In the 1950s, I lived with Iya, my grandmother. She sold gari that she made at home in the market. She also sold door to door, village to village, stuff that pupils needed for school. Iya taught me ‘worth’ as a concept. She taught me that the price of anything was what it was worth to you as seller or worth to you as buyer. The first step to buying or selling anything therefore was to know its ‘worth’ or importance. According to Iya, it was the thing’s worth, not its physically being that was being bought and sold; worth determined monetary value. The worth, and therefore the price, to person A was not the same to Person B. ‘Sale by worth’ is also not sale by Barter.
Take uranium, for example. There is currently a price arbitrarily determined by a market controlled by the buyers. In essence, the foreign buyer paid whatever it liked; the African seller simply accepted it as fait accompli. That is the structure of exploitation. But we could do better if we traded another way; if we traded by ‘worth’. Say, for example, 10 grams of Niger’s Uranium provided electricity to 100,000 French homes, then that is the true worth of the 10 grams of Uranium to the French. Whatever amount of Euros the French spent in providing that amount of electricity for its 100,000 homes, therefore, to be equitable, Niger should be paid the equivalent. Niger was entitled to the equivalent of 100,000 French homes, not to something arbitrary. Likewise, if 10 gram of Niger Uranium was worth 20% of the total cost of a Russian cruise missile, then that is the true worth of the 10 gram of Uranium to the Russians, and so on.
We cannot follow the example of China and out-manufacture the West. It was easy for China to do so because China had a tradition of manufacturing. Africa does not have a tradition of manufacturing. Africa has to pursue a different path. What we have are natural resources. Natural resources give Africa potential, not wealth. To have wealth, Africa has to be smart; Africa has to be strategic.
Foreigners pay Africa with paper money, which is ‘intangible’, whilst Africa pays with commodity, which is ‘tangible’. Exchanging money for commodity thus is not about worth or true equivalence. It can never be. Monetary value determined by an arbitrary market cheats and corrupts. As it was in the olden days of cowries, so it is now in the days of Dollars and Euros. Africa must put an end to it otherwise Africa will continue forever to be cheated.
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