YNaija Analysis: Fidel Castro’s influence on Nigeria and Africa

Fidel Castro’s life and legacy is one that defies all simplification. He remains a hero to some, and a monster to others. One of the defining parts of his legacy, however, was his defiance of the United States and his support for revolutionary efforts throughout Latin America and Africa.

Castro himself came to power through revolution, and his army trained others in similar tactics. In fact, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, one of Castro’s top lieutenants, died while training revolutionary forces in Bolivia.

Regarding Africa, it is not an exaggeration to say that the apartheid regime in South Africa would not have crumbled were it not for Fidel Castro’s intervention.

The point of Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution was to spread it far and wide. The historian Piero Gleijeses described it ‘internationalism’ – the duty to help others. And help Cuba did.

Cuban intervention prevented the overthrow of Angola’s leftist MPLA government by South Africa’s apartheid regime in 1975, and Angola then became a haven for the struggle against minority rule going on in Southern Africa. Every other Southern African nation that gained independence subsequently – Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique, and the end of apartheid in South Africa – owe a big debt to that singular action by Cuba.

This foreign policy stance was very much in line with Nigeria’s, especially under Murtala Mohammed. Cuba and Nigeria had only established formal diplomatic ties in 1974, a few months before Murtala came to power. Murtala was strongly in support of the Angolan independence movement, and that was the basis of common ground with Cuba.

That relationship has continued in the decades since. One of Cuba’s successes under Castro is a very strong healthcare system, with a life expectancy of 79 years. More than a hundred Nigerian doctors have been trained in Cuba, and Cuban doctors have undertaken several missions to Nigeria especially in rural areas. There is an ultra-modern eye clinic set up in Ekiti by Cuba, as well as an anti-malaria project in Rivers State.

Cuba’s doctors also played a huge role in helping to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a role acknowledged by Barack Obama back in 2014.

Another thing Fidel Castro did was to provide an alternative approach to the capitalist economic ideology, by promoting the role of the state in development, even though that alternative model came under severe pressure with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, to whom Cuba was very much a client state.

For a tiny island, one under embargo for decades, to project power in various forms to such great effect, is something truly remarkable and deserves to be viewed on its own terms. There is simply no other country with similar size and population that has made such a contribution on two continents.

Back in Cuba, however, things were decidedly less rosy. Castro imprisoned and killed many of his opponents, and his economic policies kept Cubans who stayed in the country mostly poor. Indeed, Cuba still seems stuck in 1959 in many ways.

Now that Fidel Castro has departed this world, his brother Raul can now move economic reforms along quicker before his own capacity starts to wane. He is already 85 years old.

Whatever the less than flattering aspects of his legacy, it is safe to say that Castro’s role in liberating Africa from colonialism will be remembered for a long time to come.

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