Genf: Genf und Afrika

Genf und Afrika – ein Teil des Buches «Genf als internationaler Finanzplatz» von Dr. Alexander Ressos.

Geneva and Africa

Geneva maintains relations with Africa that few European financial centres of its size can claim. Through commodity trading, it buys a considerable share of the oil, cocoa, coffee, cotton and metals that the continent exports. Through banking, it manages African fortunes, legitimate and sometimes illicit. It has returned more than two billion dollars in assets of deposed leaders. Through diplomacy, it hosts the missions of every African state to the United Nations and the organisations that deal with health, refugees, trade and human rights on the continent. Through language, it shares with some twenty African countries the French language, the language of their administrations, their legal systems and their business. These relations are long-standing, dense and at times controversial. They make Geneva an African crossroads whose importance is often underestimated in Switzerland itself.

Part I examines these relations in six chapters. The first retraces their history, from the missionaries and traders of the nineteenth century to independence and International Geneva. The second describes the trading of African commodities from Geneva, its volumes, its players and its controversies. The third analyses resource-backed financing, prepayments and their effects on the debt of African countries. The fourth deals with the assets of African elites, politically exposed persons and the restitution of illicit assets, from the Abacha case to the federal act of 2015. The fifth describes the new bridges being built between Geneva and the continent: business forums, investment, fintech and the diaspora. The sixth proposes good practices for banks, traders and advisers who work with Africa.

The author approaches this part with a conviction and a caution. The conviction is that Geneva possesses, in its relations with Africa, an asset that its competitors lack, made up of linguistic proximity, accumulated experience and institutional presence. The caution is that this asset has, on several occasions, been placed at the service of practices — plundering of resources, concealment of embezzled assets, corruption — that have harmed African populations and the reputation of the financial centre. The chapters that follow seek to describe both faces of this relationship, without complacency and without presuming bad faith.

About the book

This part belongs to Geneva as an International Financial Centre by Dr Alexander Ressos, published here in full, section by section.