About twenty years ago, Federico Rampini made Italians discover a new Asia, in dizzying change, with the bestsellers "The Chinese Century" and "The Empire of Cindia". Today he tackles the African continent with the same unprejudiced approach, guiding us in its rediscovery without blinkers, as a live witness , through travel reports and giving voice to characters who make history.
His latest essay, in fact, entitled " African hope " (Mondadori, 2023, pp. 348, also Ebook), tells us about a land that is very different from the current narrative.
Rampini defines it as the land of the future. But why? We asked him directly:
«Africa still has a high birth rate while much of the planet is experiencing demographic decline, therefore, Africa will be a factory of young people. It is rich in all the resources we will need for our transition to an economy less based on coal and oil, such as minerals, metals and rare earths that we use for green technologies."
Why do you define Africa as an amazing land?
«Because seen up close it rarely corresponds to the stereotypes prevalent in Italy. It is not a continent marked only by tragedies, disasters, calamities and desperation. Africans do not feel on the brink of the Apocalypse as we describe them. Among the many surprises they reserve for us, there is their cultural and artistic creativity. For those who live in New York like me, but also in London or Paris, it is clear that Africa exports talent in fields such as music and cinema, literature and painting, fashion. It is not art born from suffering, on the contrary it is rather joyful and cheerful. It is a stark contrast to the narrative we make of Africa. It's clear that we haven't understood it, or we don't want to understand it."
What do we Western Europeans not fully understand about Africa?
«We Westerners are paralyzed by our guilt complexes. We think that everything that happens in Africa today has its explanation in colonialism. It's another way to feel important, to delude ourselves that we are still the center of the world. Once upon a time we were conquerors, we dominated vast areas of the planet, which we claimed to civilise. Today we want to maintain the illusion of our centrality with this new egocentrism: we believe we are responsible for all the evil, all the injustices and intolerance of humanity. Thus, for example, in American progressive thought slavery is described as the supreme sin of the white race; but Africa had great empires that thrived on the slave trade long before the first white man appeared there. Our self-referentiality hides a new form of racism, which believes itself to be progressive: we describe Africa as the eternal prey, the eternal victim, and thus we 'infantilize' it, we speak of its ruling classes and its elites as children who they don't know what they are doing, they are manipulated and manipulated by external powers. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is an African protagonism, for better or for worse: those who make the most wicked choices, from coups d'état to large-scale theft, are aware and responsible. The African ruling classes are skilled at putting external powers in competition, they do not suffer at all. In my book this emerges from the voices of many African protagonists who I have met and who offer us their version, very different from ours."
What can Africa represent for Italy?
«A great opportunity, provided that we stop embracing the obsessive and monothematic representation of the African Apocalypse. The same demographic bomb is exaggerated by Italians, who ignore the new birth trends: the good news about Africa is censored. We must also abandon the culture of humanitarian aid, which has not given the desired results: Africa has absorbed twenty times the value of the Marshall Plan with which post-war Europe was reconstructed. Africa needs our businesses and our investments, not charity. However, we discourage companies because those who invest in Africa are accused a priori of plundering it. So we abandon it to the Chinese, Indians, Saudis, Russians, Turks."
What kind of outlook do Africans have towards the West and Europe?
«A unique African perspective on us does not exist. Africas are plural, this is an immense continent whose surface area exceeds the United States, China and India combined, it has one and a half billion inhabitants, 54 nations, two thousand ethnic groups and linguistic groups. I describe their gaze on us through three emblematic trips I made to three very different countries: Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa. A common thread is certainly an anti-Western sentiment, also the result of Chinese and Russian propaganda. Instead of countering this propaganda, we support it."