Happy BRICS Summit 2023!

We are finally there, at the BRICS Summit 2023, they are all there except Putin (Prigozhine effect or pressure on South Africa).

Anyway, the summit is held and already China has taken out the wallet, what generosity!

Unlike the Berlin conference in 1884, the BRICS summit is being held in Africa, in South Africa, Mandela's land, in this atmosphere of a new world order against a backdrop of war in Ukraine and "the return of Covid19".

In the same vein, ECOWAS has decided to attack one of its members, another African country. (Well, black people don't like each other, that's nothing new).

General DeGaulle said: "A country has no friends but interests".

So what is Africa's interest with BRICS? Surely our leaders have thought about it, free wheat, getting more donations, more debt, increasing their imports and exporting their raw materials with their BRICS partners.

Maybe this time they will surprise us, maybe they will say to China and Russia, we want to have a common currency, remove our borders, standardize and uniformize our customs and trade tariffs, industrialize our industry, and then we will export our manufactured products to China, oops!

Africa must develop its intra-African Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) to hope to be developed. Will the BRICS help us achieve this? The West does not want it (their help for decades does not go in this direction). But China and India have no such interest in it; the trade balance deficit between China and the United States is USd 390 billion in favor of China; they export a lot, our Chinese partners, and Africa is a vast market. 

So how can Africa have a win/win partnership with the BRICS?

To get out of a yoke, you need strong allies to assist you economically, politically and militarily. And, especially if it concerns several African countries, they must be united and speak with one voice. In this, the crucial role of regional integration organizations should be mentioned. But these organizations in Africa do not do much to integrate or help each other like European countries with the European Union.

Can you imagine that there has been no SADC emergency meetings on the war in the DRC, the dire economic situation in Zimbabwe (~300% inflation for years),… at the African Union level, it's even more distressing, no emergency meetings on Tunisia which hunts and persecutes black Africans, nor on the war in Sudan, nor on African immigrants who kill themselves in the sea trying to reach Europe, and the worst, our countries went to beg wheat in Russia despite the fact that Africa holds 60% of the arable in the world.

If African countries do not initiate their own development program with decisive and courageous decisions, they should expect nothing from the United States, Europe, China and Russia. Everything must start with the Africans first because great world powers are hegemonic in nature.

Of course, slavery and colonization are businesses. A company whose cost of labor and raw materials is zero, you can imagine the profits that such a company can generate! Now, to sustain this operation, you must first convince your own people to see no harm in it and the colonized to accept it with joy and fervor. This is how colonization, this ingenious system, is created and maintained. Africa has been there for a very long time and to get out of colonization, the Pan-Africanists are counting on the China/Russia couple.

Leaving prison to go to another prison is not a bright future, since these 2 countries are not "democracies", they will support any leader who preserves their interests as Westerners do even if this leader does no good to his country, to his people.

At the moment everyone is nice like when courting a girl, but it's up to her to accept your offering. They tell us that they come as a partner not as a colonizer, the others have told us the same thing at the beginning of our relationship and we found ourselves later speaking English and French as official languages. Our leaders represent us at the BRICS summit, they are our spokespersons, the decisions they will take in these new partnerships will affect their country and their people. They are surely aware of it, that is why some are there and others are not. 

The most worrisome in this battle of seduction is the reaction of Africans, some are pro-West (I guess that after centuries of colonization their country is developed), others pro-East ("1st gaou is not gaou, it's 2nd gaou who is gnata", we don't make the same mistake twice, it's a choice); but there are those who are pro-Africa and for them competition is good because it should not be synonymous to a declaration of war. Let each world power therefore make its proposals, Africa is in heat, the sun is there in abundance and the weather is always good.

Africa needs great leaders, who put the interest of their nation first, who have a great vision for their country, their region and their continent, in short, statesmen at their head like Abraham Lincolns, DeGaulle, Mao Tse Tung, Churchill, Thomas Sankara, Gaddafi, Putin, Xi, … conquerors like Alexander the Great, Shaka Zulu but filled with wisdom like Mandela, Houphouët Boigny.

Who should choose these leaders? Their people. But for the moment, the African people don't care, they are asleep. We hope Africans will heed to the voice of Steve Biko shouting "black consciousness".

Happy BRICS Summit 2023, May Africa wins!

Marius C. Oula