Expert explained why Africa slipping away from Western influence

Africa is raising its head and does not want to obey the West, including because it sees that the world is no longer unipolar – as stated by Vadim Yelfimov, the Head of the Department of Social Policy and Ideology of the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Belarus, in his talk with Alfa Radio

As programme host Vadim Shepet noted, “According to many experts, Africa is slipping away from the sphere of influence of the West.”

“It is not the West that is missing Africa, but Africa itself that is simply leaving it, whether it wants to or not. In the early 1960s, many African states gained independence and became members of the United Nations. Africa was shaken by many events at that time – for example, the murder of Patrice Lumumba. There was resistance from the former metropolises. Then, the West decided that they may ‘hang around’ for some time and, eventually, they will come back anyway, economic dependence will remain, everything will be fine, there will be the same metropolises, only called differently. African countries have gone through this terrible cycle. Besides, when they became independent, they had confrontations with each other. You know, there was a kind of euphoria of success. The understanding that the countries of the continent share the common African destiny, not of individual states, but of the whole of Africa, came to them with blood, sweat, and hard events. In one way or another, however, they felt it,” the expert commented.

According to Vadim Yelfimov, if the Soviet Union had not collapsed, Africa would have risen much earlier, “The 1990s should have been the years of Africa, and the West understood this. By the way, they then came up with a special programme: the American and British banking systems even wanted to give money, to bribe some countries, roughly speaking. However, in the late 1980s, this programme was closed. There was no sense in giving money to Africans if they had lost support from the Soviet Union or some other country.”

Answering the host’s question of why Africa is actively raising its head right now, Vadim Yelfimov stated, “Africans see that Russia, China, and Belarus are rising, that there is support. After all, when the President of Belarus once called for the Non-Aligned Movement to become an independent global centre of political power, a very large number of African states were included there. Nevertheless, unfortunately, this slogan was not fully supported at that time, and economic conditions were not created. Belarus and Russia did not rise so much then. China was also, roughly speaking, holed up politically. It accumulated economic strength, but did not declare its political ambitions. Today, the situation has changed, and African states have very subtly grasped this. The BRICS expansion has become a kind of signal for them.”