On Wednesday, President Trump delivered a speech to the Heads of States leaders of Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, and South Africa at the UN.
This statement he made earned and still earns him a lot of derision on social media:
“Nambia’s health system is increasingly self-sufficient.”
You see, there is no African nation named Nambia and everyone wondered if he meant Namibia, Zambia or Gambia.
Yet with everything Trump, within the web of lies, half-truths and exaggerations, there often lurks a hint of reality on which his deck of cards is mounted.
The clue to all this is found in the first paragraph of his speech. He said:
“Africa has tremendous business potential. I have so many friends going to your countries, trying to get rich. I congratulate you. They’re spending a lot of money. But it does — it has a tremendous business potential…”
So Trump has a lot of friends who go to Africa to make lots of money.
They go to this continent racked with disease, poverty and war to make a lot of money.
So where do they go to make this money? Well, you won’t believe it but they go to…Nambia!
I can already see the looks of incredulity as you read this and the question, “Where is this Nambia, Nana Dadzie?”
Well, Nambia is not a place per se. It is an institution. Nambia is an institution that allows a continent to be exploited to an unimaginable degree.
In urban parlance “nam” can stand for “a nothing” and one of the meanings of “bia” is weakling.
“Nambia” – “a weak nothing!”
Doesn’t the continent often comes across as a weak nothing?
Yet it’s not the whole continent that is a Nambia per se.
You see, the continent of Africa is blessed with resources. Like crazy amounts of gold, diamonds, oil, uranium, land and human capital.
The institution of Nambia is that which allows only allows a few access to these riches.
In the era of early European exploration and colonialism, they traded in everything, even humans! As the Indigines languished, they amassed sick wealth.
The whole continent was sucked into a giant Nambia.
The whole continent was a weak nothing!
These days, you see Nambias in Lagos, Accra, Abidjan, Nairobi, Lome, Luanda or even Johannesburg.
The men and women who populate them are Nigerian, Ghanaian, Ivorian, Kenyan or even Angolan. They wear thousand dollar suits from Saville Row and Rolex watches bought in New York. They ride in Mercedes AMGs over potholed streets that are lined by hungry children begging for a morsel yet these men and women do not see them through their tinted windows. They live in million-dollar homes far-removed form the crumbling hospitals and dilapidated schools their poor constituents have to use.
You see, these are the men and women with power and access to all the resources the continent have.
These are the men and women Trump’s friends go to see when they go to make money. These are the men and women who cavort with the North Americans, Europeans, Japanese and especially the Chinese who want to reap the riches of the continent. These power brokers sell these foreigners access to Nambia and together, they get to enjoy this paradise. To assuage their guilt, they throw the masses a bone, a like a health center, every now and then.
In this rarefied air, the masses who are afflicted with disease, racked with hunger and killed in wars don’t get to play. They hear their nations are rich but they never see it. They hear of this place called Nambia and bid their time. if they ever make it there, they take as much as they can, propagating the cycle.
These men and women may have all the trappings of wealth but due to their greed, they are weak nothings!
So laugh at Trump all you want. He was right. His friends go to Africa to try and make lots of money. They spend a lot of money doing that but only few of the Indigines benefit from that.
The place they do that is called Nambia and unlike the rest of the continent, its health system is increasingly self-sufficient and those who populate it are far-removed from the misery of life on a continent that is poor in the midst of riches.