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by Joel | 15 April 2023 · 6:03 am

Who Led the Scramble for Africa?

From Britain at War with the Asante Nation, 1823–1900: “The White Man’s Grave” by Stephen Manning (Pen & Sword Books, 2021), Kindle pp. 193-195:

When examining the British government’s actions before 1895, it seems evident that ministers felt no urgent requirement to expand British influence in West Africa. They were not interested in using imperial power and capital to work in West Africa for the purpose of investing in new markets and resources. It is often thought that the empire existed to create more business for Britain, yet, according to Robinson and Gallagher in the seminal work Africa and the Victorians, in the Gold Coast, before 1895, it would be truer to say that the merchants were expected to create empire and that the British government expected them to do so without imperial rule, to make do with the limited protection and to pioneer their own way inland.

The ‘Scramble for Africa’ was to change that thinking. This term refers to a period in the late 1880s and 1890s during which many European powers, including Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, sought to expand their own empires or spheres of influence across the African continent. The motives behind such actions were often economic enhancement or dominance, but the nations were equally driven by the desire for their European rivals to be excluded from a region. Although this was true across Africa, West Africa was to be dominated by a strong rivalry between the British and the French.

At the height of the Scramble it was common that local officials were several steps ahead or even led opinion as to what action should be taken. Often the Colonial Office in London was slow in offering definitive guidance and policy could be made by the officials in situ. This was certainly true of the Gold Coast. The Governor Brandford Griffith had already alerted London that French colonial ambitions were being extended by exploration westwards into the hinterland of the Gold Coast, from their colony of the Ivory Coast. In 1886 a French officer, Captain Louis-Gustave Binger, had been tasked by the French government to lead a reconnaissance mission along the Niger River. To avoid arousing British suspicions he started from the interior and by 1889 he had covered a huge area between Bamako, Kong and Wagadugu and he encroached on British influence in Salaga and Kintampo. In 1888, Binger even managed to secure a treaty of protection with the Bontuku under the noses of a British mission. Brandford Griffith feared that the French might even penetrate into northern Asante and so in 1886 he informed the Colonial Office that Asante territory should be quickly brought under British jurisdiction.

The following year the governor gave a further warning to London of German encroachment into Asante from Togo in the east. These warnings were not, initially, taken very seriously and the secretary of state, Henry Holland, 1st Baron of Knutsford, even wrote, ‘If Ashanti is to be annexed to any European power let it be by the Germans.’ However, over the next few years such complacency disappeared from the Colonial Office in light of further European penetration of the interior of West Africa and diplomatic disagreements in Europe. It was felt that some action, at least to the north of Asante, would have to be considered. Here diplomacy within Europe secured two important agreements. The Anglo-French Agreement of 1889 defined the western boundary of the Gold Coast according to treaties made with the local chiefs. Similarly, the Anglo-German Treaty of 1890 established a neutral zone to the north east of Asante in which European nations bound themselves not to acquire protectorates. The treaty also defined the southern Gold Coast–Togoland boundary in general terms, but detailed interpretation on the ground aroused local resentment and the king of Krepi was outraged that the new boundary split his lands. Furthermore, the creation of the neutral zone merely heightened colonial rivalries in the adjacent territories. When the king of Attabubu approached the British seeking protection from German encroachment, the governor was delighted to recommend that a treaty of friendship and protection should be drawn up and this was executed in 1890, much to the annoyance of the Germans.

New African Infrastructure for Whom?

From The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa’s Wealth, by Tom Burgis (PublicAffairs, 2016), Kindle pp. 147-149:

It is too simplistic to see China’s quest for African resources as a Manichean struggle for nature’s treasure between East and West. There is competition, but there is also cooperation in the business of resource extraction. And for all its increased attractiveness to rival investors from overseas, much of Africa remains locked at the foot of the global economy.

Ibrahim Iddi Ango, the industrialist who headed Niger’s chamber of commerce, told me that Niger’s rulers had sold the country short in their negotiations with the Chinese. “They need strategic resources. You must say, ‘You are interested in that? These are the conditions. First, you must use local labor. Second, all the needs you have—for example, the transit—you must use at a minimum 50 percent local operators.’ But when they came the government said none of this. The state took a percentage of the businesses and let the Chinese do what they want.” A brief window of opportunity to use China’s desire for African minerals to insist on securing for Niger the skills and infrastructure that might help to salve the resource curse by broadening the economy was closing. “To diversify, it’s central,” Iddi Ango said—and with good reason. Niger is among the African states most acutely dependent on a handful of raw commodity exports, their economic fortunes yoked to the whims of far-off consumers. On the African Development Bank’s index, where a higher score indicates a more diversified economy, relatively wealthy countries not shackled to the resource trade such as Mauritius and Morocco score 22 and 41, respectively. The average for the whole of Africa, including more prosperous North Africa, is 4.8. The most oil-dependent states, Angola and Chad, record the lowest scores, 1.1. Niger does only marginally better, with a score of 2.4.

“But if you let China do what it wants—as many African countries have—they pay for the oil or the resources and use Chinese labor, Chinese trucks. It’s a big problem,” Iddi Ango said. “They are coming because the resources are here. This moment will not be repeated. We can’t miss it. When the uranium or the oil is finished, they will leave.”

The fall of Tandja demonstrated the limits of China’s readiness to get involved in domestic politics to protect African allies. But Xia Huang, the Chinese ambassador in Niamey, encapsulated how China’s readiness to spend and build allowed Beijing to gain a foothold sufficiently strong that its interests could withstand a coup against an ally. “Today there is a bridge between the two sides of the River Niger,” he told me. “But there is also a bridge that links China and Niger.”

Yet the true value of China’s offer to guide Africa on a path to economic diversification and industrialization—the road that led the rich world to prosperity—rests on whether its construction spree is geared primarily toward cultivating the rulers who govern access to resources or toward broadening the opportunities of the population at large. Neither railways that simply connect Chinese-owned mines to Chinese-built ports for the export of commodities nor vanity projects of great cost but little economic usefulness will lift resource states’ inhabitants from their poverty. Martyn Davies, the chief executive of a South African consultancy called Frontier Advisory who has worked as an adviser on Chinese deals in Africa, told me, “When you have a commodity-driven economy, where a lot of people are excluded, it’s a silo economy. It’s very difficult to build infrastructure that supports inclusive growth. Is Chinese-financed infrastructure going to provide diversification? Which comes first?” He added, “African governments should never assume that responsibility for the development of our continent has been outsourced to Beijing.”

Beijing appears to be undercutting its side of the deal. Chinese goods like the counterfeit textiles flooding into northern Nigeria drown out hopes for industrialization, regardless of how many roads and railways Chinese companies lay. Lamido Sanusi, governor of Nigeria’s central bank from 2009 to 2014, put it well: “So China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism. The British went to Africa and India to secure raw materials and markets. Africa is now willingly opening itself up to a new form of imperialism.”