The book (Infinito Edizioni, 2024, pp. 101, € 14.00) by journalist Enzo Nucci, who for sixteen years was RAI's (Italian Radio & TV broadcasting) correspondent from Nairobi, is entitled Africa contesa (Disputed Africa). It is a highly topical and useful essay, embellished by Pietro Veronese's preface, which puts the spotlight on the geopolitical dynamics and international appetites aroused by the continent - rich in strategic resources for the future - as well as on the African response to the onslaught of the superpowers. We publish a foretaste. The rest, not to be missed, can be found in bookshops or online shops.

“Africa has the whole world in its waiting room.” This lapidary reflection is the work of Antoine Glaser, a France24 journalist, who portrays very well the throng of foreign powers that are flocking in search of new markets and precious minerals, aiming to enlarge their areas of influence on the continent. Not only nations with consolidated (and long-standing) attention such as the United States, China and Russia or states that are part of the European Union, but also growing countries such as India, Turkey, Brazil, Korea, Japan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Africa, however - or, rather, the 54 sovereign states that belong to it, 48 of which are sub-Saharan - is aware that this rich and dismaying parterre has helped to keep it in check until now thanks to aid, cooperation activities, loans and other “interested” measures that have blocked its path. An awareness that has distant roots, starting with the Burkina politician and historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo (1922-2006), who warned Africans: “You don't develop a country, you develop yourself.”

Today, the dissent, already fragmented and internally fractious, is beginning to take shape, in search of a common front capable of identifying shared political-organisational forms to guarantee itself a place in the front row where the fate of the planet is decided.

Rupture with the West

A trend that has been in place for some time but which came crashing in with overwhelming power, somehow taking on official guise, with the beginning of Russian aggression against Ukraine. On 2 March 2022, a week after the start of military operations, and in similar fashion on 23 February 2023, the United Nations General Assembly was convened to vote on a resolution calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the cessation of fighting. A vote with a strong political value, although without any legal and operational constraints, approved by a large majority of 141 nations (including 28 African), with seven against (including Eritrea and Mali). While among the 32 abstentions as many as 15 came from leading African continental powers [...].

These are not small numbers but, above all, we are in the presence of African great nations with strong political influence, repositories of important natural riches and economic and commercial potential of primary importance. Perhaps it is precisely these dates that officially mark the birth of the “multi-alignment”, a concept that has taken the place of the “non-alignment” used in the past and which indicates the willingness of African countries to emancipate themselves from traditional alliances, counting on their own resources, making the most of the evolving geopolitics (including the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians) and the “shattering” of world balances on which weighs “the third world war in pieces”, a concept dear to Pope Francis.

As a commentator from the BBC, the British public television station, pointed out, the memory of the Cold War is still alive in Africa, where the logic of the blocs fuelled conflicts and arrested development, and no one today is willing to repeat those mistakes. This is why the West struggles to create consensus around the Ukrainian conflict, experienced as a European issue.

The Palestinian question

Then, on 7 October 2024, this international context was compounded with the attack on Israel by the Islamic fundamentalist movement Hamas, which was followed by the fierce response of the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The seismic swarm spread quickly, and not only along the African coasts bordering the Red Sea, where the Yemeni Houti rebels began their dangerous attacks on cargo ships passing through the area.

Hamas's murderous mission proved to be an injection of vitality that rejuvenated the myriad of Islamic terrorist groups. The Somali al-Shabaab have in fact intensified their military actions even in neighbouring Kenya, considered by the United States and Europe to be an indispensable bulwark against jihad, which, albeit without means, is taking on the task with great difficulty. While Egypt is concentrating on Gaza, juggling the repression of pro-Palestinian protests and Israeli-Western pressure, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are working hard to dismantle the fragile African security system, first and foremost in Sudan, where a “Libyan” scenario is looming due to the extremely harsh civil war.

In search of new balances

Out of the teeth, Moussa Fakhi Mahamat, president of the African Union Commission, also reiterated this with icastic clarity at the summit in Rome on 29 January 2024, organised by the Italian government with 46 delegations representing as many nations. “The African continent wants non-aligned relations in a single bloc, where nothing is imposed on us,” thundered the former Prime Minister of Chad, claiming full freedom to have a free hand in entertaining political relations, forging alliances and doing business with all the powers concerned. Indeed, there is full knowledge that the world's Great Powers are only interested in Africa to satisfy their own needs. "Today, Africa is at the centre of all kinds of economic desires, and speeches about friendship between peoples at major international meetings only serve to lull the Africans to sleep, to extract more easily their wealth from them. That is why on occasions like the Rome summit, the continent should sell itself dearly,” is the scathing comment of the Burkina Faso newspaper Le Pays. It is clear, then, that even at these latitudes the lesson of French General Charles de Gaulle, who coldly remarked: “States have no friends, they only have interests”, has been largely digested.

The role of Brics+

Since 1^st January 2025, the Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have been joined by five new nations: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia. The name has therefore changed to Brics+. We are dealing with an economic bloc with a total population of three and a half billion people, or 45 per cent of the planet's inhabitants. A bloc that can boast an economic base of a total of 28.5 trillion dollars, which means almost 28 per cent of the world system. Without underestimating that the ten Brics+ nations produce 44 per cent of the world's oil. Africa in particular has 30 per cent of the world's mineral resources and 60 per cent of the world's unused arable land. [...]

The economic body accuses Western countries of being the biggest creators of foreign debt of poor (and less poor) nations through loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Brics+ claim greater representation in these multilateral organisations (as well as in the UN) in order to acquire adequate decision-making weight on issues such as ecological transition and finance, with the aim of reducing their dependence on the US dollar and favouring internally the adoption of mutually supportive initiatives. [...]

In reality, since 2009 (the year of foundation of the group that brings together the world's emerging economies), concrete results have been less than the ambitious expectations. Internal divisions that generate a lack of a truly shared vision remain strongly entrenched. Some once-growing economies are now experiencing a sharp slowdown. Competition is high: India is aiming to wrest the leadership of the Global South from China, while Brazil is trying to stem the compulsive expansion to new entrants supported by China for fear of losing incisiveness in political action.

New investments and markets

In Africa, the European Union will invest 150 billion euros, equal to half of the Global Gateway, the strategic investment plan launched to counter Chinese expansionism on the new Silk Road worth a trillion dollars. But there is awareness on the continent that the focus is on control of raw materials rather than development. [...] An important chance is offered by the African Continental Free Trade Treaty (Afcfta), which established from 2019 the free trade area and the opening of borders between all nations, with the exception of Eritrea, which has not signed. The objectives are the overcoming of customs barriers and the promotion of economic, monetary and development integration: a market that today concerns just under 1.5 billion people with a gross domestic product of $2.6 trillion. In this rich scenario, the interventions of the Brics are particularly welcome for the construction of large infrastructures. Brazil can become the continent's great ally. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also leading the G20 in 2024, shares the African Union's positions on debt relief and has never made a secret of the need for a structural overhaul of the global financial system so as not to further penalise those left behind.

The burden of debt

The creation of a fast track with the G20 countries is necessary in view of the renewal of maturing debt securities amounting to over two hundred billion dollars. Africa comes to the rendezvous with a situation complicated by an average inflation of 18% in the sub-Saharan area and the devaluation of local currencies by 20% against the dollar while the external debt is 30% of the gross domestic product. Not to be underestimated is the political impact of the default declared by Ethiopia in December 2023 and previously by Ghana in 2022 and Zambia in 2020, forced to suspend foreign debt payments due to the explosive mixture of the stronger dollar and the “biggest interest rate hike in forty years”, as the World Bank explains. And from 2024 on, the list is likely to get longer: nine countries are in severe distress, fifteen at high risk and another fourteen at moderate risk. In these cases, debt restructuring passes through the mediation of the G20.

Russia (also in the light of the conflict in Ukraine), on the other hand, sees in the increased Brics+ an effective tool to add to its toolbox in the tough confrontation with the West, in particular to circumvent the sanctions imposed after the invasion. And Iran's membership could be an important contribution to accentuate the anti-Western character of the economic body. The Brics+ programmatically aspire to become the spokesmen of the Global South, despite the important defection of Argentina, which withdrew its membership after the political change of direction imposed by President Javier Milei, elected in November 2023. Many African countries are on the waiting list to join: Nigeria, Senegal, Algeria, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, among those that have applied.

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