Algiers shows Africa's struggle between radical zeal and dependency

African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. [AFP]

There were two overlapping African conferences in Algiers, Algeria’s capital on the Mediterranean Sea. Algeria and Kenya have a few colonial and demographic similarities. 

In terms demography, while Algiers is roughly the size of Nairobi, each boasting of populations of seven million people, Kenya and Algeria fought bitter anti-colonial wars in the 1950s, the Mau Mau War in Kenya against the British and the Algerian War against the French, which accelerated decolonisation across Africa.

After shaking the existing world order, Kenya and Algeria went separate ways on attaining independence. Kenya lost its ‘revolutionary’ zeal in order to be in good books with the Conceptual West. Algeria retains its revolutionary legacy, pushing for liberation of Western Sahara.

Kenya appears to have surrendered its sovereignty to the Conceptual West and such institutions as the World Bank and the IMF. Algeria, in contrast, is increasingly self-reliant and is seemingly succeeding in reducing dependency. It easily takes care of the health and educational needs of its citizens.

The two overlapping conferences in Algiers promoted Algeria’s image as revolutionary country. Its huge convention centre has capacity to host multiple conferences in the same venue. They were the AU Conference on Pease and Security better known as the Oran process which was named after the Algerian City of Oran. The other was on declaring colonialism a crime against humanity in order to call for reparations for the crime of colonialism. Kenyan embassy officials in Algiers and Addis Ababa, led by Ambassador Kaluma Timothy Mcharo looked after the welfare of Kenyans at the conferences. Mcharo is passionate about ‘technology driven diplomacy’

Of the two conferences, the Oran process appeared to be divisive. A few speakers accused other states of hypocrisy because they supposedly fuelled chaos in various regions. Questions of exactly what security is and the point at which the African Union (AU) and regional bodies should take action were not answerable in satisfactory ways, there was no clarity on the nature of the action to be taken, who would pay for the action and still not appear to be interfering with the internal affairs of a sister state.

Although the African philosophical shift from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union, AU, tended to dilute the non-interfering principle, how to deliver on the promises was vague. Some contributors kept lamenting about ‘donor fatigue’ which was sign of the AU’s sense of helplessness and over dependency on extra-continental powers when it comes to perceptions of peace and security in Africa. The suspicion that some states have on each other made comments about finding alternative to donor funding when it comes to peace and security sounded unrealistic. Since they simply do not trust each other, they are unlikely to find funding alternatives.

The conference on demanding reparations, with a united sense of purpose, had the spirit of the 1945 Pan African Congress in Manchester. Algerian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Attaf, invoked the spirit of the ancestors. “What unites us today,” he said, “is a trust upon all our shoulders - a trust we have no choice but to fulfil, absolute and binding.”

Participants then discussed how to fulfil binding the trust and advanced different arguments to prove colonial criminality and make the case for reparation. Slavery and colonialism were evil products of two intellectual movements in search for European identity to make them superior. The Renaissance helped to create historical amnesia by ignoring over 1000 years in order to clutch on to arrogant Rome and Athens.

The enlightenment preached freedom and natural rights that excluded Africans. That superiority identity allowed Europeans to enslave, kill and loot. To obtain reparation, argued Martin Kimani, previously Kenya’s ambassador to the UN, registers of colonial damages should be created. Hakim Adi, of SOAS, spoke of African dependency on financial institutions as continuity of slavery that needs stopping. The spirit of Manchester lives on.