Interesting piece. I like it a lot and people who don't know much about Africa will learn a lot from your piece. However, I have a few quibbles. I think my biggest issue is that I didn't see much perspective of specific African leaders. But I will break down my quibbles one by one. I'm a Ghanaian-American myself and traveled to a bunch of African countries.
Here's part one of my critique:
1. "Africa has had colonizers since the ancient times" - Sure pieces of Africa has had colonizers since ancient times like the Roman conquest of North Africa, but it certainly didn't apply to the whole continent. The Aksum empire of Ethiopia during ancient times conquered Yemen. West Africa has historically had the (Ghana, Mali, Songhay,), the Sahel had Kanem Bornu, and etc. There have been plenty of autonomous African states that were free until the Portuguese or Arabs (as you correctly said!), but even when Europeans started coming in the 15th century there were still autonomous states.
2. "These states failed and spiralled into corruption, civil war, armed revolution, looting, mafia-state type governance and all the consequences that come with it. Since then nothing has been done to help Africa sustainably and with enough resolve. In fact, I argue in this essay that no one is actually trying to help Africa but only extract value from the continent while leaving it more impoverished." -- My problem with people who never been to African countries or never looked at the history of each country, falls in the same trap of just lumping African history as a whole and completely remove all agency from each African leader.
3. When it comes to Gaddafi and Libya. You leave out that the Arab League and African Union condemned Gaddafi AND supported the "no-fly zone". In fact the African Union explicitly said that they support a "no-fly-zone" because they didn't support a total occupation of the country.
You article suggests that it was just the West that unilaterally backed the rebels, when NATO had support from the Arab League and African Union. In fact UAE and Qatar both intervened as well. But of course I agree with you that the current shitshow demonstrates how terrible the aftermath was.
3b. "Many African left-wing intellectuals say that the West didn't want a unitied Africa" that's true. However, most African leaders had no intention at all of unifying with Libya. You should check the egos of some of these leaders. They would take Gaddafi's money but they wouldn't align with him geopolitically. Hence why countries like South Africa, Nigeria, and the AU condemned him. Gaddafi also tried unifying with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan, and Egypt many times and they all backed off.
Here's a list of all the attempted unifications he tried:
Africa isn't unified because of Western intervention it is mainly due to the will of African countries.
There was a movement where Africa tried to unify after independence in the 1960s.
There were three groups: the Casablanca group that wanted a Pan-African state (Morocco, Libya, Ghana, Mali, Guinea).
The Monrovia Group that wanted a gradualist approach to unification (Nigeria, Liberia, Ethiopia)
The Brazzaville Group that was full of French countries that didn't even want to be independent. Felix Houphet Boigny of Ivory Coast and Gabon's Leon M'ba most famously tried to stay as overseas territories of France.
The Monrovia Group and Brazzaville Group teamed up and stopped the idea of a Unified Africa on the onset, creating the gradualist institution the Organization of African Unity, which later became the African Union in the early 2000s (funded by Gaddafi!)
3C: You are correct that Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMDs. But when it comes to Libya, Gaddafi initially did want a nuclear weapon. That's why he tried to annex the Aouzou Strip in Chad, and he did manage to start to try to enrich Uranium. In fact, when he was tired of being sanctioned, so he let the West come in to dismantle his nuclear plant in order to get the sanctions removed. Bush, Tony Blaire, and Gaddafi reached a deal in 2003, for the West to dismantle his enriched uranium out of Libya. UN inspectors went into Gaddafi's labs and got rid of it.
Interesting piece. I like it a lot and people who don't know much about Africa will learn a lot from your piece. However, I have a few quibbles. I think my biggest issue is that I didn't see much perspective of specific African leaders. But I will break down my quibbles one by one. I'm a Ghanaian-American myself and traveled to a bunch of African countries.
Here's part one of my critique:
1. "Africa has had colonizers since the ancient times" - Sure pieces of Africa has had colonizers since ancient times like the Roman conquest of North Africa, but it certainly didn't apply to the whole continent. The Aksum empire of Ethiopia during ancient times conquered Yemen. West Africa has historically had the (Ghana, Mali, Songhay,), the Sahel had Kanem Bornu, and etc. There have been plenty of autonomous African states that were free until the Portuguese or Arabs (as you correctly said!), but even when Europeans started coming in the 15th century there were still autonomous states.
2. "These states failed and spiralled into corruption, civil war, armed revolution, looting, mafia-state type governance and all the consequences that come with it. Since then nothing has been done to help Africa sustainably and with enough resolve. In fact, I argue in this essay that no one is actually trying to help Africa but only extract value from the continent while leaving it more impoverished." -- My problem with people who never been to African countries or never looked at the history of each country, falls in the same trap of just lumping African history as a whole and completely remove all agency from each African leader.
3. When it comes to Gaddafi and Libya. You leave out that the Arab League and African Union condemned Gaddafi AND supported the "no-fly zone". In fact the African Union explicitly said that they support a "no-fly-zone" because they didn't support a total occupation of the country.
African Union & Arab League supporting the "no-fly zone". The African Union was represented by Nigeria, Gabon, and South Africa. : https://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/03/libya-nigeria-votes-in-favour-of-no-fly-resolution/
You article suggests that it was just the West that unilaterally backed the rebels, when NATO had support from the Arab League and African Union. In fact UAE and Qatar both intervened as well. But of course I agree with you that the current shitshow demonstrates how terrible the aftermath was.
3b. "Many African left-wing intellectuals say that the West didn't want a unitied Africa" that's true. However, most African leaders had no intention at all of unifying with Libya. You should check the egos of some of these leaders. They would take Gaddafi's money but they wouldn't align with him geopolitically. Hence why countries like South Africa, Nigeria, and the AU condemned him. Gaddafi also tried unifying with Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan, and Egypt many times and they all backed off.
Here's a list of all the attempted unifications he tried:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Arab_Republics#:~:text='Union%20of%20Arab%20Republics'),specific%20terms%20of%20the%20merger.
Africa isn't unified because of Western intervention it is mainly due to the will of African countries.
There was a movement where Africa tried to unify after independence in the 1960s.
There were three groups: the Casablanca group that wanted a Pan-African state (Morocco, Libya, Ghana, Mali, Guinea).
The Monrovia Group that wanted a gradualist approach to unification (Nigeria, Liberia, Ethiopia)
The Brazzaville Group that was full of French countries that didn't even want to be independent. Felix Houphet Boigny of Ivory Coast and Gabon's Leon M'ba most famously tried to stay as overseas territories of France.
The Monrovia Group and Brazzaville Group teamed up and stopped the idea of a Unified Africa on the onset, creating the gradualist institution the Organization of African Unity, which later became the African Union in the early 2000s (funded by Gaddafi!)
https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/organisation-african-unity-oau
3C: You are correct that Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMDs. But when it comes to Libya, Gaddafi initially did want a nuclear weapon. That's why he tried to annex the Aouzou Strip in Chad, and he did manage to start to try to enrich Uranium. In fact, when he was tired of being sanctioned, so he let the West come in to dismantle his nuclear plant in order to get the sanctions removed. Bush, Tony Blaire, and Gaddafi reached a deal in 2003, for the West to dismantle his enriched uranium out of Libya. UN inspectors went into Gaddafi's labs and got rid of it.
Here's some sources if you want to see
https://www.economist.com/news/2003/12/29/qaddafi-comes-clean
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/dec/30/libya.brianwhitaker