
The Attali Report sets out the issues at stake with exemplary clarity. It is difficult to do better, so let’s repeat in extenso the rationality of the geostrategic importance of the African continent.
Africa is also the ecological lung of the planet: On its forests, which cover about 22% of the continent (and even 45% of Central Africa, in particular with the Congo Basin, the second largest forest in the world) depends the control of greenhouse gases, the protection of diversity, the stabilization of soils, the quality and flow of water.
Africa is also one of the engines of global growth, with a growth rate that has been higher than the world average for years, and still higher than 2% in 2009 compared to 5% previously, which is not enough to prevent millions of Africans from falling back into extreme poverty.
Africa is finally the place of all promises: it is the continent richest in raw materials (oil, minerals, agricultural products); it is the youngest continent (43% of sub-Saharan Africans are under 15 years of age; in Nigeria alone, more children are born each year than in the entire European Union; Uganda is the youngest country in the world, with 56% under 15 years of age); school enrolment is booming; a birth rate that is becoming better and better controlled, particularly in Morocco, Tunisia, Senegal, South Africa and Kenya; a life expectancy that has increased by 16 years since 1950; financial markets that are opening up everywhere; universities that are progressing; internet connections that have been disrupted by the opening of two submarine cables; incredibly rapid changes in mentalities; governance that is improving, despite the fact that nepotism and corruption are still prevalent.
Europe should therefore consider Africa as a formidable potential for growth, much closer than all the other giants that Europe is so fascinated by. If we know how to organize partnerships to develop natural resources on the spot, instead of abandoning them to the Chinese and the Americans, once again in league against the Europeans. If we know how to eradicate the Franc zone and eliminate the Luciferian currency that is the FCFA in French-speaking Africa and replace it with other institutions of cooperation, stabilizing the prices of raw materials and developing the formidable creative potential of the continent. If we know how to prepare our common future, beyond any altruism, from which we should expect nothing, by hanging on together to this formidable locomotive.