The purpose of AFRICOM is to use U.S. military power to impose U.S. control on African land, resources and labor to service the needs of U.S. multinational corporations and the wealthy in the United States. Industries in the United States and in NATO countries largely depend on the raw materials that come from lesser developed countries. AFRICOM reports often indicate its responsibility is to ensure a steady stream of raw materials for corporations and to maintain unimpeded movement of goods through shipping channels.
African countries rely on the export of their raw materials because many lack sufficient industrialization and are forced to reckon with the strength of multinational corporations. The unequal relationship benefits foreign capital. This dependency is an extension of colonial policies that imposed major economic, political or military decisions, leaving the masses of African people disempowered.
This relationship between colonized Africa and Western countries has been maintained through the present by generations of neo-colonial leaders, who derived rents from it and do nothing to alter this dependent structural relationship. These (mis)-leaders are able to maintain their comprador roles with U.S. military power through entities like AFRICOM. African people need an end to AFRICOM and neocolonialism as well as the development of a people-centered development program that properly harnesses their resources. All power to African people on the continent and around the world!
U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin talks with Dr. Sharon Gramby-Sobukwe, Associate Professor and Director of Political Science at Eastern University. She has served as Assistant Professor at Rutgers University-Camden in the Department of Political Science and in the Department of Public Policy and Administration. She specializes in African political economy. Dr. Sobukwe brings her travel experience in Africa, the Caribbean and Europe to her teaching and activist work.
AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: How would you define Financial Imperialism and what has been its impact on African countries, particularly on the masses?
Dr. Sharon Gramby Sobukwe: Financial imperialism might be considered a distinct 21st century stage in the development of capitalism. V.I. Lenin, in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, stated “Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed” (1999, 232–33). Lenin further identified five basic features of imperialism:
Monopolies play a decisive role in economic life;
Bank and industrial capital merge to create “finance capital,” and a financial oligarchy;
Export of capital becomes equally or more important than export of commodities;
International monopolist capitalist associations form and share the world among themselves; and
The biggest capitalist powers divide the world's territories among themselves.
The key features of financial imperialism are best understood by comparing them to the characteristics Lenin identified. During the 20th century, this process, described by Lenin, continues:
Monopolization deepens, as not only is production concentrated in a few industrial monopolies, these companies now produce and manage across sectors. Technology has provided conditions for international industrial transfer. Now, not only is monopoly production internationalized, but also corporations dominate supply chains, including production and trade of intermediate products and services, subsidiaries, contract partners, and suppliers of the multinational companies (Ghosh, 2021). Thus, capital is concentrated in these giant monopoly multinational corporations, at a scale that produces global empires, whose wealth is greater than many countries (Enfu and Baolin, 2021).
By the end of the 20th century, finance capital and industry benefited from technology to reinforce one another. In short, the recession of the 1970s was the catalyst for monopolization of the finance industry. As a result, as few as 737 multinationals controlled 80 percent of global output. Further, a core of 147 multinationals controlled 40 percent of global output. Of that 147, 75 percent were financial entities, such as banks (Vitali, Glattfelder, & Battiston, 2011; Enfu and Baolin, 2021).
As a result, export of finance capital has indeed become equally or more important than export of commodities. Finance capital has expanded in a process linked to the continuous deindustrialization of the economy. As the cash flows of large enterprises have shifted from fixed capital investment to financial investment, corporate profits come increasingly from financial activities. Enfu and Baolin (2021) note, “Increasingly, the trade in financial products is separated from production; it is even possible to say that it has nothing to do with production and is solely a gambling transaction.”
AWB: What role has the International Monetary Fund and/or the World Bank played in this?
SGS: Much discussion of financial imperialism as neoliberalism, highlights Lenin’s final two characteristics.
First, international capitalist associations divide the world among themselves. After the second “World War,” the establishment of the Bretton Woods Institutions, especially the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, provided the means for dominant capitalist metropoles to gain financial dominance over underdeveloped countries (Rodney, 2018) by taking advantage of the debt situation in those countries. The World Bank and IMF, since the 1980s, own most of poor countries’ debt, and thus establish the rules and requirements for not only repayment but also financial processes and economic development within these countries, a kind of legalized extortion. This process typically involves requiring that countries first restructure their economies, foremost by devaluing their currency, to increase trade and repay debt using revenue generated. But this never happens as U.S. dollar hegemony and the developed-country monopoly of intellectual property mean that international exchange is incredibly unequal (Ghosh, 2021). In this environment, governments of underdeveloped countries are under immense pressure to deploy austerity measures, spending less on schools, hospitals, roads, etc., and increasing taxes the people must pay. Again, this strategy is supposed to save money to pay off debts. Next, underdeveloped countries are expected to borrow even more for development. Clearly, this is a vicious circle, leading to ever increasing debt and never increasing development.
In Africa, the impact on the masses is abundantly clear. As governments continue borrowing, unemployment rises, and health, education, housing, and infrastructure fail, due to the austerity measures imposed. These policies erode national sovereignty, increase suffering for most, and harden gender hierarchies as care work increases for women (Prashad, 2021). In response, governments allow rich industrial, corporate monopolies to establish manufacturing plants there to arrest unemployment. However, because capitalist metropoles have highly favorable trading advantages, allowing them to plunder high monopoly profits from countries across the globe, underdeveloped countries have hardly any leverage in these arrangements. They receive little in tax revenues or infrastructure development in return for allowing corporations free and unfettered access to (abuse) labor, and the environment. Further, the revenues generated by these corporations all go back to foreign countries and not to the debt-ridden, underdeveloped country.
As a result, as of June 2021, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) considers 70 countries as low-income developing countries, those in which average per capita (annual) income is below $400, and 54 percent are African (https://www.imf.org/external/Pubs/ft/dsa/DSAlist.pdf). Of the 39 countries the World Bank identifies as “Highly Indebted,” 33 or 85 percent are African states (https://data.worldbank.org/country/XE).
Secondly, global territory is divided among the biggest capitalist powers. In the past and now, the dominance of finance and the integration of countries in the periphery into the global financial system have been the mechanisms by which Britain and the United States fostered their imperial financial dominance over the periphery (Vasudevan, 2008). Serving as bankers to the world, they extract heavy interest surpluses from African countries, and others in the periphery. And through their private corporations, receive capital flows from the purchase of cheap resources from poor countries and dumping manufactured products in peripheral markets.
Worse still, African states, typically labeled “failed states” are by-passed by the metropole governments and the IMF and World Bank to fund hundreds of thousands of non-governmental organizations. Thus, Africa has seen the privatization of what were basic responsibilities of government: Electricity, water and transportation infrastructure, and social services like health, sanitation and education (Ghosh, 2021). While many African heads of state have proven corrupt, and government provision of these responsibilities only ever come as the result of prolonged mass struggles, neither NGOs, nor the rule makers, the IMF and World Bank, have any accountability to the masses, operate under the direction and cover of imperialists, and therefore further deprive the masses of democratic rights and control over their own livelihoods (Campbell, 2015; Gramby-Sobukwe, 1997; Peterson, 1999).
AWB: Thank you for your time and analysis!
NEWS AND ANALYSIS
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This episode is a crash course on Guinean history to help provide context on the unfolding coup. The guest is Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire.
Africa’s Uprising is Frozen, Its Cry Swollen with Hope: The Thirty-Fifth Newsletter
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Its immeasurable mineral resources has made the Congo the victim of a long history of Western greed, plunder, and genocidal violence. AFRICOM’s presence in the Congo—ostensibly to fight ISIS—will only extend this history.
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Mohamed Hassan joined Rania Khalek and Breakthrough News to help make sense of the situation in Ethiopia and place it in its proper historical context.
Colonialism and Solidarity Define the Decisive Israel-Palestine Battle in Africa
August 23, 2021 by Ramzy Baroud
A continent of Africa’s size, complexity, and proud history cannot be written off as a mere ‘prize’ to be won or lost by Israel and its neocolonial friends.
Memo to France As Its Soldiers Leave Africa: ‘Get Out and Stay Out!’
July 22, 2021 by Mark Fancher
While France may be scaling down its military operations, it is not removing all its troops, and the country’s interest in Africa has not evaporated. France hopes to hide within an imperialist coalition to do its dirty work in Africa.
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Banner photo: U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal troops train with Congolese forces in Africa. (Walter Ham/AFRICOM)