Germany must be able to change its tune and take the European lead in new cooperation with Africa (comment)
Germany is inspiring in many ways and has much to share with Africa. Europe’s leading economy, Germany developed by relying on its genius and not on a policy of predation of its former colonies. It is legitimate to take the European lead in establishing new cooperation with Africa. She still has to want it.
France, for its part, can sing and dance it but it cannot itself establish new relations with Africa different from those of neocolonialist paternalism which gives it the feeling of being a powerful giant of the world. Its hands and feet are tied to its past as a colonizing country and its mouth is full of the advantages gained from this still persistent link.
Prime Minister Kyélem de Tambèla said: ‘We were colonized by France and for a long time, it never accepted our independence. She still considers us her colony, and for more than 60 years, we have not evolved.
But we can also understand that Germany is favorable to neocolonialist links with Africa. And that it does not want to frankly support this
continent in the fight against colonialist domination and not even against terrorist attacks. The Germans were the ones who called together the other countries of Europe in 1884 to decide to attack, divide and balkanize Africa, without a hitch between them. Once with the gains of aggression, they are the same ones who inaugurated the contemporary genocide on the continent, in their Namibian colony, massacring more than 70,000 Nama and Heroros wanting to resist colonialist terrorism.
The Russian presence fills the refusal of so-called traditional partners to support the fight against terrorism in the Sahel
From this point of view, we can then understand why Germany, which refused to provide military support, even if only through training, Burkina Faso, a country of honest men resolutely committed against terrorists, is showing its interest, not against the blind and inhumane practices of terrorists but just on the Russian presence in Burkina and the Russian origin of the weapons used by terrorism.
As a remi
nder, during his contact, on Friday July 19, 2024 in Ouagadougou, with the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, Apollinaire Kyélem de Tambèla, the new German ambassador Dietrich Becker was immediately interested in the subject of the Russian presence in Faso and the fact that the terrorists had Russian-made weapons.
What meaning can we give to the German diplomat’s concern? Does he prefer German or European-made weapons for terrorists who bandit in the Sahel? Would he like to accuse Russia of supplying weapons to terrorists?
It is obvious that the Burkinabè are not going to keep a disproportionate interest in the insinuations of the German diplomat which are unusual and surprising to say the least. They will easily forgive the host who has just landed in Ouagadougou and who obviously only knows the country through a distorting prism of European media.
A beautiful, prosperous little nation that knows how to rebuild itself thanks to its geniuses
The Burkinabe people remember that Germany is a beautiful, prosper
ous little nation in Europe, three and a half times smaller than Niger. A nation full of geniuses. Geniuses who allowed it to recover from the two great wars that it lost, to rise to first place among the economic powers of Europe. This German resilience is a tremendous source of inspiration for the Sahel; a resilience that is all the more inspiring since the Germans were able to get back up without clinging to their former colonies in Africa like a wolf to a sheep’s udder.
Post-Nazi Germany did not need to demean impoverished nations to appear more important. Its historical journey and its current level of development speak in favor of its splendor and grandeur. The new diplomat must be able to rely on the esteem that the Burkinabè have for his country to begin a new era of diplomacy between Africa and Europe and not rely on old prejudices or a recourse to fascistic racism.
This is why the head of Burkinabe diplomacy, Jean Marie Karamoko Traoré, when receiving Dietrich Becker on August 26, 2024, expressed
the hope that the honest partners of Burkina Faso agree to change their reading grid and act according to tangible realities. on the ground and not according to principles that are sometimes subjective, open to criticism and selectively applied.
The message seems to have been well understood as evidenced by Becker’s reaction: ‘Germany is always the spokesperson for the Troika of technical and financial partners. I also announced Germany’s desire to continue to be in the Troika of Technical and Financial Partners, to cooperate with the Burkinabe government.
This is undoubtedly where the two countries must dig deep to build a new era of Afro-European cooperation which is the result of a win-win partnership. For its part, Burkina Faso, since the attack on the World Trade Center, has always shown solidarity with all those who fight against terrorism in all its forms. The deadly attack in Solingen in western Germany, claimed by the Islamic State group, shows that the German people and the Sahel states must colla
borate more in the fight against this phenomenon. No one is safe, no one is so strong to reduce this complex power equation alone. But you never know, maybe there is a second Berlin conference through which Germany cannot take the European lead in Africa.
Source: Burkina Information Agency