Black Liberation & the Exploitation of Africa

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Black Liberation & the Exploitation of Africa

Our need for "stuff" is killing us, and Africa

Ijeoma Oluo

Apr 09, 2025

Transcript

Welcome to Month 4 of our year-long focus on Black Liberation as Collective Liberation. This month we’re focusing on Black Liberation and the exploitation of Africa.

Now, Africa is a whole, big continent. So we cannot cover everything in this post or in this month. But I hope that this will be a helpful starting point to think of Africa and it’s connection to Black Liberation in the US and through the West. In this episode we will be discussing Sudan, Congo, the West’s trashing of Africa, and it’s connection to Black American liberation. And we have wonderful contributions from Francesca Eluhu, Aja Barber, and Alsarah. And we are also featuring music from Alsarah and Francesca Eluhu.

Be sure to check out the resources below to learn more, and different, perspectives on what is currently happening in Africa and how it’s related to Black America. And be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss out on this continuing conversation throughout the month.

Conflict in Sudan

The Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been in heightened conflict since April of 2023. Since that time, between 61,000 and 150,000 people have been killed, and at least 12.5 million people have been displaced. There are many factors at play in this conflict, but at the heart of it are certainly the vast natural resources that Sudan has, and the way in which conflict in Sudan gives other countries increased access to those natural resources much more cheaply than they would were they dealing with a stable government. We’ve barely scratched the surface of this conflict in the episode, so please check out some of the links below to learn more.

Follow

Sudan Solidarity Collective

Women of Sudan

Sudanese Resistance Front

Conflict in Congo

The current conflict in Congo, between the Congolese government forces and an armed group called M-23 has killed thousands of people in recent months and has displaced more than 7 million people. The people of Congo have had to endure decades of devastating violence, much of it directly connected to the lasting legacy of European colonization. As in Sudan, the current conflict has many factors at play, but the fight for Congo’s rich natural resources is at the core of this conflict, with foreign countries like Rwanda exacerbating this conflict in order to access these minerals to serve the ever-expanding appetites of the Global North for these resources. As with the section on Sudan, we barely scratch the surface of the conflict in this episode, so please check out the resources below for further reading!

Follow

Friends of the Congo

F O C U S C O N G O

Team Congo

Western Capitalism is Trashing Africa

Our seemingly endless need for new technology is not only contributing to war and exploitation in Africa, our discarded tech and textile waste is literally trashing many African countries. Black Americans are a targeted community for the sales of fast fashion, the primary culprit behind the mountains of textile trash that is polluting Africa.

The Legacy of the Scramble for Africa

While we should never reduce Africa simply to colonization and the impacts of it, we should also be careful to not ignore the lasting impacts of the violent colonization of Africa by Europe, and current neo-colonial policies that create and exacerbate problems on the continent. What happens in Africa does not happen in a vacuum, and the Global North continues to be a violent factor in the state of many African nations.