International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Mobilizations against the established order in Angola and Nigeria

Jean Nanga — 2020-12-26T09:53:59Z

In October 2020, starting on the sixtieth anniversary of its independence (1 October 1960), Nigeria experienced almost two weeks of mobilization of the movement against police violence, #EndSARS, made up mostly of young people. While in Angola, after a demonstration against corruption in October, on the very day of the 45th anniversary of independence (11 November 2020), young people took to the streets, demonstrating once again their anger over their social relegation. These mobilizations (…)

- IV551 - December 2020 / Nigeria, Angola

The African Continental Free Trade Area: What Kind of Pan-Africanism?

Jean Nanga — 2019-01-23T08:45:10Z

On March 21, 2018, five years after celebrating the half-century of existence of the Organization of African Unity (OAU)/African Union (AU) – considered in the AU Newspeak as "fifty years of success" , 44 of the 55 AU member states signed in Kigali the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) - the creation of a "single market for goods and services facilitated by the movement of persons [...], a liberalized market for goods and services" according to the text of the Agreement.

- IV528 - January 2019 / Economy, Africa, Nigeria

Free trade and Pan-Africanism

Jean Nanga — 2019-01-01T07:19:44Z

In Kigali, Rwanda, on March 21, 2018, five years after the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)/African Union (AU) – considered in the Newspeak of the AU as “fifty years of success” – 44 of the AU's 55 member states signed the Agreement concerning the Creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), a “single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of business persons and investments”. Suppression of customs tariffs is supposed to boost intra-African trade, which represents around 12%-15% of Africa's exchanges, well below the internal exchanges of other continents (which makes Africa the most open region to world trade). In the event of ratification, by 22 of the signatory states, by late 2018 - early 2019 – intra-African trade is slated to exceed 50% by 2022. [1]

- IV528 - January 2019 / Economy, Africa

Social struggles and the birth of a new consciousness

Jean Nanga — 2017-09-07T11:36:08Z

The Yaoundé Summit of Central African heads of state – Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Chad – was held during the second half of 2016, a fairly volatile period in the sub-region. Alongside the Central African Republic, where the violence which began in 2013 has sporadically re-emerged; Equatorial Guinea where, in order to develop his “Abayak holding” and his “shares in all the economic sector” the autocrat Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (in power since 1979 when he ousted his uncle, the previous president), had himself re-elected in April with 97% of the vote with his repressive apparatus dissuading any popular mobilisation; and the Republic of the Congo, where opposition to the regime has generated a confused and murderous military situation which began in Brazzaville and has since spread to the neighbouring department of Pool; the three other countries of the sub-region entered 2017 in an atmosphere of popular mobilisation.

- IV512 - September 2017 / Africa, Equatorial Guinea , Congo, Chad, Central African Republic, Gabon, Cameroon

Constitutional gerrymandering and murderous consolidation of capitalist nepotism

Jean Nanga — 2017-01-18T17:04:31Z

From Angola to Chad, Central Africa, including Equatorial Guinea, is the sub-region most affected by the decline in oil prices, because it is dependent on oil revenues. An oligarchic resistance to the respect of the rules of the democratic game, in the form of a new type of authoritarian regime combining a formal multiparty regime with a repressive confiscation of power, characterized by nepotism, is closely related to this rentier character.
Thus, in a direction contrary to the wind that blew from North Africa in 2010-2011, sweeping away in 2014 the Blaise Compaoré regime in Burkina Faso, in 2016, the Congolese, Chadian and Gabonese peoples were forced to suffer, for another term of office, disgraced regimes. The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), confronted with the postponement of the elections, which extended the presidency of Kabila, have already seen dozens of people killed following the repression of popular demonstrations. So we could speak of a "spirit of sub-region". Without forgetting that in CÃ´te d'Ivoire Ouattara has had a constitution drafted that allows the president to appoint one third of the members of the Senate.

- Features / France, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African Republic

New capitalist domination and imperialism in Africa

Jean Nanga — 2015-10-29T14:27:22Z

The decolonization that began in the 1940s was essentially a passage towards neocolonialism, a mutation of the former colonies, a reconfiguration of the mechanisms of domination and exploitation by both the former colonial powers and other capitalists of the centre. It was necessary to adapt to the new balance of power on the international stage (the new economic-military hierarchy, the “Cold War”) in both the colonial metropolises and the colonial territories. Three or four decades later, the disappearance of the so-called “communist” camp gave rise to a restructuring of the world order based on the dynamic of the neoliberalisation of capitalism that had been set in motion in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is characterized by a permanent strengthening of the global hold of capital on the world (globalization) and a dynamic of abolition of the “private estate” (concerning the former French colonies), the “backyard” (Latin America for the United States), etc., which were said to limit the free movement of capital, hitherto considered as an intrusion.

- Features / Brazil, Russia, Africa, China, India, South Africa, European Union, Features, Imperialism today

Is Africa rising? A critical perspective (2)

Jean Nanga — 2014-12-29T12:37:35Z

The narrative about Africa in the international media, in particular the economic press, as well as in academic journals, is changing. It is no longer dominated by what is frequently labelled ”afro-pessimism”, which allows development NGOs especially to dedicate themselves to the civilising, neo-colonial mission in Africa. Now we are faced with ”afro-optimism”, which has a strong tendency to supplant the ”afro-pessimist” discourse, based on the roughly 5 per cent average GDP growth rate for all of Africa over the past 10 years. By bourgeois economic logic, this effectively makes it the world's second economic driving force after Asia, at a time when a significant number of economies in the traditional capitalist centres oscillate between an end to recession and fears of a fall back into one.

- IV479 - December 2014 / Africa

GDP, the bourgeoisie and inequality all growing

Jean Nanga — 2013-06-14T16:14:41Z

In the current context of international crisis of capitalism, sub-Saharan Africa is presented as a zone of the world economy which is doing well. In 2012, none of the states in the region was considered as in recession: 0.8% growth in GDP in Swaziland, 8.7 % (after 13.7% in 2011) in Ghana, or 7% in Congo-Brazzaville, 2.7% in South Africa and 4% in Mauritius [1]. The average growth of the sub-region is 5.8%, well above the world average of around 3%.

- IV461 - June 2013 / Africa

A neo-colonial intervention under French leadership

Jean Nanga — 2013-03-01T21:15:30Z

On 11 January 2013, French president François Hollande announced the intervention of his country's army in the war in Mali, which had until then opposed the Malian army to the Tuareg independence movement, the Mouvement national de libération de l'Azawad (MNLA – National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad), and the various jihadist groups apparently committed to the establishment of a West African caliphate: the Malian Tuaregs of Ansar Dine, the internationals of the Mouvement pour l'unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l'Ouest (MUJAO – Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa) and the “narco-Salafists” of Al-Qaeda au Maghreb islamique (AQMI - Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). France's entry into a war in one of its former colonies was presented as a response to an appeal for help from the head of the interim government in Mali, President Dioncounda Traoré. The latter owes his position to an agreement between the army, led by Captain Sanogo, which overthrew the legal government of Amadou Toumani Touré in March 2012 (a month before the presidential elections which the latter was not going to contest), and a part of the Malian “political class” under the patronage of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Dioncounda Traoré felt threatened by the movement of the jihadists towards the Malian capital, Bamako.

- IV458 - March 2013 / Mali

“The dynamic of the victorious struggle of the workers in the sugar industry has spread to other areas...”

Jean Nanga — 2013-01-10T18:14:31Z

Ashok Subron, an activist of the ecosocialist organization Resistanz ek Alternativ, is a spokesperson for the Left Trade Union Confederation-Solidarity (CSG-Solidarity) and an organizer of unions in the sugar industry, the port and the transport sector for the General Workers Federation-Joint Negotiating Panel (GWE - JNP) in Mauritius. He spoke to Jean Nanga for International Viewpoint.

- IV456 - January 2013 / Mauritius