The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Why Africa should dump the dollar and the euro and develop her own currency for international trade
THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | America’s weaponisation of the dollar to settle scores with rivals has opened the eyes of many countries about the risks of having one country print the global currency. The confiscation of over $600 billion worth of Russian foreign exchange reserves sent a signal to the world of how America abuses this role. Many people and countries are shifting their financial portfolios from dollars to more reliable assets like valuable minerals, especially gold. In February 2022, one kilogram of gold was selling at $21,000. As I write this article now, it has reached $90,000.
BRICs countries are thinking of an alternative currency, or basket of currencies, to the dollar. It is in America’s interest to undermine this effort by sowing seeds of discord among BRICs members. The former leader of Libya, Col. Muammar Qhadaffi, had argued for an alternative continental currency for Africa. America killed him and destroyed his country to kill this idea.
Africa should develop her own currency to trade within itself. The only problem with Africa is ideological: we are intellectually married to Western ideas and systems. This has made us blind to see the opportunities before our eyes.
African nations should seek independence from the dollar and the euro in their international trade. We export highly valuable goods like rich minerals to Europe and North America. They pay us using pieces of paper they print at little cost or digits on a computer screen that cost nothing.
This is largely because we have not liberated ourselves from internalised beliefs about money. We believe that governments earn money through taxation. Yet governments raise money by printing it. Taxation is used to force people to demand that what government produces – currency; or to mop excess liquidity out of circulation to control inflation.
To understand the way Western countries cheat us of our rich natural resources and labour, we only have to look at our colonial history. When European colonialist arrived in Africa, they found autonomous societies living on subsistence and/or trading with each other through barter trade. The colonialist needed Africans to work in mines and/or public works or to produce such things as coffee, cotton, tea, cocoa, sisal etc. that were demanded by their industries at home. Africans had no use for these crops. They were, therefore, not willing to divert their energies from cultivating crops that fed them to these externally desired crops.
The colonialist introduced taxes NOT to raise money. The colonial government could just print or mint currency off a machine at little cost. Rather, taxes were levied to force Africans from subsistence agriculture and/or barter trade to commercial farming. The African was required to pay these colonial taxes using currency notes and/or coins printed or minted by the colonial government. Local food crops were not traded using money. The only way to earn currency to pay taxes was to either work in mines or public works projects (and earn a salary) or cultivate “cash crops”.
The colonialist would take our labor and our resources (gold, copper, coffee, cotton etc.) in exchange for pieces of paper or coins they had just printed or minted at very little cost. These had the backing of law making them “legal tender”. It was made illegal to reject them. This way, Africans surrendered goods and services that were highly valuable in exchange for something that had no value other than the backing of the law. This is the way Africa was integrated into the international trading system, and it continues till today.
The second level of colonial penetration was the manufacture of new desires among our people. The colonialist, using his power and media, made Africans develop appetites for his manufactured goods, ideas and beliefs. This was achieved by denigrating those products and beliefs that Africans had produced themselves by calling them backward. So, our religions were called satanic, our customs barbaric, our products primitive, our tastes primitive and our knowledge ignorance. Colonial beliefs and goods were presented as modernity. This is what has kept us hooked on their goods, giving them valuable assets in exchange for valueless pieces of paper called dollars and euros and killing each other over their ideas.
At the dawn of colonialism, Africans had advanced science and technology. In his book, Journeys Through the Dark Continent, Henry Morton Stanley says he found the Banyoro conducting caesarian and brain surgery and manufacturing guns. Our technological and scientific advances were declared backward. So locally manufactured goods were outlawed and only those trained in colonial schools could practice medicine. Instead, local medical knowledge was declared witchcraft, traditional doctors were called witch doctors. We internalised these ideas.
Therefore, the greatest damage by colonialism in Africa was not the tyranny of its rule and the violence of enforcing it. That was only a sideshow. The biggest damage was epistemic, the inculcation of ideas, beliefs, tastes and preferences in our minds that made us dependent on the European. Today, our ministries, central banks, state houses, media houses, universities, research institutions, religious organisations etc. are all managed by people whose beliefs are shaped in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington. Although these beliefs are presented as universal, their aim (intended or not) is to promote the interests of those who designed them. This is not to deny local agency and local beneficiaries, or course.
Why does Rwanda need dollars to buy goods from Uganda? Why is it easy for a European to fly from London to Lagos than it is for a Kenyan to do so in terms of ease of access to a visa? Why does Congo exchange its gold for pieces of paper printed in America or Europe? Why do Africans fly to Europe and elsewhere for medical attention when we have highly specialised doctors on our continent. Because we believe our doctors are up to no good. But is this really the case? Why do many Africans go to Europe and North America to study literature and psychology?
Why are our stories told by the New York Times, CNN and BBC, our hungry fed by WFP, our poor cared for by Oxfarm, our human rights fought by Amnesty International, our policies written by IMF and World Bank, our democratisation measured by Freedom House, our press freedom defended by CPJ, our refugees looked after by UNHCR, our poverty fought by Hollywood movie stars and European rockstars, our gay-rights groups funded by Western nations etc.? Does anyone see how wrong and distorted this is?
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amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug
