Non Linear Economic Warfare and the Struggle for Africa’s Resources

It was a deadly virus, unusual for its type. It was an economic virus that replicated so quickly that even the experts were confounded. Where did it come from? Wither it goes?

It took over the host multinationals, wresting control from them. Finally, the experts found the answer to the riddle of the economic virus. The story now begins below. It started from an old idea by a Prussian military strategist and a new idea by a Russian politician and thinker.

“War is a continuation of Politics by other means” said the German military strategist Carl Von Clausevitz. We will build our idea around the theme, Economics is a continuation of Politics by other means.

The rapidly changing international geopolitics in Ukraine has spawned a new term “non linear warfare”. This is a term that appears in a short story “Without the Sky” by Vladislav Surkov one of Putin’s most trusted lieutenants. The story appears here in the online Russian magazine Russian Pioneer.

Surkov writes, “It was the first non linear war, it was a clash of four coalitions, it was not two against two or three against one, it was all against all”.

The concept of Non Linear Wars present Africa with a powerful geopolitical tool to regain control over its resources. It allows Africa to deploy a devastating economic virus against the multinationals that have come to control her resources for the past two centuries and counting.

We remind the readers of the current geoeconomic situation in Africa. Africa’s natural resources are controlled by western multinationals. The control is near total, to the extent that Zambia only gets 0.3 percent of the share of production of her copper.

Ghana gets under 10 percent of the share of production of her natural resources. This leads to the burring question, what can be done to regain control over the natural resources in Africa by the people and for the people?

We introduce a solution that we will call Non Linear Economic Warfare. We will operationalize a sequence of strategies in this new kind of warfare. But first, let us turn our attention to the indigenous communities who live on the lands and on the seas beyond the lands where these resources are mined and drilled.

The traditional states and communities that own those lands which are their Ancestral Lands preceded the modern nation state in Africa. Hence by their occupancy of those territories, their rights come first. They owned the resources on those lands hundreds and thousands of years before the modern post-colonial nation state construct came into existence in Africa.

This means that those resources in the lands or territorial waters owned by these traditional communities belong properly to them. This right of ownership gives them equity in any program or process to develop these resources. The equity as the rightful owners of these resources should be no less than 60 percent.

The problem today is that, western multinationals control more than 80 percent equity in those resources, a terrible travesty and an economic injustice. An attempt by the government to reverse the ownership dynamics could lead to legal and judgment debts against the government. It would also be seen as strong arm government tactics which could be bad for the reputation of the government.

Hence the need for non linear economic warfare and the deployment of an economic virus. The operational strategies of non linear economic warfare in this case are as follows.

The local traditional authorities with the support and expertise of the state should set up development agencies mandated by law to manage and control investments made by the communities. The local traditional communities will own these development agencies.

Professionals should be brought in to train activists in the local community in sophisticated social media techniques, organization ability and benign agitation to raise the consciousness of the local people to the historical injustices in resource ownership on their ancestral lands. The key idea is, this should be directed and viewed as a grassroots movement by the common people.

The local activists will then organize the people to peacefully disrupt operations at the mines, refineries and production centers of the multinational companies.They will make demands that they have been cheated for far too long and want back control over the resources on their Ancestral Lands.

Any attempt by the multinationals to co-opt the state to intervene and crush the grassroots protest should be forcefully rejected as a gross violation of the rights of ordinary people in a democratic state to demand a fair share of their own resources.

Social and traditional media should be skillfully deployed by the local activists acting as the engine of the grassroots movement to force the companies to make concessions. The media campaign should be structured and viewed as a tired, poor and cheated David of the local communities against the greedy Goliath of the multinational company.

In a Pikettian world of high inequality, that should resonate with the public opinion around the world and draw public opinion to the side of the common people. We remember, no one likes the one-percentocrats controlling the resources and the wealth.

As the media campaign ramps up globally and constant physical peaceful demonstrations by the local people heats up and affects production, they can then make their demands that they want 60 percent of the resource production as their share , being generous and understanding of the investment costs and risks of the company, they will allow the company to have not more than 40 percent of the share of production.

In this people’s movement, the Government will act as the wise old Zen master and state studiously that the free will of the people who are the owners of the lands and waters beyond the lands is an expression of real democracy and that she will respect the will and the decision of the local traditional communities.

The multinationals stymied by the media campaign and the peaceful stoppage of production processes and a damage to their corporate brand will be forced to accede to the will of the traditional communities as the worse alternative will be violence, a radicalized local population hostile to their continued exploitation, and a zero to no production.

We remember the Niger delta of Nigeria as the worst alternative. In fact 40 percent or less ownership is a very generous concession by the local people. In Norway and many other countries, foreign firms investing in the natural resource sector do not get more than 40 percent for the most part.

In fact in a World Bank report of 2012 entitled “Rents to Riches”, it states that there is a growing global consensus that regards citizens as the ultimate owners of natural resources. This growing global consensus has created the right atmosphere where non linear economic warfare will work.

Once the local communities gain back control over their resources through their development agencies, nothing prevents them from allowing the government an equity share to help develop the country and region as a whole. These actions replicating as an economic virus will spread throughout a country and over the continent to wrest back control of Africa’s resources.

These are the opening salvos, the sequence of steps in a new war of the 21’st century, non linear economic war, to regain control over African resources.

And as Vladislav Surkov finished in his short story, “We will engage tomorrow, we will win or we will die, there is no third way”.

In the non linear economic war to regain control over Africa’s resources to provide the capital for the transformation of the continent, there is no third way, tomorrow we will engage.