9 - The Politics of Europe/China Dependency on Africa

Summary

Aime Cesaire has quoted Frantz Fanon as saying that Europe is the brain behind the formulation of the term “Third World.” By creating the term third world, there is a supposition that there is the existence of first and second world and how was that classification obtained? It appeared as if the rest of the world had folded their arms and had given the green light for Europe to decide the structure of the world and they had to just comply. This hierarchical structure, imposed unto the rest of the world by the West by having some parts of the world under a certain category pre-supposes that some nations are big, and some are small. This idea of a big and a small nation has created a conundrum of what really should constitute the size of a nation. The economic measuring tool should have been the motive for Europe to design the world that way. Africa, a continent with over a billion inhabitants, was carved out by Europeans into little states for the purposes of domination. A country like Guinea-Bissau and Liberia do not in any way compare to France, Germany, or Britain from an economic standpoint, but they too are recognizable states in their own right with a constitutional structure. But these countries in Europe belong to the first world, while Guinea-Bissau and Liberia are countries in the African continent with government and institutions and a seat at the United Nations. The kind of power they can wield is nothing compared to the power that Britain, Germany, and say, France do wield in that same body that brings nations of the world together. If Europe had this immense power over Africa and the other developing nations, how come some authors have advanced the thesis that Africa wields great power over Europe. Walter Rodney is one of these authors. Africa built Europe, and Walter Rodney discusses how Europe under-developed Africa. Rodney (1982) quotes one of the messages by the Dutch when they visited Benin for trading purposes in the 17th century, they sent this message back home:

The town is composed of thirty main streets, very straight and 120 feet wide, apart from an infinity of small intersecting streets. The houses are close to one another, arranged in good order.