Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Italy sets Example in Healing Colonial Wounds with Libya Pact

The ANNOTICO Report

According to the terms of a "friendship and cooperation" deal sealed Saturday between the European country and the oil-rich North African nation of Libya, Italy will invest $200 million a year during the next 25 years in infrastructure projects in Libya. The deal also calls for student grants and pensions for Libyan soldiers who served alongside Italians during World War II.

Other European nations with colonial pasts, including France, Britain and the Netherlands, carry out developmental projects in African and Asian countries they once colonized.

BUT Italy made a point of framing its assistance to Libya as an apology for colonizing the country in the 1930s before it won its independence in 1951.

Italy Sets Example in Healing Colonial Wounds

London Guardian

IPP  Media 

September 2,  2008

Italy on Sunday announced it will pay Libya USD 5 billion as compensation for its thirty year occupation of the country.

The compensation package would involve construction projects, student grants and pensions for Libyan soldiers who served with the Italians during World War II.

Indeed, this had all along been the material and emotional spirit from African leaders and academics during the fall of the last century in recognition of the mistakes that colonialism did to Africa since 19th century.

The Libyan success in getting monetary compensation for the exploitation of her resources by a colonial master has definitely raised the issue of whether other African countries should also not initiate a process of demanding adequate compensation from Britain, France, Portugal and distantly also from Germany and Arab slave traders for decades of colonial subjugation spanning the period 1914 to 1960.

The only co-ordinated attempt by African nations to demand compensation from European colonial masters and slave traders was initiated in 1990 by the late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola (often referred to as M. K. O. Abiola) who initiated discussions on reparation for Africa. The initiative however died when the late Abiola joined politics in 1993 and sought the presidency of Nigeria. He died in incarceration resulting from his struggle to reclaim his electoral mandate usurped by the military government of Gen. Sani Abacha.

Even so, several development writers, including renowned Jamaican Walter Rodney, have elegantly demonstrated ``How Europe Underdeveloped Africa``, though most of them went short of demanding reparations from former colonial masters.

Although no two cases are necessarily similar, and even so in the absence of the facts and circumstances that led to the payment of compensation, it wont be totally speculative if other African countries ask for compensation or are paid compensation by their former colonisers.

Neither would it be proper to suggest that Africa has been receiving reparations in forms of loans and debt relief from its old masters.

It is true that the West has given grants, forgiven loans and paid directly over USD500 billion to Africa in the last 60 years in the name of addressing poverty over the continent.

However, Africa is still sustaining poverty and underdevelopment due to a systematic process with roots deep into traditional colonialism which ensured that even after political freedom, Africa`s wealth would still systematically be siphoned to Europe through international trade and aid.

Indeed, the Italian reparation package comes with some differences as USD200m would be spent on infrastructure projects over the next 25 years, including a coastal highway stretching across the country from Tunisia to Egypt. This will definitely promote intra-trade across Africa`s Mediterranean coast.

Once reparations are adequately paid, that would open a new path to sustainable cooperation between Africa and former colonial masters, and even make recent Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) more meaningful.

http://ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2008/09/02/121736.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/09/libya-making-it.html

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