For the second time in four months, this week the vice president of Colombia, Francia Márquez, is in Africa seeking to strengthen the ties she considered “abandoned” between the country and the continent.
In May, the first Afro-descendant vice president in Colombian history made official visits to South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia. Now, this September 4 and 5, she participates in the African Climate Summit, in Kenya; and on the 6th and 7th she will be in Ghana on an official visit.
All this is part of the “Africa 2022-2026 strategy”, a plan by the government of Gustavo Petro to deepen relations with a continent that, according to the ruling party, has much to offer to and receive from Colombia.
“Not only is it the region with the greatest potential for economic growth in the world, but it also has a population that will double by 2050,” Márquez said when he finished his first visit a few months ago.
That trip generated a harsh controversy in the media, where criticism was read for the “high price” of transportation and the size of the delegation, which had almost 60 officials, including Márquez’s couple.
But Márquez dismissed the criticism as having an alleged “racial bias”: “I have made trips to other places, I have traveled to Europe and the United States and on those trips I did not see questions about the fuel used by the plane or the resources that we spent mobilizing ”.
Between 15 and 20% of the population in Colombia is Afro-descendant and lives in the most excluded and poorest regions of the country.
The arrival of Márquez to power meant a claim for many of those communities, but it also put many Colombians in an uncomfortable place that reflects, among other things, how the country has been governed throughout its history: looking at the West as an ideal and relegating other regions as a source of resources and knowledge.
the relegated continent
Although neither was given in the terms of this, Colombia had two approaches to Africa in its recent history.
First, during the government of Ernesto Samper, who in 1995 hosted the eleventh conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of countries, many of them African, that did not adhere to any of the Cold War blocs.
“There were several visits from Colombia to various countries in Africa, but they were not official visits, nor were they aimed at strengthening bilateral relations, but, above all, to dialogue within the framework of the movement,” explains Jerónimo Delgado, doctor in Geography and professor of African Studies at the Externado University, in Bogotá.
Then, a decade ago, the government of Juan Manuel Santos approached various African countries as part of its “diplomacy for peace” to exchange experiences related to the demobilization of illegal armed groups.
For the rest, most Colombian governments have seen Africa as a territory far from their priorities.
“Colombia has ignored Africa,” says Mara Viveros, a PhD in Anthropology and an expert in Racial Studies from the National University.
“Not only is it seen as a country, its heterogeneity is denied, but this entire continent has been seen like the slide you don’t want to reach, like a third world supposedly inferior to ours“.
As president of the Association for Latin American Studies, Viveros promoted the organization of the organization’s annual summit in Ghana, which is being held this year, in part because, she thought, “Latin America’s relationship has been with all the continents except Africa ”.
“The questioning of Márquez’s trips is because it is to Africa, it would not be done if he went to Europe or the United States; it is given because she [la vicepresidenta] they are thinking about economic development in a different way, with different eyes”, says the professor.
And Delgado, also a professor, agrees: “This is the first government that looks at Africa with different eyes, with particular interests, in search of a commercial and cultural relationship.”
What is and what can be
Colombia, in any case, already has a certain relationship with African countries: there are embassies in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa and Kenya, but not in Nigeria and Ethiopia, two of the most important in the region.
And commercially: coal, oil, agricultural products, chocolates and coffee are exported; and calcium phosphate, titanium ores, mineral waxes, onion seeds, food and medicines are imported.
If it were a country, Africa would have the same commercial importance for Colombia as Peru: 1.5% of imports come from there and 2% of exports go there.
With the difference that Africa —which is not one country, but 54— has 30 times more people than Peru and a Gross Domestic Product 12 times larger.
Colombia, analysts explain, could increase its exports to Africa in products such as meat, industrial machinery, green coffee, leather, wheat and palm oil. And promote their imports in auto parts, machinery, food and clothing.
“Africa lifted 24 million out of poverty and its economy is growing at more than 6%, steadily,” says Caicedo. “It is a continent that is important for the rest of the world, but not for Latin America, which, except for the cases of Cuba and Brazil, which have strong ties, has not realized its potential.”
As Márquez highlighted in a recent speech, Africa is today “the largest free trade area in the world and expects to eliminate 90% of tariffs on merchandise in the next five years.”
The Africa 2022-2026 strategy hopes to strengthen the relationship with African countries in all kinds of sectors: direct commercial flights, new embassies, commercial agreements and alliances to promote cultural exchange, which has countless historical and ancestral connections.
“Many will be waiting to hear how much business was done,” Márquez said after his first trip. “But that doesn’t work like that, first political dialogues and legal mechanisms are established; our relations with that continent were practically abandoned”.
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