Further to our previous posting , this is a follow up on-the-spot analysis of the Chinese effect on the Zambian working class by an African socialist . The recent visit by the Chinese president Hu Jintao was hailed as a great economic milestone in the New Deal administration of MMD (Movement for Multiparty Democracy) president Levy Mwanawasa. Toying with Marxist revolutionary political ideology is now a thing of the past in Africa—ever since the dawn of political pluralism and economic liberalism. Thus the phrase Chinese neo-colonialism may seem like a contradiction in terms in the sense that bilateral trade...
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From the BBC we hear that Aliko Dangote may be the richest man in Africa . Mr Dangote has come along way from his early days of trading commodities in his home town of Kano in the north and now has listed two of his 13 companies on the Nigerian stock market. His stake in those two alone is worth more than $4 billion (£2 billion). His business empire spans the economy. He dominates the markets for sugar, cement, rice, pasta, textiles and salt, and he is big in transport, oil and gas. In politics, as in business, he...
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It is not good news for the future of the continent of Africa from climate change according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Greenhouse gases will later this century put up to 1.8 billion more people in Africa at risk of water stress. Even a modest temperature rise could lead to falls in water flows in some river systems equal in volume to one large dam being lost annually. Arid and semi-arid lands are likely to increase by up to eight per cent . Sea level rise, especially on the east African coast, will increase flooding...
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A previous post discussed the Chinese expansionism in Africa . However , the United States remain a big-player on the continent . Recently formed was the military command structure AFRICOM. Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper published for the U.S. military said :- “AFRICOM’s purpose is to make Africa the primary concern of one combatant command instead of a ’secondary or tertiary’ concern for three other commands.” Some analysts suggested that the formation of AFRICOM indicates that the Bush administration is planning to expand its “war on terror” into Africa. AFRICOM was formed shortly before the United States...
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Nigeria’s Niger Delta crisis goes back to 1920 and the treaties that the forefathers of the people of the region signed with the imperial masters in Bonny. The Niger Delta spreads out over several states in Nigeria and even before Nigeria’s independence in October 1960, there had been serious tensions surrounding the arrangements for the government of the region. Warri in Delta state is the second most important oil town in Nigeria after Port Harcourt, the capital of River state. Delta state produces approximately 40 percent of Nigeria’s oil. It is the richest state in the Nigerian federation. Its...
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Was the state instituted for mutual protection or did it arise when society became divided into classes? Long before Marx and Engels, political thinkers and philosophers had written extensively on the concept of the state. In the 1640s, Thomas Hobbes had argued that the state was essentially a contract between the individual and the government. The alternative, called by Hobbes the state of nature, was a thoroughly unpleasant life—solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. This, according to Hobbes, the state emerged to improve mankind’s lot. However, Engels, summing up his historical analysis in The Origin of the Family, Private...
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Channel 4′s Unreported World draws our attention to the inroads that Chinese capitalism is making throughout Africa . China’s economic boom is resulting in the biggest scramble for Africa since the end of European colonialism. Trade between Beijing and Africa has more than quadrupled since 2000 and hundreds of new companies, many of them partly owned by the Chinese State, have set up. Thousands of Chinese workers are now in Central Africa, buying up copper and cobalt. Vital for the manufacture 0f Chinese-made goods such as mobile phones, MP3 players and laptops . And the result of this...
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A Plea for Peace
Dear fellow Socialists of Great Britain: I’m sure that you have heard of the ever-lasting civil war in Uganda, Africa and that you have heard of the program know as “The Invisible Children”. My closest friends and I are doing what we can to get our country’s attention and to get the US gov’t to spur peace-talks within the torn country. The armies of this region have the audacity to bring young children into the conflict, hand them firearms, and command them to kill others. Children at times are even told to kill relatives of their own families....
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