AFRICA STORIES: BURKINA FASO SUMMONS GHANA'S AMBASSADOR IN DIPLOMATIC SPAT OVER RUSSIA
For those who read me, I have often made it clear that Africa is a complex continent with differing attitudes to world events. There is no such thing as "Africa supports Russia" or "Africa supports United States" or "Africa this or that". Every nation on the continent charts its own pathway.
African countries, while ostensibly displaying outward neutrality, do hold divergent opinions when it comes to their stance on the most important geopolitical events sweeping the world: Russian intervention in Ukraine
Like I have often explained, the french-speaking African nations, deeply resentful of domination by France, have decided to throw in their lot with Russia. From government officials to ordinary citizens, francophone Africa remain the most vociferous in support of Russia. This is CERTAINLY NOT the case in most of Anglophone Africa.
If you exclude English-speaking African countries run by political parties with historical ties to USSR such as Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia, the rest of anglophone Africa is mostly neutral, indifferent and not particularly invested in Russia's geopolitical manoeuvres on the world stage.
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SIDE NOTE: Anglophone Kenya and Ghana strongly criticized Russian intervention in Ukraine, but refused to join any sanctions regime (symbolically) or allow Zelensky to address their parliaments by video link despite intense lobbying from EU, USA, Ukraine and UK.
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As a matter of fact, Anglophone Africa enjoys cordial ties with the United Kingdom, the ex-colonial power with which it continues to relate to through The Commonwealth of Nations. This is a legacy of the fact that the United Kingdom willingly granted independence to its African colonies at a time when France, Portugal, Belgium and Spain were ferociously resisting United Nation's call in the late 1950s for decolonization of Africa.
Relations between Anglophone Africa and USA are also "okay", but mostly treated with some level of caution and suspicion, because of the historic negative role the United States played in supporting the South African apartheid regime in the name of "fighting Communists" back in the 1970s and 1980s. The apartheid regime not only denied citizenship rights to millions of black South Africans, it annexed Namibia next door, and teamed up with CIA to supply weapons and training to homicidal armed groups fighting civil wars in Angola and Mozambique.
Fast-forwarding to a few days ago, forty African Heads of State attend the so-called United States-Africa Leaders Summit. In a meeting on the sidelines of the summit, the President of anglophone Ghana, Mr. Nana Akufo-Addo, told US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that neighbouring francophone Burkina Faso had hired Russian Wagner Mercenaries (just like fellow francophone Mali and Central Africa Republic.)
President Nana Akufo-Addo also claimed that he was not happy that Russian mercenaries were operating close to the northern frontiers of Ghana. He also alleged that Burkina Faso had actually handed some natural resources to Wagner and then concluded by asking America to work with West Africa to protect "democracy" against armed groups.
As expected, an excited Blinken leaked the information to the press. Burkina Faso, which was not invited to the US-Africa Leadership Summit, angrily summoned Ghana's Ambassador to explain why the Ghanaian President was gossiping with the failed musician-turned-US Secretary of State.
Just for the record, Nana Akufo-Addo never explained how divided West Africa (francophone vs anglophone) can work together with United States to protect "democracy" from presumably Wagner mercenaries. Hopefully, the Burkina Faso foreign ministry will tease out an explanation from the Ghanaian Ambassador.
Photograph: Ghanaian Presidential Delegation Meeting Tony Blinken, Ned Price and the rest of the US State Department gang at the sidelines of the US-Africa Leadership Summit. The Ghanaian President Nana Akufo Addo (bespectacled bald man) is seated second on the right side of the table.
