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African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

siliconafrica.com

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Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#21

Post by fchollet »

alain94040 wrote: post #8

That articles looks bogus. For instance: It’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_France , that's pretty much equivalent to the budget of the French government. If that number were true, France finances o…

$500 billion is roughly 25% of the entire GDP of all of sub-saharan Africa. It is more than the entire GDP of the countries mentioned here.

Of course it is bogus. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...

I must say I am quite surprised to see a poorly written propaganda hoax article make the frontpage of HN. It is linked to the general decline in quality of HN? Is it a voting ring? Or is it because the headline pulls all the right triggers in the minds of bay area tech people?

I see a lot of accounts created in the last couple hours posting in this thread, so it might well be a voting ring situation.

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#22

Post by jacques_foccart »

saikaisi wrote: post #12
alain94040 wrote: post #8

That articles looks bogus. For instance: It’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_France , that's pretty much equivalent to the budget of the French government. If that number were true, France finances o…

the 500 billions is the compounded amount over 50 or 60 years, as I understand

Half a trillion is not unrealistic. Take one of the numbers we know with a bit more certainty, Nguesso in the Republic of Congo (not the DRC!) takes only a little over 17% of the oil revenue locally - the rest is "exported" (this low price incidentally is how he has managed to remain in power for so long despite some pretty drastic attempts at changing that).

Africa's GDP is around USD 2.4 trillion so seeing a fifth of that "disappear" seems like a conservative lower bound, actually (admittedly countries like South Africa skew the measure).

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#23

Post by pavlov »

jacques_foccart wrote: post #14
pavlov wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds simplified. Mali, Chad and Niger are inland desert countries whose enormous total land area consists mostly of Sahara. They would still be desperately poor even if their official language were English, Dutch or Danish instead of French. Conversely we could look at African countries that haven't had to suffer meddling from a colonial parent, and they don't seem to be much better off. Liberia has been indep…

Takes some balls to put forward the DRC as an example of an untouched country. Let's see: Tshombe's plane was hijacked and he was jailed in Algeria just as the French-backed "mercenaries" (including, allegedly, Bob Denard) were about to take the place over from the American-backed Mobutu. Che Guevara and a few hundred Cubans on one side, people like "Mad Mike" Hoare on the other (not American, but...). Talking of Bel…

Point taken, that was very poor phrasing on my part. I meant that Belgium doesn't engage in France-style interventions in Africa anymore.

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#24

Post by toyg »

haliou wrote: post #4

My first post on HN :) I'm not sure the situation is a simple as the author implies. It is true that when the French left Guinea in 1958 they took everything with them. Eventually Guinea turned to communist Russia with even greater consequences. The author claims "Right for France to pre-deploy troops and intervene military in the country to defend its interests". This is not true as it's a defence agreement against…

>The usage of Franc CFA is actually beneficial to those using the currency as it's value is pegged to the Euro, hence helping to control inflation.

The merits of pegging local currencies in such a way are very doubtful. Across the whole eurozone, today, this issue is hotly contested by activists stating that this rigidity penalizes poorer countries, because their lower-quality wares cannot use currency devaluation as a competitive weapon anymore. Countries using the Franc CFA might be experiencing the same problem... Also, Argentina started its bankrupting spiral when its currency was artificially pegged to the US Dollar without really having the commercial and political power to sustain such link in the long run.

A monetary policy is not just about "keeping inflation low" -- in fact, inflation and currency devaluation in many cases are necessary corrections.

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#26

Post by gdy »

haliou wrote: post #4

My first post on HN :) I'm not sure the situation is a simple as the author implies. It is true that when the French left Guinea in 1958 they took everything with them. Eventually Guinea turned to communist Russia with even greater consequences. The author claims "Right for France to pre-deploy troops and intervene military in the country to defend its interests". This is not true as it's a defence agreement against…

"Eventually Guinea turned to communist Russia with even greater consequences."

What did you mean by that? Wikipedia is prety succint on this:

"Following France's withdrawal, Guinea quickly aligned itself with the Soviet Union and adopted socialist policies. This alliance was short lived, however, as Guinea moved towards a Chinese model of socialism."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea#Independence_and_Post-C...

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#27

Post by toyg »

finid wrote: post #2

> We often accuse African leaders of corruption and serving western nations interests instead, but there is a clear explanation for that behavior. They behave so because they are afraid the be killed or victim of a coup. They want a powerful nation to back them in case of aggression or trouble. But, contrary to a friendly nation protection, the western protection is often offered in exchange of these leaders renounci…

The choice of Iraq over Saudi as Great Enemy has little to do with size or power; back before the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq wasn't a poor country. In fact, if Saddam hadn't misread US responses when he hinted at the possibility of taking over Kuwait, he would probably still be in charge and I bet he'd have developed a great friendship with King Abdallah by now.

The Saudis are safe because they will "do the right thing" when the chips are down -- see for example their recent refusal to cut oil production: there is a drunk Russian bear to quiet down, prices have to stay low to make him feel pain, so the Saudi Kingdom will make the "right" choice even if it costs them some cash. That's what a reliable partner does, and as long as partners remain reliable (and strategically irreplaceable), there is no reason to take them out.

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#28

Post by notahacker »

jacques_foccart wrote: post #22
saikaisi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 500 billions is the compounded amount over 50 or 60 years, as I understand

Half a trillion is not unrealistic. Take one of the numbers we know with a bit more certainty, Nguesso in the Republic of Congo (not the DRC!) takes only a little over 17% of the oil revenue locally - the rest is "exported" (this low price incidentally is how he has managed to remain in power for so long despite some pretty drastic attempts at changing that). Africa's GDP is around USD 2.4 trillion so seeing a fifth…

OK, lets take something we do know with some more certainty. Combined GDP of all CFA Franc countries (both blocs): ~$170bn

Do you honestly think that France is taking 3x this per annum and hiding it in offshore accounts?

Certainly France (and the US) meddled with successions in Africa (and even when they didn't have France's blessing, most elite soldiers in the immediate post-colonial period had served in the French Foreign Legion....) but for all the coups, former French colonies can and did leave the CFA Franc, one rejoined a couple of decades later and a couple of countries that weren't ever French colonies also decided to join.

I'm not familiar with the administrative details behind the CFA Franc, but it sounds quite likely the author is inexpertly trying to describe a pretty standard set of central banking arrangements (governments required to borrow reserves at the base interest rate to fund deficit spending, fiscal rules for a currency area, foreign currency reserves held with ECB to support commitment to Euro parity etc). A bit like the French in the Euro really...

There are good arguments for the CFA Franc not being wholly beneficial for its member states, but this isn't one of them.

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#29

Post by stefantalpalaru »

> if French is the only language you speak, you’d have access to less than 4% of humanity knowledge and ideas

Any relevant piece of knowledge is already available in French. I understand the author's dislike of everything french, but this is going too far.

Re: African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

#30

Post by tokenadult »

I see that several comments here doubt that the factual statements in the submitted article are true. That's something to think about before deciding how to respond to the article being posted here.

My comment on the substance of the article is that one way to reality-check French colonial policies in Africa is to see whether African countries that had a different history during the period of Western colonialism on the continent fared differently in recent decades. Ethiopia was an independent country except for a brief period of being conquered by Italy in the 1930s, becoming liberated again during World War II. Liberia was formally independent, although bound to the United States by economic ties as it was founded as a repatriation site for freed slaves from America. Various countries in Africa were British or Belgian or Portuguese or even (briefly) German colonies before gaining independence. Looking at what former colonies of a particular colonizing country have in common might shed a little light on what the varying colonial policies and post-colonial policies have done in Africa.

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