The Plunder of Africa: Exposing the Exploitation of African Resources and How to End it

By Ugochukwu Nwaokoro

Are you an individual passionate about the political, socioeconomical, and cultural predicament of the African continent? Do you often worry about the mismanagement and abuse of African resources? If you’ve been looking for a book that will highlight how Africa can recover its natural resources and reclaim its power, then keep reading because you’ve found the perfect book!
Did you know that Africa has significant natural resource wealth? It is estimated that 40% of the world’s gold and 90% of its chromium and platinum can be found on the continent. Yet, the mainland still struggles to feed its own people, improve its economy, and find solutions to common social dilemmas.
Ugochukwu Nwaokoro, a former Deputy Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, USA, is the Founder and President-Emeritus of the African Diaspora for Good Governance (ADGG). He boasts qualifications in Information Systems Management, is a certified Microsoft Engineer, Quality Management Systems Auditor, Project Implementation Manager, and holds a BA in Political Science. Using his experience and expertise, he now brings you this comprehensive guide that will not only enlighten you on the predicaments faced by Africa due to colonialism, but also how the continent can end the resource curse once and for all. Are you ready to learn how?
Inside The Plunder of Africa, you’ll discover:
● A thorough introduction to the scramble for Africa, how the 1884 Berlin Conference crippled the continent, and the ways whiteness has been used as a tool for oppression.
● Six powerful tools that colonizers have used to oppress and divide African individuals.
● A variety of methods that can rewrite the history of Africans, challenge slavery, and help them reclaim their power and identities.
● A look into the resource curse and how Africa can overcome it. PLUS: How can agriculture and agroprocessing save our beloved continent?
● The role of the AU in the future of the African continent, how Western democracy has set it back, and what can be done to create a brighter future for everyone!
After reading this book, you’ll get a renewed sense of hope in the prospective future of your beloved continent. There is still time to rewrite the books of the prosperous motherland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662939259

Book preview

Introduction

The spirit of Africa is one of the most resilient spirits the world has ever seen. The African people have been broken, brutalized, and cheated for centuries on end. The need to write this book arose from the desire to wake the fighting spirit within Africans and those of African descent all around the world. The same spirit that helped Africans to survive the devilish intentions post colonization and, in some cases, the total extermination of indigenous African people by the West. The world forgets far too easily that the terrible King Leopold of Belgium killed millions of Africans in his quest to grab land and natural resources in the Congo. The world overlooks the scars of the apartheid regime in Southern Africa, especially in the current country of South Africa, and all the atrocities, bombings, and murders that occurred within and outside its borders. Numerous Africans died at the hand of greedy colonizers who were desperate to grab African land.

It is a marvel to read about the true events of history and realize what Africans continue to endure and survive. This book aims to rouse the same spirit that helped African slaves survive the relentlessly degrading and inhuman treatments meted out on their transatlantic voyage of no return, including witnessing the throwing of sick, dead, or irritant slaves overboard in the ocean to be feasted upon by sea animals even while the slaves were still alive. This book intends to merge the spirit of African Americans to overcome and survive Jim Crow laws and all manner of racism with the African spirit that fought colonization on the continent. After all, there is no struggle that is superior to the other. An injury to one African is an injury to all.

Everything that was taught to Africans while they were colonized is a tool of oppression. There is nothing that should continue to be used. Everything is tainted! This is what is holding Africa back today. If the continent wishes to move forward, it needs to recall all the characteristics that made them African, then use them as a framework to rebuild what the colonizers tried so desperately to destroy. Africa needs to shed the economic, political, religious, and cultural shackles the West forced on them and still tries to enforce today. The animal that Africans call democracy today was defined by these colonial powers without any consideration as to what they feel democracy is to them. Based on this, the democracy that exists in Africa today fails because it is not homogenous. A prevailing irony is the fact that Africa has numerous untapped natural resources that could be the basis of the economic stability of the entire continent. Strangely, Africa is still crippled by the resource curse. Minerals and raw materials are exported, processed in foreign countries, then sold back to Africa at exorbitant prices.

As soon as the west was ousted from power by independence, other players began to place themselves in line to benefit from the exploitation of Africa. What began as a welcome infrastructure and economic development relationship between China and Africa is now looking like a new relationship similar to colonialism. Even the international organizations that purport to pump aid into the continent are doing more harm than good, making sure to keep Africa as a beggar who cannot empower herself. One can only wonder if Africa has a future, and what that future looks like?

Although the beginning of the destruction of Africa can be traced to colonization, what are Africans and people of African descent doing to stop the bleeding today? African countries, with the same borders drawn by the colonizers, have since secured their independence, a fact celebrated annually. Unfortunately, it appears that the institutions left behind and were handed over to Africans to run their independent countries are doing more damage to Africa than colonization ever did. So, instead of the independent African nations thriving, things keep taking a turn for the worse. This book will look at the role of democracy and its corrupt practices, religion (mainly Christianity and Islam), Western and Islamic education, international organizations like the UN, World Bank, IMF, WHO, UNICEF, etc., and how they affect Africa today.

The Plunder of Africa will look at the reasons why Africans in the diaspora are doing very well in their foreign host nations, excelling way more than their peers in the continent of Africa, and making great inventions and discoveries that would have been seemingly impossible for them had they continued to stay in Africa. Despite arriving in the Americas in chains and shackles, African Americans have made great progress in their quest for self-determination and actualization. Among the recently immigrated Africans in the Americas, we have the Nigerian community which is taking that region by storm. Why is it that Nigerian immigrants consistently produce the highest, first degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. holders in the United States, out of all immigrant populations?

There are so many talented Africans, but it's worth exploring why their allegiance would be to other countries over their own. The Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup witnessed an unprecedented number of African football players playing for adopted foreign countries, especially European countries, instead of their African countries of birth. One can only imagine how traumatizing it must have been for one of the African players named Embolo, playing for Switzerland, when he scored the lone and winning goal against Cameroon, his country of origin. What a bittersweet moment it must have been for Embolo. How come the progress and success of Africans in the diaspora is not being replicated in Africa? What are the reasons independent African countries are failing to lift themselves up to be worthy countries? What is holding Africa back, and who are the perpetrators? What role does corruption play in destroying the development of Africa, and who are those fueling the corruption?

Sadly, the current difficulties faced by Africa are largely caused by Africans themselves. When they are not conspiring and colluding with foreign actors to rip off their own countries, they are perpetrating the corruption themselves, awarding senseless and padded contracts to foreigners who help them to stash the ill-gotten funds in offshore bank accounts. African leaders secure unnecessary foreign loans that do not benefit the masses, but instead are only effective in lining their pockets and filling up their individual foreign bank accounts. Africans spill their own blood, fighting in senseless ethnic and religious wars, even though the root of the problem can be traced to the bundling of independent African nations in a reckless divide and conquer arrangement to benefit the colonizers. The principle of uti possidetis supports the formation of countries in Africa whose borders were drawn arbitrarily by their colonizers without looking at the people and circumstances on the ground. The reality is that this principle has created more chaos than it has solved.

Black-on-Black violence in the United States of America (especially gun violence) has continued to kill African Americans, and other diaspora Africans, at a very alarming rate that needs to stop. The youth seem to be the most affected by this. Drugs and alcohol abuse have contributed to destroying the lives of Africans, especially in the Americas. The need to escape a bleak reality can sometimes lead to seeking comfort in escapism. This sets off a cycle of crime and drug use that often curses generations to come. Black men are killed or imprisoned disproportionate to their peers of the same race. They fill up prisons and are unable to raise strong, independent sons and daughters. No matter where Africans are placed in the world, they still face the grotesque implications of slavery and colonialism. Those devastating consequences form the mountain that stands between them and success.

Finally, this book will examine why Africa must look inwards to self and examine her problems, their root, causes, and the solutions. This introspection may begin to slowly rid Africa of most of its problems. Africa can only be successful in tackling her problems if the composition of each African country is examined, and restructured, with the aim of eliminating tribalism. If each country leans on the other in order to consult and learn, it may become easier for Africa to find herself again. Africans can no longer be treated as foreigners in their own country. By joining hands across the continent, a new and well defined nation can be formed. As a new united Africa is born, all the old independent nations will die a natural death. The tribe mentality should fall to make way for a new dispensation. This is the first way Africa will start to rebuild. Becoming one economic trading and development bloc, like the EU, with one monetary policy and currency operating without borders would make Africa a power house where goods and services can move freely from one African country to the other. With a median age of 19 years, Africa is truly the future of the world.

Chapter 1:

The Scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference

In pre-colonial times, Africa was an enviable place to be. The tribes across the continents were filled by their chiefs, and communities worked together to find food and purpose. No one abused the animals, no one hurt the environment. The African lifestyle is in alignment to one's environment and needs. Riches were often determined by the amount of livestock an individual had, but it didn't stop there. A man was expected to have many wives and even more children so that the community would grow. There was nothing wrong with the African way of life until the colonizers set foot on the continent. Suddenly, the Africans faced a new kind of enemy, unlike any other threat they had ever encountered. Their lives were thrown into disarray not because this enemy came in guns blazing but rather because they came in under the guise of friendship. Quickly, the colonizers realized the riches that lay dormant both on and in the African soil, and