Introduction
One issue which has been academically consuming many Africans and friends of Africa is why, despite the official end of colonialism in Africa, including apartheid in South Africa, are Africa and Africans still the same epistemolog-ically, materially, and existentially? A lot of reasons for Africa’s current and past predicaments have been offered (Mafeje, 1986; Mbembe, 1992, 2000; Ali A. Mazrui, 1995, 2005; Mazrui, 1999; Mkandawire, 2002; Nzongola- Ntalaja, 2006; Hamilton, 2011; Ndlovu- Gatsheni, 2013a, 2013b, 2015; Benyera, 2020a, 2020b). Concomitant with attempts to diagnose Africa’s challenges are also efforts to map Africa’s trajectory, especially in the 4IR. Previous industrial revolutions saw Africa assume the position of a voiceless, choiceless supplier of raw materials and labour under conditions of duress such as slavery and colonialism.
The slave trade might have been abolished, but slavery is continuing.
Colonialism is officially over, but coloniality is going full throttle. I respond to the question: Will Africa sink deeper into a lack of sovereignty and (re)colon-isation or will the 4IR present a propitious moment for Africa to rediscover, redeem, and assert itself as an equal member of the international community?
This is happening against the background of countless political summits and initiatives which took place at regional level led by the African Union (AU), and similar countless initiatives at sub- regional level such as the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the East African Community (EAC), and other similar regional economic communities. These efforts notwithstanding, the lives of Africans have generally remained the same, that is, living without what Hannah Arendt termed the rights to rights (Arendt, 1949). For our purposes, we take human rights to mean being born, living, and dying a dignified life devoid of humiliation and able to enjoy four fundamental freedoms: freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from violence and freedom from enforced silence (Shivji, 2019, p. 7).
There were many multilateral interventions and initiatives especially from Eurocentric organisations. International “donor” organisations and
non- governmental organisations also intervened in trying to “solve” the African problem. Yet measured by any standard, the quality of life for the majority of Africans remains poor because of the effectiveness of the colonial matrix.
In other words, colonially inaugurated harsh living conditions which took 500 years to entrench intensified after the end of official colonialism. Ramon Grosfoguel opines that,
By “colonial situations” I mean the cultural, political, sexual and eco-nomic oppression/ exploitation of subordinate racialized/ ethnic groups by dominant racial/ ethnic groups with or without the existence of colonial administrations.
(Grosfoguel, 2011, p. 12) Contemporary Africa is awash with violent conflicts of all magnitudes. Why is it that the most vicious conflicts in Africa are located where the rarest and most valuable minerals are found? The recent surge of violence in Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado is taking place where the world’s lar-gest deposits of graphite and liquid natural gas were discovered. This is besides the offshore petroleum which is already being extracted there. There are also vicious conflicts in Walikale Territory, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is endowed with the world’s biggest coltan deposits.
Coltan is used for the production of tantalum capacitors which are used in many electronic devices and smart devices.
Deals around raw materials have already been sealed in Guinea, for example, where the China International Fund funded Guinea’s infrastructure developments to an amount one and half times bigger than Guinea’s economy.
Burgis notes that,
…the Queensway Group, through China International Fund, would announce joint ventures with the Guinean state that would undertake projects in mining, energy, and infrastructure. The whole package would be worth $7 billion, equivalent to one and a half times the size of Guinea’s economy.
China International Fund was to be paid for the infrastructure projects with revenues from mining concessions the government would grant it. … China Sonangol, 30 percent owned by the Angolan state oil group …
(Burgis, 2015, p. 119) Being signed by Moussa Dadis Camara’s junta government which had massacred as many as 157 civilians on 28 September 2009, the deal was described by the previous administration as rapid and unorthodox, attesting to the fact that China had in fact already (re)colonised Guinea as the de facto government in Guinea will be the Chinese via their China International Fund.
Then there are the conflicts which resulted in Somalia becoming a failed state (Rotberg, 2010a, 2010b; Di John, 2011; Fiertz and Messner, 2019). These
Contextualising the colonial project 35 conflicts are attributable to Somalia’s geostrategic location leading to global powers wanting to situate their listening posts off the Somali Gulf of Aden.
Libya’s oil resulted in the assassination of President Muammar Gaddafi and the resultant three governments, albeit in a failed state (Campbell, 2013). South Sudan with all its abundant petroleum is teetering on the brink of being a failed state. Then Nigeria and its neighbouring countries in the Chad Basin are perennially being terrorised by Boko Haram, again destabilising another oil- rich African country. Countries in the Chad Basin that are oil- rich and being destabilised by Boko Haram include Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Sudan, Algeria, and Libya. Mineral- rich African countries are deliberately being destabilised by powerful cartels from the empire so that these cartels and their local collaborators can loot and recolonise Africa.
One way of (re)colonising Africa has been to revisit colonial fault lines, espe-cially in the case of condominium states. Somalia and South Sudan are typical examples of countries which experienced condominium rule. Condominium is a principle of international law which is derived from two Latin words com meaning together and dominium which means right of ownership. It is a prin-ciple of international law where two sovereign political entities such as coun-tries agree to have joint sovereignty over a territory. In a condominium state, the parties agree to have equal share of power and exercise their rights jointly over the same territory. The same principle can also apply to three states in which case it will be referred to as a tripartite condominium. A good example is the Abyei area which is jointly administered by the Republic of South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan since 2011. Sudan is not new to condominiums as it was once in this arrangement when it was referred to as the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan. This was between 1899 and 1958. During this period Sudan was jointly administered by the British and the Egyptians. At a larger scale the Antarctica is also part of a continental condominium where it is governed by 29 parties who are party to the Antarctic Treaty.
Regarding Somalia, it can be argued that there are basically three Somalias: an Italian Somalia, a French Somalia, and a British Somalia. There is in fact very little evidence of a Somali Somalia in Somalia. Sudan before the break- up was always a typical case of a secession waiting to happen, or, more correctly, to be caused. All the ingredients for a session were there: the North was Islamic, con-trolled by the Egyptians and predominantly Arabic; the South was predomin-antly Christian and controlled by the British. Sudan as a nation- state therefore never coalesced and the presence of abundant petroleum in the South just aided the break- up. In the ensuing milieu the (re)colonisation of South Sudan is busy taking place.
The British cannot be exonerated from exerting their colonial interest in petroleum-rich Nigeria (Olowu, 2010). And for good measure, the Portuguese in Mozambique and lately the Chinese are responsible for the current disturbances in Cabo Delgado province (Mheta, 2019). The want- away Republic of Ambazonia in Cameroon is another case in point where the British
are complicit in problems faced in this tiny oil- rich Peninsula (Konings and Nyamnjoh, 2003).
In order to actualise the (re)colonisation of Africa, the empire is busy situ-ating military bases and command posts in Africa. The United States is the most present foreign army in Africa with their African Command (Africom) being omnipresent in every African region. As of now, the Russians are busy setting up their own military base in Sudan. The Chinese are already heavily present in Africa with their military base in Djibouti. A theory which explains this foreign militarisation of Africa is the (re)colonisation thesis.
For Mustafa Mheta, we have reached a point in international relations where foreign powers feel somehow entitled to Africa’s natural resources (Mheta, 2019). This is the reason why African leaders who are not compliant with the demands of the empire are simply dispensed. The 2014 Obama- initiated US- African Leaders Summit held in Washington was akin to a second scramble for Africa with observers of the politics of the Great Lakes region labelling Rwandese President Paul Kagame an Anglo- American proxy in the region, who buys his legitimacy and protection by allowing the Eastern Congo to get looted of its rare earth minerals which are exported via Rwanda by the Euro- North Americans and their mining cartels (Bentrovato, 2014; Meagher, 2014; Burgis, 2015; Ingelaere and Wilén, 2017; Mulindwa, 2020). The Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), rich in rare earth minerals and a former colony of Belgium, is now argued to be a clandestine economy run by Kagame on behalf of Euro- North American mineral cartels (Meagher, 2014; Burgis, 2015).
There are also those, however, who credit Kagame with stabilising the Great Lakes region, especially through ending the genocide in Rwanda which the West watched while it was happening and did nothing about (Moon, 2011;
Hoile, 2014). Those in support of Kagame argue that he took Rwanda from being a genocide ravaged country to one of the cleanest and most stable and technologically advanced countries in Africa. Rwanda is progressing econom-ically, the quality of life, especially human security, is argued to have improved drastically. Rwanda is now the economic hub of the Great Lakes Region. The first cellphone to be manufactured in Africa, the Mara is from Rwanda.
One factor that clearly remains constant in Africa is the resilience of colo-nialism. The resource curse has been widely explored (Burgess and Beilstein, 2013; Kopiński, Polus and Tycholiz, 2013; Miller, 2015; Knutsen et al., 2016) and challenged (Humphreys, Sachs and Stiglitz, 2007; Burgis, 2015), yet as Mheta questioned, “why is it that instability on our continent seems to be concentrated in highly resourced areas”? (Mheta, 2019). In order to properly respond to Mheta, I have to go back to Africa’s history of Africa’s conquest and pay attention to the role played by hunters, traders, explorers, and missionaries.
Hunters and traders: Missionaries as the link
I have claimed that the escapades of four groups of predominantly white Caucasian men – hunters, traders, explorers, and missionaries – eventually led
Contextualising the colonial project 37 to the colonisation of Africa, albeit without substantiating this claim. I have also linked this claim to the greater scheme of capitalism, again without substanti-ating it. In this section, I will present some evidence that proves that hunters, traders, explorers, and missionaries were not only the forerunners of, but also complicit in, colonialism. I will use the example of Frederick Courteney Selous.
His story is in many ways similar to that of many other arch- colonialists such as Cecil John Rhodes, David Livingstone, Maurice Raymond Gifford, Alan Wilson, John Hanning Speke, the list is endless. Missionaries, and these included the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus), the Marist Brothers, and the Franciscans, imported their organised religion into Africa. Walter Rodney made this point when he noted that,
The Christian missionaries were as much part of the colonising forces as were the explorers, traders and soldiers. There may be room for arguing whether in a given colony the missionaries brought other colonialist forces or vice versa, but there is no doubting the fact that missionaries were agents of colonialism in the practical sense whether or not they saw themselves in that light.
The imperialist adventurer, Sir Henry Johnston disliked missionaries, but he conceded in praise of them that “each mission station is an exercise in colonisation”.
(Rodney, 1973, p. 80) [emphasis original]
Frederick Courteney Selous was born in London in 1851 and his father was the chairperson of the London Stock Exchange. He received a very good edu-cation and at the age of 19 came to Africa to become an elephant hunter and explorer. Between the ages of 19 and 25, Selous was at the Kimberley Diamond Mines digging and trading diamonds. At age 25 he was already a renowned ele-phant hunter, successful miner, and influential diamond trader. As a trader, he traded not only in diamonds and ivory but various other merchandise and most importantly information on the geography and anthropology of South East Africa (Selous, 1893, 1968; Bourne, 2011, p. 19). As a hunter, explorer, miner, and trader, Selous’ sphere of influence was along and around the Limpopo, Chobe, Zambezi, and Congo rivers. He explored, mined, hunted, and traded in modern- day Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, and parts of Namibia.
What is notable is that the British South Africa Company (BSAC) realised that Frederick Selous had cordial relations with African chiefs, especially the Ndebele aristocracy. His social capital was therefore efficacious in tricking African chiefs into signing the many concessions and even receiving these colonialists in their courtyards. As a hunter, trader, and explorer, Selous was therefore a genuine and bona fide forerunner for British colonialism in South East Africa.
In Frederick Selous, Cecil John Rhodes found a very capable partner and leader of his so- called Pioneer Column. The Pioneer Column set out to colonise modern- day Zimbabwe from a place in Botswana called Macloutsie
comprising 400 men and destined for Mount Hampden, Mashonaland, which is on the outskirts of modern- day Harare. They left on 28 June 1890 and crossed the Tuli River on 11 July 1890 into present day Matebeleland South Province, Zimbabwe.
There was no better partner for the South Africa British Company in their colonial venture than Selous. Selous was praised for skilfully guiding the inaug-ural colonising force thus,
The spear- head of Rhodes’s plan of northward expansion was the “Pioneer Expedition” to Mashonaland, which, during the dry season of 1890, cut a road 500 miles in length through a hostile, rugged and trackless country, and succeeded in planting the British flag on the high plateau where now stands the modern capital of Salisbury. Skilfully guided by the hunter, Selous, the 200 pioneers, who were accompanied by a like number of mounted police, with 300 more in support, reached their objective without open collision with the Matabele regiments hovering on their flanks during their passage through the low country. Their march occupied three months, in which not a shot was fired.
(Hole, 1936, p. 39) [emphasis original]
Selous skilfully navigated the Pioneer Column from Botswana to Rhodesia such that they managed to avoid any hostile communities along the way. Not only was Frederick Selous useful in introducing Cecil John Rhodes to African chiefs, leading the Pioneer Column, and befriending the many Africans along the way, he later became one of Rhodes’ leading army commanders. Frederick Selous is also credited for bringing the modern- day Manicaland Province in Zimbabwe under British colonial control (Selous, 1893; Daly, 1982).
Besides his hunting, exploring, and trading prowess, Selous was also an accomplished soldier instrumental in putting down various local rebellions against colonialism (Selous, 1893, 1968; Cobbing, 1977). According to Selous himself, as a soldier for the British South Africa Company, he fought in the 1893 Matabeleland Uprising (Selous, 1968). He was wounded in this battle and had to go home to England to seek medical treatment. He returned two years later in 1895, this time as the manager of the Essexville Estate. When the Second Matabeleland uprising broke out in 1896, Frederick Selous was commander in the H Troop of the Bulawayo Field Force. In his later life when he returned to England in 1908, he was to be invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to accompany him on a hunting expedition to East Africa. In 1915 during the First World War, Frederick Selous worked in East Africa as a British intelligence officer. Of course, he had mastered the geography and anthropology of East, South, and Central Africa which benefited not only British colonial ambitions but also Allied World War One ambitions.
The story of Selous demonstrates the fluidity and operational efficacy of the hunters, traders, and miners into turned soldiers and colonial administrators.
Some like the members of the Pioneer Corps were awarded with tracts of land
Contextualising the colonial project 39 and turned into farmers and sudden land barons. The Pioneer Corps was offi-cially disbanded on 1 October 1890. This is what I mean when I allege that the hunters, traders, missionaries, and miners were actually the forerunners of colonialism while their reincarnation, the big tech multinational corporations, are in turn the forerunners of Africa’s (re)colonisation.
We also see this intricate relationship between soldiers, traders, and colo-nial administrators elsewhere, for example in colocolo-nial Nigeria. “Sir” Frederick Lugard, later Baron Lugard, is a classic example of how Euro- North American modernity had agents that mutated and chameleoned between these three roles.
Initially, Lugard was a soldier who fought many colonial wars in West Africa between 1878 and 1887 (Gardiner and Davidson, 1968, pp. 23– 24). He became a key servant and senior agent of the Royal Niger Company. He then later also became a senior government official for the British government in Nigeria between 1912 and 1919. Attesting to the unity of purpose between the hunters, traders, and missionaries, and the importance of commerce in the colonial era for the benefit of the British empire, Baron Lugard wrote,
Let us admit that commercial enterprise in Africa is undertaken for our own benefit, as much as and more than for the benefit of the African. We have spoken already of the vital necessity of new markets for the Old World.
It is, therefore, to our very obvious advantage to teach the millions of Africa the wants of civilisation, so that whilst supplying them we may receive in return the products of their country and the labour of their hands.
(Gardiner and Davidson, 1968, p. 23) Lord Lugard’s legacy is omnipresent in Africa in general and in Nigeria in particular as it is his wife, Flora Louise Shaw, also known as Lady Lugard, who named the country Nigeria. Lady Lugard was a British journalist and writer.
Writing in The Times of 8 January 1897 she suggested that the name Royal Niger Company Territories was too long and suggested Nigeria rather than Central Sudan. Today the country is still known as Nigeria, a name which therefore qualifies as a typical colonial creation: you create it and you name it.
Back to Lord Lugard, we learn three important views about the presence of the empire in Africa from Baron Lugard’s words, ‘the empire is present in Africa for its own commercial benefit’. Any benefit that accrues to Africa and Africans are incidental. Every relationship between the empire and the (for-merly) colonised world including in the 4IR must be understood against a commercial background.
Colonialism and the (re)colonisation of Africa is all about the need for new markets for the empire. Having gained access to Africa’s rare earth minerals, the empire is now gunning for Africa’s cyber markets. For Africa, the 4IR is
Colonialism and the (re)colonisation of Africa is all about the need for new markets for the empire. Having gained access to Africa’s rare earth minerals, the empire is now gunning for Africa’s cyber markets. For Africa, the 4IR is