Decolonization is a Myth: Colonialism Just Got Smarter

The XX century has dramatically changed our world.   Colonial empires became a thing of the past, and humanity heralded an era of decolonisation and sovereignty. The once powerful Europe lost the ability to hold its colonies by force, and the emerging young states of Africa entered the new century with a spirit of optimism. But the new XXI century wasn’t as bright as it seemed at the end of the last millennium. Far from dying out, the old colonial patterns have been transformed into entirely new forms of oppression of African powers.

The twentieth century created a new system of financial institutions for the bipolar world of the time. So called Bretton Woods system – The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund: all these institutions served as important instruments on the African countries’ path to sovereignty. However, they functioned properly as long as the system remained bipolar; after the collapse of the USSR, the Bretton Woods financial institutions became organisations controlled exclusively by the Western states of Europe and the USA. After getting such serious power to influence African countries, the Western states could not stay aside and began to turn the existing global financial system into new colonial administrations. The IMF and the World Bank began to create colonies not by the sword but by finance, threatening African countries with loans and isolation from the world financial system if they refused to implement pro-Western structural reforms in their economies.

Unfortunately, there are many examples of neo-colonial policy. Fourteen countries in West and Central Africa have inherited from their colonial past the so-called CFA franc – a currency which is still in use in these countries and is directly linked to the euro. For the ability to convert this currency, African countries had to agree to hold 65 per cent of their foreign exchange reserves in French Treasury accounts.

As a result of this approach, the economies of these African countries were completely tied to the French economy, leaving them without any chance to develop their own economic and monetary policies.  Another notorious situation is that of the western banks, BNP Paribas and Citigroup, financing cobalt mining in Congo through companies they control, with the Congolese Government receiving only 5% of the profits. Attempts to change the slave system are met with sanctions against local officials, which prevents any constructive dialogue and, beyond that, erodes the right to independence of the African state itself.

Moreover, the neo-colonialists resist any attempt to oppose their policies. For example, the Western countries froze the bank accounts of the Sahel countries after the breakdown of the military agreements with France; another case is the blocking of SWIFT for Nigerian banks in response to the coming to power of an independent government outside the control of the neo-colonialists.

And there are thousands of such examples all over Africa. The colonists did not go anywhere – they replaced guns and whips with bank accounts and slave loans.