As we remember the Zambia Sovereign Debt Crisis, the Entebbe airport Uganda-China debt (Ugandan international airport at Entebbe about to be seized by China), the 999-year land lease granted to Europeans in Kenya, and the price of gold in Mali or uranium in Niger, the common thread seems to be that in most of these cases African countries are taken in for a ride, and that these contracts are negotiated without the people’s knowledge, or rather none of these contracts are discussed in the parliaments of these countries were the people’s representatives could all get to vote on it. The contracts are instead negotiated behind closed doors, thus ensuring constant corruption, and of course many years of “walking blindfolded”. If the future of their constituents is going to be traded away, why shouldn’t the people be invited to the negotiation table? Some argue that this would take too long, that sometimes, waiting for parliament’s approval may lead to gridlocks and more… however if the people’s future is going to be signed away like in the case of Zambia and countless African countries, contracts need to be made public. Now if it is confidential, why not release at least the ones that were signed over 20, 50 years ago? or the ones signed at independence (which are now over 60 years old)? This will help the new generations of lawyers to also learn how to negotiate for better contracts in the future. The reason is most likely that, just like in the case of The 11 Components of the French Colonial Tax in Africa, if Africans were made aware of what their forefathers were made to sign, they would have risen in riots, and many of the puppet governments installed to serve the West will all get toppled down.

It is about time that current African governments release the contracts signed at the time of independence!!! More importantly, it is also high time that when negotiating our future away, that we, the people, are invited at the negotiation table so that our children and children’s children and generations to come do not spend centuries paying interest on a debt that keeps increasing because of poor deals! Some may say, “we are in 2023, why do you need to know what happened in the 1960s? We need to focus on the present!“ Oh yes, but the past will inform the future! The contracts of yesterday still affect today, particularly in Africa, see The 11 Components of the French Colonial Tax in Africa, and The Bank of Senegal: Ancestor to the FCFA – producing Bank. It is because we do not keep archives that we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. If we all learned from the fact that, for instance, Pascal Lissouba of Congo was deposed because he asked for the re-negotiation of Congo’s oil and dared change partners from French to Americans, and then later under fire he back-pedaled back to French, we will know never to back-pedal and that once we have set our minds for liberty, no matter how hard it is, we should stay the course.