Africa's Alternative Approach
Updated: In Africa, injustice looms large, marked by poverty, warfare, and famine. Despite post-WWII political gains, economic independence, a vital component of true freedom as envisioned by Pan African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and Haile Selassie, remains elusive.
The damage from the earthquake that struck Morocco on Sept. 8, 2023, is still being assessed. Moroccans are grappling not just with the loss of thousands of lives, but also with the widespread destruction of their cultural heritage and historical sites.
The world is losing animals at an alarming rate due to habitat degradation, climate change and illegal human activities in the wildlife protected areas. In fact, it is estimated that, by 2100, more than half of Africa’s bird and mammal species could be lost.
The West destroyed Africa, Eurasia will revive it
By Matthew Ehret
In Africa, injustice looms large, marked by poverty, warfare, and famine. Despite post-WWII political gains, economic independence, a vital component of true freedom as envisioned by Pan African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, and Haile Selassie, remains elusive.
After decades of restrictive IMF and World Bank loans, poverty, hunger, and conflict persist throughout the continent. While many attribute this to Africa's governance challenges, in reality, a deliberate imperial agenda has hindered the continent's development in all political, economic, and security sectors.
Coups against neo-colonialism
But much has changed in the past few years. The growing clout of Eurasian institutions that fully embrace Global South countries as valuable, integral, and equal members - the BRICS+ and Greater Eurasian Partnership are examples - offer hope that old neo-colonial shackles will be broken and that Africa can enjoy an unfettered renaissance.
The rise of a new global pole to challenge the old unipolar order has had a notable impact across sub-Saharan West Africa which, in recent years, has seen a surge in military coups shifting power away from regimes that had long prioritized the interests of western corporations.
These coups occurred in Chad (April 2021), Mali (May 2021), Guinea (September 2021), Sudan (October 2021), Burkina Faso (January 2022), Niger (July 2023), and Gabon (August 2023) - all resource-rich countries with abnormally poor living conditions.
In Gabon, over 30 percent of its people live on less than $1 per day, while 60 percent of its regions have no healthcare or clean drinking water despite the abundance of gold, diamonds, manganese, uranium, iron ore, natural gas, and oil – mostly monopolized by French corporations like Eramat, Total and Ariva.
Despite its abundance of rare earths, copper, uranium, and Gold, 70 percent of Malians still live in abject poverty. SImilarly, Sudan, with its riches in oil, fertile soil, and water, has 77 percent of the population living below the poverty line.
In uranium-rich Niger, which provides over 35 percent of the fuel for France’s nuclear industry (accounting for 70 percent of France’s energy basket), mainly under the control of France’s Orano, only 3 percent of Nigerians have access to electricity. In the “former” French colony of Chad, that number is only a little higher at 9 percent, and a still-unacceptable 20 percent in Burkina Faso.
While Altanticists desperately seek ways to keep their talons embedded into the African continent and its abundant riches, a much healthier security paradigm has emerged in recent years from Eurasia.
A new security paradigm for Africa and the world
Since the 2021 coup in Mali, Russian military support has skyrocketed, with the supply of numerous fighter jets and Turkish drones, accompanied by Russian military advisors who have provided substantial assistance to the state.
This approach mirrors Moscow’s strategy in other conflict-ridden countries, such as Syria, where the focus is on eradicating terrorism and supporting legitimate governments.
In 2022, following local accusations that French troops were supporting the Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists they claimed to be fighting, 400 Russian military personnel were deployed to Boko Haram-infested Mali. This move marked a significant shift in the region's security dynamics.
Despite the extensive presence of US and French military bases across Africa and the substantial financial investments in "counter-terrorism" efforts on the continent, militant violence has continued to escalate dramatically, with sub-Saharan Africa witnessing an 8 percent increase in terrorism over the previous year.
Last year, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 60 percent of all terror-related deaths. A 2021 African Center for Strategic Studies report shows that 18,000 conflicts affected sub-Saharan states resulting in over 32 million displaced persons and refugees.
Russia has steadily established itself as a dependable supporter of African national governments in recent years, by leveraging its advanced defense industry and military intelligence capabilities. It aims to foster cooperation and development alongside China and the broader BRICS+ group, thereby creating a more conducive environment for mutual growth.
While the west portrays Russia as weak and isolated, the fact that 49 African nations were present at the second Africa-Russia Summit in July 2023 paints a very different picture.
Russia has also emerged as Africa’s top arms supplier - representing 44 percent of arms imports from 2017-2022 - and has signed military/technical agreements with 40 African states. Moreover, Moscow has engaged in joint military training exercises with countries like Egypt, Algeria, South Africa (in collaboration with China), and Tunisia.
Alternative to rules-based order
During the May 2023 11th International Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues, Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed the objectives of his country's vision, stating that nations should jointly work towards “strengthening stability in the world, the consistent construction of a system of unified indivisible security, solving major desks of ensuring economic, technological and social development”.
The Russian leader called out the need to create a “more just multipolar world, and that the ideology of exclusivity, as well as the neo-colonial system, which made it possible to exploit the resources of the world, will inevitably become a thing of the past.”
From 28 August to 2 September, 50 African Defense chiefs and 100 senior representatives of the African Union attended the China-Africa Peace and Security Forum where the theme was “Implementing the Global Security Initiative and Strengthening Africa-China Solidarity and Cooperation” as an alternative to the rules based order.
Chinese military expert Song Zhongping was quoted by Global Times as saying:
"China will not interfere in the internal affairs of African countries, but we will assist African nations in building defensive military capabilities, and we are also willing to enhance collaboration with African countries on counter-terrorism and other non-traditional security matters."
Sustainable security means economic development
The fight against the destructive effects of imperialism may seem daunting, especially when viewed solely through the lens of military affairs. But the growing influence of major multipolar institutions offers an important, consensus-based, strength-in-numbers way forward.
The BRICS+, for instance, has made sure to add new members strategically. Last month, the organization grew from five to 11 members, which today include three geostrategic African nations of Egypt, South Africa, and Ethiopia, and major West Asian energy powerhouses Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE with extensive interests across Africa.
Then there's China's Global Security Initiative, unveiled in April 2022, which represents far more than just a non-western security doctrine. It embodies a fundamentally different paradigm, which at its core, places paramount emphasis on economic development as the foundation for long-term strategic peace.
Beijing has not only endorsed the objectives of the African Union’s Africa Agenda 2063in words, but has done more than any other country in realizing those ambitious goals which call for “unity, self-determination, freedom, progress and collective prosperity pursued under Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance”.
Over the past decade, China has advanced a policy of rail development, connectivity and building up industrial capacities, training, and skill building across partner nations. During that time, trade with Africa has risen to $282 billion in trade in 2022, marking an 11 percent increase over the previous year—a figure more than four times that of the US, which recorded $63 billion in trade with Africa in 2022.
During that same 10-year span, Chinese companies have won $700 billion in contracted projects to build energy systems, transportation grids, manufacturing hubs, ports, telecommunication, aerospace, aviation, finance, and a myriad of soft infrastructure.
Despite the challenges posed by western interventions, China has been able to build 6000 kilometers of rail, 6000 kilometers of roads, 20 ports, 80 large power facilities, 130 hospitals, and 170 schools on the continent.
While some western "democracies” resort to the threat of military intervention, punitive sanctions, or assassinations in post-coup Niger, China assumed the role of peace broker and re-emphasized its commitment to continue all projects in Niger, including the crucial 2,000-kilometer pipeline designed to export crude oil from the Agadem fields to the Port of Seme in Benin.
This pipeline, currently three-quarters finished, will boost Niger's oil output by 450 percent upon completion.
In Tanzania, the Chinese government hosted the 25 August China-Africa Vision conference promoting a myriad of economic initiatives, but its highlight was the Tanzania-Burundi-Democratic Republic of Congo railway which will likely become the first of several major trans continental rail lines outlined in the Africa Agenda 2063 Report.
Another significant development is the construction of northern sections of east-west continental railways. The electrified Djibouti-Addis Ababa railway, completed in 2018, serves as the cornerstone of a major rail corridor connecting Senegal, Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, facilitating trade and economic growth across the sub-Sahara.
The extension of the Trans-African rail across the 29 km Bab el-Mandeb Strait, linking Djibouti to Yemen, and its subsequent connection to the Persian Gulf-Red Sea high-speed rail line currently under construction is indeed an exciting prospect. China's ongoing efforts in this regard are laying the foundation for broad continental harmony.
China is constructing the “African BRI” (Belt and Road Initiative) in sections, including a 1,228 km line connecting Dakar in Senegal to Bamako in Mali, and a 283 km line connecting landlocked Niger to Nigeria, which is in its final phase of construction.
As this project continues to expand, feeder lines into other landlocked African countries and ports along the Atlantic coast will likely become evident, enhancing connectivity and trade across the continent.
In August, Kenya and Uganda announced the launch of a $6 billion Standard Gauge rail line as part of the Northern Corridor Integration Project of the East African nations extending the already existent Mombassa-Nairobi-Naivasha line built by China in 2018 to Kampala in Uganda, Kigali in Rwanda and then South Sudan and Ethiopia. It will eventually connect with the emerging Djibouti-Dakar railway, further integrating East and West Africa.
North-South African development
In North Africa, three north-south rail lines outlined in the Africa Agenda 2063 Vision have strategic ports in Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco to facilitate trade with Europe. Egypt's imminent entry into BRICS+ in January 2024, and Algeria's potential future inclusion, signify the growing geopolitical significance of North Africa as a hub of industrial growth and a gateway between Africa, Europe, and the Eurasian Heartland.
Egypt is Africa’s second largest economy with a $475 billion GDP enjoying a strategic gateway into the Heartland and Europe via both land and sea routes. China is also helping to build Egypt’s high speed rail system alongside German firms and is a major investor in Egyptian ports - Alexandria, Abu Qir and El Dekheila - that are integrated with the supply lines into Europe where China has a controlling stake in Greece’s Port of Piraeus.
Morocco, which successfully built Africa’s first high speed railway (Al Boraq) with financing from France, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, has also built the Mediterranean’s largest port - the Tanger Med Port - with China financing 40 percent of the port’s expansion. This advanced transportation grid has inspired European automakers like Groupe Renault and Groupe PSA to launch factories in the region.
While China has not built automotive facilities in Morocco, it has built a massive $400 million aluminum casting plant which supplies material used by French automotive producer Peugeot, and although China failed to win the contracts to build the first phase of Morocco’s high speed network, plans are in motion to take the lead on the upcoming extensions.
From the standpoint of energy geopolitics, Russia’s Rosneft owns a stake in Egypt’s Zohr offshore natural gas field and in June 2022 Russia’s Rosatom began building a third generation reactor set to begin generating energy in 2026 located in El Dabaa. Russia also has a $2.3 billion stake in a petrochemical complex and oil refinery in Morocco and Rosatom is carrying out studies for Moroccan desalination plants.
Africa is undeniably on the move, and the quest for economic independence, long denied by colonial powers, is finally emerging. The rise of a multipolar order, with ancient civilizational states cooperating and adhering to Natural Law, offers hope for the eventual post-Hobbesian order, bringing us closer to a more just and harmonious world.
Tinmel – Morocco’s medieval shrine and mosque – is one of the historic casualties of the earthquake
The damage from the earthquake that struck Morocco on Sept. 8, 2023, is still being assessed. Moroccans are grappling not just with the loss of thousands of lives, but also with the widespread destruction of their cultural heritage and historical sites.
Among them is a 12th-century mosque in the village of Tinmel, about 4 miles from the epicenter of the quake that flattened many of the villages in the Atlas Mountains.
The mosque at Tinmel was originally built to commemorate the figure of Ibn Tumart, founder of the Almohad movement that ruled an empire stretching from Mali to Spain from 1147 to 1269. Ibn Tumart was a Muslim reformist who advocated for greater accessibility and clarity in Islamic law and scripture. The Atlas tribes spoke little Arabic and lived in remote villages, so Ibn Tumart translated the Quran into the vernacular and issued the call to prayer in the local Berber dialect.
After Ibn Tumart’s death, his tomb at Tinmel became a shrine, marked by a simple whitewashed dome in front of the mosque. Under the Almohads, Ibn Tumart was venerated as a saint, and the early Almohad caliphs were also buried alongside him, turning Tinmel into a potent site of spiritual and social memory.
As an architectural historian who specializes in medieval Morocco, I have spent many years visiting and researching Tinmel. For nearly 900 years, Tinmel was central to a distinctly Moroccan Islamic tradition, but the events of the past week have thrown its future into doubt.
Unusual architecture
Built in 1148 by Ibn Tumart’s successor, Abd al-Muʾmin, the mosque embodied the core principles of Almohad architecture. A rectangular prayer hall was supported by plaster-coated piers, while a façade of geometric ornamentation emphasized the niche that indicated the direction of prayer, the mihrab.
The structure was designed to encourage circumambulation around the mosque, with the ornamental decoration intensifying the experience. The closer one moved toward the mihrab, the more elaborate the design became, drawing the eye of the viewer in.
But the mosque’s most unusual element was its minaret, which wrapped around the exterior of the mihrab. A staircase behind the niche led to the upper story of the structure, where the call to prayer could be issued out over the valley.
Historically, minarets were never constructed in conjunction with the mihrab, but off to the side or opposite the mihrab. Tinmel’s minaret was thus both unique and innovative. Positioned on a steep hillside, with the mihrab and the minaret both facing the slope down toward the seasonal stream known as the Wadi N'Fiss, the mosque and its shrine looked larger and more monumental than their physical size suggested.
A center for religious study
After the collapse of the Almohad dynasty, Tinmel fell under the administration of the provincial sheikhs who governed the Atlas territories.
When the Almohads’ competitors, the Marinids, succeeded in replacing the dynasty to rule much of Morocco between 1244 and 1465, they systematically demolished many of the Almohads’ most precious sites, including Tinmel. They sent soldiers to ransack the village and the shrine, though the mosque itself was left standing.
There is no architectural evidence to suggest precisely where Ibn Tumart’s tomb and those of the Almohad caliphs were located. Scholars continue to debate how the shrine, the dynasty tombs and the mosque may have fit together as a complex for pilgrims.
But despite Tinmel’s deterioration after the Almohads fell from power, the site remained a powerful place in Moroccan Islam. Ritual recitations of the Quran were still being carried out twice a day in the 14th century, and pilgrims continued to visit the site for another 200 years.
The site remained a center for religious study where men from the Atlas villages could gather and learn about the Quran and the hadith, which are stories of Muhammad’s life and actions.
An uncertain future
By the 20th century, the mosque had fallen into disrepair as a result of neglect and political instability in the Atlas Mountains.
An archaeological survey of the site and advocacy from local historians inspired a 1995 restoration under the aegis of Morocco’s Ministry of Culture. The site was a tentative place on the UNESCO World Heritage list, pending a full application from the Moroccan government.
The mosque’s plaster ornaments were conserved and the prayer hall’s brick piers reinforced, although the roof remained open to the sky – the original roof, likely wooden, had long since deteriorated.
Earlier this year, more renovations began with the hopes of adding a museum that could help contextualize Tinmel within the larger scope of Moroccan history and welcome more visitors.
The earthquake on Sept. 8 has set this project back indefinitely. Five of the workers at the site – all local to the region – died in the disaster, and the site was further damaged. Although the Moroccan government has committed to rebuilding the mosque, the details of how this will be accomplished and funded are unclear.
Wild animals leave DNA on plants, making them easier to track – here’s what scientists found in a Ugandan rainforest
By Patrick Omeja
The world is losing animals at an alarming rate due to habitat degradation, climate change and illegal human activities in the wildlife protected areas. In fact, it is estimated that, by 2100, more than half of Africa’s bird and mammal species could be lost.
Efforts to conserve biodiversity depend on information about which animals are where. Tracking wildlife is instrumental. Existing tracking methods include camera trapping and line transects, which are specific areas and designed trails respectively, that can be revisited from time to time to monitor habitat conditions and species changes. These methods can be expensive, labour intensive, time consuming and difficult to use, and might not detect all the species that are present in an area. Dense rainforests present a particular problem for tracking, since the vegetation is often very thick and doesn’t let much light in.
Recent research has shown that vertebrates leave their DNA in the environment, both as airborne particles and on vegetation. This offers a useful new way to monitor species.
Our international research team, working in the rainforest of Uganda’s Kibale National Park, wondered whether the environmental DNA methods would be useful to us. We reasoned that if animal DNA was in the air, perhaps it settled and got stuck to leaves. Waxy, sticky or indented leaf surfaces might even be ideal DNA traps. Would simply swabbing leaves collect enough DNA to monitor species and map biodiversity?
Our study demonstrated that many birds and mammals can be detected using this simple, low tech method. It’s a promising tool for large-scale biomonitoring efforts.
Kibale National Park
Kibale National Park in Uganda is famous for its rich biodiversity and has earned its place as the “primate capital” of the world. It is home to 13 species of non-human primates including the endangered Red colobus monkey and chimpanzees.
To test our idea, the research team went into the park’s dense tropical forest armed with 24 cotton buds. Our task was to swab as many leaves as possible with each bud in three minutes.
To tell which animals gave rise to the DNA in the swabs, the team sequenced a short piece of DNA, called a barcode. Barcodes are distinct for each animal, so the barcode found in the swabs could be compared to a barcode library containing all animals sampled to date.
The team didn’t expect great results, because in rainforest conditions – hot by day, cold at night, humid and wet – DNA degrades quickly.
So we were surprised when the results came back from the DNA sequencer. We’d picked up over 50 species of mammals and birds and a frog, with swabs collected in just over an hour, on only 24 cotton buds.
We detected nearly eight animal species on each of the cotton buds. These species spanned a huge diversity, from the very large and endangered African elephant to a very small species of sunbird.
Detected animals included the hammer-headed fruit bat, which has a wing-span of up to one metre, monkeys like the elusive L’Hoest’s monkey and the endangered ashy red colobus, as well as rodents such as the forest giant squirrel. A great variety of birds was detected too, including the great blue turaco and the endangered gray parrot.
The high diversity of animals, coupled with the impressive animal detection rate per swab, suggests we can now collect a lot of animal DNA simply from leaves. The ease of sampling, a task we can ask anyone on our team to do quickly when they are in the forest, suggests we could use this method to track animal diversity in the park, particularly in areas that are rapidly changing.
One of the team members, Emmanuel Opito, is studying exactly these areas in the park for his doctoral project. He is trying to understand how the invasive Lantana camara and the woody herb Acanthus pubescens inhibit forest regeneration. With this leaf swabbing method, it will be easier to explore how removing invasive species and allowing the forest to regenerate will help animal biodiversity recover.
Easy way to gather information
Monitoring animal populations is crucial to comprehend the scale of ecosystem changes and to guide the development of effective management strategies. New technologies like these environmental DNA approaches offer promising support for these efforts.
Because leaf swabbing does not require fancy and expensive equipment or much training to carry out, it can easily be carried out by the staff at Uganda Wildlife Authority, field assistants or biologists working in the forest.
The method can also be scaled up because DNA sequencing technology is becoming more accessible and affordable post-COVID-19. There is a lot of potential for environmental DNA to contribute to biodiversity monitoring at a much larger scale and to inform biodiversity management initiatives.