Let there be fair play in Africa

The recent statement by Bishop Mario Grech on detention centres once more focused our attention on the crisis associated with illegal African immigrants. Besides grappling with the symptoms, it is of fundamental importance that we address the root causes of this phenomenon.

Two years ago, the film Blood Diamond shed light on the terrible realities being faced by ordinary people who were caught up in the violence of the civil war that plagued Sierra Leone from 1991 till the end of 2001.

The graphic depiction of the amputation of hands and the brainwashing and induction of young children into the rebel militias was a shocking reminder of the unbelievably low levels of degradation to which humanity can sink.

Sierra Leone is not the exception. Many African countries have been afflicted by war, poverty and political corruption. The degree of cruelty and the scale of violence are staggering. Despite its immense natural wealth, Africa seems cursed. At one point in the film, the main actor claims that God left Africa long ago.

On entering a village that had just been ravaged and pillaged by the Revolutionary United Front, he finds only one survivor... an elderly man who exclaims that at least Sierra Leone does not have oil.

Such a statement sounds contradictory. For a country, natural wealth such as minerals and oil should be the passport to general well-being and dramatic economic improvement.

In Africa this is not the case. Natural wealth more often than not proves to be a curse. The only beneficiaries are the mining and oil companies in cahoots with the local corrupt elites. A few examples will suffice.

In Sudan, government forces have carried out an unprecedented assault on farming communities in the Darfur region, which is rich in oil. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and many others have been brutally killed.

Too often, atrocities carried out within one's own country are dismissed as internal affairs.

In the Western Sahara, civil war has been festering for years due to the enormously rich deposits of phosphates as well as nickel, chrome, platinum, gold, silver and copper.

In the Congo, some three million people have been killed in just a few years due to the tragic legacy left by the Belgian colonisers.

In 2004, the British High Commissioner to Kenya, Edward Clay, accused the Kenyan government of arrogance, greed and corruption, telling his audience that ministers "could hardly expect us not to care when their gluttony causes them to vomit all over our shoes".

In Africa, even oil rich countries such as Nigeria and Chad, the local populations have benefited very little, if at all. In fact, for ordinary people, the discovery of oil has a negative reputation and has been called the "devil's excrement".

No man is an island. The international community cannot keep ignoring the prevailing state of affairs. Mass migration on an uncontrollable and unlimited scale is a symptom of the problem. The crisis affects Malta directly as our island is in line with the escape routes taken by Africans seeking a better future in Europe.

The western world, including the EU, has to address the roots of the problem. Otherwise, there will be no end in sight to the situation. This does not only apply to Africa's mineral wealth. Way back in 2000, a year before his departure from the White House, Bill Clinton told his audience at a University in Ireland: "If the wealthiest countries ended their agricultural subsidies and levelled the playing field for the world's farmers, that alone would increase the income of developing countries by $20 billion dollars a year".

Africa does not need aid, it needs fair play.