonial debt” was close to 40% of the country budget in 1963.
The financial situation of the newly independent Togo was very unstable, so in order to get out the situation, Olympio decided to get out the french colonial money FCFA (the franc for french african colonies), and issue the country own currency.
On January 13, 1963, three days after he started printing his country own currency, a squad of illiterate soldiers backed by France killed the first elected president of newly independent Africa. Olympio was killed by an ex French Foreign Legionnaire army sergeant called Etienne Gnassingbe who supposedly received a bounty of $612 from the local French embassy for the hit man job.
Olympio’s dream was to build an independent and self-sufficient and self-reliant country. But the French didn’t like the idea.
On June 30, 1962, Modiba Keita , the first president of the Republic of Mali, decided to withdraw from the french colonial currency FCFA which was imposed on 12 newly independent African countries. For the Malian president, who was leaning more to a socialist economy, it was clear that colonisation continuation pact with France was a trap, a burden for the country development.
On November 19, 1968, like, Olympio, Keita will be the victim of a coup carried out by another ex French Foreign legionnaire, the Lieutenant Moussa Traoré.
In fact during that turbulent period of African fighting to liberate themselves from European colonization, France would repeatedly use many ex Foreign legionnaires to carry out coups against elected presidents:
- – On January 1st, 1966, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, an ex french foreign legionnaire, carried a coup against David Dacko, the first President of the Central African Republic.
- – On January 3, 1966, Maurice Yaméogo, the first President of the Republic of Upper Volta, now called Burkina Faso, was victim of a coup carried by Aboubacar Sangoulé Lamizana, an ex French legionnaire who fought with french troops in Indonesia and Algeria against these countries independence.
- – on 26 October 1972, Mathieu Kérékou who was a security guard to President Hubert Maga, the first President of the Republic of Benin, carried a coup against the president, after he attended French military schools from 1968 to 1970.
In fact, during the last 50 years, a total of 67 coups happened in 26 countries in Africa, 16 of those countries are french ex-colonies, which means 61% of the coups happened in Francophone Africa.
Number of Coups in Africa by country
|Ex French colonies||Other African countries|
|Country||Number of coup||Country||number of coup|
|Cote d’Ivoire||1||Equatorial Guinea||1|
|Congo – RDC||2||Ethiopia||3|
|TOTAL (1 + 2)||45||TOTAL||22|
As these numbers demonstrate, France is quite desperate but active to keep a strong hold on his colonies what ever the cost, no matter what.
In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac said:
“Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third [world] power”
Chirac’s predecessor François Mitterand already prophesied in 1957 that:
“Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”
At this very moment I’m writing this article, 14 african countries are obliged by France, trough a colonial pact, to put 85% of their foreign reserve into France central bank under French minister of Finance control. Until now, 2014, Togo and about 13 other african countries still have to pay colonial debt to France. African leaders who refuse are killed or victim of coup. Those who obey are supported and rewarded by France with lavish lifestyle while their people endure extreme poverty, and desperation.
It’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out.
We often accuse African leaders of corruption and serving western nations interests instead, but there is a clear explanation for that behavior. They behave so because they are afraid the be killed or victim of a coup. They want a powerful nation to back them in case of aggression or trouble. But, contrary to a friendly nation protection, the western protection is often offered in exchange of these leaders renouncing to serve their own people or nations’ interests.
African leaders would work in the interest of their people if they were not constantly stalked and bullied by colonial countries.
In 1958, scared about the consequence of choosing independence from France, Leopold Sédar Senghor declared: “The choice of the Senegalese people is independence; they want it to take place only in friendship with France, not in dispute.”
From then on France accepted only an “independence on paper” for his colonies, but signed binding “Cooperation Accords”, detailing the nature of their relations with France, in particular ties to France colonial currency (the Franc), France educational system, military and commercial preferences.
Below are the 11 main components of the Colonisation continuation pact since 1950s:
#1. Colonial Debt for the benefits of France colonization
The newly “independent” countries should pay for the infrastructure built by France in the country during colonization.
I still have to find out the complete details about the amounts, the evaluation of the colonial benefits and the terms of payment imposed on the african countries, but we are working on that (help us with info).
#2. Automatic confiscation of national reserves
The African countries should deposit their national monetary reserves into France Central bank.
France has been holding the national reserves of fourteen african countries since 1961: Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
“The monetary policy governing such a diverse aggregation of countries is uncomplicated because it is, in fact, operated by the French Treasury, without reference to the central fiscal authorities of any of the WAEMU or the CEMAC. Under the terms of the agreement which set up these banks and the CFA the Central Bank of each African country is obliged to keep at least 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in an “operations account” held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20% to cover financial liabilities.
The CFA central banks also impose a cap on credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20% of that country’s public revenue in the preceding year. Even though the BEAC and the BCEAO have an overdraft facility with the French Treasury, the drawdowns on those overdraft facilities are subject to the consent of the French Treasury. The final say is that of the French Treasury which has invested the foreign reserves of the African countries in its own name on the Paris Bourse.
In short, more than 80% of the foreign reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “operations accounts” controlled by the French Treasury. The two CFA banks are African in name, but have no monetary policies of their own. The countries themselves do not know, nor are they told, how much of the pool of foreign reserves held by the French Treasury belongs to them as a group or individually.
The earnings of the investment of these funds in the French Treasury pool are supposed to be added to the pool but no accounting is given to either the banks or the countries of the details of any such changes. The limited group of high officials in the French Treasury who have knowledge of the amounts in the “operations accounts”, where these funds are invested; whether there is a profit on these investments; are prohibited from disclosing any of this information to the CFA banks or the central banks of the African states .” Wrote Dr. Gary K. Busch
It’s now estimated that France is holding close to 500 billions African countries money in its treasury, and would do anything to fight anyone who want to shed a light on this dark side of the old empire.
The African countries don’t have access to that money.
France allows them to access only 15% of the money in any given year. If they need more than that, they have to borrow the extra money from their own 65% from the French Treasury at commercial rates.
To make things more tragic, France impose a cap on the amount of money the countries could borrow from the reserve. The cap is fixed at 20% of their public revenue in the preceding year. If the countries need to borrow more than 20% of their own money, France has a veto.
Former French President Jacques Chirac recently spoke about the African nations money in France banks. Here is a video of him speaking about the french exploitation scheme. He is speaking in French, but here is a short excerpt transcript: “We have to be honest, and acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks come precisely from the exploitation of the African continent.”
#3. Right of first refusal on any raw or natural resource discovered in the country
France has the first right to buy any natural resources found in the land of its ex-colonies. It’s only after France would say, “I’m not interested”, that the African countries are allowed to seek other partners.
#4. Priority to French interests and companies in public procurement and public biding
In the award of government contracts, French companies must be considered first, and only after that these countries could look elsewhere. It doesn’t matter if the african countries can obtain better value for money elsewhere.
As consequence, in many of the french ex-colonies, all the majors economical assets of the countries are in the hand of french expatriates. In Côte d’Ivoire, for example, french companies own and control all the major utilities – water, electricity, telephone, transport, ports and major banks. The same in commerce, construction, and agriculture.
In the end, as I’ve written in a previous article, Africans now Live On A Continent Owned by Europeans!
#5. Exclusive right to supply military equipment and Train the country military officers
Through a sophisticated scheme of scholarships, grants, and “Defense Agreements” attached to the Colonial Pact, the africans should send their senior military officers for training in France or French ran-training facilities.
The situation on the continent now is that France has trained hundreds, even thousands of traitors and nourish them. They are dormant when they are not needed, and activated when needed for a coup or any other purpose!
#6. Right for France to pre-deploy troops and intervene military in the country to defend its interests
Under something called “Defence Agreements” attached to the Colonial Pact, France had the legal right to intervene militarily in the African countries, and also to station troops permanently in bases and military facilities in those
countries, run entirely by the French.
French military bases in Africa
When President Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire tried to end the French exploitation of the country, France organized a coup. During the long process to oust Gbagbo, France tanks, helicopter gunships and Special Forces intervened directly in the conflit, fired on civilians and killed many.
To add insult to injury, France estimated that the French business community had lost several millions of dollars when in the rush to leave Abidjan in 2006 the French Army massacred 65 unarmed civilians and wounded 1,200 others.
After France succeeded the coup, and transferred power to Alassane Outtara, France requested Ouattara government to pay compensation to French business community for the losses during the civil war.
Indeed the Ouattara government paid them twice what they said they had lost in leaving.
#7. Obligation to make French the official language of the country and the language for education
Oui, Monsieur. Vous devez parlez français, la langue de Molière!
A French language and culture dissemination organization has been created called “Francophonie” with several satellites and affiliates organizations supervised by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs.
As demonstrated in this article, if French is the only language you speak, you’d have access to less than 4% of humanity knowledge and ideas. That’s very limiting.
#8. Obligation to use France colonial money FCFA
That’s the real milk cow for France, but it’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury.
During the introduction of Euro currency in Europe, other european countries discovered the french exploitation scheme. Many, specially the nordic countries, were appalled and suggested France get rid of the system, but unsuccessfully.
#9. Obligation to send France annual balance and reserve report.
Without the report, no money.
Anyway the secretary of the Central banks of the ex-colonies, and the secretary of the bi-annual meeting of the Ministers of Finance of the ex-colonies is carried out by France Central bank / Treasury.
#10. Renonciation to enter into military alliance with any other country unless authorized by France
African countries in general are the ones with will less regional military alliances. Most of the countries have only military alliances with their ex-colonisers! (funny, but you can’t do better!).
In the case France ex-colonies, France forbid them to seek other military alliance except the one it offered them.
#11. Obligation to ally with France in situation of war or global crisis
Over one million africans soldiers fought for the defeat of nazism and fascism during the second world war.
Their contribution is often ignored or minimized, but when you think that it took only 6 weeks for Germany to defeat France in 1940, France knows that Africans could be useful for fighting for la “Grandeur de la France” in the future.
There is something almost psychopathic in the relation of France with Africa.
First, France is severely addicted to looting and exploitation of Africa since the time of slavery. Then there is this complete lack of creativity and imagination of french elite to think beyond the past and tradition.
Finally, France has 2 institutions which are completely frozen into the past, inhabited by paranoid and psychopath “haut fonctionnaires” who spread fear of apocalypse if France would change, and whose ideological reference still comes from the 19th century romanticism: they are the Minister of Finance and Budget of France and the Minister of Foreign affairs of France.
These 2 institutions are not only a threat to Africa, but to the French themselves.