I found it both somewhat futile and thought-provoking when yesterday Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo gave a speech in New York City addressing representatives of the African Diaspora and warned the Diaspora about another “Scramble for Africa”. Obasanjo was basically saying that unlike the scramble we already know of (colonies and slaves), this time the world’s great powers will come after Africa’s energy resources especially those found in the Gulf of Guinea. He said that the scramble is “being led by China from the East and the US from the West”. Three things intrigued me about this:
1. How much can Africa really protect herself from the scramble? Do we have the capacity, considering that a lot of our self-protective capacities are in the West’s hands? We are not in a position to put the West, or even the East in sanctions because their trade feeds us, among many other reasons.
2. Obasanjo asked the African Diaspora to join Africa in its efforts to protect its resources. This is where my cynicism about Pan-Africanism shows up. Really, African-Americans see themselves as first American and secondly of the African Diaspora, if at all they acknowledge the latter. So, you can figure whose interests they will have at heart. Use the same reasoning for other groups in the African Diaspora and you’ll see this might not have been as grand a move towards progress as Obasanjo may believe.
3. I ask myself if the scramble ever stopped after the slavery and colonization. And if Obasanjo is right that something really huge and explicitly nasty is coming, whose help do we seek?
