Tokyo International Conference

Abstract

As you all know, Africa is the cradle of mankind. All human beings (Homo sapien sapien) emanated from Africa. Evidence has now shown that until 100,000 years ago, all human beings were living only in Africa. It is, therefore, tragic and paradoxical that when the out-of Africa human beings came back to that Continent, around the 15th Century, they came as predators – slave traders, colonizers, etc. The last 500 years of interaction between Africans and Europeans, in particular, has not been a happy one. It has not been an equitable one. Africans were also involuntarily involved in a war with Japan in Burma on behalf of European colonizers.

Eventually, Africa had to win her freedom by a combination of peaceful and armed means of struggle. Since independence, the interaction between African countries, if Uganda is to be taken as one of the examples, has not been equitable. Yes, Uganda has received “aid” from Western countries and Japan. However, that “aid” has been wiped out several times over by the inequitable trade arrangements. These unfair trade arrangements confine us to producing raw materials whose prices inexorably go down for very good scientific reasons. These raw materials are easy to produce. Hence, all countries with similar climatic conditions produce them. Thereby leading to over production and, therefore, declining prices. Besides, as science and technology advance, either new raw materials are identified, new techniques evolve or fewer quantities of the same raw materials are used. Thereby, either diminishing the use of the raw materials or rendering them irrelevant altogether. The fate of copper is one good example. Copper was a raw material for telephone wires in the old telecommunications technology. With new techniques of wireless telecommunications technology, less copper is demanded. Hence, the collapse of the copper prices. African countries such as Congo-Kinshasa and Zambia that had considerable prosperity based on copper in the 1960s have fallen on hard times.