As the world teeters at the brink of global socioeconomic downturn, emerging solutions from political leaders in many countries tend to focus on issues that bear remote or no relevance to the burgeoning problems. Currently, ideologies play prominent roles. They shape politics and policies and tend to push the mainstream world towards the left of the centre, with some charismatic activists pushing more towards the extreme left as such promoters are now regarded as “woke” ideologues.
Rather than emphasise policies, programmes and projects that impact uniformly on everyone, they generally play divisive politics and roll out permissive policies while in power. The divisive “permissive politics and policies of the West” involves essentially a post-World War II trend, particularly since the 1960s, where Western democracies have increasingly adopted liberalised, tolerant, or legally permissive stances on social, moral and individual rights issues.
This shift is characterised by the liberalisation of morality policies — such as abortion, same-sex marriage and pornography — and the prioritisation of individual autonomy over traditional, religious or collective constraints.
While the West of today has become indistinguishable from the West of some 30 years ago or more, it is rather interesting that Africa, a continent where Western values and lifestyles are prevalent, has largely failed to exhibit any exceptionalism. Rather than latch on to the philosophies and practices that resulted in the West’s growth before the coming decline, African leaders have mostly indulged in practices that further demean the continent, slowing down its social development and economic progress. They have basically indirectly or directly engendered brain drain, in which many educated and professionals leave for the West in droves in search of opportunities.
African countries, despite the general poverty in the lives of their people, keep subsidising the economies of most Western countries, particularly the former colonialists. A prominent example is France, a country that still tries to hold on to 14 Western and Central African former colonies.
The minerals extracted from those countries power France’s economy. Over 50 percent of their foreign reserves are stowed away in France, again powering the country’s economy. The continent-wide prevailing poverty has led to unchecked emigration from Africa to mainly Europe and North America. This has in turn triggered an array of local political reactions, particularly one that is crudely against African immigrants.
African leaders, past and present, are known to have kept huge parts of their countries’ wealth in private bank accounts in Europe and North America, creating conflicting impressions of riches amidst poverty. While industrialisation has largely slowed down, Africa’s economies have failed to keep pace in the service industry, especially with the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution.
A lot of non-governmental organisations sponsored by Western charity and philanthropic organisations have taken up the roles traditionally played by governments of African states in response to the failure of such governments. These cover many critical areas such as agriculture, water supplies, individuals personal health, public health and safety, education and social justice.
The social justice interventions now appear more like a trojan horse in its application to poverty-stricken and poorly developed African countries. It seems the beneficiary populations are now offered ideological hooks through philanthropies as baits.
If such ideas from the West were limited to private donors and philanthropic organisations, it could be regarded as innocuous and harmless. The recipients, who obviously are entitled to their choice, could decide to accept or reject the strings attached to such ostensibly humanitarian interventions. It takes on a different meaning, however, when state-sponsored interventions come with obvious strings attached.
In March 2023, Kamala Harris as the United States vice president came visiting three African countries (Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia) on a bilateral mission. Beneath the mission was a subtle marketing of “woke” LGBTQ ideologies by Kamala Harris. Although, unsurprisingly, the three countries visited by Vice President Harris strongly rejected her woke message, Nigeria about eight years earlier was dealt a severe political blow by President Barack Obama for rejecting the same ideologies. The same year, Kenya also opposed the visiting Obama on the same woke ideology.
We can begin to ask why and when ideologies that are ferociously opposed and rejected by half of the Western world are being packaged alongside aid support for African countries and what exactly the promoters in the West are up to.
The fragility of African countries became so obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the initial permutations and mortality projections proved absolutely wrongheaded, the continent was nonetheless holding the short end of diplomatic stick then. If, truly, vaccines were the true guarantees for survival in that pandemic, the mortality rates would have been in the tens of millions across the entire African continent. In other words, the lack of access to those vaccines that were more or less an exclusive preserve of the Western countries would have meant a great disaster for Africans.
In terms of priority, the Western countries took their own more seriously. Even South Africa that tried to play along by its disclosure on Omicron had reasons to regret as the politics of vaccines and vaccination were turned against South Africa. The excessive measures applied on lockdown in Africa was one of the most brutal. For countries that are predominantly informal economies, with governments unable to determine the essential needs of their people in good times, locking them up forcefully under the pretext of pandemic lockdown was an unprecedented punishment. It is most unlikely if African leaders learnt anything significant from the lockdown and vaccine non-availability then. More importantly, the draconian condition involving vaccine certificates appears like one of the policies from the West that was not well scrutinised and rejected by African leaders. The simple logic that most rural and urban Africans were already locked down before the pandemic took a global dimension was enough to invalidate the pressure over vaccine certificates, especially if sound science and public health principles were applied.
One of the more recent Western permissive policies that seem to be gaining traction is partly promoted by the United Nations and Western countries under liberal regimes. The application of two-tier rules is becoming widespread now. Countries in Europe and North America (US and Canada specifically) that allowed in refugees on a large scale immigration under various considerations are now grappling with the consequences.
In Europe, the crisis of unchecked migration is brewing and the locals are reacting. This is becoming politicians’ nightmares or campaign slogans. The surging population of Muslim immigrants in the UK, Germany, France and the recurring reported cases of violence linked to some of them who are illegal immigrants are becoming a reason for worry, not only within such countries but within others that are now increasingly tightening their immigration rules.
The European Union recently began to meet a backlash and resistance from Italy, Hungary and Poland on their refusal to liberalise immigration and allow in immigrants on a large scale. Hungary, for instance, has to pay huge daily fines for as long as it refuses to comply with the EU’s instructions on loosening its borders for immigrants to enter. Recently, the Netherlands vowed to send back hundreds of thousands of Syrian immigrants very soon. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni recently ordered the revocation of the visa and deportation of one Pakistani Muslim immigrant for preaching violence. The recent killings of Jews in the open in Australia is forcing the country to reconsider its disposition to immigrants from developing countries.
The second coming of President Donald Trump has changed the situation of illegal immigrants that poured into the US in their thousands during Joe Biden’s regime. There have been reported cases of assaults, murder and rape linked to illegal immigrants in the US. Those immigrants, whether criminal or not, are now being hunted down daily in sanctuary cities across the US and are being swiftly deported. Recently, President Trump designated many countries under the US Visa ban. Many of such countries are in Africa. The implications entail serious restrictions in their access to US territory. Japan is even more strict. The country reportedly tightened the rules against countries that try to import the religion of Islam into its borders.
Overall, a vicious cycle seems to have been created, one in which bad governance in Africa has led to massive exodus of Africans into many countries of the West while the unchecked influx into those countries has sparked outrage, resistance and political decisions to cut down or drastically restrict access of immigrants from those countries, notable among which is Nigeria. With the increasingly worrisome trends associated with immigration into Western countries from developing countries of Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa, it is important for African leaders to rethink the policies and politics that give rise to this trend of migration from Africa and for Western leaders to think through their own policies that may be encouraging such scale of illegal immigration. They need to figure out how to work with African leaders to find lasting solutions to this lingering crisis and make it easy for migrants with genuine and legal means of entry to access approvals and access. It can be achieved.
The souls of our ancestors will now rest in peace!