Dictators as Gatekeepers

The USA is divided around the wall President Trump wants to build along the Mexican border. Europe has long answered this question at its own southern border: put up that wall but don’t make it look like one. Today the EU is trying to close many deals as it can with African states, making it harder and harder for refugees to find protection and more dangerous for labor migrants to reach places where they can earn an income. But this is not the only effect: the more Europe tries to control migration from Africa, the harder it becomes for many Africans to move freely through their own continent, even within their own countries. Increasingly, the billions Europe pays for migration control is declared as official development assistance (ODA), more widely known as ‘development aid, supposedly for poverty relief and humanitarian assistance. The EU is spending billions buying African leaders as gatekeepers, including dictators and suspected war criminals. And the real beneficiaries are the military and technology corporations involved in the implementation.