Let's give Africa a voice

The commitment to peace is a service to the entire planet

Let's give Africa a voice. Starting with Pope Francis and continuing for NGOs large and small, it is the unheard cry that associations, volunteers, scholars, those who have more or less profound ties with the continent of our destiny repeat. Unfortunately, the media and therefore politics talk very little about it, while the Italian public opinion is uninformed. What should we say and know about Africa that from the Mediterranean to South Africa is a variegated world, a sampling of cultures and biodiversity? First of all, know the common features of suffering.

We are going through a perfect storm from a social point of view, from wars, from the pandemic and from climate change. According to UNICEF 150 million children in areas such as the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, which have been particularly affected, suffer from extreme poverty, malnutrition, disease and across the planet the figures are increasing at a dizzying rate. Out of two billion children in the world, today half live in 33 countries with high climatic risk, i.e. desertification and floods that generate famine. The consequences on the most vulnerable are increased diseases, malnutrition, abandonment of school - and for many it means saying goodbye to the only daily meal - forced migration often to nearby areas in camps for displaced persons.

In the Horn of Africa the situation is even more serious due to the thirty-year civil conflict in Somalia, where the central government has engaged in a tough fight with the jihadist terrorists of al Shabaab who respond with bloody attacks that do not spare civilians. In northern Ethiopia, after two years, the fratricidal conflict in Tigray between the federal government, the Eritrean allies and the regional Tigrinya authorities was finally concluded with the signing of a truce in Pretoria on 2 November. It has been defined as the biggest ongoing conflict with tens, hundreds of thousands of dead - probably half a million according to the US Senate - between victims of the clashes and deaths due to the blockade of humanitarian aid carried out by the Addis Ababa government. But let's not forget the situations of conflict in half of Nigeria due to the jihadists of Boko Haram, the wars between gangs in the Congo over the possession of the extremely precious rare earths, in Cameroon due to the secession of the English-speaking population, in the Central African Republic where the Russians want to replace the French as the dominant power and in Mozambique where the jihadists want to grab the oil fields. Not to mention that the Russian invasion has shifted international humanitarian aid to Ukraine to the detriment of Africa, where the shortage of grain, fertilizers and fuels has caused the prices of water, food and petrol to skyrocket, making North African countries even more unstable , Sudan and Chad. More generally, the African scourges are the corruption of the political elites and of the bureaucracy and the curse of resources, for which the country that has been given one or more wealth below or above the ground as a gift will be plundered. And if the old predators were us European colonialists and the USA, in the twenty-first century we have been partly ousted by China, Russia, Turkey and the Gulf countries. Forgotten African wars are fought above all with the weapons of these non-African powers and the hunger for energy and raw materials could unleash the next war here.

The geopolitical framework is complicated and is constantly changing, putting diplomacy in difficulty. Yet, precisely in South Africa, the signing of the truce in Ethiopia unexpectedly arrived under very strong pressure from the African Union, the USA and the European Union. We can and must treat. Always. Those who love peace today may overcome afrophobia, listen and begin to take an interest in this immense continent. The youngest and richest on earth. Those who love peace are with Africa.

The Russian invasion has shifted international humanitarian aid to Ukraine at the expense of Africa, where shortages of grain, fertilizers and fuel have sent water, food and petrol prices skyrocketing

Paolo Lambruschi

NP Dicembre 2022