Lineaments of Multipolar World Rising: Africa and Russia harmonize (Part 6)

By AHH

Please read in order: Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3 ; Part 4 ; Part 5

TRANSFORMATIONAL

“В ти́хом о́муте че́рти во́дятся
The devil lives in the still waters.”
— Russian Proverb

1938 Man of the West

A) The Empire Strikes Back.

What to do about the West and its primordial way of life? We’ve watched them totally unleashed since 1991, even before the corpse of the Soviet Union had cooled. They plundered and ravished and lied without limit or remorse. It proved insufficient for their fill. They hungered still. They turned a baleful ravenous gaze on the major powers still standing. Ensconced inside self-blown Unreality Bubbles, they did not wish to comprehend they had lost military supremacy to Russia and economic and industrial supremacy to China… and these two now coordinated effortlessly as “more than an alliance,” gathering further allies by the day. The 90% Rest of Humanity (RoH) was resolutely against them.

How do they fare in the roiling maelström of the geopolitical moment? Many noted the seamless segue of the forthright Trump foreign policy into that of the Biden regime. The current one is a continuation of the former, with no discernible originality by its boxed-in deep state handlers. The instructive Trump gang didn’t limitless themselves to merely spouting of “shithole countries,” but voiced a damning projection piece by the feckless Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser. He rudely asserted:

“…the predatory practices pursued by China and Russia stunt economic growth in Africa, threaten the financial independence of African nations, inhibit opportunities for U.S. investment, interfere with U.S. military operations and pose a significant threat to U.S. national security interests.” 

Where does one begin?? We can start by cleansing our minds of the injected poison and flipping to grasp the reality: insert “USA” for “China and Russia” and reverse the rest too. Note even prior to the Russian SMO, the West was in desperate straits in Africa. And barking into closed echo-chambers did not impress peer nuclear powers. The retreat was in full swing, approximating the whining Bargaining stage of the Kübler-Ross model. The following model is from “North East,” an astute friend’s historical process for the plundering West. He called it the western ‘grovel and conquer’ strategy, used and perfected against the native-North Americans.

Grovel and Conquer

He noted with the West, it was invariably 1 and 4, hence more appropriately termed ‘grovel or conquer.’ And their diplomacy and tradecraft were adjuncts of 2 and 3 – probing – as a means to get to 4. A bitter reality confronted Bolton and other inadequate cutout functionaries. Those who had invoked themselves “gods,” with History proclaimed ended on the Liberal note, and further declaring “full-spectrum dominance” over all that encompassed their limitless avarice, had to return to groveling. And they would grovel for a very long time indeed in the new multipolar age.

Spire of the MiG–31 et l’enfant terrible

1) France, Macron and “Françafrique” rejected. Even as Paris burned, France in Africa was the canary in the Exceptionalist mine. Africa in the last years refused a subaltern role as a western Safari Club. Enough was enough. The idea or genie was truly out of the bottle. Tormented West Africa in many respects led the way in Africa — showing the rest of Africa kinetic ways and means to sovereignty through the fortitude and persistence of Senegal (the current AU head), Mali, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, and most of the Muslim Sahel. The blowback from NATO’s Operation Barkhane, US Africa Command’s continuous malevolency, and terrorist proxies has been massive. And the West is tied down and being bled out in the Ukraine! The Exceptionals lacked the arms, troops, and focus given this enshrouding Ukrainian tar pit, the ultimate gift birthing us the multipolar world.

In desperation, France and the entire apparatus of Europe and North America tried various soft-power tactics, deploying the dated charms of a wrinkled and castrated vampire. Can a cold-blooded lizard miser show charm? With “80-90% of Africa’s cultural heritage stored in European museums,” such as the bronze of the Queen of Ife in the forgotten innards of the British Museum, the return of looted artifacts was supposed to be an emotional sop. The Belgians made a non-apology non-apology for killing 10,000,000 Congolese blacks in a mere 23 years.

It is not merely dedollarization on the African menu, but in West and Central Africa they are de-francing and de-eurozing. The French in turn made grudging moves permitting holding only 50% (!) of Françafrique ‘s national liquid wealth in Paris from the former 85%. Too little too late! Paris itself called for the end of Françafrique – apparently a morally flexible play on terminology, like “the USA leaving Syria and Iraq.” The bottomless cynicism was evident with Paris aiming to rebrand its military bases in its former colonies as “cultural and economic projects!”

The bleak reality for the combined West is that China and Russia offer economic growth, threaten escape from the financial capture of the Washington Consensus and its Hitmen wings, outcompete western TNCs in a transparent environment, transfer technologies and know-how, force the US to offer serious investment or get out, and can kinetically protect assailed states. To ever increasing number of African states, Russian arms, technology, PMC-support and determined grit to oust the devils put an end to gunboat diplomacy, hybrid-wars, and open pillaging.

Deterrence: Iskanders, Belarus

2) Indiscreetly generating genocide. Part of the artificial prolongation of the useful Ukrainian war by the combined West, with its derivative Russian sanctions, has been to disrupt established Black Sea supply chains and the vast Russian store of grain. This facilitated an energy and food crisis, especially in the Russia-allied CIS and Africa. 350 million Africans already suffering from food insecurity were thereby held hostage. Given the continued maintenance of siege and withholding of grain and fertilizer, ransoming does not appear the chief objective. They appear guided above all by eugenicist Guidestones agendas and timetables.

“…The peaceful resolution of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict would help to restore supply chains and reinvigorate the global food trade, the Africa experts believe. However, Western countries are continuing to pour gasoline on the fire in Ukraine by stepping up arms supplies and artificially protracting the conflict, according to them.

As a result, the West’s policies continue to exacerbate the global food security and nutrition crisis, with high and volatile energy, food and fertilizer prices, restrictive trade policies, and supply chain disruptions, according to Ashraf Patel..” 

Russian sanctions were not merely sweeping, but clearly intended to harm further secondary targets. They focused on key economic sectors, such as finance and banking (especially disconnection from SWIFT), thus blocking the sole existing payment mechanisms between Russians with Africans and Asians. African buyers and Russian sellers could not communicate. Sanctions included transportation and supply chains, blocking west-controlled grain shippers and their insurance. They included energy, severing essential diesel and fertilizers, harming the subsequent season’s crop yields. “80% of the fertilizers that Russia is ready to donate to the poorest countries are blocked in warehouses in Latvia, while the rest is frozen in the ports of Estonia, Belgium and the Netherlands.” The lawlessness in motion is breathtaking in scope and shameless audacity. Western technocrats really do see themselves as arbiters of life and death itself on our realm. As they judge, so they shall be Judged.

Desperate Russia, watching this massive criminality (to be blamed on them!) even gave the shipments for free, as fertilizers and food degrade quickly. To no avail – most shipments continue to rot in European ports. Even the gas caps and other European shenanigans were calculated to chiefly harm those European farmers who were among top importers of African grain, compounding precipitously falling food imports in addition to Europeans’ own food security.

“The traditional major wheat exporters [since WW2] are Australia, Canada, the European Union (EU), and the United States, but in recent years the Black Sea region – Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine – has emerged as a strong player in the global wheat market.

[Western] wheat… is marketed on its high quality, while the Black Sea has been successful at competing on lower price and location. This dynamic has increased competition rapidly and has affected all major suppliers in the global market. The Black Sea region will continue to challenge its competitors, with this year’s record crop in Russia dampening prospects for the traditional exporters.” 

It becomes clear the war in Ukraine affects so many critical tasks and interests of the Hegemon that its ignition was inevitable. Yet their repeated ill-disguised heavy-handedness backfired. Using an optical food narrative to drive Global South revulsion against Russia rebounded onto the West. Now, it is the West itself reviled worldwide for these transparent shenanigans. And the Russian President, Foreign Minister, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova do not waste a chance during their continuous dialogues with the Global South to remind of these sordid facts and the key antagonists.

Fortunately, Russia started to draw the lesson and quickly dissociated itself from all west-controlled mechanisms of trade which could be instrumentalized. For the short term, she quickly mobilized a shadow fleet of oil tankers estimated at over 440 to distribute to desperate customers. And for the duration, Russians bought over 100 tankers with the projected need of “more than 240 tankers to keep its current exports flowing.”

“Russia is set to build its own dry cargo ships to become completely independent from Western maritime transportation companies and insurers. The creation of its own fleet for the export of Russian food has become a strategic task and an important factor in the development of the agro-industrial complex in Russia, according to the nation’s Ministry of Agriculture.”

The Bell Tolleth – Facing da Music

3) Scrambling – and sinking, panicked reaction by panicked reaction… Even wielding the stiffest most shameless necks, how do you spin the unspinnable? How do you mask ongoing collapse in every sphere and by every metric? Western military prowess and reputation is being disemboweled on the Steppes of Novorussiya; the US dollar screams strapped into the humming (Chinese-made) electric chair. How does one put lipstick on a dead quartered pig swaying on a rope by its transgendered testicles?

One established method is to blithely change the topic and project one’s own criminality onto others. An “arrest warrant” was issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Russian President Putin and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova. The spurious issue was inserted just prior to the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Russia. It patently lacked jurisdiction as Russia never ratified nor is a party of the Rome Statute of the ICC. It was fittingly disparaged by Trump’s Secretary of State Pompeo, as “an ‘unlawful, so-called court’, a ‘crazy, renegade, political body’, ‘an unaccountable political institution, masquerading as a legal body’.” It appeared leveraged through the lurid family scandal of the ICC chief prosecutor, whose convicted and jailed pedophile brother was released early only 25 days prior to the “arrest warrant.” Many surmised the usual crude quid-pro-quo. The loyal British state servant was himself elected to his position by secret ballot. The agony of Perfide Albion, burning its agents so wantonly!

The premature malevolent measure will have the healthy benefit of further binding Russians and Chinese as well as Africans and Russians. If the intent had been to scare him away, Xi Jinping mocked the risible effort by congratulating Putin in advance for the support he’ll receive in rerunning for 2024 Russian Presidency! Africans had long held this court in contempt given its clear partisanship as a tool of western geopolitics. Its first dozen years were devoted to hunting “safe” black African leaders! The unending hypocrisy of a clearly western political tool, demeaning the very concept of justice! And Putin was indicted on 20^th anniversary of the Iraq invasion to boot.

For Africa, Putin had received a badge of honor: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Putin’s famous rolling walk now had an extra gangster street cred of approval. Or to use the famous parable of Emerson allegedly visiting his friend Thoreau in jail: “…Waldo, the question is, ‘What are YOU doing out there?’” That is indeed the question now for all who are not under the Hegemon’s censure. The ICC gambit was a damp squib. It was widely construed as hypocritical virtue signaling via impotent lawfare.

The soul-crushing conundrum of ‘Turd-blossom’ and other Exceptionals that pumped up their exclusive Unreality Bubble! They became lost so deeply therein! When they dared to peek outside and smell the clean air, the world had become quite different. It no longer references a West led by the demented. Other civilizations and regions had moved on. Such damage occurs against “their interests” as cannot be drowned out by media hysteria and the next false flag. Their viceroys, envoys, and dignitaries are openly mocked and laughed at pityingly by African leaders. Their limp ICC gambits merely draw scorn, uncontrolled laughter, and toilet-paper memes. They are shown to be in a blind lust on permanent war – “White House Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby on the inadmissibility of calls for peace at the meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping: ‘If this meeting leads to any call for a truce, it will be unacceptable!’” This was the ill-considered response to the baited trap of a ‘Peace offensive’ by China. It is over. As titillating as this current stage of mocking the dying Beast, it is nevertheless most unsavory seeing the vivisection of Hubris.

Into the Maelström

France, canary in Africa, was also canary in Europe. Ever the political and sociocultural avant-garde of revolutionary Europe, France entered hell. The agony of disenfranchised deplorables boiled over.

“…They know indiscriminately that at the same time Africa is freeing itself from the domination of French governments and that Russia and China are reorganizing international relations, but they are very little informed on these subjects…” 

The inelegant yet proud political suicide of the globalist Rothschilds’ Bankster-boy mesmerizes. Macron presented open sociopathy – ruling via dictatorial executive order under French constitutional Article 49-3. His entire class layer and turgid clique became contemptuous and unaccountable to democracy. Europe did the Bakhmut route of self-immolation. In a supreme act of sabotaging the dawning era and ending any chance of the Chinese BRI finding fruitfulness on the European peninsula, the Fifth Republic torched itself and became ungovernable. The dutiful supranationalist returned his region to the familiar warm bosom of another medieval Dark Age.

The contagion spread to major European countries. Already voiceless imperial vassals, how could a Europe run by these cruel supranationalists join multipolarity or even change course in the Ukraine? They were frozen in-situ, unable to swerve from their current terrible trajectory, crazily focused on burning themselves, to build back better from the rubble. Saturn was eating his dearest children. The Russian, Indian and Chinese leaders of BRICS and the entire Global South averted horrified gazes. They would craft the new World System sans the West, rerouting all connections, trade, relations, and hope itself around a West descending into the darkest feudal night.

Sea Roads, Indian Ocean, 500 – 1500 C.E.

B) The 90% Rest of Humanity (RoH)

1) India divorces the Anglosphere. Can you hear the birdsweet Bollywood ballad? The Age of Comeuppance spread like wildfire to the Indian subcontinent. A respected co-founder of the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), India’s maintenance of relations and trade with Russia was a significant victory for multipolarity. It helped protect Russia’s economy and psyche during the vital transition from western markets to the RoH. An old friend, a stalwart socialist friend, succored Russia during the early bitterest months. The deep appreciation and gratitude of Russia was evident in countless forums, such as Lavrov visiting the Tolstoy-Gandhi exhibition in New Delhi, in working to mend relations between China and India, in deep concessions given to India in the oil trade. The people-to-people affinity and relations will prosper and continue to consolidate for generations to come.

In fact, the vaulting love-affair between Russians and Indians, between northern ice and southern amber, is quite unique, beguiles mankind, and is so romantic! And a peerless match made in Anglo-Saxon Hell. Since the 19^th century Afghan “Great Game,” the British fought long, bitterly, and at great personal cost in blood precisely to avert such blossoming romances. Russia had completed her centuries-long march southwards to consummate, and so transformed all our futures.

India’s Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar kept it simple. This exquisitely refined diplomat dryly reminded the West that Russia was a principled friend of generations. It had stuck by India while the ostensibly “democratic” West during the Cold War preferred the Pakistani military dictatorship over the world’s largest democracy. Pakistan, a carefully created anti-India of the departing Raj, obviated close need of India; it fulfilled the same purpose as the Afghan blocking function denying Indian passage northwards to Central Asia or Russian passage southwards to warm water ports and the huge complementary Indian market.

Russian import substitution may have been assured by India alone. It also absorbed much of the redirected oil and petroleum products formerly headed to the West. Russia rapidly rose to become the top Indian oil supplier from its prior marginal role. Erstwhile EU crude oil loadings were shipped to India, both for domestic use and reimport right onwards to the EU for handsome profit! The generosity of the European Commission and its sound and scientific Technocrats, in paying for the SMO as well as picking up portions of the tab for India’s developmental goals, was highly commendable.

India’s nerve in the face of constant western shuttle-diplomacy and vituperation for infringement of the imperial “Rules-based Order” encouraged others of NAM and throughout the Global South. As a longtime leader of NAM, their public posture of non-involvement in the sharp bloc confrontation was unimpeachable. The narrow-minded western focus on the Ukraine blew back immeasurably, demonstrating desperation and weakness. It was neither the attitude nor confident pose of the strong winning side. Indian exasperation during the G20 exposed this to the entire Global South.

Africa – India Trade

Dedollarization gathered pace, even prior to the anticipated South African BRICS conference this August. India, foreseeing further attacks by the Anglo-Saxons, and to support a beleaguered neighbor, diversified to using the Indian rupee with Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan crisis was attributed to “a shortage of foreign currency arising from the pandemic-related restriction of tourism, led to dire shortages of fuel, food and basic necessities.” Earlier, India led efforts to ditch the dollar to bypass western sanctions on Russian oil, using Emirati dirhams via Dubai-based traders. India established ever-expanding trade mechanisms using bilateral domestic currencies for transactions. This mechanism is now used in at least 18 countries, six of them African.

Relations between India and Africa are significantly underappreciated. Bollywood, and Indian songs and culture are ubiquitous and beloved throughout the Indian Ocean, from Myanmar to South Africa. India has a privileged role in most of the eastern rim of Africa, with pockets of ancient, intermixed communities from eons of two-way migration patterns. In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, their presence was turbocharged by a British Empire which brought millions of Indians as indentured laborers, and to administer, teach, guard and serve in many other functions in its vast African holdings, from Cairo to Cape Town.

“The stark contrast between the first [precolonial] trade wave was that migration during colonial rule was forced, not voluntary. It is worth noting that some Indians migrated as clerks and teachers to serve colonial governments overseas. This expanded colonial rule. Estimates during the period of 1829-1924 suggest that about 769,427 Indians migrated out of India into Mauritius, South Africa, Seychelles, and the East African region…

… Indentured labor came as the result of bondage of debt. Through this, European imperialists facilitated the transport of over 3.5 million Indians into the African continent where they served as labor for plantations. A majority of these plantations grew sugar…”

India today is at same the largest socialist democracy, arguably most influential NAM member, and actively engaged in the same anti-imperialist and anti-neocolonial efforts as Africans. India overtly saw itself as the leading voice of the Global South. Thus, its audience and impact in Africa was considerable since the SMO. It steadied African nerves in the face of western démarches to choose sides in the Ukrainian world war through sanctioning and cutting relations with Russia. India quietly helped solidify and shape multipolarity.

Africans in ancient South & East India

Another happy fruit of the SMO was the breaking up between India and the Anglo-Saxons. The West arrogantly demanded exclusivity of relations, and for India to forfeit the productive and valued Russian romance. The predictable vicious reaction by the West to India’s measured and sovereign steps away from unipolarity was duly unleashed. The pressure on India became too heavy and shameless – the West rolled out “human rights” campaigns targeting Modi, exposés of oligarchic corruption (and implied political complicity), amid other coup mechanisms from the little black grimoire of Gene Sharp. The supreme irony, and of bottomless western cynicism, in deploying nonviolence to surreptitiously overthrow the India of Gandhi and his nonviolent Satyagraha!

The recent coup in Pakistan with insertion of a hostile clique led to a more disturbing scenario. On cue, terrorism was reactivated in Afghanistan-Pakistan. And Russia, China, and Central Asia would not be the only targets.

India was fed up. The BBC offices in New Delhi were raided, and became censored along with other British organs and western social media such as YouTube and Twitter. The Indian National Security Advisor was sent to Moscow to meet in person with Russian President Putin. Jaishankar gently reminded “the British weren’t the nice guys” during their predatory Raj. Friendly topics were cheekily suggested for future BBC documentaries. The pterodactyl Soros was openly mocked…

India could see the open rot throughout the edifice of the West, and the way Africa, West Asia and 90% of the Rest supported Russia. They would not forego their long-term successful relationship with Russia. Most encouraging for Indians, commoner and elite alike, once Russia finally stood up to the US and Europe in its SMO and survived, they knew it would make Russia much stronger. They were emboldened to express long grievances and anti-neocolonial and by now anti-western antipathy. Personal western heavy-handedness had been the last straw influencing the Zionist or Anglophile elements among their elites to at least fight back and keep their house together.

The crazies did not learn! As with Russian oligarchs, a critical enough Indian elite mass did not take the bait. Rather these elites of the older civilizations patriotically circled bandwagons and bit the bullet. Better the devils amongst one’s own ranks rather than the completely amoral foreigner hellbent on a global gulag.

Additionally, the Chinese BRI and the huge developmental opportunities and [non-western] civilizational races underway positively swayed India onto constructive directions, rather than the favored sectarianism and other elite games of diversion and division. A heady and so promising new age was being born outside the West and India planned to be a part of it.

Mother brings life

2) The Imperial Muslim Brotherhood & Salafis wither on the vine.

The 2003 criminal war on Iraq, coming so soon after Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, set off many realignments in the world, especially amongst Muslims, traditionalists, anti-imperialists, and the older civilizational nation-states. There was profound disquiet and feeling of insecurity everywhere. The familiar International System had died. All felt inconsolable betrayal and disillusionment with the West. “Today the hapless Arabs, tomorrow us!” They had been entrusted with leadership in global affairs and had abused it, trampling on weaker states for naked adventures on resource grabs. They had turned psychopathic in open repudiation of the core values constantly spouted on their well-burnished Shining Hill.

The intelligent ones, understanding the devolution into the decadence of late Empire phase, merely smiled, and furiously rearmed and prepared in silence. The permanent wars would eventually come to them. Even the hitherto outer imperial provinces started to diversify relations, understanding the future lay elsewhere. Africa became such a magnet for Türkiye and the Gulf states.

Africa had been divided between the spheres of influence of the West and Soviet camps after World War II. Starting in the 1950s, the West worked to counter Soviet influence throughout traditional Africa by emphasizing Soviet atheism and revolutionary potential upsetting this traditionalism. The Salafi genie uncorked by Brzezinski and Carter in late 1970s Afghanistan took on global dimensions since the 1980s, markedly increasing in Africa during periodic boom times of Gulf oil income, such as since the start of the Global War of Terrorism (GWOT). The Rumsfeld-Cebrowski Doctrine carefully steered these useful proxies throughout the Muslim Sahel, engendering chronic militancy and burning chaos which helped weaken the state structure in the entire northern half of sub-Saharan Africa. (Map 10: The African Muslim Sahel)

Salafis inculcated ignorance, intolerance, and proud backwardness, easing in the desired foreign control. As the afflicted state collapsed, the organized western bagmen vacuum-extracted native resources calmly and unmolested by central resistance. The game took on more direct states’ involvement since the seminal year of 1991 unleashed the Hegemon and its minions. However Türkiye and the Gulf countries really entered Africa in a big way after the West launched the 2011 second “Arab Spring.”

Even then, the original intent of Empire to use ideology to divide, destroy and remote-control Africans worked against them. The Turks and Oil–Sheikhs increasingly saw Africa as a golden business opportunity to reorient from a nonproductive West sinking deeper into their psychotic Bubble. The West Asians built more than they destroyed. Turks developed a healthy and often collaborative competition with the Chinese master builders in infrastructure development and modernization.

Since the arrival of the new King and his team in 2015, Saudis looked to diversify beyond petroleum products into global investments. Their initial forays into fraternal nations expanded to sub-Saharan Africa. Arid Gulf Oil–Sheikhs invested heavily in nearby Ethiopia just across the Red Sea, the leading agricultural hotspot in Africa, and started to finance many capital projects. They tried to host their own Africa conference, dubbed the “Fifth Arab-African Summit,” delayed since 2019 in part due to the covid crisis, scheduling conflicts with the G20, and likely other western diversions working to block such potent direct foreign investment into Africa.

Each West Asian, despite ideology and original impulse, started to acquire his constructive niche in a new win-win paradigm that pumped heady air into Africa. They participated in and helped accelerate the African boom times.

Under the auspices of its “2013 Africa Partnership Policy,” Türkiye developed a thorough and multi-dimensional foreign policy vis-à-vis Africa. “President Erdoğan visited 31 African countries so far, including during his tenure as the Prime Minister.” The indefatigability put even Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in the shade! Türkiye engaged via its own series of large-format conferences with the African Union, the last being the 16-18 December 2021 Third Türkiye – Africa Partnership Summit, held in Istanbul. Türkiye is making a big diplomatic and corporate push into Africa.

“In Somalia one of the advantages of being a Turk is that you pray at the same mosques as everyone else,” says Kadir Mohamud, a Somali businessman. Non-Turkish companies and embassies tend to operate from the guarded “green zone” around the airport. “We are the only ones in the field,” says Mehmet Yilmaz, the Turkish ambassador.

Somalia is a striking example of Mr Erdogan’s broader push into Africa in search of markets, resources and diplomatic influence. Only two decades ago Turkey had very little interest in Africa below the Sahara. Instead it looked west and dreamed of joining the European Union. But as relations with the West have cooled, Turkey has pivoted south.

Turkey is also gaining clout through aid. Previously it gave money mainly through international agencies such as the UN. In 2003 some 60% of Turkish aid was channelled this way. By 2019 that share had plummeted to 2%. These days Turkish flags adorn packages of food, schools and wells.

Turkey and France, after sparring in Libya, have also locked horns in west Africa, the Sahel and the Maghreb, where Mr Erdogan has challenged French influence by playing on France’s image as a colonial oppressor. In Somalia Mr Erdogan faced off against Saudi Arabia and the UAE when their spat with Qatar, which is friendly with Turkey’s government, spilled over into a proxy struggle in the Horn of Africa.

Turkey has also signed military pacts with several African countries, most recently Nigeria, Senegal and Togo. Many are keen to take advantage of Turkey’s experience in counterinsurgency. Tellingly, an increasing share of African ambassadors appointed to Turkey are active or retired generals.

Turkey’s top products are drones. They have been seen in Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. Other countries, including Angola, Nigeria and Rwanda, are thinking of buying them. “Wherever we went, they asked us for unarmed and armed drones,” said Mr Erdogan after a visit to Africa last year.

Like China and Russia, which have expanded their reach in Africa in recent years, Turkey touts its policy of non-interference as a selling point. Mr Erdogan presents Turkey as a rising power and the champion of a fairer world order. “Turkey is coming in with no colonial baggage whatsoever,” says Wamkele Mene, the secretary-general of the African Continental Free Trade Area (afcfta). “That’s an advantage.” “The British, the French and the Western colonisers,” [Erdogan] said earlier this year, “continue to loot Africa’s diamonds, its gold and its mines.”

Turkey’s interest in Africa is reciprocated. The number of African embassies in Turkey has tripled in two decades, to 37. At least 14,000 students from Africa have received scholarships to study in Turkey over the past decade. Africans are also buying property in Turkey, not least since spending $250,000 on a house brings a Turkish passport. Ankara has emerged as a hub of the Somali diaspora. Turkish soap operas, which are winning audiences across the continent, are spreading soft power.” 

Sultan swings to Africa

Türkiye made significant inroads in African infrastructure, health care and culture. Turkish companies are active in many other sectors too – in food, energy systems, and agriculture, as well as all types of commercial activities. Istanbul’s Istiklal Street expanded all the way to Africa.

“The number of Turkish embassies has increased from just 12 in 2002 to 43; Turkish Airlines now flies to 61 places across the continent; the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency has opened 22 offices; and the Maarif Foundation has 175 schools in 26 African countries.

Turkish construction companies have followed suit. They now do 17.8 percent of international construction business in Africa, according to 2021 figures from the Turkish Contractors Association, which stated that the total volume of projects undertaken by Turkish construction companies now surpassed $77bn. Turkey’s trade volume with African countries has increased from $5.4bn in 2003 to $34.5bn in 2021.”

The Turkish construction giants active in Africa came to be associated with quality and positive development. They earned the trust of many states. Meeting deadlines, efficiency, while keeping to budgets, with their major projects such as airports, ports, roads, railroads, and stadia. They modernized entire cities. The 50,000 seat Olympic Stadium project in the Senegalese capital of Dakar is a recent highlight. Turkish companies became the biggest competitors of Chinese companies in Africa.

The Sultan of Swing had his successful geopolitical moment facilitating the July 2022 Russian-UN-Ukie Grain Deal, which sent a few NATO-blocked grain ships from Odessa Black Sea port to Africa. That over 90% went to Europe and wealthy countries was secondary. Goodwill points were earned in African eyes. As Türkiye fully joins multipolarity, ditching NATO and the corrosive MI6-created Muslim Brotherhood (MB) ideology among its elites, it will find an ever-bigger place in Africa. Its recent track record of beneficial win-win development, modernization, and security engagement conducive to the state stabilization of many African states speaks for itself.

Türkiye like China, Russia, and Iran, worked tirelessly to diversify relations and trade away from the unreliable and shrinking West. They did so constructively in Africa. The MB ideology of the ruling AKP party became a secondary consideration in the drive to maintain growth and bolster the west-besieged Turkish economy.

Turks were driven by spiritual impulses and through charity to long-deprived Africans; they invested considerable social, cultural, and religious energy into Africa, being coreligionists with the almost half of Africans. 590 million of 1.4 billion (42%) Africans are Muslim. This represented almost 1/3 of the global Muslim population of 1.9 billion. Türkiye once fashioned itself the leader of all Muslims and held the seat of the Islamic caliphate at Constantinople for over four centuries. The emotional scenes seen with Turks at many instances and forums indicates a self-conscious expression of ‘noblesse oblige’ toward a continent recovering from five centuries of western predation.

Aya Sofia, Constantinople

The Gulf Oil–Sheikhs barged right in where angels fear to tread. A great wild stallion – rough sire of his vast valley – dashing after his mares in heat had a more considered and delicacy of approach to the task. Uncle Sam only had to crook a crooked claw at the condemned targets in the Sahel – and the desert Bedouins were off.

However, three considerations trumped their former single-mindedness of purpose. The first was geoeconomic: the truly stupendous resources and opportunities in Africa. All non-western middling powers were piling in. It was seen as an avenue to diversify relations, income streams, and get out of being a kept one-teat milch camel. They hired sharp investors and researchers and put their money into fruitful enterprises. They spent from Egypt to South Africa and many promising points in between.

The second was the red-hot geopolitical intra-GCC rivalry, between the Saudi-UAE side and the Qatari side. The latter had the largest airfields and forward US Central Command headquarters in the region at Al Udeid Air Base. And the tiny emirate also hosted a considerable detachment of the Sultan’s troops. These precluded invasion by hostile Arab neighbors and a redivision of the miniscule gas-giant’s wealth. Both GCC sides then resorted to mud-slinging media campaigns and buying foreign influence, including in Africa. These entailed serious investment input, much welcomed by Africans as the Indians had welcomed the European fuel cap bonanzas.

The third factor was geosurvival informed by potent modern ISR geolocation. What a salutary effect!  ‘The times were achanging.’ Sponsoring terrorism had become personally consequential. The worn western intelligence vehicle of mindwashing madrassas grated on the entire Muslimsphere. All by then knew the sponsors, funders, indoctrinators, tribal footsoldiers, and their methods, locations, and rat lines.

In 2016, a noteworthy international conference of Sunni scholars was held in Grozny, Chechnya. Attending was Ahmed El-Tayeb, the foremost Sunni Islamic authority in the world, and the grand Imam of the Al-Azhar University of Cairo, Egypt. The conference reached a consensus which “defined the mainstream Sunni Islam and excluded Wahhabis from it.” Wahhabism was declared a dangerous splinter group working to spread a harmful radical ideology for geopolitical gain. The implications, and delegitimizing exposure, were staggering. This removed all complacency from Saudis. They saw the writing on the wall. Remaining in the upstream of Anglo-Saxon proxy terrorism, already patently catastrophic to reputation, would result in the same unenviable fate as ISIS in Syria and Iraq. And the threat was delivered in the hometown of the same Russian warrior who had helped visit hell on all western proxies in the Levant, to the muted detachment by a limp Obama regime.

The 2019 Abqaiq–Khurais attack, ostensibly by Ansarullah (Houthis), and which cut Saudi Arabia’s oil production by about half, was another gentle reminder. It took offline about 5% of global oil production and destabilized global financial and oil markets. Those who lived in glass houses relying on gaudy, yet worthless western air-defenses could not afford to throw stones… This reality completely sobered the Saudis, setting into motion silent revolutions in international relations.

A few weeks after the Grozny Islamic conference, the GCC royal families split from the smothering lose-lose scenario. Extremist clerics found themselves quickly jailed; Twitter tweets provided a suddenly useful register of self-incrimination. August guests – heavy weights and capos of the ancien régime – were hosted sumptuously and indefinitely at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton; they were duly pillaged and thereafter prevented returning to their old sponsorship ways as heavy weights and capos.

By early 2017, major steps were taken to roll back fundamentalism and inaugurate a beautiful new era. A lot of oxygen was removed from Boko Haram and other “ideologies of western statecraft” in the fluid African Sahel. It was thus strictly productive capitalist business and sincere Islamic charity work indeed. The going got a lot easier for Wagner and other PMCs buttressing state stability.

The ball was back in the Hegemon’s court. The very next year, the 2018 device of the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a card-carrying member of the MB, close friend of Osama bin Laden, and lifelong tool of the western intelligence agencies, was clearly a western nudge for course correction at the oil hacienda. Even more dastardly than Trump’s gleeful milking of the moment were those shadow forces who had set it all up, strung along both victims, and sacrificed a vulnerable agent for the dispassionate realpolitik. Regardless of their backgrounds, dubious track records, and narrow considerations, the maneuverings of the Turkish and Saudi state apparatus away from the Hegemon toward multipolarity, peaceful international relations and sovereignty were commendable. Their efforts provided a big sip of cool water offering Africa and the entire Global South reprieve from a deep thirst. They had halted and transformed a potent, extremely wealthy, ruthless and their potentially limitless proxy pool used to destabilize the entire World Island for centuries.

3) Iran maintains the steady course. Iran’s experience and parallels with Russia vis-à-vis both Africa and the West are astounding. For millennia a feared and indominatable civilizational nation-state, the West seduced or viciously isolated and besieged it in turn. As with Russia in the 1990s, Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution was mostly in stasis vis-à-vis Africa, in rearguard action elsewhere. Its first decade of the 1980s were consumed in war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and his west-built Arab coalition.

The entire period since were under various forms of western or west-driven international sanctions. Its reach, efforts and interactions elsewhere were circumscribed during the period of enforced survival. If not warding off wars and international intrigue, its focus was internally on modernizing its real economy with an eye toward self-sufficiency and self-defense. It also had the burden of the second largest population of West Asia, currently 83 million, greater than the combined populations of the seven Arabian Peninsula states.

Iran is a very strategic nation – historically, civilizationally, ideologically, in terms of stupendous resources of human potential, petroleum, agriculture, textiles and commerce, and most crucially in location where it was the key middleman of the ancient Chinese Silk Roads. And as a privileged partner of both Russia and India in the north-south INSTC and the nascent Chinese rebooting of the Silk Road in the east-west BRI. Living at the perfect Eurasian intersection, all terrestrial and even maritime major paths led through Iran. Western nations worked ceaselessly to break these connectivities, through a weakened, fractured, and chaotic Iran. They have labored thus for centuries – even prior to the British Empire – from the times of the Venetian and Iberian hegemons.

Since Ahmadinejad, Iranians said, “the world is not limited to the West.” They too worked to diversify and to build networks throughout the Global East, North and South. After the preoccupation of the Rouhani administration trying to reach detente with the West, the incumbent President Raisi immediately refocused on non-Western countries. In his first press conference, Raisi said “the foreign policy of my administration will not be limited to the JCPOA and I will consider broad and balanced interaction with the world.”

Iran’s current foreign policy in Africa can be summarized as “a new horizon… looking to all regions around the globe… and its goal to be defined as part of Africa’s future.” It has rich experience from its heyday as a superpower of antiquity extending into the modern era along the entire coast of the northern Indian Ocean basin. Following in the steps of the ancient Egyptians who visited ‘the land of aromatics and incense,’ the Persian Empire founded Mogadishu (“the City of the Shah”) two millennia ago among many other trading posts for “livestock, coffee, frankincense, myrrh, acacia gum, saffron, feathers, ghee, hide (skin), gold and ivory.” The port of Berbera also served as outlet for Ethiopian goods and livestock bound for the maritime Silk Road. For countless millennia, much of the livestock meat consumed in the Arabian Peninsula came from Abyssinia and the Horn of Africa. Persians were among the middlemen here too.

“Africa has come to the center of attention in the world for its resources from energy to mines as well as the virginity of these resources. That’s why the Raisi administration has focused on the continent as part of its doctrine of looking to the whole world… Iran’s capabilities in technology and knowledge-based industries in various areas, including defense and health sectors, could be a big advantage in expanding relations with African countries..

..Iran’s delegation included many officials from ministries of labor, oil, and defense and other related governmental organizations as well as private businesses. This shows that Iran prioritizes investments on power generation, agricultural machinery, detergents, canned food, construction, and health sectors. Iran has proved to be competent in these areas as it has been independently improving industries in those sectors for the last four decades despite many restrictions.”

Biskra oasis, Algeria, 1890s

Iran’s top trade partners in sub-Saharan Africa were unchanged from the Shah’s era of the 1960-70s. It remained export-oriented in petroleum and petroleum-products but shrank since 1979 to littorals of the Indian Ocean. Overall volumes were small compared to Africa–West, Africa–China, or Africa–India trade, largely driven by sanctions and earlier Iranian policies focusing on immediate neighbors and on the West. Iran’s fluctuating turns toward or away from the West (and away from South Africa during apartheid) affected its focus elsewhere, especially in Africa. Only 2% of the Islamic Republic’s total annual trade average is conducted with sub-Saharan Africa. This is approximate with the Shah’s equally low amounts of 4% of total trade.

Azadi Tower, Tehran, Iran

The reconciliation with Saudi Arabia brokered by China was a massive setback for the designs of the USA and combined West. It was a major victory for peace throughout the World Island. Every two warring parties in Africa and elsewhere now knew they enjoyed a sincere impartial partner who could mend even the most bitter intractable conflicts. It also opened wide diplomatic space for Iran with formerly hostile Arab neighbors and throughout the Global South. The US campaign to isolate and subjugate Iran was finished. Iran’s incalculable potential and energy would spread throughout the World Island.

Perpetual war and contrived insecurity raising anxieties amongst the simple Oil–Sheikhs which in turn legitimized the Anglo-American presence in their region is also on life-support. Looking ahead, the competing Gulf Arabs sent by the Hegemon to frustrate Iranian outreach in Africa, which in part played on their dominantly Sunni co-religionists in Africa, as well as African and Global South willingness to follow illegitimate unilateral sanctions against Iran, will all end. Iranian presence will accordingly expand, as its savviness, technologies, commercial activities, and can-do indominatable spirit will be welcomed.

The existing medium-term rupture with its European markets and the West saw Iran’s African trade and political relations on the rise. Prior western sanctions on Iran had already created a vacuum filled by Chinese, Turks, Indians and then increasingly Russians and Africans as they looked both north and south towards their ancestral Indian Ocean basin neighbors. This is most true of BRICS member South Africa, Iran’s largest trade partner receiving 80% of its exports to Africa. Venomous agitprop by the usual suspects, to match their current hysterical slander of China and Russia in Africa, indicates Iran is making encouraging headway in Africa.

Wagner does not operate alone in Africa. Seven years ago, the Ambassador of Togo to Tehran Mohamed Sad Ouro-Sama met with President Rouhani to thank him “for Iran’s role in bringing peace and stability to the region in fighting terrorism.” There are heartwarming prospects of growth in Africa–Iran commerce, military industrial complex networking (think even more dronification, massively boosted by successful exposure in the Russian SMO), cultural and many other South-South supportive interactions.

More significant than the savvy trading of Iranians proved the formidable presence of Iran’s premier diplomatic corps, bitterly lamented by Trump. Leaving aside ahistorical claims of never winning wars, Iran was a feared superpower longer than the USA exists as both a colony and state combined. As it dawned even in Trump’s attention-starved and fructose-laden street cunning, Iran is indeed one of the very few peers of the formidable Russian and Chinese foreign ministry staffs. This highly professionalized soft-power wing opened many African doors. And where they chose to go, they received wide respect for their principled ant-imperialist resistance to the West and for the many technologies and hardware they brought, made in their effective, affordable, and native defense industry. In return, African ties, along with West Asian, Indian, Chinese, Latin American, and Russian ties, permitted Iran a deep welcoming sea in which to swim and to easily nullify intended isolation through UN and unilateral US sanctions. And to their satisfaction, these cumulative efforts saw the goading and shaming of the West as Iran punched far above its weight on the global stage.

The four RoH members above – India, Türkiye, the Gulf states, and Iran – are far from exhaustive. Other rising partners are found in South Korea, Japan, members of ASEAN, and others engaged in trade and involved in their own expanding niche within Africa. Africa ever plays a larger role in the transforming new international system. Its heft increases corresponding to its scale of resource, youthful human potential, booming economies, great need for partners in infrastructure development and modernization, and corresponding geopolitical weight. This will continue to attract vast numbers of investors and countries to a continent much wiser and more discriminating of sincere partners intent on win-win relationships.