AU to Establish African Space Agency … The African Union, has commenced a process that would lead to the setting up of a regional space agency.The agency, to be known as the African Space Agency, would focus on the development of common space policy for the continent. In a communique issured at the end of the third African Union conference of Ministers in charge of Communications and Information Technologies held in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, member countries agreed to conduct a feasibility study on the establishment of the African Space Agency, It said this would be done taking into account existing initiatives and develop an African space policy in cooperation with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and REC. Jonathan had said during the opening of the conference that a lot still needs to be done by Africa to bridge the knowledge and technology gap between it and the rest of the developed world if it must achieve rapid and sustained economic, social and human development. – This Day, African Views
Dominant Social Theme: Boy, the Africans are making strides!
Free-Market Analysis: We don't much like large governmental organizations and we are not fans of the even larger organizations erected by, for lack of a better phrase, "regional" governments such as the European Union. This announcement by the African Union is a twofer in this regard. It involves the African Union itself and the erection of yet another large, unwieldy bureaucracy.
"Stop!" we want to shout. Too late … Did those voting for this agency cast their eyes Westward? Did they descry technocratic NASA bestriding the Potomac like a bloated toad? Obviously not. The article in the Sydney Morning Herald is making the point that Africa is joining the 21st century in ways that are comprehensible to Westerners. The "communique," above, could have been issued out of just about any bureaucracy in the world. It tells us that Africa is in the throes of giving birth to full-fledged regulatory democracy. There's a kind of dominant social theme, here: "Africa is a competent and growing continent; soon she will take her place on the world stage."
This is not a fear-based promotion. It is more or less an assertion of the way the world is supposed to work. If Africa, wild and untamed, can be presented as a kind of European Union, then surely there is no doubt this is where the future is headed. Perhaps there are other models (a republican one for instance) but increasingly they are not apparent. Bigness seems to be the watchword of the day. Regulatory democracy, with its high taxes and central banking aspects, is increasingly in evidence.
Did you even know there was an African Union, dear reader? Did you know that AU has set up an African central bank? Did you know there are plans for an African currency called, unsurprisingly, the afro? There are even pictures of the afro online. It seems a fairly important artist was commissioned to create "art" representing how such a currency might look. Go to Google and look under "images" and you'll see the artwork. The coins are gold-colored, predictably, and quite handsome. The notes look like euros to us, only with African scenes instead of European ones. Here's a full description of what is planned, according to Wikipedia:
The African Monetary Union is the proposed creation of an economic and monetary union for the countries of the African Union, administered by the African Central Bank. Such a union would call for the creation of a new unified currency, similar to the euro; the hypothetical currency is sometimes referred to as the afro. The Abuja Treaty, an international agreement signed on June 3, 1991 in Abuja, Nigeria, created the African Economic Community, and called for an African Central Bank to follow by 2028. The current plan is to establish an African Economic Community with a single currency by 2023.
There are 2 existing regional currency unions in Africa, using the West African CFA franc, and the Central African CFA franc, respectively. Additionally, the Common Monetary Area links several countries in southern Africa based on the South African rand. The African Union's plans for further integration encourage the development of more such regional unions as an intermediate step to full monetary union. One proposed union is the eco, a proposed currency for members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
In 2002, Mansour Ciss and Baruch Gottlieb created a "prototype" currency, called the AFRO, which they presented at the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art on May 10, 2002[2][3]. The project was a response to the perceived lack of independence created by use of the CFA franc. Notes and coins of the imaginary currency were produced, and given away or sold to the people of Dakar and Senegal to encourage them "to reflect on the meaning (value) of money and the future of their own local currency."
Our question, of course, is where do all these ideas come from? Who's organizing it? Is it Nelson Mandela? He doesn't seem interested in this sort of thing – and past his impressive prime. Maybe it's African heads-of-state … One calls up another and broaches the subject. "See what the Europeans are doing? It's worked well for them, so it may work well for us!" No, we hope the Africans, as a group, do not move further down this path. The Europeans are actually having plenty of trouble, of course, with the EU, and we can hardly imagine the kinds of troubles that an African Union would generate. Even Africa's most powerful industrial counties such as Nigeria are quite corrupt, so far as we can tell.
What is to be gained by agglomerating so many failed states under one umbrella? The powers-that-be should be concentrating on breaking up Africa's states, not gathering more of them together. Often they contain two or more competing tribes that have no intention of living amicably and are not apt to share power. Tribal cultures are difficult to tame and bring under the roof of regulatory democracy, as the Anglo-American axis is discovering in Afghanistan.
We know there are plenty of people, even regular and irregular Daily Bell viewers and feedbackers, who simply don't buy-off on the idea of elite-organized promotions. What we see as organized interference others may simply see as the centralizing instincts of the human species. But in both articles, today, (admittedly not "mainstream" Western ones) we've tried show that there is likely some animating entity that is driving the world toward global governance – with all that implies for citizens and investors alike. The Internet helps connect the dots.
