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Economy · Revelation
Episode #39
Reminder of the dilemma
A — You publish the report and expose fraud to the open.
B — You're silent to keep the three thousand jobs under threat.
If you chose A
Choosing A is to believe that accounting truth is the foundation of all economic sovereignty. It is refusing that Africa remains this docile link in the globalized value chain. But it's also about accepting that structural justice can sometimes be paid for in immediate suffering.
If you have chosen B
Choosing B means recognizing that daily survival weighs more than an abstract principle. It's protecting real bodies, real families. But it is also fuelling the silence that, since trafficking, allows others to enrich themselves on the continent's back.
This dilemma is that of a continent caught between the urgency of living and the need to count — in the proper sense. Accounting, often reduced to a neutral technique, becomes a political act here. Declare the true value of the extracted cobalt is to question the very architecture of a world economy which, since triangular trade, is based on the systematic undervaluation of what Africa produces, what Africa is worth.
If you choose transparency, you enter into a line of resistance: that which says that numbers do not lie, that flows must be traced, that wealth must be named where it is born. You pose a founding act of sovereignty. But the price is dizzying. The multinational has the means to leave, to relocate suffering, to find another basement, another silence. The three thousand families, however, do not have a screen company to cushion the shock.
If you choose silence, you do what generations have done before you: absorb injustice for yours to eat tomorrow. It is neither cowardice nor complicity. — This is the terrible rationality of those who do not have a safety net. But this silence feeds the system. It allows the value chain to remain invisible, at Accra's electronic landfills to continue burning, on Geneva's consolidated balance sheets to remain clean.
The truth is that no accountant should bear the weight of a choice that entire states, institutions and peoples have not yet had the courage to decide collectively. The real scandal isn't your hesitation. — It's the absence of a framework that would protect you if you talked.
Like Baobab, African economic justice cannot grow in one day. Its roots must first sink deep — in strong institutions, protective laws, continental solidarity — Before his trunk can withstand the storms. Your pen is shaking, yes. But maybe the first act of courage is to refuse to choose alone.
To go further
Black Atlantic: Tragedy of the crossing, triangular economy and European architecture of the slave trade
History of a total system: violence, logistics, profits and inheritances. For three centuries, the Atlantic was the heart of...
Globalized Value Chain: When Africa Pays the Hidden Price of Others' Wealth
From the African basement to electronic landfills, backwards of a global economy Behind every product we co...
Accounting at the heart of economic transparency in Africa
The forgotten but central role of accounting In an African context marked by a growing need for transparency ...
Next dilemma Next Monday
