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Is the West losing Africa to China?

Teo Kermeliotis

With Chinese yuan and Indian rupees increasingly finding their way into Africa’s economies, Western powers are worried that they are losing influence in the resource-rich continent, according to analysts.

Driven by their appetite for natural resources, trade opportunities and political alliances, emerging powers such as China and India are moving from the sidelines to the center stage in Africa — a region the West has long considered to be its own trading partner.

While Western countries are still important players in Africa’s energy sector, the deepening engagement of China in Africa’s infrastructure, mineral sector and telecommunications is creating “deep nervousness” in the West, says David Shinn, the former U.S. ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia.

Asian giants scent opportunity in Africa

The competition in these areas, he explains, usually pits big Chinese enterprises that are financially backed by Beijing’s deep pockets against Western companies that often have shareholders to consider and are by-and-large acting independently of their governments’ desires.

“If the Chinese government wants to encourage an engagement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they can make it happen,” says Shinn. “If the United States wants its companies to get involved in the DRC all they can do is say ‘look, there’s an opportunity there, why don’t you go explore it’ and if they want to explore it, they do and if they don’t they don’t.”

According to Shinn, this different system of government “does create anxieties” because “the United States and the West see China filling all kinds of voids that it thought it would eventually fill.”

China overtook the United States as Africa’s biggest trade partner in 2009, according to OECD figures, whereas in 2000 the United States’ trade with Africa was three times that of China’s.

India’s bilateral trade with Africa jumped from around $1 billion in 2001 to about $50 billion last year.

India bids to be Africa’s ‘new best friend’

The European Union still accounts for more than 40% of Africa’s trade but the share of Africa’s trade with the EU and U.S. fell from 77% to 62% over the last decade. At the same time, the share for new economic forces — China and India but also countries like Brazil, Turkey and South Korea — rose from about 23% to 39%.

China’s first official aid project in Africa took place in the 1960s, and in 1975 it completed construction of the iconic Tanzania-Zambia railway. In the early 1990s, when headline-writers would often label Africa as the “failed continent,” Beijing decided to step up its foray into the continent, filling the gap left by an exodus of Western investors.

“Just as Western companies were mothballing mines, walking away, certainly not bringing new investments, China plunged in and dared to go where the white man feared to trade,” says Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society, based in London.

“It was quite amusing to see the Western mining companies, who’d been shrugging their shoulders at Africa and looking elsewhere, suddenly rushing back in.”

The emergence of China as a major player in Africa has prompted many Western countries to change their strategies on the continent and emphasize the need for collaboration.

“Earlier on, you heard (U.S.) officials maybe talk about China as a threat or as a competitor in Africa,” says Richard Downie, deputy director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “All the language from officials now is about Africa as a place where competition is good … and all the efforts here (in the United States), at least in public, are about seeking areas for cooperation and collaboration with China — so the language has shifted.”

Yet concerns about China’s role are still being voiced in public.

When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about China’s growing influence in Africa, during her visit to Zambia in June, she said that Africa must beware of a “new colonialism.”

“We saw that during colonial times it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave,” Clinton said from the mineral-rich country that has attracted heavy Chinese investment in mining.

Although Clinton avoided naming China specifically in her remarks, the suggestion that it could be fostering colonialism in Africa was immediately dismissed by Beijing.

Downie says Clinton’s comments come at a moment when China’s increasing role is creating “a sense of unease” in the United States which echoes a larger debate about America’s declining influence as a world power and China’s rising prominence.

“The U.S. is very sensitive about it at the moment,” he says. “Africa is the corner of the world where that declining U.S. influence is most evident,” he adds.

Ayo Johnson, director of Viewpoint Africa, a media organization dealing with news from the continent, says the growing influence of emerging players has left the West feeling “very rattled” and put African countries in a stronger bargaining position.

“It’s becoming very difficult for the West to deal with Africa from their usual perspective,” says Johnson.

“When you’ve been used to doing business in a particular fashion, when you’ve been used to dealing in a certain way and then there’s an injection of a third or fourth player who risk the entire dynamic — that’s exactly what has happened with India and China and now made it so much easier for Africans and their leaders and their communities to choose among the various investors.”

Shinn says that to the eyes of many African leaders China’s capacity to move fast, coupled with its policy of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, often makes Beijing a more attractive partner than the West, whose policy in the continent is usually linked to conditions about good governance and human-rights reforms.

One of China’s big advantages is that “the Chinese have no mission, no intention at all to change Africa,” agrees Dowden.

He adds: “There’s still a narrative in our minds in the West that Africa is backward and Africans have got to become like us — ‘we have got to change them’ — I think that Africans feel that and the young African generation that’s coming through are now very resentful of that.”

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

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Africa: Trading With the Enemy

Jason Hickel

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) masquerades as a boost for Africa‘s development, but the reality is that it’s nothing less that a new scramble for Africa, writes Jason Hickel.

The last decade has seen a remarkable surge in US economic interest in the continent of Africa. Policymakers who once considered Africa the languid backwater of global economics are now rushing in to stake a claim in the continent’s enormous resource endowment.

Most of this effort operates with a rhetoric focused on ‘partnership’ and ‘development’, with the vision of using US trade and investment to lift Africans out of poverty. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exemplified this attitude when she spoke last year at a US-Africa trade policy forum, saying, ‘Let’s help each other make Africa all that it can be.’

But a quick look at the trade policy itself shows that this sugary rhetoric of American benevolence and concern for African welfare is deeply misleading. It does little more than cloak an agenda firmly rooted in economic realpolitik.

Michael Battle, the US Ambassador to the African Union, has revealed the blunt urgency of this agenda in a candid but troubling statement: ‘If we don’t invest on the African continent now, we will find that China and India have absorbed its resources without us, and we will wake up and wonder what happened to our golden opportunity of investment.’

The centerpiece of US trade policy for Africa is the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Signed into law by President Clinton in 2000, AGOA is, according to Congress, ‘perhaps the most significant American initiative on Africa in our country’s history’. It provides trade preferences for duty-free entry into the United States for certain goods from sub-Saharan Africa, which is touted as a way to boost African business by encouraging exports. President Bush signed the AGOA Acceleration Act of 2004, which extends the policy until 2015.

THE BIG CATCH

It’s hard to quarrel with the idea that reduced trade barriers around American markets would be a boon for African exporters. The quintessential example is Lesotho, whose textile industry has flourished since joining AGOA and now exports more than $400 million worth of garments to the United States annually.

But there’s a catch. The US president reserves the right to reevaluate each country for AGOA eligibility on an annual basis; 41 made the cut last year. In order to qualify, African countries have to meet a specific set of stringent ‘conditions’.

Topping the list is the requirement that the beneficiary promote ‘a market-based economy that protects private property rights … and minimises government interference in the economy through such measures as price controls, subsidies, and government ownership of economic assets.’ In addition – and here’s the big one – the beneficiary must make progress toward ‘the elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment’.

In other words, AGOA eligibility requires not just mild economic deregulation but the outright destruction of any and all tariff protections, flinging open African markets to a flood of American goods that inevitably undermine local industry. And African countries don’t really have a choice in the matter, for if they refuse to meet these conditions, they effectively forfeit their access to the American market.

For all of the positive spin that US policymakers put on AGOA, nobody ever so much as mentions these draconian measures, which are easily as destructive as the dreaded ‘structural adjustment’ conditions that the International Monetary Fund attaches to its loans. Essentially, AGOA amounts to a coercive free trade agreement with most of the subcontinent.

Given that AGOA requires its beneficiaries to eliminate barriers to US investment, it’s not surprising that the balance of trade comes out strongly in favour of the United States. Trade data shows that Benin, for example, has exported almost nothing to the United States since it became an AGOA member, but has imported some $600 million worth of US goods that have significantly undercut local producers. Some countries do actually export a great deal under AGOA rules – but only those with substantial petroleum and mineral deposits.

Take Angola, for instance; 99 per cent of all of Angola’s exports under AGOA have been energy-related. In the Congo, that number reaches closer to 100 per cent. The same is true of Nigeria, Botswana, and every other country with an oil and mineral portfolio. Indeed, more than 80 per cent of all exports under AGOA fall under this sector.

AGOA, in other words, is designed to pry open new markets for US goods while making it easier for the United States to extract oil and minerals. And since most of Africa’s oil and minerals are controlled by Western corporations like Exxon, Shell, and Anglo-American, this is hardly an arrangement designed to benefit African businesses.

DUBIOUS ELIGIBILITY

If that’s the tragedy, then here’s the farce. AGOA actually does include a number of progressive conditions for membership. In order to qualify, beneficiaries must develop ‘economic policies to reduce poverty’, uphold ‘the rule of law, political pluralism, and the right of due process, a fair trial, and equal protection’, construct ‘a system to combat corruption and bribery’, and refrain from ‘gross violations of human rights’.

In addition, beneficiaries must implement ‘the protection of worker rights, including the right to organize and bargain collectively, a prohibition on the use of any form of forced or compulsory labor, a minimum age for the employment of children, and acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health.”

In practice, however, none of this actually applies. Countries renowned for corruption, human rights abuses, and labour law violations are routinely approved for AGOA eligibility. Indeed, the countries with the most flagrant abuses are those that trade the most under AGOA, giving blatant lie to the claim that good governance is a necessary precondition for successful US investment in Africa. Cameroon, for example, enjoys AGOA eligibility even though the government there rules an undemocratic, one-party state, regularly obstructs political meetings, harasses journalists, tortures human rights activists, and turns a blind eye to child labour. But it has a lot of oil.

Neighbouring Chad also enjoys AGOA eligibility, despite rampant corruption and a long tradition of arbitrary detentions and extra-judicial killings. But it has the Chad-Cameroon pipeline – the single biggest US investment in Sub-Saharan Africa – and Bush and Obama have been devoted to protecting the project’s US investors.

Eritrea is another example. In 2003, the UN named Eritrea one of the ‘World’s Most Repressive Regimes’. But it gets AGOA eligibility in exchange for having joined ‘the coalition of the willing’ during Bush’s war in Iraq. Burkina Faso, Angola, Swaziland, and the Congo all benefit from similar double standards.

The issue here is not just that the United States benefits from corrupt and repressive regimes, but that while AGOA claims to create incentives for political reform in Africa, it actually does the opposite. By encouraging the deregulation of oil and mineral based economies, AGOA contributes to the development of ‘rentier states’ that do not have to rely on income taxes for their revenue.

Such states have no incentive to build up a strong middle class, diversify their economies, or respond to the needs of their citizens. In turn, citizens have no incentive to scrutinise government priorities. As the social contract between citizens and the state erodes, endemic corruption inevitably follows, and states become increasingly repressive in order to maintain their grip on power.

This is what economists call ‘the resource curse’ or ‘the paradox of plenty’. An over-reliance on huge oil and mineral deposits ends up generating corruption, inequality, and widespread poverty instead of positive development outcomes. This pattern contradicts the common assumption that economic liberalisation translates into political freedom or democratic reforms.

WHO BENEFITS?

Although AGOA purports to leverage exports as a way of boosting economic development in Africa, it does not stipulate that the exporting companies must be African. Indeed, most of them are American, Chinese, and Indian. The vast majority of beneficiaries under AGOA are not impoverished Africans, but wealthy foreign corporations.

Indeed, AGOA’s insistence on the elimination of local trade barriers allows US companies to bid freely on things like mineral concessions and government contracts. And given that these companies have deep capital reserves, they can usually win, effectively blocking out their African competitors.

In addition, when it comes to industries like textile manufacturing, AGOA stipulates that producers must use US raw materials, which effectively blocks investment in local upstream sectors. Furthermore, because AGOA requires that goods exported to the United States ‘originate’ in the host country, Chinese and Indian clothing manufacturers frequently label their goods ‘Made in Kenya’ and transship them to the United States through Africa to get preferential treatment. The overall effect, then, is that AGOA does not create greater market share for African companies but actively diminishes it.

One might argue that regardless of where the investment comes from, at least it creates jobs. This may be true. But AGOA does not require that the new jobs go to Africans. Indeed, many of the extractive industries that benefit from AGOA import highly skilled labour from developed countries like the United States.

In Angola, for example, most of Exxon’s engineers are Americans. Furthermore, the jobs that AGOA does create for Africans are often deeply exploitative. AGOA has encouraged the development of Export Processing Zones (EPZs) across the continent, where labour laws are nearly non-existent and wages are rock-bottom in order to attract foreign manufacturers. In the textile industry, the net effect is that Asian sweatshops relocate to Africa to take advantage of AGOA incentives.

In Kenya in 2006, the average wage of EPZ workers in Asian sweatshops was a paltry 20 cents per hour, which amounts to barely more than a dollar a day – the lowest wages in the country. Most EPZ workers – the majority of whom are women and doubly vulnerable to exploitation – have to work excessive overtime just to meet their basic needs, and live in constant danger of being laid off without compensation.

CHANGING AGOA

It doesn’t have to be this way. With a few thoughtful changes, AGOA could be used to make trade work for everyday Africans.

First, the economic liberalisation condition should be dropped. Rich countries like the United States, Britain, Japan, and China initially used tariff protections and subsidies to promote their industries in the early stages of development; it’s cruel to deny those basic strategies to African countries desperately in need of development. Second, the political reform conditions should be taken seriously, and used to leverage best practices in human rights and labour law.

Third, local content rules should require that all US investments in Africa should tier up over a set period to at least 80 per cent local labour and local contracts – characterised by genuine registration – and should require investment in local capacity where it proves too poor to meet the necessary standards. Finally, targeted quotas should be used to channel foreign investment to where it’s needed most, rather than to where the regulations are most relaxed.

But changes of this order are not on the horizon, for – as I have demonstrated – the United States is concerned less about the well-being of Africans than about meeting its own energy needs and promoting the interests of American corporations. We need to cut through the deceptive rhetoric of US trade policy and ask the tough questions: Who really benefits from AGOA? Does AGOA enhance welfare and development, or facilitate extraction and exploitation?

As Ambassador Battle’s statement illustrates, the present trade arrangement between the United States and Africa is eerily reminiscent of the era of colonial conquest. In 1875, as Europe set its sights on Africa’s vast riches, King Leopold II of Belgium wrote to his ambassador in London, ‘I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.’ It’s America’s turn now, and it appears that the Obama administration – like Bush before him – is driven by a similarly disturbing vision: a new scramble for Africa.

Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Jason Hickel is an instructor and PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on trade, development, and political conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Business in Africa: It’s Boom Time if You Can Dance

There is much more happening in Africa than what you see on TV. There is a reason the world’s big businesses are paying closer attention to the continent known for its challenges like poverty, disease, gang rape and high maternal and infant mortality. Some of the portrayals are real.

Last week, former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo said ‘

“The lack of a dependable electricity supply hampers production, the absence of good roads slows transport, and insufficient access to modern technology limits industrialization and integration into the global marketplace. The resultant inefficiencies make Africa the most difficult and expensive place in which to do business; they also slow economic growth and frustrate general development”

President Obasanjo was 100% right is the statement he made but he was yet very optimistic about the prospects for the continent, a fact that is often clouded by the pessimism. Similarly, Mr. Kofi Annan in a speech delivered at the Exeter College on February 13 portrayed a similar sentiment: hope and excitement in the years ahead for the continent of Africa. Reports from several international bodies and financial institutions point to a continent experiencing an economic boom that is creating numerous opportunities not just for the African people, but for investors and business owners all over the world.

As Kofi Annan pointed out in his speech, the country with the world’s most sustained and strongest economic growth over the last four decades is in Africa; it is Botswana. In fact, the IMF assessment establishes that the African continent will have as many as seven of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world over the next decade.  The McKinsey report estimates that by 2030, the continent’s top 18 cities will have a combined spending power of $1.3 trillion. These are the reasons why multinational corporations can no longer afford to ignore the continent.

I still believe that Africa faces numerous challenges but those who have the eyes to see beyond these challenges are taking the lead and, by the time some of us wake up, the lead may be too big to catch up.

Last week I had conversation with a friend about business opportunities in our home countries. In the 45 minutes discussion I had with the friend, I can recollect that not less than 30 minutes were spent on listing the impossible. We might be right, but that is exactly what entrepreneurship is about. An entrepreneur is “one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen, amidst risks and challenges, in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods”.

I would like to end with laudable example of what people like you and I have embarked upon to change their lives and change their societies.  A group of African traditional dancers in Botswana met and decided to form an alliance to preserve and promote the rich and historic culture of Botswana traditional dance and music. The group, MatsosaNgwao Tradition Dancers, has being performing live music shows in the region over the past three years to promote this African cultural heritage. The MatsosaNgwao Tradition Dance group was the typical neighborhood dance group, unknown and not recognized beyond their physical location. But the group’s efforts did not go unnoticed. The Department of Culture and Youth invited them on a trip to Mumbai, India, for a cultural exchange event in 2009. It was then that the youngsters realized how far their talents could take them. Today, the group is hot. The waiting list for appointment is long. To have them say “yes” is a lifelong accomplishment

What is fascinating about the MatsosaNgwao Tradition Dancers is their impetus; it was simply to help their community preserve its cultural and historic heritage.  Money and fame are the bye-products.

Many communities in Sub-Saharan Africa are endowed with functional African music accompanying work, childbirth, marriage, hunting and political activities most of which are normally associated with a particular dance. Similarly, other regions of the African continent have distinct musical and dance traditions that have not yet been exploited economically. MatsosaNgwao Tradition Dancers have shown that these are untapped gold mine in today’s world.

Out of school and thinking of what the government can do? Look at how the MatsosaNgwao Tradition Dancers did it. Opportunites abound in all areas.

If you are an investor seeking to grow your business globally or an ordinary person seeking opportunities, keep Africa on top of mind. It is still early enough to bring your ideas to the table and join the competition.

MatsosaNgwao Tradition Dancers
MatsosaNgwao Tradition Dancers

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Multi-National Corporations play it ‘dirty’ in Africa

Former US Vice President and CEO of Halliburton
Former US Vice President and CEO of Halliburton

Corruption is a worldwide problem. For convenience sake, it has been widely associated with developing countries  for the most part. It would be dishonest on my part to defend the developing world against charges of corruption. But the story is never complete when we only call the developing country like Ghana or Nigeria corrupt. That means we are only looking at one side of the coin.

Multi-national Corporations (MNCs) with roots in the developing world have a dominating role in propagating this disease in the developing world.

Last week, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of Nigeria announced plans to charge Dick Cheney, former Vice President (VP) of the US, with corruption. Mr. Cheney acted as the CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Documents coming to light reveal that during that time, the company participated in corrupt and fraudulent activities in Nigeria. One source states that about $180 million was used by Halliburton to bride its way to acquire lucrative natural gas contacts in Nigeria.
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This is just one example of large companies who have the resources to hire experts who can cope with the bureaucratic hurdles normally characteristic of most African countries and obscure rules of play.

I’m very much aware of the situation in Ghana. Local entrepreneurs fight and give up in securing land and other licenses to start operating businesses while International Corporation can work around the system overnight and be in business the next morning. They have the means to “oil” the administrative machinery and speed up long drawn-out decision-making processes.

These corporations are not only infecting our system with the disease that we’ve been fighting for decades, in fact, some of them are directly or indirectly responsible for civil unrest and wars.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it is estimated that nearly five million people have died in wars, the primary drive of which is the fulfillment of the Western economies and people’s unquenchable craving for high-quality jewels and precious minerals such as diamond. Where do the rebels get their arms from? They’re surely not locally made.

The educated elite in Africa benefit from this serfdom. This has become a war of attrition. The system of corruption propagated by MNCs in collaboration with African politicians has become a type of civil war in which the man or woman on the street cannot distinguish between a friend and a foe. They know that these corporations and their local leaders are making fortunes but they see none of the benefits in their everyday lives. Gold and diamonds from Ghana, diamond from the DRC, oil from Nigeria, cocoa from Ivory Coast and the list goes on,  but a tin of milk is a luxury to most families.

It is easy for richer countries to attribute African development problems to corruption by African leaders. That is just part of the story. The role multi-national Corporations  play should be addressed by their respective governments if these governments really care about Africa.  The Western media needs to do a better job covering their corporations doing business in Africa.

I trust that the Nigerian EFCC hold Halliburton according to the very letter of the laws of the land. I’ll also have my ears widely open with regard to what steps the US Department of State takes. If I find something that I think will  interest you, I’ll report it as usual. After all, that’s the very purpose this website was built to serve. Please check back

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Lobbying for Africa

Lobbying is a form of advocacy with the intention of influencing decisions made by legislators and officials in the government by individuals, other legislators, constituents, or advocacy groups.

Lobbyists exist for diverse interest groups: individuals with disabilities, specific industries, nations, and institutions, and so forth.

Jewish lobby for instance have a strong presence in the US capital and play a significant role in shaping policies affecting business, international finance, the media, academia, and popular culture.

Hispanic groups are well represented by Hispanic politicians who vigorously take on the specific issues affecting Hispanic people. Hispanic politicians never hide, never run away and never apologize when it comes to issues affecting Hispanics.

Last summer, after Arizona passed its tough immigration law, Hispanic politicians reacted with fervor. Some compared the decision to apartheid while others embark on peaceful demonstration and hunger strikes. They articulated that if the law affects one Hispanic, it affects all Hispanics.

It has always baffled me why African American leaders shy away from speaking out on Africa and the issues affecting the nearly one billion people on the African continent. African American politicians and leaders in general speak narrowly, though very well, about issues touching the ‘African American’ in the US. Unlike their Latino counterparts who speak for Mexico, for example, as though they are Mexicans, African American leaders address African American problems and that is enough for them.

Many African countries have made significant progress in creating a more business-friendly environment as well as impressive progress towards political stability. In spite of these, trade policies in most western economies are not designed to make these markets accessible to African goods and services. In fact, some of them are calculated to accomplish the exact opposite.

What is needed is an advocate who will stand up in the Congress, Senate or Parliament and fight for a more afro-centric trade, immigration and environmental policies. The African-American politicians can play a leading role in this.

It is my hope that African Americans leaders, students, musicians, and pastors will realize one day that our destinies are together. The African American will not be accorded the respect and dignity he or she deserves in this country or elsewhere, until the current perception of Africa in the mind of the Westerner is expunged. And this requires work, not only by the African leaders and people but also by their African American brothers and sisters.

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Modern day slavery in America

West African Girls Now Free

CNN Amber Lyin talks to 2 girls brought to the the US and forced to work in hair salons.

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New Jersey — They arrived in the United States from West Africa, young girls held against their will and forced to work for hours on end. But this time, it didn’t happen hundreds of years ago.

Nicole’s journey started in 2002, when she was barely 12, in her small village in western Ghana. She and about 20 other girls were held in plain sight, but always under the watchful eyes of their captors.

“It was like being trapped, like being in a cage,” said “Nicole,” now 19. CNN agreed not to use her real name.

“I always have to behave, behave, behave, behave. No freedom at all.”

The girls’ families sent them to the United States after being assured they would receive a better education. But once they arrived, they were forced to work in hair braiding shops across the Newark area — just a short drive from New York City, right in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

The girls, who are now young women, have never spoken publicly before, until now.

“It was horrible,” said Zena Amevor, who was 15 when she was brought over from Togo. “Sometimes there was not enough food for us to eat. … It was like a prison. I was just stuck there. … It was horrible.”

For the first time, the former slaves provided details about their horrifying odyssey and an intimate view into the world of human trafficking and contemporary slavery.

“Jacqueline” was 13 when her family sent her to the United States, not knowing that a woman she called “auntie” was a human trafficker. It was unclear if the woman was a blood relative.

“My dad … worked hard so I could go to school, so when my auntie came and told my family that I could go to a school in the U.S. … they trusted her,” she said. “Everyone was happy about it.”

The girls worked in the salons right out in the open, in front of customers. They were on their feet all day, sometimes for more than 12 hours, weaving intricate and elaborate hair braids, seven days a week.

This went on for more than five years.
“We stood there all day, just braiding,” Jacqueline said. “If they want really small braids, you stay there sometimes until 2 a.m. … That’s every day.”

At times, they were forced to braid the hair of American teenagers no older than they were — girls who were free and had no idea the people braiding their hair were slaves.

“I wished I could go with them,” Nicole said. “Most of the time, I’d end up just breaking down later crying … because when I see teenagers going around, going to the movies and just being a teen … I just couldn’t understand why my life has to be this way … ”

In one of the many ironies in the case, the customers whose hair was braided by the slave girls were mostly African-American women, many of whom could have been descendants of slaves brought to America generations ago.

Slavery through trafficking continues widely today in the United States, though often undetected, according to law enforcement officials.

Nicole, Zena, Jacqueline and the other girls were held in groups in several houses around Newark and East Orange, New Jersey. The girls were brought to the United States at different times between 2002 and 2007, according to court documents. As the group grew, the traffickers ran out of places to put them and had to rent more living quarters.

The homes were always in the middle of residential areas with manicured lawns and nice houses, often near churches, schools and community buildings.

“I think it’s hard for people to believe that in 2010, we have people who actually put people in slavery,” said Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, whose office successfully prosecuted the case. “It’s the most fundamental and intolerable violation of human rights.”

The traffickers convicted in this case were a mother, father and son who also came from West Africa, according to court documents and law enforcement officials.

Nicole, Zena and Jacqueline described living in fear shortly after they arrived in the United States, forced to work by day at the hair salons and sleeping in groups on the floor at night.

“When I got here … I asked her if I was going to school, and she said there was no school,” Jacqueline said, referring to her auntie, the trafficking ringleader.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to school?’ [and] she said, ‘no’ … and that was her decision and she wasn’t going to change it.”

The captors controlled the girls by beating them, withholding food, keeping them separated from anyone else and, at times, through sexual abuse, according to court documents.

The young women who spoke to CNN described years of cruelty, physical abuse, beatings with wood or metal objects, extreme isolation and sleeping on mattresses on floors in filthy conditions. Even their phone calls back to their families were monitored by their captors.

“I always thought of running [away], but I know nobody,” Zena said. “I don’t know where to go, didn’t have [any] friends, nobody to talk to, so it was kind of hard. … I had nowhere to go to.”

Five years after the girls began arriving, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents received a tip and began extensive surveillance on the houses where the girls were kept.

After months of surveillance, the ICE agents raided the houses in 2007. Inside, they found the girls and mattresses on the floor. The traffickers had hidden bags of cash and the girls’ passports.

Peter Edge, who led the team of agents, said none of the girls’ customers ever called officials to help.

“Hundreds of people came into these salons, they probably witnessed things out of the ordinary,” said Edge, special agent in charge of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations in Newark.

“These girls were shielded from the outside world, virtually hidden in plain sight … from everything else that was around them.”

Edge and the girls said several customers asked about the girls’ ages, and the girls — following the orders of their captors — lied and said they were 18.

“I wish one of my customers … would have gone to police,” Nicole said. “I wish they would have helped me.”

In the 2007 raid, the ICE agents found a notebook the girls used to track the tips they received, but couldn’t keep, at the hair salon. Ironically, on the cover of the notebook was a picture of the Statue of Liberty.

More than two years later, Akouavi Afolabi; her husband, Lassissi Afolabi; and their son, Dereck Hounakey, were convicted of running the trafficking ring. Akouavi Afolabi was the ringleader, while her husband and son were accomplices, according to court documents.

In September of this year, a Newark court sentenced Akouavi Afolabi to 27 years in prison, while her husband received 24 years and their son received 4½ years.

The girls had to testify against the Afolabis in court.

“I remember crying. All I did was cry. It was overwhelming,” Nicole said. “I told myself, ‘She finally got what she deserved’ … she did really, really wrong. She treated us bad. And she was heartless … and I’m happy she was caught.”

Court records show the Afolabis knew many of the families whose girls they lured away to become their slaves. They had an elaborate scheme to lure the girls: Mrs. Afolabi would approach families of young girls in Ghana and Togo, where she had connections, and tell the families she would give the girls an education in the United States. They then used fraudulent visa papers to sneak the girls into the country.

Experts say the main reason for most modern-day human trafficking is money.

“Human trafficking is extremely profitable,” said Bridgette Carr, a law professor and a national expert on human trafficking.

The customers at the hair braiding salon where Zena and Nicole were forced to work would sometimes pay as much as $200 to $400 for elaborate braiding that would take many hours to complete.

The traffickers took every penny made by the girls, both in tips and payments for their hair braiding. They made about $4 million, according to court documents.

“It’s so profitable that we are seeing some drug traffickers get out of drug trafficking and into human trafficking,” said Carr, who teaches law at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor.

Carr heads a clinic that is helping Nicole and many of the other girls move ahead with their lives.

“Sadly, the work of our clinic is necessary in every community in America,” she said. “Human trafficking, also known as modern-day slavery, exists in big cities, in small towns, in rural areas with no towns, exists in restaurants, in hair salons, in hotels and in farmwork.

“Almost every industry you can think of, there is an opportunity there for someone to be exploited. This is everywhere in the U.S.”

Today, Nicole, Zena, Jacqueline and the other girls are trying to move on with their lives. Several are in high school, and one has recently been accepted into college.

Most of the girls have not been able to return home to see their families in West Africa. When asked why she agreed to finally talk out about such a painful chapter of her life, Nicole said she wanted to raise awareness about what other young girls may be going through.

“I want to tell people that slavery exists,” she said. “It’s huge, and it’s really happening here.”


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Turkish PM: Africa needs trade more than aid

In his address to EU-Africa summit held Monday in Libya, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that African countries need trade, investment, technical and scientific cooperation more than assistance. Erdogan is the guest of honor at the summit meeting.

We find this encouraging because last week we presented an article proposing a shift from the AID model to more trade and accessible  western markets.

You may read the article from here

We will welcome your opinion on this or an alternative veiw.

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South of the Sahara: Boom times, at least in parts

Pratibha Thaker: regional director, Africa, Economist Intelligence Unit

Sub-Saharan Africa will be one of the fastest-growing regions of the world in 2011, thanks to surging demand both from abroad (from China and India in particular) and at home (fuelled by urbanisation and consumerism). As a result, investors will find it increasingly difficult to ignore the area, despite its—justified—reputation as a tough place for business because of political uncertainty, corruption, weak infrastructure and inconsistent regulation.

A test of Africa’s democratic credentials will take place in the early part of 2011, when Nigeria—the region’s most populous country, largest oil producer and second-biggest economy after South Africa—elects a new president and legislature. The election, expected to be won by the ruling People’s Democratic Party and President Goodluck Jonathan, will not be fully “free and fair”. However, if a more effective government emerges, the benefits will be felt throughout the region. Several other sub-Saharan states are planning to hold elections during the year. They include, in rough chronological order: Benin, Uganda, Chad, Madagascar, Zambia, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Gabon—and in January southern Sudan is due to hold a referendum on independence (see article).


More than just commodities

As well as hosting the region’s most important election, west Africa will be the location of Africa’s fastest-growing economy in 2011: Ghanaian growth is set to reach double digits as oil comes on stream in significant quantities for the first time. The inflow of money will pose a stiff test of institutional accountability, but Ghana’s democratic record is among the best in the region (power has regularly shifted between the two major parties), offering hope that the country will use its new-found oil wealth more wisely than others have done.

Certainly, oil wealth is no guarantee of prosperity, as demonstrated by producers such as Equatorial Guinea and Chad. However, oil will drive growth in Angola, the region’s third-largest economy, Congo-Brazzaville and, within a couple of years, Uganda. Meanwhile, mineral producers, such as Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Zambia, and strong agricultural economies, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi, will benefit from rising demand and should achieve economic growth of 5% and above in 2011.

Ghanaian growth is set to reach double digits

Sub-Saharan Africa will be more than just a commodity play, however, as urbanisation and an expanding middle class increase demand for modern goods and services. The arrival of new submarine fibre-optic cables will boost bandwidth, cut costs and stimulate businesses that rely on technology. With recovery in Western economies still looking fragile, there will be a growing appetite to invest in Africa, adding to the forays already made by China and India.

The fastest-growing areas will be telecoms, banking, retailing and manufacturing. The provision of financial services to ordinary people, including tele-banking, will thrive. In addition, outsiders will want to buy or lease cheap agricultural land. Food-importing countries poor in land and water but rich in capital, such as the Gulf states, and countries with large populations and food-security concerns, such as China, South Korea and India, will be at the forefront. Private capital will also play a vital role—through privatisation and public-private partnerships—in modernising the region’s inadequate infrastructure, especially its transport and electricity networks. Several countries will seek private investment in power generation, although their weak regulation will remain an obstacle.

So in 2011 sub-Saharan Africa will find itself newly fashionable. But investors will need to distinguish between the countries that are starting to live up to their potential and those whose politics and policy will keep them stuck in the slow lane.


 

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