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The Top 10 things you didn’t know about Canada’s role in Africa.

D 16 septembre 2015     H 13:47     A     C 0 messages


10. Canada is a mining superpower in Africa. With mines in 35 countries, Canadian companies operate hundreds of mineral projects across the continent.

9. Canada trained the army command that overthrew Ghanaian independence leader Kwame Nkrumah and Canada’s high commissioner privately celebrated the coup.

8. A Canadian led the expedition to conquer the Katanga region of the Congo on behalf of Belgian King Leopold II.

7. In exchange for land near present-day Harare a Canadian missionary organized health services for Cecil Rhodes’ army that conquered Zimbabwe.

6. Canadian military officials were complicit in the killing of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba.

5. An Ottawa-based consulting firm has overseen the privatization of tens of billions of dollars in public African infrastructure.

4. Much of Atlantic Canada’s early wealth was generated from feeding Caribbean slave plantations.

3. A Canadian intelligence officer/diplomat led the Nairobi police force that arrested Kenya’s future president and violently suppressed the Mau Mau independence movement in the 1950s.

2. Canadians rose to become governors of colonial-era Ghana, Kenya and Northern Nigeria.

1. Tens of thousands of Africans have protested Canadian corporate behaviour across the continent where 45% of people live on less than a dollar a day.

Canada in Africa — 300 years of Aid and Exploitation is the first critical overview of Canadian policy towards the continent. It documents Canadian involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, “scramble for Africa”, missionary movement and European colonialism as well as Ottawa’s opposition to anticolonial struggles and promotion of neoliberal economic prescriptions, which have benefited Canadian mining companies that have bought up much of the continent’s mineral resources, but are often bitterly resisted by local communities.

"Canada in Africa reminds us that the draining of African blood through slavery and naked imperialism continues today through the draining of her resources. Yves Engler gives us a haunting chronicle of the bloodletting, destabilization and pillaging of Africa by agents and governments of Canada. This should be required reading for every human with a conscience and all those that desire to join the forces fighting for change."
 Nnimmo Bassey, former chair Friends of the Earth International and winner of the Right Livelihood Award ("Alternative Nobel Prize")

"One of the great myths of Canadian history is that the nation has only been helpful to Africa and persons of
Black/African heritage, whether serving as a refuge for fugitive slaves in the 19th century or denouncing South African apartheid in the 20th. Yves Engler writes with majestic clarity and daunting command about the truths of Canada’s relations to Africa and Africans, from the slavery conducted colonially, from Upper Canada to Nouvelle-France to Nova Scotia, to the pollution of lands and impoverishment of peoples wrought by Canuck mining interests in Africa today. Beware ! This book is upsetting, for it argues—with quite damning evidence—that Canada has been as much an imperialist abuser of human rights as have the European (and American) empires we so righteously—hypocritically— condemn. Engler needs to be read by everyone who desires Truth in political science and Humanitarianism in contemporary foreign policy."
 George Elliott Clarke, Ph.D., E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature University of Toronto
Author of Directions Home : Approaches to African-Canadian Literature

Dubbed "Canada’s version of Noam Chomsky" (Georgia Straight), "one of the most important voices on the Canadian Left today" (Briarpatch),
"in the mould of I. F. Stone" (Globe and Mail), "part of that rare but growing group of social critics unafraid to confront Canada’s
self-satisfied myths" ( Quill & Quire), "ever-insightful" (rabble.ca),
 Chomsky-styled iconoclast" (Counterpunch) and a "Leftist gadfly" (Ottawa Citizen), Yves Engler’s published
eight books.