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Opinion Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu Continued from last Saturday
Nigeria’s most important trading partners are the European Union, especially Britain and Germany. It also trades with virtually all the Ecowas members, it being a prominent Ecowas member itself. Its founding president, Alhaji Sir Ahmed Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, and the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, were both opposed to Nkrumah’s proposal for the creation of a united Africa with a unified military command.

They were in agreement with Niger’s first black head of state, Diori Kamani. These leaders were treated with much favour by all European and American governments all of which viewed Nkrumah’s pan African ideas with a great deal of alarm.

Rwanda is an East-Central African country bounded on the west by Tanzania, on the south by Burundi, and on the west by the DRC, with Uganda lying in the North. Only tin occurs in the former Belgium League of Nations mandated territory which was granted independence on  July 1, 1962.

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is a former Spanish colony situated south of Morocco, west of Mauritania which stretches up to the south of the country up to the Atlantic Ocean. Algeria is Sahrawi’s North Eastern neighbour.

The country is sitting on massive phosphates deposits. It is for those phosphates that Spain will not let go the desert territory and, with Morocco’s  actual military  intervention, has been fighting the militant Frente Popular para la Liberacion de Saguia el Hamra y Rio de Oro (Polisario) since May 20, 1973.

Sahrawi comprises two parts: an 184,000sq\km region bordering Mauritanian in the south. It is called Rio de Oro.
The second is the Saguia al Hamra (also known as Rio Rojo) lying along the Sahrawi-Morocco frontier in the north, and measuring some 82,000sq/km. The country has iron ore deposits lying a few metres below its Sahara Desert sand.

The ore has between 60 and 80 percent ferrous content. Its phosphates rock deposits are some of the world’s best and third largest after those of the US and Russia, with those of China trailing a distant fourth.

Sahrawi’s unilateral independence was declared unilaterally by the Polisario on February 27, 1976. It is recognised by virtually all African Union states except Morocco, and some European Union countries.

The Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe has no minerals. The former Portuguese island territory lies in the Atlantic Ocean, west of the Gulf of Guinea and comprises the main island after which it is called, and the smaller Cabras, Rolas, Pedras Tinhosas and Gago Continho. It became a sovereign state on July 12, 1975.

Senegal is a 196,720sq/km former West African French colony which shook off its colonial shackles on 20 August 1960. Its minerals are titanium, iron, limonite and phosphate.

Its trading partners are France, the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Mauritania, Mali, the Ivory Coast and Italy.
The Seychelles are a group of Indian Ocean islands measuring a paltry 308sq/km. They are a former British colony. The archipelago’s most central territory is Mahe. It is 966km North-East of Madagascar’s northern most point. The Seychelles were granted independence on 29 June 1976.

Sierra Leone, a 72,323sq\km West African former British protectorate, is a very mineral rich country. Situated along the Atlantic Ocean, its neighbours are Guinea in the North and East, and Liberia in South and South-East. Its minerals are platinum, iron, titanium, rutile, bauxite, chrome and diamonds. It became independent on April 26, 1961 with Sir Milton Movigai as the head of the government.
He was opposed to Nkrumah’s wish to unite Africa’s independent states. Sierra Leone’s international business partners are Britain, Nigeria, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Ecowas in general.

One of Africa’s poorest countries is Somalia, a nation made up of two former colonies. British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland.
It does not have any mineral. Somalia became independent on July 1 1960, and the two parts united to form one nation “Greater Somalia,” a nationalist dream that has been shattered by the tragic inter-ethnic and inter-factional religious conflicts since the late 1980s.

One of the continent’s richest nations in terms of minerals is South Africa. Located at the very southern end of the continent, the 1,221,042sq/km country has iron, chrome, tin, coal, nickel, copper, manganese, diamonds, gold, uranium and platinum.

South Africa produces the largest amount of gold in the world, about 30 percent. It has been in the diamond mining industry since 1876 when the mineral was discovered.

Gold was discovered on what was later called the Rand in 1886. South Africa produces also substantial quantities of silver. The country agreed on a democratic constitution in 1993, some 340-plus years after the Dutch landed at the Cape and began settling around the region, violently displacing the indigenous people.

The country’s first democratic elections were held on April 26-29, 1994, and the African National Congress (ANC) led by Nelson Mandela won and formed the first black-led government of that country.

The ANC had been struggling for the black people’s freedom since its formation in January 1912.
South Sudan was proclaimed in 2012 after more than a decade of civil war involving the Southern region’s predominantly black people against the mainly Arabic northern part of that Sahara Desert country.

Its minerals are oil, gold and natural gas. Southern Sudan, that African area that was ravaged by the slave trade, has some gold deposits, iron ore, copper ore, gypsum, chrome and manganese.

Sudan, from which Southern Sudan split, is the northern neighbour of Southern Sudan. Its minerals are gold, chrome, magnesium, iron and copper. It became independent on January 1, 1956.

Sudan was for a number of years jointly administered by Britain and Egypt, and was called the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
The Sudan was initially clearly more interested in unity among and co-operation with Arab (the Arab League) states than with black-led governments. That attitude was strengthened in the 1960s by Khartoum’s feeling that the Ugandan, the DRC (then called Zaire) and the Central African governments supported the Southern Sudan’s black ‘Anyt-Nya’ guerilla army, a predecessor of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

The Khartoum administration was thus not enthusiastic about pan-Africanist ideas and goals as it felt that its interests lay more in and with what it termed ‘the Arab World’ than with black Africa.

The eventual secession of the South (Southern Sudan) should be understood in Sudan’s historical context especially with particular reference to the slave trade which played havoc with the overwhelmingly black people of that region.

A look at one of the continent’s surviving monarchies, Swaziland, show us two minerals iron and asbestos. Situated between South Africa in the west and south, and Mozambique in the east, Swaziland was a British protectorate from 1902 to September 6 1968 when the high British commission territory became independent. The country’s sovereign at that time was King Sobhuza 11 (the Second). He was a conservative traditionalist whose political party, imbokodvo, (Grindstone) had no room for Pan-Africanist ideas.

Attempts by the then kingdom’s opposition, Dr Ambrose Zwane’s Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC) to usher the country into the pan-Africanist political era came to nought particularly following the banning of political parties by the absolute monarch officially said to be a constitutional monarchy.  Sobhuza’s son Mswati 111, has the same political ideology as his father’s.

One of Africa’s heroic nations in terms of its historical role in the continent’s liberation struggle is Tanzania. In fact, it played the greatest part by the active support it gave to the largest number of liberation movements operating in the Indian Ocean, East Africa, southern West and South-West Africa.

Tanzania’s mineral wealth is quite meagre in quantity compared to such countries as the DRC. It has gold, mica, tin, diamonds, silver, copper, tungsten, lead graphite, titanium, phosphates, coal, iron and gemstones.

Some of these minerals do not occur in as large quantities as in South Africa or Zimbabwe. However, the country has a developing mining sector.

The 945,166sq\km East African country has eight neighbours: Uganda and Kenya to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, the DRC and Zambia to its west, Malawi and Mozambique are on its south, and the Indian Ocean in the west.