While Black History Month is widely celebrated in the United States, many Africans continue to face significant economic hardship. In February alone, the Rwandan-backed March 23rd movement’s (M23) aggression in The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the recent struggle between the state military and The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan have continued a seemingly endless cycle of political conflicts and destabilization — the loss of stability in an economy or political structure.
As Americans, we tend to view these as unfortunate circumstances, but ultimately a consequence of the corrupt individuals and systems in place on the continent.
This notion cannot be the standard position anymore, and the United States and the West in general need to reckon with how their interference historically and contemporaneously has played the largest role in a large part of the continent’s continued struggle.
The Debt Situation
Many newly independent African nations such as Ghana, Tanzania and Rwanda struggled to get on their feet economically compared to first-world nations. Former occupying countries left the continent significantly underdeveloped and reliant on trade from European leaders. Assistance was desperately needed at the international level.
So in came the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Organizations created and operated by the Western world’s developed nations to assist countries in their development. This sounds good on paper, but the loan structure of these two organizations has put many African countries in crippling amounts of debt.
In 2022, the continent owed the World Bank over 125 billion dollars; in 2024, many African countries such as Egypt, Angola, Kenya and Ghana owed billions to the IMF. The situation has gotten so bad that many African nations have organized their economies around paying off the debt. A focus has been placed on cheap cash crops that can easily be exported around the globe for mass consumption. However, the money hasn’t been adequately redistributed to the masses because the West has successfully trapped most of the continent.
Foreign Economic Interference
Africa is the richest continent on the planet concerning resources. Because of this, the U.S. and other Western multinational and transnational corporations have taken a huge interest in establishing a presence for further enrichment.
Due to poor economic conditions, companies such as Nestle and OpenAI have used cheap labor on the continent to maximize their profits, limiting the ability of the countries to benefit from their resources and labor forces.
Many leaders across the continent have attempted to tackle this issue by limiting foreign interference in private industry, but the IMF and World Bank loans unilaterally have included conditions that require the opening of African markets to competitors from abroad, complicating a situation predicated on exploitation, to begin with.
Direct Military Involvement
Historically, postcolonial Africa has been a hotbed for all different political ideologies. However, one branch of political philosophy that has never been viewed positively by Western states, particularly the U.S., happens to economic self-determination.
This distaste, guided by the economic interests of multinational and transnational corporations, has been expressed through covert and overt military intervention.
Revolutionary figures such as Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba were deposed by groups in collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other Western countries.
As of 2020, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) forces were reported to have 29 bases around the continent. The most powerful country in the world has maintained a permanent military presence in a destabilized part of the world that has remained violent because of the actions of its government, allies, and organizations that cater to their interests.
Further specifics concerning the situation on the African continent can’t be fully explained in one written piece. But the first step to rectifying the mistakes and mistreatment the U.S. and its allies have engaged in is the recognize it.
Black History Month shouldn’t just consist of praising Tiger Woods, watching “Black Panther,” or other vague actions of “solidarity.” It should be focused on the oftentimes uncomfortable history of Black people all around the globe, as well as the future.
