Ambassador Satch

On a 1960 tour of the emergent African nations, jointly financed by the State Department and Pepsi-Cola, the All Stars arrived in the middle of the civil war in the former Belgian Congo, now Congo. [Arvell] Shaw said: “We landed at Leopoldville four days after Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. Both sides came together to the concert and enjoyed it and as soon as we left they started in again shooting at each other. The American ambassador said: “Louis, if we had you all the time there wouldn’t be no war.” That’s how he got the name Ambassador Satch.

Armstrong by David Bradbury. Haus Publishing. 2003. p.117

the case of cotton

The case of cotton illustrates the hurdles that Africa has to surmount. Africa is the world’s third largest producer, turning out high-quality cotton at competitive prices. In West Africa cotton provides a living for a million farmers. Cotton production in francophone West Africa has soared from 100,000 tons a year at independence in 1960 to 900,000 tons. In Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Togo, cotton represents between 5 and 10 per cent of GDP, more than a third of export income and more than 60 per cent of agricultural export income. Production costs in West Africa are about 38 cents a pound. By comparison, production costs in the United States are more than twice as high. But the US provides its 25,000 cotton farmers with an annual subsidy of $4 billion – more than the value of the entire crop. US farmers have therefore been able to export cotton at one-third of what it costs them to produce. Over a period of fifteen years, they have gained nearly one-third of the world market. A study by Oxfam in 2002 calculated that, as a result of the US subsidy, the world price was 25 per cent lower than it would otherwise have been. It estimated that the cost to Burkina Faso was 1 per cent of its GDP or 12 per cent of its exports; to Mali, 1.7 per cent of GDP or 8 per cent of exports; and to Benin, 1.4 per cent of GDP or 9 per cent of exports. According to Oxfam, the trade losses associated with US farm subsidies that West Africa’s eight main cotton exporters suffered outweighed the benefits they received from US aid.


The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.

unique opportunities for self-enrichment

When a government is the direct beneficiary of a centrally controlled major revenue stream and is therefore not reliant on domestic taxation or a diversified economy to function, those who rule the state have unique opportunities for self-enrichment and corruption, particularly if there is no transparency in the management of revenues. Because achieving political power often becomes the primary avenue for achieving wealth, the incentive to seize power and hold on to it indefinitely is great. This dynamic has a corrosive effect on governance and, ultimately, respect for human rights. Instead of bringing prosperity, rule of law and respect for rights, the existence of a centrally controlled revenue stream – such as oil revenue – can serve to reinforce and exacerbate an undemocratic or otherwise unaccountable ruler’s or governing elite’s worst tendencies and enrich itself without any corresponding accountability… This has happened in Angola.


Human Rights Watch report published in 2004. The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.

this catalogue of shame

You bribe to get your child into school; you pay to secure your job and also continue to pay in some cases to retain it; you pay ten percent of any contract obtained; you dash the tax officer to avoid paying taxes; you pay a hospital doctor or nurse to get proper attention; you pay the policeman to evade arrest. This catalogue of shame can continue without end.


Commentary by a senior civil servant in Nigeria. The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.

everybody was a worker

In an essay on African socialism that he wrote in 1962, Nyerere gave an idyllic account of pre-colonial society. ‘Everybody was a worker… Not only was the capitalist, or the landed exploiter unknown… [but] capitalist exploitation was impossible. Loitering was an unthinkable disgrace.’ The advent of colonialism had changed all this. ‘In the old days the African had never aspired to the possession of personal wealth for the purpose of dominating any of his fellows. He had never had labourers or “factory hands” to do his work for him. But then came the foreign capitalists. They were wealthy. They were powerful. And the African naturally started wanting to be wealthy too.’ There was nothing inherently wrong with that, said Nyerere, but it lead to exploitation. There was now a need for Africans to ‘re-educate’ themselves, to regain their former attitude of mind, their sense of community. 

The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.

the vilest scramble for loot

Joseph Conrad described the activities of Léopold’s Congo Free State as ‘the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience’.


The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.

always something new

Ex Africa simper aliquid novi – Out of Africa always something new.



Pliny the Elder, in The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 2005.