Chess.
In 1979, something happened that took the global oil industry by storm.
A strike by 37,000 workers at Iran’s national oil refineries led to massive protests; foreign workers fled the country; the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country; Ayatollah Khomeini soon became the new leader of Iran.
Global oil output staggered. The price of crude oil more than doubled. Widespread panic resulted. Economic recessions were triggered in the United States. French, Italian and German car brands (Fiat, Peugeot, Mercedes, etc) and Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers (Ford, Chrysler, GM) lost the market, and cut jobs. Mass marketed Japanese exports (Toyota, Honda, Hyundai etc) would later displace them in the automotive market.
Long lines appeared at American gas stations. Ideas like ‘Daylight Saving Time’ became public policy. The U.S. Department of Transportation found that observing DST saved 600,000 barrels per year. In response, other western governments initiated multibillion-dollar research programs to develop alternatives to oil. In Europe, many nations took steps to reduce their dependence on global oil. They switched from oil to coal, then natural gas, and nuclear power; today, you call it a clean energy revolution. It was just politics.
The master stroke happened in Nigeria.
In July 1979, Nigeria’s Government increased the interest held by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation in foreign oil company operations, from 55 percent to 60 percent in one day. The shock move jolted the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, comprising the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. On a list from 1 to 100, Nigeria was the world’s 6th largest oil producer.
‘Chess Moves’.
Barely letting them recover, on 30 July 1979, Nigeria dispatched a telegram to Shell BP, stating that it was taking over the British Petroleum Company’s remaining stake in Nigerian oil operations. We stated we were doing this because of the United Kingdom’s recent decision to allow B.P. to sell crude oil to South Africa.
We called the British move “a clever ruse for sending Nigerian oil to enemies of Africans in South Africa.”
Hence, “North Sea oil will be released to South Africa while Nigerian oil is made to take its place in European markets.”
Henceforth, associated rights to ship crude from Nigeria would be denied B.P. and the company’s 60 percent interest in B.P. Nigeria Ltd., were immediately nationalized. All B.P. staff members, except those retained on contract by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation were ordered to leave the country by Aug. 31, 1979. Nigeria gave other foreign oil companies the assurance that they had nothing to fear as long as they continued “to respect the policies of the Nigerian Government.”
In New York, with global oil markets in turmoil following the revolution in Iran, officials of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group stated they “regret” Nigeria’s nationalization move. Headlines in the New York Times screamed: “BP Cuts Crude Supply, Citing Nigeria Takeover”. The United Kingdom lost about 300,000 barrels daily of crude supplies, in addition to 100,000 barrels daily it had previously lost following Nigerian charges that it had allowed tankers that had docked in South Africa to pick up Nigerian crude.
But none of that is the news.
The news, from New York, is that the president of the United States wants the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB) out. Dr Akinwumi Adesina, a former Nigerian agriculture minister, is due for re-election for a second term at the helm of Africa’s leading development finance institution. May 28 2020 was the 5th anniversary of Adesina’s election.
Under his leadership, the bank has maintained sound financial and risk management, excellent liquidity and strong shareholder support, and an AAA rating by all the four major global rating agencies, four years in a row. The AfDB is now ranked 4th in the world in terms of transparency among 45 bilateral & multilateral banking institutions.
In 2010, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed Adesina as one of 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals and in 2017, he was awarded the World Food Prize, also known as the “Nobel Prize for Agriculture”. Dr Adesina used the entire $250,000 Laureate award prize to establish a fund to support youth in agriculture.
In 2018, Adesina helped create the AfDB-sponsored Africa Investment Forum which in 2018 and 2019 attracted more than $80 billion in infrastructure investment interests into the continent. The US opposed the creation of the Forum, saying it did not deem it necessary.
In 2020, Dr Adesina led the AfDB to capitalize from $93 billion to $208 billion, the highest single increase in the bank’s worth since 1964.
Since Adesina assumed its leadership on 1 September 2015, the African bank has backed major agriculture, energy and infrastructure projects. These include the Ethiopia-Djibouti Power Interconnection Project, the Ethiopia-Kenya Transmission Highway Project, the Kariba North and Ithezi-Thezi Power Hydro Generation Projects in Zambia-Zimbabwe, which provided power to the SADC region through the Southern Africa Power Pool, the first inter-regional 400 KV power inter-connector between Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya linking East African Community and Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, and the new Kotoka International Airport, Accra.
Other important energy infrastructure projects financed by the AfDB include the Kariba North and Ithezi-Thezi Power Hydro Generation Projects in Zambia-Zimbabwe, which provides power to the SADC region through the Southern Africa Power Pool.
The new 120-metre Alemondji bridge on the CU9 corridor linking Lomé, Cinkansé and Ouagadougou, alone, is worth $325 million.
All this big spending displaces the United States from a financing role it previously held through its World Bank and IMF.
In 2018, Adesina helped create the AfDB-sponsored Africa Investment Forum which in 2018 and 2019 attracted more than $80 billion in infrastructure investment interests into the continent. The US opposed the creation of the Forum as it did not deem it necessary and ostensibly outside the remit of the bank.
In February 2020, the President of the World Bank, David Malpass, criticised the AfDB for excessive lending, accusing them of contributing to Africa’s debt problems. Speaking at a World Bank IMF debt forum in Washington on 10 February, Malpass, who is an American, said the AfDB was “pushing large amounts of money into Nigeria, South Africa, and others without the strongest program to sustain it and push it forward.”
The AfDB dismissed Malpass’ accusation as “impugning the integrity of the African Development Bank, undermining our governance systems, and incorrectly insinuating that we operate under different standards from the World Bank.”
The US is also unhappy with Adesina for not being critical of China’s investment activities in Africa. “Do not be overly concerned about China’s presence in Africa economically. Be more concerned about America’s absence,” he’s quoted to have once told a US audience.
On account of the US’s disruptive and unashamedly colonial interference, former President and former AU chair Olusegun Obasanjo this week signed off a letter to 13 former African Presidents, warning of the risk of a “hijack” that is “foreign to AfDB governing articles”.
Obasanjo was the Nigerian leader who kicked out the British & the Dutch from Nigeria’s oil company 41 years ago.
US interests have long been a neocolonial barrier to Africa’s future. Neocolonialism is a key word often used by Kwame Nkrumah and other panafricanists. Apart from murder plots, coups & counter coups, covert CIA operations and open coups like the assassination of Libya’s Gaddhafi, there are constant covert Cambridge-analytica style social media campaigns and daily destabilizing media propaganda from mainstream publications.
In 1964, civil rights leader Malcolm X visited some newly independent African countries.
He had this to say:“ … in most of the African countries, that are the most pro-American, interwoven into the American way of thought, you find that the conditions, economic conditions, of those countries are usually the worst.
The countries that are identified with America the most are the ones that are the most backward and the ones that have the most problems…
…the Nigerian people are great. But by the same token the United States influence in Nigeria has turned it almost into a colony.
I think Nigeria’s problems stem primarily from it’s over-exertion on the part of outside interests. The United States presence in Nigeria is far beyond what it should be, and its influence is far beyond what it should be.”
Unquote.
Malcolm X was murdered 2 months after declaring that. And, yes, in New York.
Apart from the “American way of thought”, there are many other neocolonial barriers to Africa’s development, such as visas, borders, religion and colonial language barriers.
According to global consulting firm McKinsey, Dakar (Senegal), and Kano (Nigeria) are among African cities that will develop markets worth more than $10 billion by 2020. Imagine the buying and selling Africans could actually do, if Hausa speakers in francophone Dakar didn’t need to “do a French stopover” before interlocuting with their anglophone/arabized brothers in Kano?
That’s the problem the 2019 African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) was signed to solve. In France’s Europe, up to 70% of trade is among other European nations. In Africa, that number is 10-15 percent. If successfully implemented, the agreement will create a single African market of over a billion consumers with a total GDP of over $3 trillion. This will make Africa the largest free trade area in the world. Does that excite you? Can you think of one or two people, countries maybe, who are not jumping at this possibility? I can.
Improving trade is why we have an AfDB, since 1964, to finance the infrastructure and commerce between us.
Why is America getting in the way??
Wait: why is the US a stakeholder in an AFRICAN AfDB? Because they love us & want to give us free money?
Or are there African shareholders in the US treasury?
The top 5 shareholders of the AfDB are Nigeria (8.20%), USA (6.60%), Egypt (5.60%), Japan (5.50%), and South Africa (5.10%).
The voting power on the bank’s Board is split according to the size of each member’s share, currently 60%-40% between African and non-African member countries.
Isn’t it time for African Union countries to jointly acquire those shares?
It’s 1979 again, and it’s time to play chess.
Nationalize America’s interests in our AfDB.
There’s perhaps no time more fitting to demonstrate African unity than in this month of our African Day, 57 years after our first generation of panafricanists fought to free us from colonial rule, and prevent future neocolonialist control.
•Written By AYO ADENE