The new scramble for Africa

Today’s race is not for colonies to conquer but for natural resources and America has stepped up pursuit in response to superpower rivals

TWO SCARCELY noticed events occurred in Nigeria and Botswana at the end of last week that signal the growing speed and strength of a new “scramble for Africa” among the world’s big powers, who are tapping into the continent for its oil, iron ore, timber, gold, diamonds and other natural resources.

At Nigeria’s Defence Intelligence School in Karu, near the capital Abuja, 30 military officers from seven African countries graduated from a training course designed to meet the “rapidly changing security complexities” of their nations “and the continent at large”.

Ostensibly organised by Nigeria’s Defence Intelligence Agency, the 12-week “Military Intelligence Basic Officers’ Course for Africa” – the third this year after two in Mali – was in fact designed by the controversial United States African Command (AfriCom).

Less than two years old, AfriCom has the same general responsibilities as all US combatant commands: to plan, direct and execute US military operations in its assigned area of responsibility. The US Seventeenth Air Force, based at Sembach in western Germany, has been allocated to AfriCom and renamed Air Forces Africa.

AfriCom – currently headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, but aiming to transfer to Ghana – is a measure of how seriously Washington is taking the new scramble for Africa and how determined it is to compete there with China, which has major strategic and economic goals throughout the continent. It also shows how seriously the US takes threats from al-Qaeda-aligned Islamic movements which have footholds in several African states; and how seriously it intends securing its burgeoning oil and gas interests in West Africa.

Sunday Herald