Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki
Interview with President Isaias Afwerki:
“Anyone who takes aid is crippled. Aid is meant to cripple people… Governments in Africa and elsewhere are not allowed to write their own programs. And when it comes to implementing programs, it deprives you of building institutions and the capacity to implement your programs…We need to write our own programs in the first place. We need to articulate on the projects we write. We need to have a comprehensive strategy, plans on how to implement those programs…Unless we do that on our own, we can’t possibly imagine that we are achieving any of the goals – millennium or non millennium.” — President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea
Eritrean’s president has kicked the U.S. NGOs out of Eritrea. The tactics of President Afwerki of Eritrea defies the US and its imperialist policies toward Africa. All African Heads of State need to kick out the NGO charitable industrial complex and design their own reforms by themselves for their own implementation and independence.
President Isaias says African mineral resources are not sustainable for economic development in the immediacy. Developing infrastructure for this will take generations to come. Comparative advantage are of greater immediate importance. “Your location could be a comparative advantage. If you have a long coastline, then you develop fisheries, develop your services industry – shipping, transportation – air, land. Provide industry and manufacturing.”
“Africa can produce its own food and grow more. Why aren’t we able to do that?” You have to produce something. Emphasize sustainable sectors. Agriculture is a sustainable sector. You need to put in place agriculture infrastructure. It’s a strategy commodity for communities.
“You need to think least on mineral resources (for economic development)… Gold glitters but it blinds people…If you forgo agriculture because you have gold, you go into a trap. If you forgo comparative advantage that you have because you have gold, then you make a big mistake.”
Food sovereignty and local production, local manufacturing and development are more critical than depending on resource exploitation. You must have a balance, comprehensive program that takes stock of your comparative advantages in different sectors and local needs first.
“Local markets are everything.”
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At 8:33 in this video regarding on border dispute and food crisis, the Eritrean president takes on the US concept of democracy for African nations through fake elections:
The Aid Racket: Food Aid and promoting hunger as a Weapon
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The price of gold: Chinese mining in Ghana documentary | Guardian Investigations
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- “If you cannot feed yourself you cannot be independent” — Yahya Jammeh, president of Gambia talks about rice plan
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“The West has only been ungrateful. Abject poverty drove Europeans to Africa. And they exploited Her for four hundred years. In those years there has never been any elections. They were no parliamentary systems. After four hundred years of looting Africa, some of us had to take up arms to kick them out. Now they have come around to give us lectures about democracy and human rights. When in their own countries there’s no democracy. Where’s the democracy for Blacks in the UK or Blacks anywhere in Europe? The so-called skin heads or neo-Nazi or the Far right, if they were in Africa or in the Gulf States they would be called terrorist organizations. Why are they not being called terrorist organization and being dealt with?…They are all anti-human. They hate humanity. But why are they not called terrorists and being bombed…like the Islamic extremists? The KKK in the United States are called Far Right or white supremacist. White supremacist against who? I am not anti-West. I am anti their hypocrisy and their racism…The British never built a high school in this country in four hundred years…Democracy is respecting the will of the people…Who do they think they are that they have to teach Africans democracy when we’ve never colonized anybody? The Western democracy is a fallacy. It doesn’t exists.”–Yahya Jammeh, president of Gambia
