Diverse actors and global challenges 

The world is currently facing an epochal tectonic shift. New powers have emerged and reemerged, including an economically strong and politically assertive China. We are in a new multipolar world. Different countries in the west are competing for power and influence in Africa, the continent of raw materials for the industrialized west. 

But the old order of corruption, exploitation, and hypocrisy persist. In Germany, the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is under German parliamentary investigation into his alleged connection to a massive tax evasion scandal.

The case which dates back over five years to the time Scholz was still a Mayor of the Hamburg city state – is linked to the broader so called “cum ex” affair, under which the German state was defrauded by over Ⱡ30 billion as some banks, companies, individuals claimed tax reimbursements from authorities for alleged costs that never occurred. 

The scandal already hung over Scholz and his social democratic party (SPD) campaign in 2021 but had little impact in the end as Scholz’s potential involvement remained unclear. Now it is heating up again after new details emerged that put his previous defense in question. The scam has seen dozens of people indicted in Germany including bankers, stock traders, lawyers and financial consultants. 

At the European commission, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, a German physician and politician serving as the 13th president of the European commission since 2019 has been smoking with corruption scandals. In February this year, the New York Times sued the European union (EU) over the institution’s failure to release text messages between Von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bouria whose company was forecasting revenues of $3bn (Ƚ26bn) from vaccine sales in 2022. 

The newspaper was arguing that the commission faces a legal obligation to release the messages, which could contain information on the bloc’s deals to purchase billions of Euros worth of Covid-19 doses. An investigation by the EU Watch Dog into the Von de Leyen text massages found EU’s executive arm guilty of “maladministration”. 

Under Von de Leyen’s watch, allegations emerged that the 2022 World Cup host, Qatar, lavished cash and gifts on European parliament officials to influence their decision-making. 

She described the scandal as of the “utmost concern” after investigators charged four people with “participation in a criminal organization, money laundering and corruption”. The prosecutors reportedly searched 16 houses and seized E600,000 (£516,000) in Brussels as part of the probe. 

Back home the German parliament 2019 dug into how Von der Leyen as German defense minister, allegedly awarded lucrative contracts from her ministry to outside consultants without proper oversight. The lawmakers looking into the case say Von der Leyen will still have to face their questions even as president of European Commission.

These are elements of the diverse cabal of powerful elites that are currently propelling the new world order of secretly implementing a dystopian international governing structure that will grant them complete control over global resources and the populace.             

The United States Government’s Prosper Africa program, launched in 2019 aims to accelerate and expand an ongoing shift in US foreign assistance toward more investment-driven approaches to counter China in today’s shifting geopolitical landscape. US – Africa trade has declined from a peak of $142billion in 2008 to just $64 billion in 2021 as China has edged them out since 2009. 

New centers of economic power or multipolarity are a concept that is central to the foreign policy of Scholz and therefore intends “expanding German global partnerships in a targeted way”. The truth is that the concept of multipolarity is a normative concept in the sense of curtailing the United States dominance in global affairs and making space for Germany’s hegemonic aspirations.              

The current leadership of Germany intends to return some African countries to its zone of influence by promoting its own neo-colonial policy using tools of German “soft – power “(foundations named after Konrad Adenauer, fried rich Ebert, fried rich Neumann, etc.), which is also evidenced by the possible arrival of Chancellor Scholz to Nigeria this October. 

The German colonial empire encompassed parts of several African countries, including Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, and Ghana. Two big rebellions in Namibia and German east Africa ended in colonial wars. The first was the Herero rebellion in Namibia when 40,000 – 100,000 were reportedly murdered in revenge for the killing of 123 German settlers by the suppressed tribe. The Germans subsequently established so-called

 ‘’Concentration Camps’’ in Namibia for all survivors after the Maji, Maji rebellion against German colonial rule in east Africa resulted in the deaths, possibly murder, of 80,000 – 300, 000. After the first World War, Germany was forced to retreat from its colonies as specified in the treaty of Versailles. 

Observers believe Germany has intentions to revive German revanchism. This is evidenced by the fact that Berlin reneged on the principle of military restraint adopted after the second World War. Colonialism continues today in different forms. In May this year ,  

Scholz made his second major trip to Africa with focus on East Africa, a region that has witnessed recent violence. He headed first to Ethiopia before crossing into neighboring Kenya, Germany’s biggest trading partner in the region.  

Germany had prepared the grounds for today’s rapprochement with Africa when on August 14 2004 it presented for the first time its formal apologies for the massacres committed by troops in German south-west Africa between 1904 and 1908. 

Addressing world leaders at the UN General assembly last September Chancellor Scholz, said: “Multipolarity is not a normative category but on description of today’s reality”. 

That reality is governance through a complex global web of “government networks. African countries must be alert to the type of global partnerships they embrace in this new reality in order not to deepen their economic slavery

Hassan Tukur,

Sokoto