West's Use of Aid to Dominate Africa 'Is Coming to an End': Pan-Africanist

At the Africa Climate Summit (ACS), President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen renewed her promise to grant €150 billion to Africa to fight against climate change. The founder of the association Actions for the Sovereignty of Peoples (ASP), Abdoulaye Nabaloum, discussed with Sputnik Africa the nature of Western development aid.

According to him, this type of aid "is always accompanied by the indebtedness of our states" and represents "an instrument for refinancing the West," as well as brings efforts to "influence African leaders" and "for the domination of the West on African peoples and states."

"The aid is not designed to help Africa develop. […] [It] is linked specifically to climate change, it is a means, it is a mechanism for Western companies to create a new income or continue to refinance Europe and the West with impunity through African countries," observed Nabaloum, who is also president of the Confederation of Pan-African Associations and Movements of West Africa (CAMPAO).

He further emphasized that "climate change is a question not for African countries, but rather for Western companies that are established in Africa, which are truly the causes of this global warming in Africa."

What's more, "the European Union has run out of concrete proposals that meet the needs of African countries" and the Western world is showing "a decline […] which is accelerating with the war in Ukraine and which is also accelerating with the loss of influence in the Sahel." This comes as the EU has already allocated more than €77 billion to Ukraine during the recent year.

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While the West swears that it is not targeting the extraction of resources from the African continent, these denials no longer resonate with young Africans aspiring "to new models of partnership", namely with the BRICS or via bilateral ties with Russia, India, or China, continued the expert. The group of five got "in motion so that the Western world, which had Africa as its preserve, begins to revisit its way of collaborating."

"Today, we have to recognize that France's stubbornness and deviousness will have a lasting effect on relations between Africa and the Western world. Today, the foresight of African youth sees in this [von der Leyen's] promise an element of blackmail vis-a-vis the BRICS, but also a maintenance of the influence of European countries, the European Union and the Western world in general," he estimated.

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Loss of Western influence

For Nabaloum, following the loss of European influence in African countries, "we are faced with an unbalanced equilibrium in terms of collaboration and viable relations or partnerships."

"It is moreover this occasion which allowed many Africans [...] to understand very clearly that the Western world only aims at its interests, the Westerners [are there] to exploit peoples and nations with impunity."

According to him, this loss of influence "will crescendo and will accelerate further" as "this policy of Western domination is coming to an end."