Page 33 - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine October 2024

bne October 2024 Cover story I 33
starting to push back, which is also fuelling the gravitation to things like the BRICS+ and G20 groups.
A former colony, Niger has long been a French client in Africa, but earlier this year a new government kicked France out of the country, despite Paris’ loud prostrations. Niger also happens to be
a major source of uranium and 80% of France’s power is nuclear. But France was reported only playing a fraction of market prices of supplies of uranium from Niger.
The countries of the Global South are becoming increasingly resentful of
this colonialist model, particularly in Africa, that has been sanitised in the West with the “globalisation” label. The wealth transfer remains an exploitation of labour and a theme that the Kremlin plays on constantly to a warm reception outside the Western world. As bne IntelliNews reported, French President Emmanuel Macron got roasted by
Felix Tshisekedi, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, live on TV last year during an official visit as the French president tried to shore up relations with France’s former colonies.
“This must change, the way Europe
and France treat us. You must begin to respect us and see Africa in a different way,” Tshisekedi told Macron to his face with the cameras rolling. “You have to stop treating us and talking to us in a paternalistic tone. As if you were already absolutely right and we were not.”
The same resentment is behind Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s “new rules of the game” speech in February 2020, which was the starting point of an escalation in tensions that ended
in the invasion of Ukraine two years later. Lavrov said that Russia would no longer tolerate the West’s dual approach of sanctioning Russia with one hand but doing business with the other. He threatened to break off diplomatic relations if this didn’t change. Russia and much of the Global South object to the right the West gives itself to lecture and sanction them on things like LGBT rights, but at the same time ignore all criticism on issues like US’ material support of Israel’s bombing of Gaza.
European vs German power prices 2019-2023 (EUR/kWh)
Source: European Commission
This dichotomy is increasingly seen
by many in the Global South as the hypocrisy of a two-speed world, divided into the haves and have-nots, and was made doubly poignant when the US was downgraded to “flawed democracy” by the respected EIU in 2016.
“The war in Ukraine is a European problem, caused by Europeans. Let Europe fix it! I don’t think that India should become involved at all,” Bhaswati Mukherjee, former Indian ambassador to the EU and UNESCO, told bne IntelliNews in a recent interview, following suggestions that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the best placed international statesman to mediate a peace between Ukraine and Russia.
The Kremlin became equally fed up with being talked down to but after three decades thanks to the stability Putin brought it is more or less a normal country in terms of income, on a par with the rest of Europe in real terms and increasingly on nominal terms too.
As wages rise relentlessly in the Global South, the wealth transfer from south to north will slow as the income
gap closes, pushing up the cost of imported goods, while the profits from the export of manufacturing slowly fall. There is little the West can do to prevent this change other than keep its technological and productivity lead.
But it is going to be a long, slow and difficult process. The Global South
is already trying to coordinate this change with a raft of new non-aligned organisations such as the BRICS+,
the G20, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), MERCOSUR, ASEAN, the African Union and many others, but it is still early days and regional rivalries, such as those between China and India, remains problems.
Food price inf lation
Food price inflation is one the permeant changes that will only make the cost-of-living crisis worse thanks to a combination of Climate Crisis- related falling agricul-tural yields and disruptions to trade with Russia and Ukraine – the two largest tradable food producers in the world.
Russia is commonly seen as a provider of oil and gas, but thanks to a decade’s worth of heavy investment it has also become a global agro-power. In 2023, the volume of agricultural supplies to foreign markets amounted to $43.5bn. In total, Russia exported more than 100mn tonnes of food. But, like oil, those exports are now going to new markets.
The cost of Britain’s iconic fish & chips has doubled as it remains heavily dependent on the import of Russian cod, while German fishmongers are preparing for thousands of layoffs.
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