Beatriz Mesa scribbles on a notebook the brainstorm she launches during the interview. On the backs of academic knowledge and professional career is added a vocation and admiration for a silenced and forgotten region, although of great geopolitical importance: the Sahel. Mesa has a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Grenoble Alpes, a journalist and current affiliated professor and researcher at the International University of Rabat. Since 2007 it has focused its lines of action and research around the countries of North Africa and West Africa, although with a special focus on Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Mauritania, among others.
In his new book titled The failure of the West in Africa from the Almuzara publishing house and presented at the Balqís Bookstore in Madrid, the researcher specialized in geostrategy, terrorism, political violence and organized crime examines the strategies implemented by external actors such as the United States, the European Union or France in an attempt to stabilize the African continent and that have finally led to regional imbalance.
¿How is the new book different from the previous ones?
We can think that it is a continuity of the first work on The armed groups of the Sahel: conflict and criminal economy in northern Mali, but really this book is above all focused on the new approach to the Global South. A Global South approach that implies a new geopolitical perspective.
On this occasion, I have tried to explain that, parallel to the production of violence that has been taking place in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and specifically in the Sahel, we have also seen how security mechanisms have been positioned over the last 20 years. international, specifically from the West.
That is to say, from a situation of insecurity and the emergence of the armed insurgency that is questioning the sovereign States of the African continent, there has been, once again, a progressive and repeated intervention of international actors through security . The window of opportunity for an international actor to intervene in the African continent during the 21st century, although before it occurred through cooperation or resource economic agendas, today it has been the security agenda that has been marking the steps of these international actors.
And what has been the result of this process of securitization of the West in Africa?
The result is bad. This entire process, which began in the 2000s, has resulted in a new proliferation of violence, the emergence of new armed groups, an increase in insecurity… All of this has led, for the first time, to the emergence of parallel states. . That is, in certain territorial areas of the Sahel, these insurgent groups, which are supported by political arms and popular legitimacy, have managed to create States for themselves with the support of a classic international actor like France.
The West has been interested in continuing to maintain a relationship of dependency in Africa where the international actor acts in a short-term manner, without intervening to generate opportunities for industrialization.
in the book speaks of an accumulation of failures… In general, what is the greatest failure of the West in Africa?
Mainly we are facing a failure in two dimensions. On the one hand, the security aspect, which draws on the failure of securitization that I mentioned previously, and, on the other hand, the economic dimension. In a postcolonial phase, the African countries that achieved independence have always lagged behind the process of sovereign legitimacy and industrial development in Europe.
To date, Africa has not completed its process of emancipation and industrialization because dependence on the outside world still exists. Although African countries have achieved independence from the point of view of a nation-state, that does not mean that they have managed to reappropriate their economic sovereignty.
The failure of the West is that some of the programs that have been implemented through cooperation agencies have continued to underdevelop Africa. The West has been interested in continuing to maintain a relationship of dependency where the international actor acts in a short-term manner, without intervening to generate opportunities for industrialization.
Doesn’t that failure draw on the Western narrative about what Africa is and will be?
A lot. Neocolonial narratives continue to point out that there is one hegemonic civilization over others. What’s more, they have made us believe that there has been no civilization in Africa, that there were no African historians and that everything began with the arrival of European explorers.
Added to this neocolonial narrative is the idea that all African countries are incapable of being independent because they are failed states. The failed state, as a concept, has always needed power actors from the global north to justify its interventions.
The neocolonial discourse leads to the problem of securitization and the concept of the language of jurisdiction. To anticipate a threatening situation, public opinion has to legitimize an intervention outside my border. In the case of the West, they use a language of securitization that involves sowing terror, fear or a risky situation.
The title of your book talks about threats… what is the threat that the West does not see in Africa?
For Western eyes, which are not mine, in Africa we are experiencing a prolongation of the Cold War. Although Russia’s presence and its relationship with the continent is historic and solid, especially in military matters, we are experiencing a new generation of Russian influence in Africa. We are no longer talking about ideologies, but rather about positions of power and actors that support the recovery of the sovereignty, security and economy of African countries.
Even so, what is clear is that the international scenario is totally altered. It is, furthermore, an alteration from a geopolitically emancipated Global South. That is, the countries that had been considered by the West as a periphery and that could not influence the Global North, are doing so.
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