#NSS23: African leaders and political activists share their views on foreign interference in Africa
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00:03 We Africans, as I conclude, we Africans
00:14 must stop operating in silence.
00:17 Rwanda alone will not confront them.
00:20 Burundi alone will not confront them.
00:22 But if we go through the regional bodies
00:25 and ultimately the African Union,
00:27 we may indeed succeed in putting away this bulwark.
00:32 And remember, it is no longer just Europe.
00:35 There is a new scramble for Africa.
00:37 The Chinese are here.
00:40 The Turks are here.
00:42 The Qataris are here.
00:44 All of them are coming back.
00:47 And the military bases that you see here
00:49 is telling you that if you don't behave,
00:52 we are going to use force.
00:55 Sometimes I wish-- and I'm saying this seriously--
01:00 that we too had a nuclear weapon,
01:02 because that is what Europe and America understands.
01:07 Thank you.
01:08 [APPLAUSE]
01:11 Prof, thank you very much indeed.
01:15 For now, maybe this is just--
01:18 we'll declare a ceasefire for the moment.
01:20 [LAUGHTER]
01:23 Now, thank you, Prof.
01:27 Let me throw this question.
01:28 And I'll come to you, Brian.
01:30 I think Lumumba PLO took us through those stages.
01:34 It's been 60 years plus we've had this.
01:37 We're actually calling it the enduring destabilizing factor.
01:41 Why is it so difficult to really tackle this issue?
01:46 Why is it taking us so long?
01:51 I think the most fundamental challenge is not
01:55 white supremacy.
01:58 It's black inferiority and the abiding appetite
02:02 amongst the black elite to function on the basis
02:05 of white embrace.
02:06 Number one, if we ourselves, even our thieves,
02:12 are not patriotic, when they steal from Africa,
02:16 they invest in Europe.
02:17 They don't believe.
02:18 The minister said, fix our own government system.
02:21 The people in charge of government systems
02:23 steal and invest elsewhere as an indictment
02:27 or an affirmation of their own incompetence and incapacity.
02:30 But the second bit is that--
02:33 I think both His Excellency Musafaki, Professor Lumumba,
02:39 and the minister indicated, when you grow a disconnect
02:45 between the people who give you legitimacy, who
02:49 are the ultimate resource for the transformation
02:52 of any nation, when you grow a disconnect
02:55 between your culture--
02:57 Amilcar Cabral said, every revolution
02:59 is first a cultural revolution.
03:02 A people must believe in themselves.
03:06 That way, they're able to produce both citizens
03:09 and leaders who are not only patriotic and competent,
03:13 but that are future-focused and that are regenerative.
03:18 Unfortunately for us, we have constantly
03:22 killed three forms of assets.
03:24 First asset, we kill our babies and our young people
03:28 by never exposing them.
03:30 And Rwanda is an exception to this,
03:32 to what it means to govern and what it means to negotiate,
03:37 what it means to compete.
03:40 Number two, in all our countries,
03:44 anybody, the age group of the people sitting at this table,
03:47 when you are out of government, you are finished.
03:51 The state has absolutely no use of the experience,
03:54 the expertise, and the resources.
03:56 We are constantly going elsewhere
03:58 to look for experts that we either have in the diaspora
04:01 or we have in our countries.
04:03 The inability to build, retain, use our own local expertise
04:09 and experience.
04:10 The third is that we have created everything
04:13 to be solely decentric, that most of our citizens
04:17 either wait for God or wait for the leader
04:20 or wait for foreigners.
04:22 And the day must come in Africa where
04:24 Pan-Africanism is Pan-Africanism of the people,
04:28 no matter how brilliant institutions are,
04:30 continental or regional, as long as they are not
04:33 nourished by the ideas of African intellectuals,
04:36 African artists and activists.
04:38 But there is hope.
04:40 Many of you may not see it as hope.
04:43 The dominance of Afrobeat and Afropop
04:46 in the world today, sending a message,
04:50 if that can be used as a vehicle of cultural regeneration,
04:54 if what the young people have been able to do with tech
04:56 can be used as a way of re-imagining,
04:59 then what we are talking about as a phenomenon will end.
05:02 The third is that we can't keep sending all our people--
05:05 I know that is maybe brain game for some people.
05:08 We can't keep sending all our young people to Europe,
05:11 to America, and elsewhere without creating pathways
05:14 back.
05:15 Why?
05:16 Because as Frantz Fanon said, they
05:17 realized that the empire or the center
05:22 came and took the best from amongst us
05:25 and took them to their best institutions.
05:28 And they emptied them of their own culture
05:30 and their own sense of being.
05:32 And they filled them with ideas of how
05:35 to be good Europeans and Americans.
05:38 And when they returned, their kit and kin
05:40 realized that their children had not come back.
05:42 What had come back were echoes of the empire.
05:44 You and I, having had the opportunities
05:47 to serve outside our continent, when we return,
05:50 we are not trying to establish little Europe, little France,
05:54 little America.
05:55 There must be an authentic way.
05:58 That's why Rwanda's revolution is not only leadership.
06:02 It is homegrown solutions, not for Rwanda only,
06:07 but for the whole world, not just for Africa.
06:10 We cannot assert ourselves culturally, intellectually,
06:14 spiritually, as long as we are leprous and dependent.
06:18 Thank you.
06:18 Brian, thank you very much indeed.
06:19 [APPLAUSE]
06:23 Honorable Minister, I'm going to turn to you now.
06:25 We're laying this problem firmly at the feet of the foreigner.
06:28 But what is our responsibility as Africans?
06:31 Brian mentioned the issue of patriotism.
06:35 We also carry the blame.
06:36 We are the people who are complicit in all this.
06:39 What are your thoughts on this?
06:41 I think I already mentioned--
06:45 I already said something about this.
06:46 Foreign interference is real on our continent.
06:55 It was here during the colonization time
06:58 and even after the independence.
07:01 But we cannot sit here and keep blaming others
07:05 without ourselves.
07:07 We are just able to analyze and see
07:10 that foreign interference has done bad to our continent.
07:15 But now we know we should do something about it.
07:21 And we need to start by owning our own development,
07:27 as I mentioned earlier.
07:29 We needed to put in place the right policies
07:32 for our continent.
07:34 We need to build regional integration
07:38 and later on continental integration.
07:42 We have the agenda 2063 for the African Union.
07:48 We know what we need to do.
07:51 And we should just do that.
07:55 So blaming others, it's fine.
08:00 But we need to stop and start just addressing the issues we
08:05 know very well.
08:07 And we cannot neither close the continent
08:11 and consider that all others are bad.
08:16 This is not possible.
08:17 It is not even realistic.
08:19 We need to work with others.
08:22 And we need to go and train in America, in Europe,
08:26 and wherever.
08:29 But we need to train there.
08:31 We need to study there, knowing very well
08:34 that we are doing that for our continent, for our countries
08:39 to benefit from those trainings.
08:44 So we needed to be cautious that we
08:47 need to develop our own countries and our own continent.
08:51 We cannot keep blaming everybody else except ourselves.
08:57 Because we have the diagnosis there.
09:00 We know our problem.
09:02 We know the solution.
09:03 We need to implement it.
09:05 And as I mentioned earlier, we just
09:10 need to own our development.
09:13 We need to have the courage to adopt the right policies
09:18 and to implement them.
09:21 And we need also to know, to develop our capacity
09:24 to deal with foreigners who are coming to our countries.
09:30 If Americans have USAID, if others have CEDAW,
09:33 if others have a NABEL or whatever, it is good.
09:38 Now it is upon me, upon Rwanda, upon any African,
09:43 I say to know the better way to use these mechanisms which
09:47 are there for the benefit of our own people.
09:51 We should be able to tell these partners that this
09:55 is the development path we want to take.
09:58 If we want to work with us, this is the way we want to go.
10:03 And to be able to orient them to own it.
10:08 Otherwise, if we consider that they are there,
10:10 and when they come to us, we just
10:12 need to accept whatever they bring to us,
10:15 this is not their problem.
10:16 It is our problem.
10:17 Thank you.
10:21 Thank you.
10:22 Thank you so much.
10:25 Let me turn to you, Chairperson.
10:28 Now we're here fighting huge global forces,
10:34 international financial systems that are skewed against us.
10:37 And you've laid out some steps, some of the instruments that
10:40 are available and open to Africa to try, including integration,
10:43 to try and address this problem.
10:46 But I wonder, if as a continent we
10:48 can't produce a passport for all Africans,
10:51 how are we going to deal with these other huge things?
10:54 If we can't even produce a paper document that
10:57 is acceptable in all our countries?
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15:02 Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.
15:05 [APPLAUSE]
15:08 So, your thoughts as well on why it has taken us so long?
15:13 Let me-- I'll answer your question, but I must also respond to what I hear the minister say.
15:20 First of all, when we talk the way we do, we are not blaming anybody.
15:26 The impact of European and American and Russian and Chinese interference is a raw wound.
15:37 It is not something that is in the past. It is something that is happening as we speak.
15:43 And therefore, when we speak to it, we are speaking to it to warn ourselves of the reality.
15:51 When we speak about the Danidas and the NGOs, these are bodies whose raison d'etre is to ensure that we remain in a perpetual state of begging.
16:06 That is what we are doing to warn ourselves.
16:08 And we are not for one minute saying that we will shut ourselves out from the rest of the world.
16:15 What we are saying is that we must define how we engage with the whole world.
16:21 And we are saying that as individual countries, we are weak, and the rest of the world wants to operate and to deal with us in our weak state.
16:34 The United States of America dealing with Rwanda on second-hand clothing, Rwanda cannot resist them.
16:41 Burundi cannot. Kenya cannot. Uganda cannot.
16:45 But if we are East Africa with a population of 300 million, we can.
16:50 If we are SADC, we can. If we are ICOWAS, we can.
16:56 So this is what we are saying, and we are saying further that going forward, we must also recognize our internal weaknesses.
17:06 And what are our weaknesses? Chinua Achebe said it very well.
17:09 The problem of Africa is simply and squarely one of political leadership.
17:15 The rank of many political leaders in Africa are thieves. Let's call them by their name.
17:23 They are thieves. They are individuals who are not interested in the interest of this country.
17:28 And as long as we continue electing such individuals into positions of power across Africa, they are going to be manipulated.
17:36 What then is the responsibility of the citizenry?
17:40 The responsibility of the citizenry is to make demands.
17:45 The chairman here, I hope he has received the several letters that I have written to him.
17:51 I have written several letters to his organization talking about the role of the African Union in peacemaking.
17:57 I wrote to the chairman only last week about the situation in Sudan, saying we must solve our own problems.
18:07 And I want to see a crusading African Union so that it's not the Americans and the Saudi Arabians who are summoning them to Jeddah.
18:16 It should be in Addis Ababa.
18:19 In a nutshell, Joe, what I'm saying is that we have a responsibility to ourselves,
18:24 both at the leadership level and at levels of the civic society.
18:29 We must be engaged in a positive manner and we must keep on shouting without being diplomatic,
18:36 because diplomacy is lulling us into a false sense of security.
18:42 And lastly, I want to say this.
18:44 When foreign powers come, we must always be reminded of these goodies that they bring to us.
18:52 It used to be said of the Trojan War that even when the Greeks bear a gift, they do not mean well.
19:02 They never mean well.
19:06 The sooner we say it, recognizing the external threat, recognizing the domestic weaknesses, the safer we are.
19:15 Right now, as I conclude, there is a group of experts going around East Africa,
19:21 collecting views about the constitution of East Africa.
19:26 I've just written to them this morning.
19:29 They are leaving Kenya.
19:32 If you ask 10 Kenyans, possibly only one knows they're in Kenya,
19:37 then they'll be going to Burundi.
19:40 If you ask your typical African about Africa Agenda 2063 out of 10,
19:47 if two know about Africa Agenda 2063, you'll be lucky.
19:51 If you ask them about the Africa Continental Free Trade Area 10,
19:55 if two know, you'll be lucky.
19:57 In other words, we are not doing well.
20:01 I'm going to be blunt at these functions.
20:03 If you ask the chair of the African Union who funds the African Union,
20:09 possibly 60% of the budget is externally funded.
20:12 He who pays the piper calls the tune.
20:16 That is the reality of the world.
20:18 We must begin to pay for our own things in order to be understood and to be respected.
20:25 Thank you.
20:27 Thank you very much, Indit.
20:30 I think let me give a right of reply to Chairperson to that comment about the AU funding.
20:34 But before then, the good professor says he has sent some good letters with good ideas.
20:39 Assuming he received them or they are caught up in the bureaucracy.
20:42 So maybe you'll let him know whether his message has reached.
20:46 But most importantly, if the AU is dependent on external funding,
20:51 then where are we at in terms of trying to be independent of these interfering forces?
20:57 What the professor says is true.
21:01 And it's no secret to anyone.
21:04 If in 2016 and 2017 it was decided to proceed with a reform on the financing of the African Union,
21:14 it is because the observation was made that most of our budget is financed from abroad.
21:22 In July 2016, here in Kigali, the heads of state held a retreat.
21:28 They retained a number of proposals that they adopted in January 2017 in Addis Ababa on financing,
21:37 notably by taking 0.2% on imports at the level of the African states.
21:45 Seven years later, perhaps half of the states have accepted this method of financing.
21:54 The others have not accepted it.
21:57 That's why I said that we make very good decisions, but we don't apply them.
22:03 Professor, the African Union is the sum of the African states individually taken.
22:10 They are extremely jealous of their shrunk sovereignty.
22:15 While knowing that the states, as you said, individually taken, do not weigh.
22:21 Even the regional communities alone are not enough.
22:27 But with 1.4 billion inhabitants, I believe that Africa can weigh the whole African Union states.
22:38 We still need to have the political courage to be consistent,
22:44 to start cleaning our own house,
22:48 by being consistent, by applying the rules that we have set ourselves,
22:53 by taking ourselves seriously, the others can take us seriously.
22:59 I said it, I am in my seventh year as president of the African Union Commission.
23:05 The president of the African Union Commission has no power.
23:08 The power belongs to the states.
23:11 The power belongs to the heads of state,
23:14 who refuse to implement the decisions that are taken,
23:19 and by doing so, they weaken the whole that we have put in place.
23:26 I believe that we are getting to the obvious.
23:31 After 60 years, I believe that it is largely enough to make the point,
23:36 and together, there is no doubt,
23:40 no doubt, together we can change things.
23:46 With 1.4 billion inhabitants, we are not permanent members of the United Nations Security Council,
23:52 while 60-70% of the peace and maintenance issues concern the African continent.
24:01 Until now, this reform has not taken place.
24:05 What is our weight in the IMF? 6.5%.
24:11 What is our weight in the World Bank?
24:15 Lately, we are making concessions,
24:18 we may be accepted as members of the G20.
24:22 I believe that we underestimate ourselves,
24:29 and I believe that it is time to have the courage,
24:32 I say courage, to decide together,
24:35 and I believe that we can make things move.
24:38 This is how things are presented in a raw way.
24:41 I am not speaking diplomatically, this is not the place.
24:44 I am speaking to officers, to soldiers who are called to execute their orders,
24:51 to maintain peace, security and stability in the continent.
24:54 There is a political problem in our continent.
24:58 The more we evolve, the more subtle the interventions become.
25:03 They become more subtle.
25:06 They are cultural, they are in the media, they are in social networks.
25:11 We can influence our opinion in a different way.
25:16 This is sophisticated.
25:19 And in these conditions, we must, at least with the decisions that have been taken,
25:25 everyone is aware of the need to make this self-criticism
25:31 and take the decisions that are being imposed on us at the moment.
25:34 It is a question of leadership, it is a question of historical responsibility.
25:38 Thank you.
25:53 First, it is a question of lack of political will.
25:56 We are 1.4 billion, we are a rich territory, we can take 0.2%.
26:03 This is not a big sum.
26:06 If we do this, the studies have been done, the plans have been made,
26:09 we can at least self-finance ourselves.
26:12 But when you reach out, naturally the hand that is given is always above the one that receives.
26:17 It is as obvious as that.
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