Geo-Economic, Geo-Political and Geo-Strategic Aid
Aid policies, the choice of beneficiaries, the forms of intervention, their immediate apparent objectives are inseparable from geopolitical objectives.
Sub-Saharan Africa is perfectly integrated into the global system, and in no way ‘marginalized’ as is too often claimed: foreign trade represents 45 % of its GDP, compared to 30 % for Asia and Latin America and 15 % for each of the three regions of the triad.
Africa is therefore quantitatively more, not less, integrated, but the continent is integrated differently into the system.The geo-economy of the region rests on two decisive sets of production in the making of its structures and the definition of its place in the global system:
1. ‘Tropical’ agricultural export production: coffee, cocoa, cotton, peanut, fruits, palm oil etc.
2. Hydro-carbons and mining production: copper, rare metals, uranium, diamonds.
The first are survival means, beyond the food-production for auto-consumption of farmers, that finance the graft of the state on the local economy and, beginning with public spending, the reproduction of the middle classes. The term ‘banana republic’ responds, beyond the contemptuous meaning that it carries, to the reality of the status that dominant powers give to the geo-economy of the region. These productions interest local ruling classes more than they do dominant economies.
However, what greatly interests the latter are the natural resources of the continent. Today, hydrocarbons and rare minerals, tomorrow, the reserves for development of agro-fuels, the sun (when long-distance transportation of solar energy will be possible), and, in a few decades, water (when direct or indirect export will be possible).
The race to rural territories destined to be converted for the expansion of agrofuels has begun in Latin America. Africa offers, in this regard, a gigantic possibility.
Madagascar has initiated the movement and already conceded important areas in the west of the country. The implementation of the Congolese rural code (2008), inspired by Belgium cooperation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will, without a doubt, allow agri-business to seize large tracks of agricultural land to exploit them, as the Mining Code permitted the pillage of mining resources from the colony some time ago. Farmers, considered ‘useless’, will pay the price; the aggravated misery that awaits them will perhaps interest the humanitarian aid of tomorrow—the aid programs for poverty reduction! Indeed in the 1970s, an old colonial dream for the Sahel was to expel its population (the useless) to create ranches (Texas-style) for widespread livestock farming for export. This new phase of history is characterized by the intensification of conflicts for access to the natural resources of the planet. The triad expects to reserve exclusive access to ‘useful’ Africa (that of natural resource reserves) and prohibit access to ‘emerging’ countries whose needs in this regard are already considerable and will increase. The guarantee of this exclusive access requires political control and the reduction of African countries to the status of ‘client’ states.Foreign aid fulfils an important role in the maintenance of states as client states. It is therefore not excessive to argue that the objective of aid is to ‘corrupt’ the ruling classes. Beyond the financial drain (unfortunately well know and for which donors pretend they can’t help it!) aid has become ‘indispensable’ (since it has become an important source of financing for national budgets) and therefore of full political interest. It is therefore important that aid be reserved exclusively and integrally to the classes in charge, in ‘government’. Aid must also equally interest the ‘opposition’, capable of succeeding the government. The role of civil society and of certain NGOs finds its place here.
To be truly politically effective, aid must equally contribute to maintaining the insertion of farmers in this global system, while feeding the other source of revenue of the state.
Aid is therefore equally interested in the ‘modernisation’ of export cultures and facilitate access to common goods (education, health and housing) of the middle classes and fractions (primarily urban) of popular classes. The client state’s political functioning depends, to a large extent, on these conditions.Nevertheless there will always be projects that will escape these criteria of global political effectiveness, expressed herein with lucidity (that others will call cynicism). Aid that Scandinavian countries (Sweden in particular) provided, during the Bandung era, to the radical and critical thinking and action bears witness to the positive reality of this type of aid. During the Bandung era and the decades of development, Asia and Africa began counter-geopolitics, defined by Southern states, to push the geopolitics of the triad back. The conditions of the era—military bipolarity, global boom and the growing demand for Southern exports—allowed this counteroffensive to flourish, constraining the triad to make minor and major concessions in particular instances. Specifically, the military bipolarity prohibited the United States and its associates in the triad to strengthen their geopolitical power through a geostrategy founded on the permanent threat of military intervention.
The pages of this era having turned, the geo-politics of the triad, at the service of its geo-economy, finds itself strengthened by the deployment of its geo-strategy. Which is why the UN had to be marginalized and replaced, with cynicism by NATO—the armed branch of the triad. This explains why the discourse around external security of the triad has taken centre stage. The ‘war on terror’ and on ‘rogue states’ attempt to legitimise the geo-strategy of the triad and hence take prominence.
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