August 15, 2014 EIR National 31
Obama Tells African
Youth: Pay Your Debts!
by Douglas DeGroot
Aug. 11—President Obama’s performance at a Microsoft-
and MasterCard Foundation-funded meeting with
African youth leaders in Washington July 28 removed
any remaining doubts that an already skeptical African
leadership may have had, that the Aug. 4-7 summit
called by the U.S. President would lead to a shift in
U.S.-Africa policy, to one of a development thrust to
begin to fill Africa’s enormous infrastructure deficit.
Instead, as revealed by the demands Obama made,
the U.S.A. will continue to defend the bankrupt British
global financial empire, and work to prevent African
nations from developing in collaboration with the
system being set up by the BRICS nations (Russia,
China, India, Brazil, and South Africa), the only sane
survival option the world now has. The global financial
empire will lose Africa as its private resource preserve
if the continent industrializes with the cooperation of
the BRICS.
Covering up the real reasons Africa has not yet developed,
in response to questions from the young leaders,
Obama retailed the line that the problems that are
impeding African development are internal, and, ludicrously,
he said that African development will take
place once these internal problems are dealt with. He
was especially brutal on the the question of debt relief,
saying point-blank, that African nations had to stop
complaining about their usurious debt burdens, and just
pay them.
That leaves the combination of China and the
BRICS grouping as the only option open to Africa for
infrastructure development. Chinese investment in
Africa this past year was over than $200 billion, more
than double that of the U.S.A.
Since the July 14-16 BRICS summit in Brazil, a $50
billion New Development Bank, plus $100 billion in
the Contingent Reserve Arrangement—for countries
that get in trouble—is now being geared up, and one of
its goals, which has been in planning for some time,
will be infrastructure in Africa. A regional office for the
BRICS bank is to be located in South Africa.
Large-scale electricity production, roads, and railroads
are only part of what would be on the agenda, if
the BRICS are successful. A reported 70% of the African
population have no electrical power or only irregular
power. These kinds of topics did not enter into
Obama’s performance at the meeting of the young leaders.
On the Debt
The following poignant question on African debt
was posed to Obama by Kenyan participant:
“Africa is losing her people to starvation and diseases,
which are otherwise curable. And this is largely
because our governments are establishing very huge
debts to the G-8 countries. As a global leader in the
family of nations, when will the U.S. lead the other G-8
countries in forgiving Africa these debts so that our
governments can be in a position to deliver and provide
essential services, like social, health care, and the infrastructural
development services to our people?”
Obama avoided the issues of food shortages and disease
altogether, and claimed there had been advances in
health care, without taking into account how lifespans
are shortened by the fact that the majority of the population
does not have sanitation and potable water.
He went on to say: “I will challenge the notion that
the primary reason that there’s been a failure of service
delivery is because of onerous debt imposed by the
West. . . . At some point, we have to stop looking somewhere
else for solutions, and you have to start looking
for solutions, internally. . . .
“But do not think that that [debt] is the main impediment
at this point to why we have not seen greater
progress in many countries, because there’s enough
resources there in-country, even if debts are being
serviced, to do better than we’re doing in many
cases.”
Through the special features of “bankers’ arithmetic,”
such as enforced currency devaluations, while significant
portions of African debt has been repaid, large
amounts are kept on the books, as EIR has documented
in the case of Argentina.1
Obama’s Grievance List
The British financial empire-designed campaign,
outlined by Obama, will serve to undermine the poten-
1. See Dennis Small, “Will Argentina Be First To Bolt from Bankrupt
System?,” EIR, June 27, 2014.
32 National EIR August 15, 2014
tial for the successful implementation of the desperately
needed infrastructure projects.
Obama presented a list of what he said were the impediments
preventing African development: bad governance,
no rule of law, corruption, and female oppression.
These are all problems can only be solved
effectively by economic development.
The British Empire’s time-worn tactic is to use these
types of issues as a grievance list to mobilize people
against their governments, without providing any
means to solve the problems.
Coming from Obama, the demand to eliminate corruption
is especially outrageous, given the corruption
of the millions of George Soros drug dollars channeled
into his 2008 election. One African source noted that
the amount lost to African corruption is measly, compared
to illicit funds earned legally or illegally, and then
illegally transferred out of an African nation by Western
companies. He also said that if an African government
tries to effect legislation for projects, it’s charged with
corruption. But nobody bats an eye at the billions of
dollars that are funneled through K Street, which by the
same logic, should be called corruption, but is instead
called lobbying.
As for the issue of female oppression crippling African
development, Obama should consider that women
arduously till the soil with age-old hand tools to produce
70% of the food in Africa,
while men attempt to eek out some
money from the cash economy.
Obama urged the youth to pressure
their governments to ensure
that his list of complaints be rectified—
without development—
hoping to rope them into future destabilization
projects, à la the
so-called Arab Spring. Africa has
the largest youth population in the
world.
Security Blackmail
The creation of numerous conflicts
and destabilizations across
Africa by the anti-government militias
and terrorists which are proxies
of the British Empire, is another
tactic that will be used to
sabotage the development of
Africa, now that the BRICS opportunity is there. These
conflicts were not mentioned by Obama in the meeting
with the youth, but have been often referred to by the
administration, and were discussed during the summit
itself. These proxy forces are used to provide the pretext
for U.S. and French military aid to, or intervention
into, the countries under attack, to eliminate the peaceful
environment needed for infrastructure development.
These type of operations have expanded greatly
throughout big parts of Africa, since the Obama/NATO
overthrow of the Libyan government by the use of militias,
in conjunction with an extensive bombing campaign
in 2011. The Qatar-financed arms networks are
still running arms into militia bases in Libya that are
active throughout the Sahel, as well as into other regions
of Africa.
Some examples include:
• The radical militia takeover of northern Mali in
2012;
• The ongoing attacks against the government and
population of Nigeria by Boko Haram;
• The Shabaab jihadi threat in Somalia, which is
also being used to threaten Kenya to undermine largescale
infrastructural projects in a group of eastern African
nations.
—dougdegroot@larouchepub.com
White House/Pete Souza
President Obama wagged his finger at African youth leaders at their recent summit in
Washington, ordering them to “suck it up,” and pay the predator banks.
36 Economics EIR August 15, 2014
Aug. 11—South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, speaking
at the National Press Club on Aug. 4, the first day of
President Obama’s U.S.-Africa Summit, discussed the
importance of the New Development Bank (NDB) initiated
at the July 14-16 summit of the BRICS nations
(Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in
Brazil. Contrary to Obama’s private-sector-only approach
to investment in Africa, the NDB’s dedication to
lending money to build infrastructure in developing nations,
will provide Africa with an alternative institution
to finance energy, water, and transportation projects
desperately needed throughout the continent. There
was a buzz of excitement at the Washington Summit of
almost 50 heads of states, as news of the new BRICS
bank was brought to the attention of those participating,
by both President Zuma and EIR over the course of the
week’s events.
In his speech at the Press Club luncheon, Zuma
spoke directly about the NDB, when asked to compare
it to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
He replied that the two existing banks have not been
successful in helping developing countries. Zuma
pointed out that unlike these “older institutions,” the
new BRICS bank and reserve fund come from developing
countries. “There is a general consent that the other
banks have not been doing their job,” he said. “The
BRICS bank will have a different approach. And it will
avoid the problem of having to bail out the banks.”
These comments were made in the context of his remarks
about South Africa’s commitment to make poverty
“history” for the 16 million living in deplorable
conditions in his country.
Immediately after Zuma’s remarks, this author
stood outside and handed out EIR’s feature article from
its July 25 issue reporting on the BRICS Summit, “Half
of Humanity Launches a New World Economic Order.”
Over 100 copies were distributed during the course of
the summit.
Obama Offers Little to Help Africa
It was known in advance that the United States was
not going to provide any new programs at this summit
that would materially improve the living conditions for
hundreds of millions of Africans living in poverty on
less than two dollars per day. When one representative
of a leading African nation asked President Obama
what he had budgeted for Africa, in terms of what are
called “deliverables,” the reply was: Nothing.
It was understood by most of the participants, that
President Obama needed this conference for his legacy—
i.e. that he could say that he was the first American
President to convene a U.S.-Africa summit. African
leaders were “persuaded,” and felt obligated to attend,
even though little more than a “photo-op” was expected.
The Obama Administration felt pressured by
the Africans to respond to China’s dramatic increase of
trade with Africa, and its aggressive program to build
infrastructure on the continent. More than one African
U.S.-Africa Summit
BRIC S New Bank Provides
A Pathway to Development
by Lawrence K. Freeman
EIR Economics
August 15, 2014 EIR Economics 37
leader pointed out that China’s trade with Africa in
2013 was $210 billion, while trade with the U.S. was
only $85 billion.
Although President Obama and his State Department
have obliquely criticized China’s economic dominance
in Africa, his anti-Africa National Security Advisor
Susan Rice was more blunt, when speaking on
Morning Edition of National Public Radio: “Typically,
the nature of China’s engagement,” she said, “is it brings
in thousands of Chinese workers and uses Chinese to
build roads, build buildings, rather than giving jobs and
opportunity and capacity building for Africans, which is
a real distinction between the American approach and
the Chinese approach. The American approach is not to
bring in a bunch of foreigners to take jobs from Africa,
but it’s actually to build African capacity.”
In reality, Obama’s approach is to have the U.S.
build nothing in Africa, but to convince the private
sector to make inadequate investments, and claim credit
for aiding the Africans. Obama’s Summit has been referred
to as a glorified trade mission, and a costly one at
that, with each African leader accompanied by a large
delegation, whose airplane tickets, accommodations,
and travel in D.C., are an enormous expense.
As expected, Obama announced his support for programs
from previous administrations: the African
Growth and Opportunity Act, established under the
President Clinton; President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR
(President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) program
to reduce the spread of HIV-AIDs in Africa through antiretroviral
treatment, albeit with reduced funding; and
Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account, which is a limited
program for small-scale infrastructure. Otherwise
the President announced at the Summit, $34 billion in
pledges by major U.S. companies for new investment
in Africa, although largely unspecified.
Obama’s commitment to provide $110 million per
year over five years for military training was the only
actual new money authorized to be spent by the U.S.
government for Africa. Compared to other countries
around the world, the U.S. is doing little to assist Africa,
especially in infrastructure, and Obama’s fakery to obscure
this truth did not go unnoticed by many Africans,
both from Africa and those living in the U.S.
Miraculously, Obama conjured up an additional $12
billion in private investment and loan guarantees for his
Power Africa program, which allegedly will provide
electricity to 60 million Africans, a far cry from his
claim to double access to Africa’s 600 million without
electricity. This author’s critique of President Obama’s
“Powerless Africa” initiative was widely read and circulated
before and during the Summit, to the delight
and agreement of many of those attending (see below).
Obama managed to antagonize and insult the African
press attending the Summit, who traveled from all
over the U.S. and the world, by keeping them waiting
over an hour for his press conference following the
Summit, and then only calling on one member of the
African press, leading one journalist to ask, “What did
we come all this way for?”
Africa Wants and Needs Nuclear Power
In addition to the concept of the BRICS Development
Bank being raised at the Summit, the demand that
African nations have nuclear energy as part of their
power supply was made as well. This is very important
for African countries, which have allowed themselves
to be conditioned to believe that they can’t have nuclear
energy to power their economies because it is too “advanced”
for them; that they should be satisfied with less
powerful forms of energy, including those that are outright
ineffective, such as so-called renewables, like
wind and solar energy.
President Zuma, speaking at the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce on Aug. 4, described his country’s commitment
to the future, outlining his support for a South-
North rail corridor from Durban, South Africa, to Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania, continuing to Cairo, Egypt; and
South Africa’s intention to spend 840 billion rand over
the next three years on infrastructure and energy, including
nuclear power. Even though it appears that not
everyone in his government is fully committed to nuclear
energy, at the luncheon that afternoon, Zuma
spoke of the role of nuclear power, and how it can help
“solve all of southern Africa’s energy problems.”1 He
also continued to express South Africa’s support for the
Grand Inga Dam project in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo that could provide over 40,000 megawatts of
electrical power to the continent.
Issoufou Mahamadou, the President of Niger, who
spoke at the German Marshall Fund Aug. 5, also made
a strong case for his country’s right to have nuclear
energy. In an excellent presentation on how his Sahalean
country, 75% desert, intends to reduce food insecurity
and eliminate famine, Mahamadou advocated
1. See David Cherry, “South Africa Bucks British Opposition, Goes
Nuclear, EIR, July 25, 2014.
38 Economics EIR August 15, 2014
nuclear energy, telling his audience that it was the least
costly next to hydropower, and dismissing solar energy
as more expensive.
In response to a question from this author, the President
of Niger reiterated his support for nuclear energy,
building the East-West railroad, and rehabilitating Lake
Chad.
Outstanding African leaders have historically demanded
nuclear power. Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta
Diop, in the 1960s and 1970s, advocated for African
economies to be powered by nuclear energy, and thermonuclear
fusion energy, and wanted to establish training
centers for Africans to master these technologies.
Diop wrote in 1978: “However, if that source of
energy [fusion] control were to become available, with
effective control of thermonuclear reactions, the energy
needs of the planet would be answered for a period of a
billion years—repeat, 1 billion—years. The future instruments
that produce this energy, whether called thermonuclear
reactors or tokomaks . . . will be fed in their
final and truly operational stages by heavy hydrogen,
obtained basically through electrolysis of sea water.”2
He demanded that thermonuclear fusion energy be
studied in Africa, calling for the creation of “a pilot
fusion center in an appropriate African country, open to
all qualified African researchers willing to follow this
line of pursuit.”
More than a decade earlier, Diop identified both fis-
2. All the quotations from Cheikh Anta Diop, are from his book, Black
Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, Africa
World Press: Trenton, N.J., 1987.
sion and fusion energy as primary energy sources for
Africa, underscoring the potential of fusion: “Once the
thermonuclear reaction has become adapted to industry,
mankind will without doubt, as scientists foresee,
have an abundant new source of energy.” In discussing
the type of research required in African universities, he
put the need for “an institute of nuclear chemistry and
physics” at the top of his list of scientific research institutions
to be created in Africa.
When asked, in a 1977 interview with Afriscope,
“What is the mission of culture?” Diop replied, “Survival
and creativity. Man must create to survive. To
create he must insure his survival.” Later, he added,
“Man’s mission is creation,” reflecting his own scientific
thought process.
China, a founding member of the BRICS, is today
leading the world to the next higher level of energy-flux
density with its lunar program to industrially mine the
Moon for helium-3, an advanced fuel for fusion energy
that is far more powerful than the deuterium-tritium
fuel cycle that Diop was studying.
—lkfreeman@prodigy.net
Documentation
Obama to Africa: We
Don’t Do Infrastructure
The following statement was distributed by Lawrence
Freeman at the Aug. 4-6 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
Aug. 3—Speaking at the Atlantic Council in Washington,
D.C. July 31, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs, made it clear
that the United States, as a matter of policy, will not
build infrastructure in Africa. She stated that the purpose
of President Obama’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit
was to reaffirm the U.S. partnership and friendship with
Africa for 50 years, not give out billion-dollar goodies.
She said other countries can build infrastructure, but
warned Africa to be cautious in their relations with
other economic powers.
Without infrastructure there will be no economic
development in Africa, which has the largest infrastruc-
Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop was one of many African
leaders who advocated for nuclear energy in the 1960s and 70s.
August 15, 2014 EIR Economics 39
ture deficit per capita and per square kilometer of any
continent. The spreading lethal Ebola virus is itself a
marker of the failure to develop healthy economies in
Africa. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is appropriately
threatening to become the number one concern at
the African Summit. Energy is crucial and indispensable
for the development of any country, which is why
President Obama’s signature policy—Power Africa—
is such chicanery.
Africa Needs Electrification
With between 550 and 600 million Africans living
in sub-Saharan Africa having no access to electricity—
over 50% of the population living in the dark—
President Obama’s so-called signature policy for
Africa, his “Powerless Africa” program, is either an
outright fraud, a cruel joke, or done by someone who
doesn’t know how to simply add and divide. The initiative
to generate 8-10,000 megawatts of power over
five years, divided among several countries—Nigeria,
Liberia, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya—to
provide electricity to 20 million additional users, will
not double the access to electricity. Presently, Sub-Saharan
Africa has about 400-450 million users of electricity,
albeit at very low watts per capita. However,
this did not prevent President Obama from making
false claims of “doubling” twice when he spoke in
South Africa in 2013, which his administration has repeated
ever since.
The Sub-Saharan African continent generates the
least amount of electricity in the world, and has the
lowest number of watts per capita as well. Globally the
world generates about 5,200 gigawatts (GW) of electricity—
that is, 5,200 billion watts of power. Sub-Saharan
Africa consumes about 70,000 megawatts (MW)—
that is 70,000 million watts of power, which gives the
Subcontinent less than 1.5% of the world’s total. Is it
any wonder why it is called the “Dark Continent?”
Even if we doubled or tripled Obama’s “Powerless
Africa” program every five years, Africa would still be
in the dark. One blogger estimated that if Africa’s total
electrical power were shared equally, each household
would be able to power one light bulb per day, per
person, for 3.5 hours, Obama’s program would add 18
minutes to each light bulb.
Take the case of Nigeria. At best, Nigeria generates
4,000 MW of power, not counting several thousands
more MW produced by costly household diesel generators,
which doesn’t change the country’s massive
energy deficit. With 177 million people, and at best,
4,000 MW of power, Nigerians average less than 25
watts of energy per capita, and some estimates are as
low as 12 watts per capita. For Nigeria to enjoy American
standard of energy consumption of 1,400 watts per
capita, which they deserve, Nigeria would require
248,000 MW or 248 GW—approximately 60 times its
current power generation. And Nigeria’s population is
expected to increase to 250 million in the next 20 years,
thus requiring even more power. Obama’s “Powerless
Africa,” if and when completed, will provide Nigeria
with a mere 2,000 MW in five years.
For all of sub-Saharan Africa’s nearly 1 billion
people to enjoy an American standard would require
1,400,000 MW or 1,400 GW of electrical power. This
can only be accomplished with nuclear power, which
is the most efficient, cost effective, and most powerful
in terms of its energy-flux density.3 That is why South
Africa’s commitment to build six nuclear power
plants, with 9,600 MW of capacity, is exciting for all
of Africa. South Africa, which already has the highest
energy per capita on the Subcontinent, will be generating
an equivalent amount of energy to Obama’s total
“Powerless Africa,” and it will be far more productive
than solar energy and wind farms. It doesn’t matter
that they are renewable; they are too inefficient, too
low energy-flux density to power a modern agricultural-
industrial economy. Russia has already discussed
with South Africa a proposal to build and provide favorable
financing for the construction of these nuclear
plants.
With nuclear energy, and then fusion energy, Africa
will have the energy-flux density to power transportation,
to power pumping for irrigation, to construct
new waterways, and nuclear power plants, with its
energy and high-temperature steam ideal for desalination.
Why not start building the equivalent of a new
Nile River with desalinated water? We know Egypt
and the Horn of Africa need it. With this type of high
energy-flux-density program, the people of Africa can
finally be freed from the deplorable conditions of life
caused by a lack of energy, food, clean water, and sanitation.
Not surprisingly, of the 72 nuclear plants currently
under construction worldwide, 47 of them—65%—are
in BRICS countries.
3. Energy-flux density is the organization and power/heat intensity of a
form of energy to accomplish work.
Obama Tells African
Youth: Pay Your Debts!
by Douglas DeGroot
Aug. 11—President Obama’s performance at a Microsoft-
and MasterCard Foundation-funded meeting with
African youth leaders in Washington July 28 removed
any remaining doubts that an already skeptical African
leadership may have had, that the Aug. 4-7 summit
called by the U.S. President would lead to a shift in
U.S.-Africa policy, to one of a development thrust to
begin to fill Africa’s enormous infrastructure deficit.
Instead, as revealed by the demands Obama made,
the U.S.A. will continue to defend the bankrupt British
global financial empire, and work to prevent African
nations from developing in collaboration with the
system being set up by the BRICS nations (Russia,
China, India, Brazil, and South Africa), the only sane
survival option the world now has. The global financial
empire will lose Africa as its private resource preserve
if the continent industrializes with the cooperation of
the BRICS.
Covering up the real reasons Africa has not yet developed,
in response to questions from the young leaders,
Obama retailed the line that the problems that are
impeding African development are internal, and, ludicrously,
he said that African development will take
place once these internal problems are dealt with. He
was especially brutal on the the question of debt relief,
saying point-blank, that African nations had to stop
complaining about their usurious debt burdens, and just
pay them.
That leaves the combination of China and the
BRICS grouping as the only option open to Africa for
infrastructure development. Chinese investment in
Africa this past year was over than $200 billion, more
than double that of the U.S.A.
Since the July 14-16 BRICS summit in Brazil, a $50
billion New Development Bank, plus $100 billion in
the Contingent Reserve Arrangement—for countries
that get in trouble—is now being geared up, and one of
its goals, which has been in planning for some time,
will be infrastructure in Africa. A regional office for the
BRICS bank is to be located in South Africa.
Large-scale electricity production, roads, and railroads
are only part of what would be on the agenda, if
the BRICS are successful. A reported 70% of the African
population have no electrical power or only irregular
power. These kinds of topics did not enter into
Obama’s performance at the meeting of the young leaders.
On the Debt
The following poignant question on African debt
was posed to Obama by Kenyan participant:
“Africa is losing her people to starvation and diseases,
which are otherwise curable. And this is largely
because our governments are establishing very huge
debts to the G-8 countries. As a global leader in the
family of nations, when will the U.S. lead the other G-8
countries in forgiving Africa these debts so that our
governments can be in a position to deliver and provide
essential services, like social, health care, and the infrastructural
development services to our people?”
Obama avoided the issues of food shortages and disease
altogether, and claimed there had been advances in
health care, without taking into account how lifespans
are shortened by the fact that the majority of the population
does not have sanitation and potable water.
He went on to say: “I will challenge the notion that
the primary reason that there’s been a failure of service
delivery is because of onerous debt imposed by the
West. . . . At some point, we have to stop looking somewhere
else for solutions, and you have to start looking
for solutions, internally. . . .
“But do not think that that [debt] is the main impediment
at this point to why we have not seen greater
progress in many countries, because there’s enough
resources there in-country, even if debts are being
serviced, to do better than we’re doing in many
cases.”
Through the special features of “bankers’ arithmetic,”
such as enforced currency devaluations, while significant
portions of African debt has been repaid, large
amounts are kept on the books, as EIR has documented
in the case of Argentina.1
Obama’s Grievance List
The British financial empire-designed campaign,
outlined by Obama, will serve to undermine the poten-
1. See Dennis Small, “Will Argentina Be First To Bolt from Bankrupt
System?,” EIR, June 27, 2014.
32 National EIR August 15, 2014
tial for the successful implementation of the desperately
needed infrastructure projects.
Obama presented a list of what he said were the impediments
preventing African development: bad governance,
no rule of law, corruption, and female oppression.
These are all problems can only be solved
effectively by economic development.
The British Empire’s time-worn tactic is to use these
types of issues as a grievance list to mobilize people
against their governments, without providing any
means to solve the problems.
Coming from Obama, the demand to eliminate corruption
is especially outrageous, given the corruption
of the millions of George Soros drug dollars channeled
into his 2008 election. One African source noted that
the amount lost to African corruption is measly, compared
to illicit funds earned legally or illegally, and then
illegally transferred out of an African nation by Western
companies. He also said that if an African government
tries to effect legislation for projects, it’s charged with
corruption. But nobody bats an eye at the billions of
dollars that are funneled through K Street, which by the
same logic, should be called corruption, but is instead
called lobbying.
As for the issue of female oppression crippling African
development, Obama should consider that women
arduously till the soil with age-old hand tools to produce
70% of the food in Africa,
while men attempt to eek out some
money from the cash economy.
Obama urged the youth to pressure
their governments to ensure
that his list of complaints be rectified—
without development—
hoping to rope them into future destabilization
projects, à la the
so-called Arab Spring. Africa has
the largest youth population in the
world.
Security Blackmail
The creation of numerous conflicts
and destabilizations across
Africa by the anti-government militias
and terrorists which are proxies
of the British Empire, is another
tactic that will be used to
sabotage the development of
Africa, now that the BRICS opportunity is there. These
conflicts were not mentioned by Obama in the meeting
with the youth, but have been often referred to by the
administration, and were discussed during the summit
itself. These proxy forces are used to provide the pretext
for U.S. and French military aid to, or intervention
into, the countries under attack, to eliminate the peaceful
environment needed for infrastructure development.
These type of operations have expanded greatly
throughout big parts of Africa, since the Obama/NATO
overthrow of the Libyan government by the use of militias,
in conjunction with an extensive bombing campaign
in 2011. The Qatar-financed arms networks are
still running arms into militia bases in Libya that are
active throughout the Sahel, as well as into other regions
of Africa.
Some examples include:
• The radical militia takeover of northern Mali in
2012;
• The ongoing attacks against the government and
population of Nigeria by Boko Haram;
• The Shabaab jihadi threat in Somalia, which is
also being used to threaten Kenya to undermine largescale
infrastructural projects in a group of eastern African
nations.
—dougdegroot@larouchepub.com
White House/Pete Souza
President Obama wagged his finger at African youth leaders at their recent summit in
Washington, ordering them to “suck it up,” and pay the predator banks.
36 Economics EIR August 15, 2014
Aug. 11—South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, speaking
at the National Press Club on Aug. 4, the first day of
President Obama’s U.S.-Africa Summit, discussed the
importance of the New Development Bank (NDB) initiated
at the July 14-16 summit of the BRICS nations
(Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in
Brazil. Contrary to Obama’s private-sector-only approach
to investment in Africa, the NDB’s dedication to
lending money to build infrastructure in developing nations,
will provide Africa with an alternative institution
to finance energy, water, and transportation projects
desperately needed throughout the continent. There
was a buzz of excitement at the Washington Summit of
almost 50 heads of states, as news of the new BRICS
bank was brought to the attention of those participating,
by both President Zuma and EIR over the course of the
week’s events.
In his speech at the Press Club luncheon, Zuma
spoke directly about the NDB, when asked to compare
it to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
He replied that the two existing banks have not been
successful in helping developing countries. Zuma
pointed out that unlike these “older institutions,” the
new BRICS bank and reserve fund come from developing
countries. “There is a general consent that the other
banks have not been doing their job,” he said. “The
BRICS bank will have a different approach. And it will
avoid the problem of having to bail out the banks.”
These comments were made in the context of his remarks
about South Africa’s commitment to make poverty
“history” for the 16 million living in deplorable
conditions in his country.
Immediately after Zuma’s remarks, this author
stood outside and handed out EIR’s feature article from
its July 25 issue reporting on the BRICS Summit, “Half
of Humanity Launches a New World Economic Order.”
Over 100 copies were distributed during the course of
the summit.
Obama Offers Little to Help Africa
It was known in advance that the United States was
not going to provide any new programs at this summit
that would materially improve the living conditions for
hundreds of millions of Africans living in poverty on
less than two dollars per day. When one representative
of a leading African nation asked President Obama
what he had budgeted for Africa, in terms of what are
called “deliverables,” the reply was: Nothing.
It was understood by most of the participants, that
President Obama needed this conference for his legacy—
i.e. that he could say that he was the first American
President to convene a U.S.-Africa summit. African
leaders were “persuaded,” and felt obligated to attend,
even though little more than a “photo-op” was expected.
The Obama Administration felt pressured by
the Africans to respond to China’s dramatic increase of
trade with Africa, and its aggressive program to build
infrastructure on the continent. More than one African
U.S.-Africa Summit
BRIC S New Bank Provides
A Pathway to Development
by Lawrence K. Freeman
EIR Economics
August 15, 2014 EIR Economics 37
leader pointed out that China’s trade with Africa in
2013 was $210 billion, while trade with the U.S. was
only $85 billion.
Although President Obama and his State Department
have obliquely criticized China’s economic dominance
in Africa, his anti-Africa National Security Advisor
Susan Rice was more blunt, when speaking on
Morning Edition of National Public Radio: “Typically,
the nature of China’s engagement,” she said, “is it brings
in thousands of Chinese workers and uses Chinese to
build roads, build buildings, rather than giving jobs and
opportunity and capacity building for Africans, which is
a real distinction between the American approach and
the Chinese approach. The American approach is not to
bring in a bunch of foreigners to take jobs from Africa,
but it’s actually to build African capacity.”
In reality, Obama’s approach is to have the U.S.
build nothing in Africa, but to convince the private
sector to make inadequate investments, and claim credit
for aiding the Africans. Obama’s Summit has been referred
to as a glorified trade mission, and a costly one at
that, with each African leader accompanied by a large
delegation, whose airplane tickets, accommodations,
and travel in D.C., are an enormous expense.
As expected, Obama announced his support for programs
from previous administrations: the African
Growth and Opportunity Act, established under the
President Clinton; President George W. Bush’s PEPFAR
(President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) program
to reduce the spread of HIV-AIDs in Africa through antiretroviral
treatment, albeit with reduced funding; and
Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account, which is a limited
program for small-scale infrastructure. Otherwise
the President announced at the Summit, $34 billion in
pledges by major U.S. companies for new investment
in Africa, although largely unspecified.
Obama’s commitment to provide $110 million per
year over five years for military training was the only
actual new money authorized to be spent by the U.S.
government for Africa. Compared to other countries
around the world, the U.S. is doing little to assist Africa,
especially in infrastructure, and Obama’s fakery to obscure
this truth did not go unnoticed by many Africans,
both from Africa and those living in the U.S.
Miraculously, Obama conjured up an additional $12
billion in private investment and loan guarantees for his
Power Africa program, which allegedly will provide
electricity to 60 million Africans, a far cry from his
claim to double access to Africa’s 600 million without
electricity. This author’s critique of President Obama’s
“Powerless Africa” initiative was widely read and circulated
before and during the Summit, to the delight
and agreement of many of those attending (see below).
Obama managed to antagonize and insult the African
press attending the Summit, who traveled from all
over the U.S. and the world, by keeping them waiting
over an hour for his press conference following the
Summit, and then only calling on one member of the
African press, leading one journalist to ask, “What did
we come all this way for?”
Africa Wants and Needs Nuclear Power
In addition to the concept of the BRICS Development
Bank being raised at the Summit, the demand that
African nations have nuclear energy as part of their
power supply was made as well. This is very important
for African countries, which have allowed themselves
to be conditioned to believe that they can’t have nuclear
energy to power their economies because it is too “advanced”
for them; that they should be satisfied with less
powerful forms of energy, including those that are outright
ineffective, such as so-called renewables, like
wind and solar energy.
President Zuma, speaking at the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce on Aug. 4, described his country’s commitment
to the future, outlining his support for a South-
North rail corridor from Durban, South Africa, to Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania, continuing to Cairo, Egypt; and
South Africa’s intention to spend 840 billion rand over
the next three years on infrastructure and energy, including
nuclear power. Even though it appears that not
everyone in his government is fully committed to nuclear
energy, at the luncheon that afternoon, Zuma
spoke of the role of nuclear power, and how it can help
“solve all of southern Africa’s energy problems.”1 He
also continued to express South Africa’s support for the
Grand Inga Dam project in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo that could provide over 40,000 megawatts of
electrical power to the continent.
Issoufou Mahamadou, the President of Niger, who
spoke at the German Marshall Fund Aug. 5, also made
a strong case for his country’s right to have nuclear
energy. In an excellent presentation on how his Sahalean
country, 75% desert, intends to reduce food insecurity
and eliminate famine, Mahamadou advocated
1. See David Cherry, “South Africa Bucks British Opposition, Goes
Nuclear, EIR, July 25, 2014.
38 Economics EIR August 15, 2014
nuclear energy, telling his audience that it was the least
costly next to hydropower, and dismissing solar energy
as more expensive.
In response to a question from this author, the President
of Niger reiterated his support for nuclear energy,
building the East-West railroad, and rehabilitating Lake
Chad.
Outstanding African leaders have historically demanded
nuclear power. Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta
Diop, in the 1960s and 1970s, advocated for African
economies to be powered by nuclear energy, and thermonuclear
fusion energy, and wanted to establish training
centers for Africans to master these technologies.
Diop wrote in 1978: “However, if that source of
energy [fusion] control were to become available, with
effective control of thermonuclear reactions, the energy
needs of the planet would be answered for a period of a
billion years—repeat, 1 billion—years. The future instruments
that produce this energy, whether called thermonuclear
reactors or tokomaks . . . will be fed in their
final and truly operational stages by heavy hydrogen,
obtained basically through electrolysis of sea water.”2
He demanded that thermonuclear fusion energy be
studied in Africa, calling for the creation of “a pilot
fusion center in an appropriate African country, open to
all qualified African researchers willing to follow this
line of pursuit.”
More than a decade earlier, Diop identified both fis-
2. All the quotations from Cheikh Anta Diop, are from his book, Black
Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, Africa
World Press: Trenton, N.J., 1987.
sion and fusion energy as primary energy sources for
Africa, underscoring the potential of fusion: “Once the
thermonuclear reaction has become adapted to industry,
mankind will without doubt, as scientists foresee,
have an abundant new source of energy.” In discussing
the type of research required in African universities, he
put the need for “an institute of nuclear chemistry and
physics” at the top of his list of scientific research institutions
to be created in Africa.
When asked, in a 1977 interview with Afriscope,
“What is the mission of culture?” Diop replied, “Survival
and creativity. Man must create to survive. To
create he must insure his survival.” Later, he added,
“Man’s mission is creation,” reflecting his own scientific
thought process.
China, a founding member of the BRICS, is today
leading the world to the next higher level of energy-flux
density with its lunar program to industrially mine the
Moon for helium-3, an advanced fuel for fusion energy
that is far more powerful than the deuterium-tritium
fuel cycle that Diop was studying.
—lkfreeman@prodigy.net
Documentation
Obama to Africa: We
Don’t Do Infrastructure
The following statement was distributed by Lawrence
Freeman at the Aug. 4-6 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
Aug. 3—Speaking at the Atlantic Council in Washington,
D.C. July 31, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs, made it clear
that the United States, as a matter of policy, will not
build infrastructure in Africa. She stated that the purpose
of President Obama’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit
was to reaffirm the U.S. partnership and friendship with
Africa for 50 years, not give out billion-dollar goodies.
She said other countries can build infrastructure, but
warned Africa to be cautious in their relations with
other economic powers.
Without infrastructure there will be no economic
development in Africa, which has the largest infrastruc-
Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop was one of many African
leaders who advocated for nuclear energy in the 1960s and 70s.
August 15, 2014 EIR Economics 39
ture deficit per capita and per square kilometer of any
continent. The spreading lethal Ebola virus is itself a
marker of the failure to develop healthy economies in
Africa. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is appropriately
threatening to become the number one concern at
the African Summit. Energy is crucial and indispensable
for the development of any country, which is why
President Obama’s signature policy—Power Africa—
is such chicanery.
Africa Needs Electrification
With between 550 and 600 million Africans living
in sub-Saharan Africa having no access to electricity—
over 50% of the population living in the dark—
President Obama’s so-called signature policy for
Africa, his “Powerless Africa” program, is either an
outright fraud, a cruel joke, or done by someone who
doesn’t know how to simply add and divide. The initiative
to generate 8-10,000 megawatts of power over
five years, divided among several countries—Nigeria,
Liberia, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya—to
provide electricity to 20 million additional users, will
not double the access to electricity. Presently, Sub-Saharan
Africa has about 400-450 million users of electricity,
albeit at very low watts per capita. However,
this did not prevent President Obama from making
false claims of “doubling” twice when he spoke in
South Africa in 2013, which his administration has repeated
ever since.
The Sub-Saharan African continent generates the
least amount of electricity in the world, and has the
lowest number of watts per capita as well. Globally the
world generates about 5,200 gigawatts (GW) of electricity—
that is, 5,200 billion watts of power. Sub-Saharan
Africa consumes about 70,000 megawatts (MW)—
that is 70,000 million watts of power, which gives the
Subcontinent less than 1.5% of the world’s total. Is it
any wonder why it is called the “Dark Continent?”
Even if we doubled or tripled Obama’s “Powerless
Africa” program every five years, Africa would still be
in the dark. One blogger estimated that if Africa’s total
electrical power were shared equally, each household
would be able to power one light bulb per day, per
person, for 3.5 hours, Obama’s program would add 18
minutes to each light bulb.
Take the case of Nigeria. At best, Nigeria generates
4,000 MW of power, not counting several thousands
more MW produced by costly household diesel generators,
which doesn’t change the country’s massive
energy deficit. With 177 million people, and at best,
4,000 MW of power, Nigerians average less than 25
watts of energy per capita, and some estimates are as
low as 12 watts per capita. For Nigeria to enjoy American
standard of energy consumption of 1,400 watts per
capita, which they deserve, Nigeria would require
248,000 MW or 248 GW—approximately 60 times its
current power generation. And Nigeria’s population is
expected to increase to 250 million in the next 20 years,
thus requiring even more power. Obama’s “Powerless
Africa,” if and when completed, will provide Nigeria
with a mere 2,000 MW in five years.
For all of sub-Saharan Africa’s nearly 1 billion
people to enjoy an American standard would require
1,400,000 MW or 1,400 GW of electrical power. This
can only be accomplished with nuclear power, which
is the most efficient, cost effective, and most powerful
in terms of its energy-flux density.3 That is why South
Africa’s commitment to build six nuclear power
plants, with 9,600 MW of capacity, is exciting for all
of Africa. South Africa, which already has the highest
energy per capita on the Subcontinent, will be generating
an equivalent amount of energy to Obama’s total
“Powerless Africa,” and it will be far more productive
than solar energy and wind farms. It doesn’t matter
that they are renewable; they are too inefficient, too
low energy-flux density to power a modern agricultural-
industrial economy. Russia has already discussed
with South Africa a proposal to build and provide favorable
financing for the construction of these nuclear
plants.
With nuclear energy, and then fusion energy, Africa
will have the energy-flux density to power transportation,
to power pumping for irrigation, to construct
new waterways, and nuclear power plants, with its
energy and high-temperature steam ideal for desalination.
Why not start building the equivalent of a new
Nile River with desalinated water? We know Egypt
and the Horn of Africa need it. With this type of high
energy-flux-density program, the people of Africa can
finally be freed from the deplorable conditions of life
caused by a lack of energy, food, clean water, and sanitation.
Not surprisingly, of the 72 nuclear plants currently
under construction worldwide, 47 of them—65%—are
in BRICS countries.
3. Energy-flux density is the organization and power/heat intensity of a
form of energy to accomplish work.
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