Precaution as Entry Point for Evading Africa´s Impending Colonialism 2.0

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How much would you exchange for a hectare of land you own in a rural area in your country? Note your answer. Now, imagine that you were informed after a thorough analysis that your hectare has: mineral deposits (gold, diamonds, bauxite or limestone), groundwater and fertile soil in abundance, year-round sunshine to supply an entire village with clean energy, and could sequester 1 million tonnes CO₂e per year (in a climate change era this should mean something to you). Would you trade it for your earlier value? Most likely not. But this is exactly what is happening in most parts of our home, Africa.

At the recent Global Landscape Forum in Bonn, I was largely surprised, but highly impressed to note the alacrity with which African leaders are pledging lands towards landscape restoration under the African Forest Restoration (AFR) initiative. At the time of writing, 113 million ha of land, 13% percent above initial AFR targets, had been pledged. This is both good and bad news. On a positive note, when these commitments are honored and stakeholder responsive landscape rehabilitation and restoration schemes implemented, we could achieve the enviable ambition of locking-up the biggest public enemy of our time, CO₂. We could also create much needed jobs and offer our burgeoning youths a way out of poverty. However, if we deploy business-as-usual approaches – where land deals are shrouded in secrecy and riddled with corruption – to allocate these lands, we will be largely setting up ourselves for a takeover by imperialists. Colonialism 2.0. Consider this.

Land Matrix, an online public database on land deals shows that Africa has already sold 15.7 million ha of its arable land to foreign investors. An estimated 10.3 million ha are also at various stages of completion. This means that we are already losing control of 26 million ha.

This is more than the entire area of the United Kingdom, 24.2 million ha. And the combined land area of: Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Rwanda, Togo and Sierra Leone.  Note that this 26 million is independent of the intended 113 million ha under AFR100 and others which are undocumented. 

The Land Matrix further shows that the acquired lands are mostly used for agriculture, forestry and renewable energy. So why are we not engaging in these activities ourselves? Is it because we are food and energy sufficient? Contrarily, we remain the world´s most food insecure and electricity deprived region (Figure 2). Meanwhile, several studies point to lack of access to land as a main barrier for African youths’ entry into agriculture. By relinquishing our access to land, a crucial asset for food and fuel production to foreigners, when we cannot access and use such lands to feed ourselves, are we not clearly ceding control and paving the path for them to control us?

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What ever your answer, one of our noble sons, Dr Kwame Nkrumah forewarned us about this in 1958 when he said: “Colonialism and imperialism may come to us yet in a different guise. We must alert ourselves to recognize this when it rear its head and prepare ourselves to battle it”. We would not be doing ourselves or generation after much good if we watch on for emerging pathway to colonialism to take roots.

Colonialism and imperialism may come to us yet in a different guise. We must alert ourselves to recognize this when it rears its head and prepare ourselves to battle it.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, 1958

I believe that we will be better served as a continent, as Africans if we take control of our lands and invest in them to feed ourselves, produce clean energy and sequester (capture and colonise) the dreaded CO₂. And that is not best part. It is this. If we make the right decisions, we would make a fortune and liberate our continent for the abyss of economic stagnation in the process. But the right decision is not a simple one. We can start by investing in ourselves, developing our competencies, to engage in and access directly the benefits landscape restoration offers.

We do this when we appreciate that our land is not a worthless space to be traded at next to nothing. We already made this mistake in the past, when we exchanged our gold for mirrors, schnapps and like stones, threw diamonds at strangers. They ended up enslaving us. Whatever it takes, we cannot allow that to happen again.  We need to be cautious. For many have and will continue coming to us disguised as wolves in sheep clothing. Let´s not be fooled. We need to step back and put the value of our lands into context. Really, what is a hectare of land with abundant water, fertile soils, year-round sunshine, a strong labor force and all the potential that present for clean energy generation (solar, hydro and bio-energy) worth? In a world in dire need of clean energy, we must make it our mission to not only find this value, but to access it.

It is true that no man is an island and in the age of globalization, nations are increasingly interdependent, each honing its comparative advantage in specific field. It is equally true that we remain behind in areas like oil and gas exploration and extraction, and continue to be strong-armed into trading them for next to nothing. But oil is fast becoming a tale of the past.  Renewable energy is our common future. We must therefore endeavor to invest in research and train our youth to be at the forefront of renewable energy discourses. We need to use our geopolitical positioning and the potential it offers, to leverage resources and attain the Africa we want agenda.

Beyond this, we need to reinvent our shambolic and corruption ridden governance systems that have made us a Continent that illustrates and highlights the resource curse. The resource curse is a phenomenon, where a countries natural resource endowments does not translate into economic development but rather a myriad of problems.
We need to exorcise this curse.

This means putting in place functional and organic institutions that implement the right policies and legislation we are renowned for developing. We need to put in place transparent structures, that enable our people to have a say in land related deals. Even then, we need to give preference to our folks because unlike foreigners-who repatriate most of the profits to their countries of origin-our folks reinvest their profits in our Continent´s development and enable us to breakout of the abyss of poverty.

I would like to emphasize that our leaders´ commitment of land towards global landscape restoration efforts are admirable if not enviable. However, current approaches for allocating such lands, including the exclusive focus on foreign investment needs re-evaluation. We need to revise it to embrace the bigger picture and our realities. We cannot continue to be pawns in other people’s grandiose ideas. We cannot continue to live other people’s dreams. We are better equipped and smarter than that. We need to reinvent our institutions and invest in our ourselves to strengthen our position in the global discourse and practice of sustainable development. We have leverage in our lands and the potential they present for clean development. We need to use it.

We need to be pioneers. Pioneers who use our prized land endowments to colonize CO₂ and address climate change. Future generations should know us as the developed continent that saved humanity and enriched itself with their needs in mind. They should write about us: ´the African Blessing´. Not as a bunch of people cursed by their resource endowments and in their greed became colonies again´.

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