The West and China in Africa: Civilization without Justice

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1: Civlization

Chapter 2: African Personhood—Being Human

Chapter 3: Suffering in a Continent Teeming With Riches

Chapter 4: Banks in a Bankrupt Continent

Chapter 5: Compendium of Energy Resources

Chapter 6: Africa

Chapter 7: China in Africa

Chapter 8: Leadership Crisis in Africa

Chapter 9: Leading in a Turbulent Cultural Contexts

Chapter 10: Christ

Chapter 11: The Hope of Humankind in the Hopeless Continent

Conclusion

Bibliography

The West and China in Africa

Civilization without Justice

Alemayehu Mekonnen

Foreword by Tibebe Eshete

The West and China in Africa

Civilization without Justice

Copyright © 2015 Alemayehu Mekonnen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Dedicated to

Benyam, Nardos, and Yoseph

With deep love and appreciation for making my life in exile a home

away from home

Foreword

There is no major study that can come to my immediate memory that has addressed the formidable challenge of Africa comprehensively, historically, and diachronically as that of Alemayehu’s recent book entitled The West and China in Africa: Civilization without Justice. Authored by one of the few Ethiopians from the Evangelical Christian scholarly circles, the book has tackled wide-ranging issues pertaining to Africa’s past and contemporary experiences from multiple angles.

Drawing from the well of his matured Christian faith, long reflections, critical scholarly engagements, and intimate concerns for the peoples of Africa, the author has given us a kind of last-breath illumination, refreshing and challenging at the same time for all of us who are connected to the continent of Africa and its people. A work of monumental significance written in a thorough and empirical manner, it is definitely a culmination of years of empathic scholarly endeavor that has taken someone with this author’s caliber, pastoral care, and sensitivity.

With this book Alemayehu tackles what is perhaps one of the most central concerns of contemporary Africa, namely, what are the strongholds impeding and arresting Africa’s advance in a sustained manner and how can Africa move forward steadily? By interrogating wide arrays of narratives, discourses, and theories that seek to explain the root causes of Africa’s problems, the author makes a prophetic plea for Africans to rise with vindictive spirit, not for vengeance, but anchored in a futuristic vision, summing up the resilience of the African peoples and the continent’s surplus history. The book is a violently optimistic cry for a radical reimagination and Africa’s authentic renaissance.

In this major contribution to our understanding of Africa, Alemayehu guides the reader through the variegated realms of the African experiences describing its unique history and bringing its peculiar heritages into stark relief. Alemayehu goes back to examine Africa’s rich civilizational levels along multiple lines detailing the sophisticated cultural, artistic, and technological achievements of the African society, neither to be part of the Afro-centric choir that merely glorifies the past, nor to ring a new voice to it, but to debunk the notion widely held by the West that Africa is primitive. He invites the current generations of Africans to latch onto that legacy and establish new pyramids of Africa, which posterity will look back to with pride. He provocatively calls for a radical civilizational accountability.

Gathering from several experiences across Sub-Saharan Africa, the book engages the reader in a critical and lively conversation about African past, recent and cotemporary history, not only eruditely but presented from a heart burdened with the agony of history, the plight of Africans, and laced with an earnest and forward-looking yearning for a bright future. Alemayehu gives a thorough and engrossing account of the multiplicity and plurality of Africa’s daunting challenges by locating them appropriately in their historical and diverse origins.

Based on extensive consultations of relevant sources across different disciplines, the overview of Africa’s past, specially the painful legacies associated with the slave trade and colonialism, offers both new and authoritative accounts of history as a moral discourse to demonstrate the need for global and fresh rethinking of a wider restorative justice that brings the victims and the culprits into a new redemptive bond.

The book sheds light on the distinguishing mark of Western or European civilization from Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution, then to the technological and information revolution, and explains how the momentum has been globalized.

The West and China in Africa does not just limit its considerations to an academic discourse but deals to a greater extent with the concrete life of the African people today—in a world of so-called modernity and at time of globalization characterized by Western thought and technology. Africa has in the past been a source of supply of slavery and raw materials—the demonization has not gone far enough, much to our chagrin—which can only be reversed when Africans are capable of playing new roles and assuming new positions by supplying the West with what it does not have from its own resources. What is the game changer? That is the big question Alemayehu’s book raises and the challenges it poses.

Africa is in the grip of development, but its meaning or direction, however, remains obscure. Admittedly, as also convincingly stated in the book, Africa has been bedeviled not just by endless cycles of violence over the last decades—through the hypocrisy and marginalization of Western powers—but also by the bankruptcy of the state, rising political corruptions, and the betrayal of its own leaders. On top of that, Alemayehu is troubled by the vexing challenges contemporary Africa is facing in connection with China’s growing presence and influence. This new encounter, which may be termed imperialism by invitation, for lack of a better term, puzzles the author to raise the baffling question why would Africa need an external redeemer? Is the machine eternally broken to require an external fixer?

The paradox of Africa’s tragedy is captured in the Amharic proverb, Yeabayen lij wuha temaw—the child of Abay (Nile River) is thirsty of water—or, to cite its English moral equivalent, Water, water, everywhere. Not any drop to drink (from Samuel T. Coleridge’s poem). The author uses another metaphor: watering a garden with a leaky bucket while streams of Africa lie alongside.

Thematically, the book captures the following major areas:

• Africa’s rich civilization and its unacknowledged contribution to the West

• The dehumanization of Africans by the West

• The leadership crisis Africa is facing and its way out

• African Christology and the theology of the kingdom of God

Through substantive data and compelling socioeconomic and political analysis, the book provides an indictment of the West not only for the moral turpitude of the past but mainly for its wanton neglect of serious commitment to end the existing power and wealth differential and to enhance Africa’s development by asserting its economic, military, technological, and informational might. The West is still contributing to the continent’s inhibited economic and sociocultural growth as it asks Africa to dance around the dependency orbit, but with little efforts to bridge the gaps of the great divergence the industrial revolution and resultant developments have privileged.

Alemayehu does not just bemoan the past; he offers a solution with prophetic insights, a new interpretive Christian framework, and a distinctly redemptive voice. In his prognosis, he includes diverse categories of agents as actors and facilitators of transformations, made up of the whole international community: the West, descendants of Africa, those across the US, Latin America and the Caribbean World, and children of the continent.

Alemayehu, who has seen three regime changes in his own lifetime in Ethiopia, squarely places his hope and faith in the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, not on secular humanistic philosophies, however attractive they may sound to the intellect. His call is not for a new social hermeneutics that seeks to invoke sophisticated political ideologies. Ideology is not the solution. In fact, without the necessary element of social memory, community values, and an in-depth soul-searching contemplative dimension, political ideologies create dislocations and impetuous putative solutions. As the experience in some African countries have palpably demonstrated secular ideologies have derailed and misled the African youth and the intellectual to commit social suicide by valorizing violence as a short-cut panacea for Africa’s malaise. It has disabled the African elite from identifying the root causes of Africa’s problems and from searching for strategic/creative solutions from within to rebalance and attain breakthroughs from the vicious circles of poverty and recurring civil strife.

The book opens our eyes to the immense possibilities that lie in Africa’s complexity, multivocity, and its myriad of untapped cultural resources drawing from the vantage point of a distinctly biblical worldview. Alemayehu firmly believes that the veritable hope for Africa’s transformation lies in the church and the community of faithful disciples who truly seek to apply the whole of the Word of God to the whole of life by taking the biblical mandate boldly into every sphere of life, from the private to the public. He has a firm conviction that the gospel has a redemptive power in all areas of life. Harnessing the power of the spirit for social and ethical change is an urgent concern of paramount importance. He is unafraid in charging the church for its conspicuous absence in playing an influential role in shaping the moral contours and the civic culture of the African society in view of the mounting challenges and plights of the African. His petition is grounded on distinctly Christian, God-ordained transformation, faith-based and continentally anchored solutions, the epicenter of which is the church. Alemayehu posits a ringing defense of existential Christology, a new theological and pedagogical discourse, consonant with the African experience, addressing issues of life in concrete situatedness and limitedness in contradistinction from the Christ of Christendom. It is the soul and substance of a genuine African theology of incarnation and redemption that is to be taken seriously.

The author seeks to engage all of us in the daunting task of Africa’s reconfiguration in a positive direction. For the African leaders, he calls on them to be stewards and moral guardians—preserving space for the underprivileged and protecting their peoples and cultures from global hegemony; for the peoples of Africa, to rise with dignity and acute sense of civic engagements; for the youth, to be innovative and socially responsible thinkers imbued with optimistic faith that adds value to redynamize the future; for the African Diaspora, to search for a new key and agenda of reconnecting with the mother land; for the elite, to be public servants by getting away from their pedantic and parochial confinements; for the international community, to be part of the process of the reinvigorated Africa that is renarrativizing its history, at least by sharing their part in stamping out the homogenized image of Africa.

I want to end my foreword for this book by pointing out what it is and what it is not. The book is not about dooms and glooms. It does not call for a vicious circle of introspection. It is not a defensive discourse of the past, neither is if offensive in its plea for the future. It is not written from an intellectual stature with high-sounding phraseologies. It is a book that is meant to serve as a template for a radical dissent in the imagination of Africa with a call to actions leading to holistic transformations that will per force leave enduring marks. It is written from the spirit of humility that places the strength of the intellect at the foot of the cross. It is about a reformulation that calls for a new personhood, in harmony with the identity that the Jesus Christ guarantees. It is about a cultural renaissance: down the road it anticipates a new Africa flowing with the Pauline spirit—forgetting the past pressing forward. This book is one more among the symphony of voices uttered by eminent African scholars. It is reconciliatory in its tone but loud and persuasive enough to convict its readers to take positive action on the continent of Africa. It is a timely message for Africa at a Crossroads.

Tibebe Eshete Michigan State University.

Preface

Much ink has been spent in the diagnosis of the ailing Africa for the last five hundred years both by African and non-African scholars. Various prescriptions have also been written for each diagnosis. And yet, Africa is fatally ill, lying on the sick bed of the global economy. Trapped in the intrigue of world politics, being a bone of contention for the superpowers for its natural resources, betrayed by her own children who are supposed to protect her from poverty, insecurity, disease, and despair; Africa is crying for justice and for respite from an endless cycle of bloody war, conflict, hunger, and exploitation.

Some scholars studied Africa like flies on a wall, being mere spectators. With truths divorced from real-life experience, by looking at Africans as mere objects and subjects of their studies, they determined that the main cause of Africans’ problem is Africans themselves. They say, Africans are uncivilized, less intelligent, backward, lazy, more prone to war than to peace, and are barbaric in the way they treat each other. Hence, the West, particularly the United States, treats Africa and its issues, as I will show in this book, as something to avoid. However, just for the sake of America’s self-interest Washington cannot afford to totally abandon Africa.

Studies divorced from the reality of life, no matter how their theoretical depth and finesse impress us, often fail to give us the real history and the present accurate picture of Africa. The Western scholarship that encourages detachment from the subject matter we are studying, leads to an inaccurate analysis of Africa and wrong conclusions. Hence, several African studies talk a lot about dictatorship, backwardness, illiteracy, poverty, etc., in Africa and hardly one discuss the civilization of Africa, the famous university in the twelfth century in Timbuktu, the natural wealth of the continent, the politically, socially, and economically sophisticated Nubian, Axumite, and Zulu kingdoms, and many more. The textile industries in West Africa and Congo, the naval and astronomic science, and the fascinating buildings in north, south, west, east, and central Africa before the arrival of Europeans on the continent have been deliberately ignored for centuries to justify the superiority of the Western civilization mission on the dark continent. Even after some revisions in African scholarship are done here and there, it is not easy to change the mentality and attitude of the global community toward Africans. People hardly know that while the above-mentioned African kingdoms were at their epic historical time, Europe and America were crawling on the pages of world history. When Europeans were worshiping idols, Christianity had existed for ten generations in some parts of Africa. Such stories barely get proper publicity in the academic circles and Western media that are primarily geared to serve the Western audience, which has little knowledge about Africans. As Thomas C. Oden rightly said, Africa cannot wait to discover its own rich history. The struggle for identity is urgent and mounting (2007:37).

Western academic contribution on African studies, Western financial aid, development projects, etc., have become like watering a garden with a leaky bucket while streams of Africa lie alongside. It is critical for all who have an undying interest in the continent to pause and ask why Africa is languishing in poverty. How long should Africa unjustly suffer? What needs to be fundamentally changed? These questions need to be raised and answered not only on the political and economic platforms. African theologians and missiolgists have to wrestle with it too and equip the church to be light and salt. A prophetic voice is badly needed in Africa, the West, and China.

Academic studies divorced from the real life of Africans also lack empathy. Impressive literary and film works are done on African wars, drought and starvation, refugees, malnutrition and the HIV Aid victims, etc. On a cognitive level, the African who are wronged are well described but they are hardly listened to. Billions of dollars, food, and medicine are poured out to treat the effects of the African malady. But the cause of Africa’s problems are dismally analyzed and treated from an African’s perspective—especially for those at the grassroots level who are gnashed day in and out in the jaws of injustice. For example, with regard to South Africa’s former apartheid context, a university professor from Oxford, Harvard, or University of Pretoria can give an impeccable lecture with deep academic knowledge on civil rights, justice, and freedom without emotionally identifying with the people in the context. To hear stories from those who have experienced segregation through the tone of the sufferer and oppressed is quite something. To listen to black Africans meet and have face-to-face conversation with those who experienced apartheid schools, jails, slums, and the like is different than sitting in a lecture hall and listening to experts who have no personal experience of injustice. To live among Africans whose hands and legs were amputated during the colonial power and civil war, to interact with those who were herded off to refugee camps because of social unrest, to listen to the life experience of African families whose father, husband, or brother is lynched to subdue Africans who resist degradation, enables one to see how far and wide Africans are deprived of justice. I say deprived because justice is an inherent right given to all humankind by God. And without empathy, it is almost impossible to get a true and complete picture of Africans’ situation—both the past and the present. What made Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech famous was not mere eloquence. It was an empathy communicated through the tone of his voice, teary eyes, and a face that speaks volume about anguish. If we know how to read them, the sufferers speak volumes.

Others who have immersed themselves in and studied African culture, both native and outsiders, have not done their work without an Achilles heel either. For example, David Livingstone, with good intention and Christian motive, pleaded in various platforms of his country to save Africa with the famous 3 C’s: Christianity, Civilization, and Commerce. He could hardly have anticipated that the saviors would turn out to be oppressors and exploiters. One wonders how many times Livingstone turned in his grave as the British Empire did contrary to his appeal and prayer for Africa. The Europe that had recently come out of a blood bath of wars on its continent, that had barely recovered from devastating famines and epidemic diseases that wiped out many lives all of a sudden, became the undisputed physician of Africa’s social, economic, and religious sickness. And most of Africa’s viruses and infections, discovered by Europeans and justified for treatment by their own civilized medicine and religion, are historically and scientifically unsubstantiated. The assumed absence of Christianity and civilization in Africa before Europe’s encounter with the continent is a good example. "Most Western historians have not been willing to admit that there is an African history to be written about, and that this history predates the emergence of Europe by thousands of years. It is not possible for the world to have waited in darkness for the Europeans to bring the light because, for most of the early history of man, the Europeans themselves were in darkness. When the light of culture came for the first time to the people who would later call themselves Europeans, it came from Africa and Middle Eastern Asia" (Jackson 2001:3; emphasis added).

Some Africans scholars who have suffered and gone through unpleasant experiences at the hands of white people in their home countries or while they were students in Western universities have been impaired to objectively understand human nature and have interpreted most of Africa’s experience merely in the light of racism. The tone of their writings and negative attitude and stereotypical views of the white people in general created a larger gap and indifference between Africans and the West, neglecting or undermining the internal problems of Africa, for Africa’s past and present misery on the slave trade, colonialism, and Western policies. Half-baked truths cannot resolve the challenges the continent is facing or bring reconciliation and development. There is no question that these African scholars are hurt beyond hurt. When physical and psychological injuries embitter one’s soul it alienates one from objective truth, and others. Living in a no-man’s land, these scholars have been unable to make a positive impact on both sides of the Atlantic.

As the West and Africans are pointing the finger of blame at each other, China has come on Africa’s scene with a voracious appetite for its natural resources. Despite the country’s ill reputation for democratic governance at home—using soft power, such as building roads, bridges, hospitals, clinics, schools, giving scholarships, and the like—China is thriving and succeeding in controlling various natural resources in Africa and winning the hearts and minds of millions of Africans. African leaders who are known for corruption and have been dealing with the West and Russia in the past are excited with the recent emerging star from the East. Many are dancing with the new patrons to the tune of oriental music.

There is a voice of dissatisfaction and frustration, however, among African workers who are employed in Chinese projects and companies in various countries of Africa. So long as China gets hold of the natural resources she wants, violating the human rights of Africans does not concern her. And corrupt African leaders are not famous in standing for the rights and well-being of their people. In the modus operandi of the West and the East in Africa, even though both are involved in Africa’s affairs in the garb of civilization to shape the African culture and society in their likeness, this author observes that both have one thing in common: the absence of justice. Based on research I shall demonstrate what I mean by the absence of justice and its implication for the daily lives of millions of Africans in the past, today, and in the future.

In the pursuit of freedom, equality, and justice, humanity is not alone. The God of the Bible, who is the defender of the poor, the orphans, the widows, the oppressed, and the exploited, has compassionately identified with the destitute and fought for them through his prophets, Jesus Christ, and the apostles. In the context of injustice, God was not politically correct in his statements through the Old Testament. Neither was he whispering in the ears of authoritarian evil kings and rulers who were blinded by luxury and neglect the pleas of the poor. As he did through the prophet Amos, God was roaring his oracles. Jesus also confronted the evil of his time face to face, to the point of paying with his life.

One of the highlights of my research is learning how compassionate, loving, and caring God is for those who are economically and politically paralyzed throughout human history. It is very encouraging to me to know that the God I worship and serve is actively engaged both in the Old and the New Testaments to heal the sick and broken hearts, to right wrongs, to accept the rejected, to defend the poor, to feed the hungry, and to give peace to those who are troubled. This God of the prophets and the apostles, so some Western theologians believe, has written and taught that Africans are cursed by him (the curse of Ham). He is not a stranger in Africans’ journey. He has been there with and for Africans. And the positive evidences for his presence are plenty.

Limiting Africa’s study to theological anthropology, global economy, politics, and trends cannot bring justice and hope, which are desperately needed in Africa more than bread and milk. And it doesn’t also give meaning for existence that is a source of energy and purpose to have and pursue dreams. Hence, without restricting my research to the history of human beings, I have made an attempt to understand Africa’s pilgrimage and destiny from a cosmic and eternal perspective. As the African church reflects on her past without being imprisoned by it, she can look forward to the beginning of the end with hope and triumphant spirit. She should do so not as a lonely traveler on this globe but with all the redeemed people of God. In their existence between the now and the not yet, the Africa Christians groan with all creation, not as victims but as suffering saints patiently waiting for God’s full reign on this earth.

At the end of reading this book, it is my utmost intention and desire that African people will have so many sojourners from the global community to come alongside with them. Be willing to identify with their rejection, suffering, and despair, exploitation, and give them some consolation, encouragement and fight on their behalf to give them respite from the seemingly endless misery before their last breath on this earth.

As one who had been mistreated by his own people, was a refugee and lived in exile for the last thirty-foour plus years, seen the various slums in Kenya, interacted with African refugees from the Sudan, Liberia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Congo, Somalia and Rwanda to mention the few the reader of this book should not expect an ivory tower theory divorced from the reality of Africans’ life. Even if this book is heavily based on research, I am also an eye witness of the atrocities in Africa and have personally experienced imprisonment, torture and hunger. Hence, my approach to this writing is not mere bookish but a reflection of real life experience and research.

My journey from Africa to America has been transformative in so many positive ways. And it is also an eye-opening experience. I was a one-time refugee in Kenya. Now I’m a U.S citizen teaching in an academically reputable seminary with scholarly refined and godly colleagues. This country has given me freedom and opportunity of which the country of my birth deprived me during the reign of the Marxist government. I am forever grateful for that. When I decided to be a U.S citizen, I made a resolution, and in this book you see me living up to it. I said, by being a U.S. citizen, I’m going to be part of the good, the bad, and the ugly history of this nation. And I said I have to read a lot about the United States; that I did. The United States is a country of immigrants and it has given freedom and opportunities of various kinds to all who came to her shores, except to the African slaves.

One of the most disturbing and puzzling findings I came across through this study and in my interaction with African refugees is the inconsistency of the U.S. Constitution with the foreign policy of the United States in relation to various African countries. The cluelessness of millions of good Americans about America’s involvement in numerous countries in Africa, which often led to the demise of those black nations, is equally disconcerting. Western media and philanthropist are good at showing the starved and destitute Africans to win the sympathy of innocent and generous givers in their society. But they give blind eyes and deaf ears to the policy of their countries and the greed of Western companies that have ruined Africa. It is my hope that this book will create awareness among American citizens, Christians or non-Christians, which is badly needed to make our government revisit the foreign polciy of the U.S. and its modes of operation in the continennt of Africa.

The Western church and theology have missed or intentionally neglected to engage with the issue of justice biblically in relation to the majority world. Both the Old and the New Testaments have given it significant attention. If we want the Scripture to be relevant in African cultural contexts (which is closer to the Old Testament and the first-century Mediterranean culture), both Africans and Westerners need to give heed to the justice of God. Injustice toward humanity not only breaks God’s law, it breaks his heart. African theology and missiology should focus both on saving Africans soul and restoring their dignity. The prime task of justice is to do the latter.

Africa has been economically and politically marginalized by the West. And yet, Africa is at the center of Western industrialization. You will find Africa’s fingerprint on the Western nuclear technology, in the cars we drive, the airplanes we fly, in the cell phones and computers we use, in sugar and other sweets we enjoy, in the diamonds and gold, and the like. Africa has offered not only her natural resources but the sweat and blood of her children so that we can live the kind of comfortable life we all live in the Western world today. While Africa enriched the West and the East, it is a paradox that the continent has been treated as economically parasitic destined to master carrying a beggar’s bowl rather than to be self-sufficient and self-reliant.

I have to confess the truth that for me writing this book was a very difficult exercise emotionally. Throughout my reading and writing I was elegiac and felt helpless to avert the demise of Africans. In their immediate consequences decay and instability are a matter of lament. But in their longer term repercussions, they may be a matter of celebration . . . Before a seed germinates it must first decay. A mango tree grows out of a decaying mango seed. A new Africa may be germinating in the decay of the present one (Mazrui 1986:21).

Africans have been waiting for so long to see life and vivacity spring out of decay. Where should the hope of Africa’s destitute be anchored? Where should they look for meaning and purpose, to the West or to the East? Küng shares his wisdom:

Suffering, doubting, despairing man finds his ultimate support in the forthright admission of his inability to solve the riddle of suffering and evil. He is in content to renounce any pretentions to be a neutral and presumably innocent censor passing judgment on God and his world. He decisively rejects even the slightest, inarticulate mistrust, any thought that the good is not really good to man. Positively he relies on that certainly insecure and yet liberating venture of giving an absolute and unreserved trust simply and forthrightly to the incomprehensible God: in doubt, suffering and sin, in all mental distress and all physical pain, in all fear, anxiety, weakness, temptation, in all emptiness, comfortlessness, indignation. He clings to God even when utterly empty and burnt out, even in the most desperate situation, when all prayer dies out and no words come to his lips. This is a basic confidence of the most radical character, which does not superficially appease but encompasses and embraces anger and indignation and which also endures God’s perpetual incomprehensibility. (

1968

:

299

–

300

; emphasis original)

It is such a kind of trust and cleaving to the incomprehensible God that helps millions of African Christians to make meaning out of life in their meaningless situation.

As I have stated in this book, a step in the right direction of change in Africa has been prolonged for various reasons. But it has to start soon. I have hope in the sovereign God and in people who pursue righteousness, kindness, peace, and justice for all. I am not a politician. From a political point of view, Black America especially is Africa’s most important external human resource, precisely because it constitutes a large concentration of people of African ancestry lodged in the most powerful nation in the world, certainly a nation with immense capacity to do Africa harm or good. A re-Africanisation of Black American allegiance and sympathies could help to re-orient American foreign policy towards Africa and transform it in the direction of greater sensitivity and sympathy with African aspirations and values (Mazrui 1986:302). If a positive and lasting change would emerge in Africa, my expectation is not from China but from the U.S.—not through the same lip service given in talks and exploitative foreign policy in the past 300 hundred years, but through genuine democracy, a win-win foreign policy, transparent communication, accountability to the American and African people, innovation, and Christian service.

The Western countries need to revise their foreign policy, trade agreements, relationships in the area of education, diplomacy, commerce, and the like with Africa. They need to do this not only for Africans’ sake but for the sake of their nations. Empty materialism and consumerism are rapidly breeding a nihilistic generation that aimlessly run their lives without purpose and meaning. If too much of wealth and material things are not helping the West to have a decent and godly society why do they need to starve and impoverish Africa to enrich the already rich? What happens if the present global economic system should prove to be humanity’s ultimate suicide programme, which is what the threatening climate catastrophe could suggest? The individual social and political will to live can turn into death drives. Then everything one does no longer minsters to life but to self-destruction (Moltmann 2010:76). Disobeying God’s teaching and abusing nature and exploiting people mercilessly involves an unpleasant price and leads to undesirable destiny. As we several times have seen in Scripture and in human history, injustice, no matter how long it will take, has divine consequence. The West has to decide; they cannot serve two gods.

There is no everlasting human civilization. The East also is not living beyond this human predicament. Despite economic success that takes the front page of the news in China and the Western countries, there is a permanent crisis that socio-revolutionary humanism has not solved. Man—as individual and society—remains incapable of mastering his world, because he tries to cope with everything except himself. As he seems to be gaining the whole world, he is threatened with the loss of his own soul: in routine, bustling activity, endless talk, in disorientation and futility. This has little to do with the wickedness of man or of particular individuals. It is the legal constraints of the technocratic society itself, as we have seen, which threaten to crush man’s personal dignity, freedom and responsibility (Küng 1968:58). Moltamnn rightly said, We want to know more than we need to know in order to survive (2010:190). The whole purpose of this book is to contribute additional constructive information that can build a healthy bridge of relationship with all those who are involved in Africa for one reason or another.

The reconstruction of Africa should be the primary responsibility and burden of Africans. The African diaspora in the last four to five decades is another great potential to restore Africa. While leading a comfortable life in the West, we should not forget the continent of our origin that is bleeding. We can engage beyond sending remittance to people who are depending on our support. In this regard, African diaspora has a lot to learn from the Jewish people.

We must recognize one basic fact: Although analysis shows that the world is so organized that it cannot but produce underdevelopment, injustice and misery, this structure is radically incompatible with the plan of God as God. A society that condemns millions of children to malnutrition and sickness cannot possibly be a part of God’s plan for Africa today. It is precisely the ugly face of the sin of the world that the Lamb of God has assumed and carried away. We must highlight the contradiction to the will of God, starting with our own economic and social condition, and including its effects—the illness endemic in our historical and cultural environment. As we do this, we will hear the appeal to participate in the transformation of the badly made world.

Today that participation is a prerequisite for any conversation to a living relationship with God. From now on, we need a fresh hearing of the Word of God, starting with underdevelopment and its consequences, which clarifies the actual pattern of cause and effect that can no longer remain hidden. Passive acceptance of the injustice generated by a medical system that reflects present African socio-economic structures is incompatible with the true worship of God—just as is idolatry. Active resistance is an essential feature of the practice of our faith. It must begin with problems of human health and move to challenge the unjust organization of African society. (Ẽla

1990

:

82

)

After two decades and five years of Ẽla’s plea, Africa is in no better condition. In fact, the living situation of millions of Africans continues to worsen. Hoping against hope, I am making the same call through this book. My intellectual labor is not only for the good of Africans. It is also for the well-being of the global community. If you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I humbly submit to you the truth in love about Africa. In the illustrious words of Dr. Vernon Grounds, the patriarch of Denver Seminary, Here is no unanchored liberalism, freedom to think without commitment. Here is no encrusted dogmatism, commitment without freedom to think. Here is a vibrant evangelicalism, commitment with freedom to think within the limits laid down in Scripture.¹

As you go through this book, somewhere, somehow I hope you will be able to see the burning bush and hear God say to you, Look! The cry of Africans has reached me, and I have seen how harshly they have been treated . . . I want you to do something positive about it.

I strongly believe that if there is a will, the global community can live peacefully and happily without turning the sub-Saharan Africa into a mass grave of the poor and the helpless. This book is a plea on behalf of millions of Africa’s destitute who die like a fly daily and whose life has become a living hell.

Acknowledgments

Let alone writing a second book of this size, I never seriously thought of myself producing books that would interest readers and meet their intellectual needs. A person who saw my potential and fanned the dormant amber within me into a flame is Dr. Tibebe Eshete. He was also willing to write the foreword. I’m eternally grateful to him for challenging me to get into writing.

The humbling and overwhelming feedback on my first book inspired me to work on a prolonged writing project and complete it. Readers are guests to the intellectual banquet of authors. I’m thrilled and encouraged to hear and read the expressions of many from near and far who enjoyed reading Culture Change in Ethiopia. Your feedback has given me inspiration and energy to produce this book; I can’t fully express my gratitude in words.

I did most of my writing from my home office. The price that family members paid dealing with a physically present but mentally absent husband and father was enormous. I’m immensely grateful to my wife, Roman, and our son, Yoseph, for their understanding, forbearance, love, and encouragement. In addition to her full-time work, my daughter, Nardos, did an excellent job in proofreading the manuscript. Her comments in various sections makes me burst into laughter and affirms that I am laboring for a worthy cause. Our oldest son Ben’s analytical questions about the content have given me good perspective to shape and develop this book. He made sure that the villain in Africa that I write about includes the black people so that there is no impartiality in my approach; that I did. I thank God for my family and I am grateful to them for standing with me even when they felt they were not my priority while I was undertaking this writing project.

The idea of this book was conceived in my mind initially by observing the paradoxical existence of Africans. Out of the wombs of their suffering I saw in them dignity in the face of degradation, hope, and aspiration in the most discouraging and disappointing circumstances. Africans’ abundant generosity out of scarcity, their love for family and God even when the capacity to love looks nonexistent, has been an amazing human potential to observe. The questions of my African students and their love for the church of Jesus Christ and the continent not only inspired me to write this book. Their dedication and sacrificial service have shaped my life, values, and hopes.

The faculty development fund at Denver Seminary was my huge resource to get most of the books from Amazon that I used for my research. I’m indebted to the generous provision of the administration and moral support of President Mark Young, and Provost/Dean Randy MacFarland.

Professor Daniel Carroll’s friendship, his pertinent and challenging questions related to my research, checking my motive and purpose of writing this book, are caring and loving gestures that I will never forget. He is a true brother indeed.

Aaron Wolcott, an American MK who was born and raised in Africa and worked there for a number of years, went through the manuscript and gave me valuable input. With his keen knowledge of Africans and Africna history, he did excellent editing work. His passionate love for Africans and his concern and respect for them is a rare medicine to heal the soul of a wounded African or black person. I thank him for his help and for being a source of hope and a model for the many Africans he serves.

Abbreviations

ABC American Broadcasting Company

ADB African Development Bank

AIU African International University

AGTS Assemblies of God Theological Seminary

AU African Union

AMCU Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union

AMISOM African Union Mission in Somalia

ANC African National Congress

BAES British Aerospace Electronic Systems

BAO Banque de L’Afrique Occidentale

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BCA Banque Commerciale de L’Afrique

CAD Computer-Aided Design

CAE Computer-Aided Engineering

CAM Computer-Aided Manufacturing

CANOE Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, Extraversion.

CAR Central African Republic

CBS American Broadcasting Television Network. The name is derived from the initials of the network’s former name, Columbia Broadcasting System.

CCC Cross-Cultural Communication

CEC Commission of the European Communities

CEO Chief Executive Officer

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CITA Christ Is the Answer

CNPC Chinese National Petroleum Company

COSTAU Congress of South African Trade Union

CPA Comprehensive Peace Agreement

CPC Communist Party of China

CSFAC China State Farm Agribusiness Corporation

DCO Dominion and Colonial

DPU Diamond Protection Unit

DRC Democratic Republic of Congo

ECA Export Credit Agencies

ECOMOG Economic Community of West Africa States Monitoring Group

EHM Economic Hit Men

EIB European Investment Bank

EO Excutive Outcome

EU European Union

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization

FCAO Forum on China-Africa Cooperation

FDI Foreign Direct Investment

GDP Gross Domestic Product

GFI Global Financial Integrity

GNOPC Greater Nile Operating Company

GPL General Public License

GPT Geothermal Power Tanzania

IBM International Business Machines

ICC International Criminal Court

IDMC Internal Displacement Monitoring Center

IDPs Internally Displaced Persons

IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

IMF International Monetary Fund

ITC International Trust Company

IQ Intelligent Quotient

LISCR Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry

LSE London School of Economics

MDGs Millenium Development Goals

MK Missionary Kid

MPLA Movement for the Libration of Angola

NARC National Rainbow Coalition

NEGST Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology

NDC National Development Corporation

NGO Non-governmental Organization

NPFL National Patriotic Front Liberia

NUM National Union of Mineworkers

NUMSA National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa

OAU Organization of African Union

OCED Office of Community and Economic Development

OECD Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development

PDF People’s Defence Force

PRC People’s Republic of China

RSA Republic of South Africa

RUF Revolutionary United Front

SAVAK Sāzemān-e Ettelā’āt va Amniyat-e Keshvar (Organization of Intelligence and National Security)

SEZs Special Economic Zones

SINCP Sudan Islamist Islamist’s National Congres Party, also called NCP.

SKA Square Kilometer Array

SLA Sierra Leone Army

SPLAM Sudan’s People Liberation Army/Movement

UAC United African Company

UN United Nations

UNDP United Nations Development Program

UNESCO United Nations Organizations for Education, Science and Culture

UNHD United Nations Human Development

UNHCR United Nations Commissioner for Refugees

UNIT National Union for the Total Independence of Angola

USAID United States Agency for International Development

USD United States Dollar

VIP Very Important Person

WB World Bank

WEA World Evangelical Association

WFC World Food Council

WNLA Witwatersrand Native Labor Association

WTO World Trade Organization

ZTE Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment

1. Cited in Blomberg, Can We Still Believe in the Bible?, x.

Introduction

Many readers will find this an unsettling book because the Africa of the 1980s is neither a happy nor a hopeful place. The colonialists designed the scenario for disaster, and the Africans seem to be trying their best to fulfill it. Calamity waits within the arms’ reach, oblivious of Africa’s potential strength. Across the whole continent, economies are collapsing, cities are deteriorating, food production is declining, and populations are growing like weed-seeds turned loose in a garden. Governments fall at the whim of illiterate sergeants and disgruntled despots, prisons are as overcrowded as the farm lands are empty, and at last count the number of refugees in Africa had reached the incredible figure of five million—people driven from their homelands by wars, tyrants and poverty.

As troubled as these early years of nationhood have been, Africa needs not to dwell forever in the uncertain twilight zone. Its dreams have been only mislaid, not lost. The morass has escape routes. Africa is a continent of surprises: nothing is ever quite as it seems and nothing ever happens quite as it is supposed to.

¹

They drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but they are not grieved over the ruin of [Africa]. (Amos 6:6)

The world is overwhelmingly rich; the human mind is incapable of paying attention to all its aspects. The painter sees the world in color, the sculptor in form; the musician in sounds, and the economist in commodities. The prophet is a man who sees the world with the eyes of God, and in the sight of God even things beauty or acts of ritual are abomination when associated with injustice. The world is overwhelmingly rich, but the prophet perceives the whole world in terms of justice and injustice.

²

Since Europe scrambled for Africa and altered the geographical and political map, history, culture, education, and economy of the continent, for the last five hundred years, the West has been on the continent for good or ill depending on the perspective of the observers and writers of Africa’s history. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Western NGOs, many aid organizations, philanthropists, etc., have poured billions of dollars in Africa for various reasons we will look at in detail later. The presence and modus operandi of the West in Africa, until China emerged on the African scene with a voracious appetite for natural resources, with financial means to feed her hunger and creative strategy to grab it, had a free reign with no competition.

For not willing to share the African pie, for fear of losing influence and dominance in Africa and the world, the West did not welcome the involvement and dominating presence of the East/China in Africa. The Western press, authors, and politicians have become vocal in criticizing China’s involvement in Africa to the point of calling it neocolonialism. Presumably they did this on behalf of and their concern for Africans. Many Westerners who know very little about Africa, and had no interest in the affairs of Africa, have become absorbed and engaged in conversation and discussion about Africa. This is a good thing to do. However, their approach on the issue, as usual, is from their side of story. As the debates unfolded in conference rooms, blogs, and media outlets in the West and in Africa, and as rumors of a huge new aid program created a mix of alarm and anticipation, it was obvious that debaters and bloggers, and journalists were drawing conclusions with only scant information.³ China is accused of the following major issues:

• Chinese aid is a means to grab oil/minerals and land in Africa.

• China enabled Sudan to get away with murder in Darfur.

• China hurts efforts to strengthen democracy and human rights in Africa.

• Chinese support kept Robert Mugabe in power in Zimbabwe.

• China is making corruption worse.

• Chinese aid and loans are part of a system of unfair subsidies.

• China gains business with low environmental and social standards.⁴

Despite the above-mentioned allegations of the West, three scholarly writings by Oxford graduates,⁵ did not substantiate the out-of-proportion ill-painting of China in Africa by the West. With impeccable academic research, these two authors fairly demonstrate how Western political and economic monopoly in Africa is encountered by China’s disarming soft power, financially domineering, and multidimensional purpose. The Harvard and Oxford graduate, Zambian international economist, Dambisa Moyo, explains: [T]he fact is that the Chinese way to date has shown none of the trappings of European colonialism such as religious conversion, use of military force, or handpicking the local political leadership.⁶ She adds,

It is hard to argue that a half-century of Western involvement in African affairs has done much to incentivize better government across the continent. Time and again the developed Western nations have chosen to treat the governments of poorer African nations with kid gloves, often giving them a free pass on egregious graft and theft of public resources while continuing to reward their government leaders with even more aid money despite worsening expectancies, seemingly intractable illiteracy, and erratic economic growth. The villain is this system, not China. And only its complete overhaul—from one that rewards bad behavior into one that incentivizes and supports improvements in economic and living conditions—will turn the situation around. For the moment China would seem to be the forces actively working to improve Africa and the prospects of its people—not just Africa but also the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people across the emerging world and beyond.⁷

Not too long ago, The Economist did a cover story on Africa: A Failed Continent. In this failed continent, the West has been extracting both minerals and human power, by closely working with corrupt African leaders. And as the West is treating Africa as something to avoid and keep at a long distance, the Chinese saw a great opportunity and are planning to invest $83 billion per year for the next twelve years. Compare that to the $5 billion per year investment plan of the World Bank. China is now a powerful force in Africa, and the Chinese are not going away. Their embrace of the continent is strategic, planned, long-term, and still unfolding.⁸ Brautigam’s and Moyo’s books help their readers correct a wrong perception of China in Africa and not to be swayed by media hype and populist and ill-conceived repartee. But, is China in Africa for the Africans’ sake? Yes, China’s engagement in Africa is different than the West’s approach. Does that mean the end result will be different? Does China practice justice in her involvement with African governments better than the West?

Analyzing the global economic factors, China’s geopolitical strategy, her trade agreements with various African countries, Africa’s perception of China and the U.S., etc., I will show the significant influence of China in Africa and the world. History is in the making. This author investigates the past, the present, and the future impact of global powers’ voracity for the natural resources of Africa at the cost of justice. My approach is not to give an assessment of noble and evil behavior of humankind in the light of skin color in African context. The major conflict in Africa is between light and darkness, righteousness and sin, peace and war, freedom and bondage, greed and generosity, justice and injustice, life and death. Before we attempt to cast out the demons in others, we need to recognize the demons within us and deal with them first. Neither the West nor the East, nor African leaders themselves for that matter, have a moral and ethical ground to claim a messianic mission to save Africa or to blame others for the demise of the continent. Standing before the Truth like one would before a mirror each participant in African affairs needs to look at themselves and answer these questions—did I do the right thing? Have I taken advantages of the African poor?

Despite all the bad news coverage Africa gets, any sensible member of the global community cannot afford to ignore Africa and put the things that happen within the continent on the back burner. Africa lies at the heart of history. It is the continent from which the distant ancestors of every one of us, no matter who we are today, originally came. Its people participated integrally in the great transformations of world history, from the rise of agricultural ways of life to the various inventions of metal working to the growth and spread of global networks of commerce. Bigger than the United States, China, India, and the continent of Australia combined, the African continent presents us with a historical panorama of surpassing richness and diversity.

Yet traditionally history books, ironically, have long treated Africa as if it were the exemplar of isolation and difference—all because recent centuries marked by the terrible events of the slave trade. As key agents of that trade, many Europeans and their offspring in the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries comforted and absolved themselves by denying the full humanity of Africans, and their rich history. That sad heritage continues to shape the envisioning of Africa today, not just in the West, but all across the non-African world and sometimes in Africa as well.⁹ Africa is the most thoroughly abused and the least understood region of the planet, so penned John Perkins.¹⁰ His observation is based both from his personal experience in Africa and a scholarly research. In the history of humankind I don’t know of any racial group that went through an immense and multiple kinds of suffering, humiliation, and dereliction without respite for more than five hundred years like the black people.

Africa and African studies are inseparably linked to paradox.¹¹ Africa is the first habitat of man but is the last to be made truly habitable. The crisis of habitability in recent history ranges from problems of tropical diseases to difficulties in physical communications and transportation, and from political instability in black Africa to the complexities of white-dominated South Africa. The resulting exodus of refugees from both black tyranny and white racism is part of the crisis of ‘living conditions’ in a political sense. If Africa was Adams birthplace, the Garden of Eden today is in serious disrepair. What is wrong?¹² asks a prominent African scholar, Mazrui, about twenty-four years ago. Even after apartheid the conditions of black Africans in South Africa and the rest of the continent is bleak. Mazrui’s question is yet to be answered.

Following the scholarly footsteps of African protagonists, without considering myself in their category, I have made an attempt to show why the African continent is a giant with a foot of clay. Why the contradiction? Is the cause internal/inherent or external? Why are the black race and black history misinterpreted and misunderstood? What is the impact of historical and cultural disconnection on the collective and individual personalities of Africans and blacks of African origin? Where are we now? What is the potential of Africa? What is the best way of interpreting the situation of Africans and black people in general? What role can biblical Christianity play? These and more questions are addressed in this book. I have found that clarifying the ambiguity and incongruity of the condition of the continent is a crucial step to rediscover Africa and Africans and to re-Africanize the forcibly and cunningly Westernized African history and culture.

Among African scholars, little agreement has been made between the externalist and the internalist on the causes of Africa’s multiple miseries. Externalist believes the causes are external in origin and include colonial legacies, Western imperialism, the slave trade, an unjust international economic system, and exploitation by oligopolistic multinational corporations, among others. Internalists, on the other hand, emphasize such internal causes as incompetent leadership and establishment of defective political and economic systems in postcolonial Africa—systems that bear little or no relationship to Africa’s own indigenous systems.¹³

This book takes both the externalist and the internalist stance, arguing that the causes are intertwined, and they equally damage the African people. It is true that Africa is not just a playing-field for the great powers. We must be aware of the responsibility of the African ruling classes for the ongoing impoverishment of the masses. Injustice and oppression are generated from outside, but a train of miseries also results from the relationships between the African states and their people. The benefits of programs of modernization and efforts at growth are coopted by the ẻlites in power.¹⁴ Perkins concurs: Countries in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are interwoven with common threads. Africa is a tangled knot. Its history, geography, cultures, religions, politics, crops and natural resources are discordant. This engenders a sense of separateness—even isolation—that in turn facilitates exploitation from within as well as from outside. In many countries the colonial masters of the past, the European elites, have simply been replaced by native African elites. They follow patterns established by their predecessors and openly collaborate with foreign executives who wantonly ravage the land and its people.¹⁵

Because of the size of the continent and the numerous issues in various African countries, I’m unable to give a detailed analysis of each country or region. But by providing sufficient research work on topics like civilization, African personhood, African natural resources and the fight over them, African contribution to Western capitalism, the current role of China in Africa, the role of African despots and the leadership crisis in Africa, and the role of Christianity, I have made my best attempt to explain the cultural, socioeconomic, and political context that requires the justice of God and the theology of the cross.

As I mentioned earlier, for the last five centuries or so Africa has been a continent of incongruity. As if he is inviting his readers to watch a horror movie, David Lamb had no choice but to put the paradoxical words of introduction about his book on Africa, which I have quoted above. I am afraid that my book will take you deeper into the abyss before you can see hope; not in Africans, white people or Chinese, Jews or Gentiles, but in God. The twentieth century saw the European nations destroy themselves in two world wars. In the twenty-first century we have inherited both these eras: the spirit of the scientific and technological progress, and the potential for destruction which can plunge humanity and the earth into the abyss.¹⁶ Mazrui adds:

The most devastating tradition of combat is genocide. It is now globalized. It is what nuclear war is about. The defence of New York requires the destruction of at least

40

million Russians in the ultimate analysis. The defence of Moscow requires the devastation of half of the United States.

The northern hemisphere has created a new form of genocide. It is partly masochistic since its primary targets are northerners themselves (Europeans, Americans, and Russians).

But the new genocide is also a throwback to primeval murder, cool and premeditated. Only this is homocide rather than homicide. The destruction of the human race is at stake, rather than the destruction of merely a single