The Environmental Cost of Euro-Arab Scramble for Africa
By Qeerransoo Biyyaa
The focus of this piece is to highlight how the selfish, unethical, and eco-hostile Euro-Arab “investment” in collaboration with tyrannical and genocidal Horn of African regimes is leading to apocalyptic and irreversible disasters on the environment, human lives and wild lives.
Today, 125 years later after the Berlin Conference (1884-1885), which offset the official European scramble for Africa, Europe is fully back to the continent, buying farmlands from brutal regimes in the Horn of Africa for crop and energy farming. A century ago, Europe used its direct military power (gun powder) to colonize Africa and ship Africa´s resources directly to Europe. Then, Europe, particularly the UK was hit by long economic depressions (1873-1896). This heightened era of industrialization and the need for raw material for their industries prompted Europe to loot African resources.
To some, it may feel like the scramble for Africa was a long gone story and no more relevant to talk about. Nevertheless, right after the waves of the current global economic downturn started to be felt everywhere, Europe along with rich Arab Nations, is back to grab the cheap lands and human resources of the continent in the name of ´investment in energy and food security´. During colonialism, military might was used as a weapon to subdue Africa. Currently, that form of power is replaced by monetary power, with huge disparities between exchange rates of European currencies and African ones.
This clear collaboration between irresponsible Euro-Arab investors and dictators unmistakably makes the involved Euro-Arab countries complicit in genocide and human rights abuses on the continent.
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