I have read the Berlin Act of 1885 once again these past two weeks, and so should you. All Africans should read this document every single day, and so should our children and their children. You will become angry.

That Act put together an agreement between the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, ‘Sweden-Norway’, and ‘Turkey (Ottoman Empire)’.

In our shallow history lessons we were taught that this simply “divided up Africa” and those other things that we had to write down in examinations.

The agreement did much, much more, and we are still within its grip and yet pretend we do not see it.

The preamble of the Agreement says lots, including” “to regulate the conditions most favourable to the development of trade and civilization in certain regions of Africa, and to assure to all nations the advantages of free navigation on the two chief rivers of Africa flowing into the Atlantic Ocean.”

“All nations” meant only the ones listed above – and it still holds – and the free navigation is not just on those two rivers, as we know when we look at our visa issuance policies alone across the damn Continent.

Article 1 of the Act begins, “The trade of all nations shall enjoy complete freedom-” and then proceeds to divide Africa up into details that most of you highly-educated Africans cannot explain, if you can even name fifteen African countries except for (this week) Equatorial Guinea.

I am not going to reproduce the Act here – go and read it for yourself, please. As you do so you will realise that today, 140 years later, those nations listed above are still implementing their Act – and that will make you even angrier.

Except for the “interference” that is China.

Today in Africa we are trying out our own version of collaboration in trade and development, with the Africa Free Continental Trade Area (AfCFTA) but we are moving way too slowly at it.

In dividing up Africa for themselves, the Western nations that signed that Berlin Act were quite greedy.

Unlike the Western nations and their Berlin Act, we Africans are simply not greedy enough for what should matter to us – Africa.

I expressed this angrily last week at an African Union event where the Lobito Rail Corridor was being applauded, cutting the celebration short by highlighting that this is not OUR victory as Africans.

The Lobito Rail Corridor is a little scandal in progress.
The United States conceptualised and founded US$10billion 1,300km railway line is funded mostly by them and will run across Angola and Zambia with the specifically designed objective of taking mineral raw materials out of the Continent for processing in the West.

This is not news.

Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategic Officer at the Oslo Freedom Fund, once stated: “The preferred Western economic model for Africa is for the continent to produce nothing except cheap, unprocessed industrial inputs and inedible cash crops. Once these raw materials are extracted from the ground, it is important for them to be exported as cheaply and quickly as possible.”

We know this to be true, even if he had not added: “To keep the industrial inputs cheap, as little economic benefit as possible should accrue to the locals in Africa.”

This is why, when the President talks of ‘foreign elements’ we should understand how far back these elements go.

For us to be discussing tribe around this issue of coffee that we still export mostly raw and unprocessed is basically stupid.

When the coffee is being sold at rates that make it highly profitable, there are no Ugandan tribes mentioned around it. In fact, Google the world’s best coffees and even ‘Uganda’ won’t show up on the first page!

Your tribe? Ha.

Africans willingly continue to wallow in shallow intellectualism like the Berlin Act cast a spell upon us, for the enrichment of the Western world.

The situation is so nonsensical that there are even reports out there praising the Development Bank of Southern Africa for co-funding the Lobito Rail project.

Africans are spending money so that Africans can stay poor.

At my meeting last week I asked the audience how many were engaged in agriculture – most of them raised their hands; then I asked how many had bought cars within the last five years – even more of them raised their hands; then I asked if anyone had ever bought a tractor – zero.

Of course. Africans at meetings discussing our agricultural potential and the need for commercialisation spend more money importing luxury cars and electronics than we do tractors and equipment to make fertilisers or add value to our agricultural produce.

We do that every single day of our lives, in accordance with the Berlin Act of 140 years ago.

When will we Be Serious?

We will Be Serious when we Africans stop being greedy for trinkets and our own pockets and start being greedy for Africa the way those Western nations listed above have been greedy for Africa for more than 140 years.

We will start to Be Serious when we take the spirit of the Westerners in the Berlin Act and apply it to ourselves as Africans in the AfCFTA Treaty. Africans will only become serious when Africans get Angry for Africa and become Greedy for Africa.