West Africa

There's been attacks on shipping in the Black Sea over the Ukraine-Russia war.

The Baltic Sea has seen incidents, the Mediterranean has seen incidents of piracy, East Africa, in Southeast Asia, and in West Africa.

There's risk to shipping through the Panama Canal because of climate change.

So basically, they're warning that shipping as it has functioned over the last 70, 80 years since the end of World War II is not safe anymore.

It's a real deep dive into the human side of shark conservation.

So without further ado, let's hop into our imaginary boat and travel to the colorful, humid coastline of Western Africa, where in Ghofrane's own words, "The beach becomes a theater every morning." Let's dive into our episode.

[upbeat music] Hello, Ghofrane, and welcome to the World of Sharks podcast.

Hello, Isla, and thank you for making me be here with you today.

Unless the Lord.

I was in Africa.

It's my first trip in Africa three weeks ago.

I was in Ghana in Western Africa.

And they have this particular symbol that this group of people would hold on to.

Even their ancestors would hold upon.

If the Lord has not done this, then we could have perished.

If not for God, gie nyame.

I'll just give this preference or preface.

A lot of why I'm interested in what I'm interested in and do what I do and research is because when I first moved to Mexico, being a West African immigrant child, I felt like I didn't belong, you know? And I felt very othered and awkward and constantly sort of in view and seen, but also not seen at all.

And so, I think that discovery is when I slowly learned about the Afro-Mexican community and the third root of Mexico, right? To be indigenous, African, and European.

Exactly.

And that's why it's been such a drive and such a fire in me, you know, without electricity, and just kind of a vantage point that I don't take for granted and that I think really... opens my eyes to seeing the parallels between like other cultures and what is reflected here back in Mexico.

I think Yeah, it is a very important, powerful area in which we are like sitting upon right now.

I think even from, again, the perspective of the Zocalo being both the indigenous temples and sort of the Catholicism put right on top of it.

And then all of us kind of, you know, circling around it and it being like a modern day and also a very ancient like marketplace, I think in a solemn way about how there were enslaved Africans right here in El Centro that were sold and that were bought.

Whereas in the rest of the world, we're always very sceptical.

Hong Kong, China, Africa, we're sceptical because we don't believe the CEO when he says they're going to have a year.

And then currently they are, as Michael was saying, they're surprising on the upside.

And I think that is very much in correction territory.

Yeah.

Michael, you mentioned Nigeria a little bit earlier on.

There's a very interesting IPO going on there, isn't there? Africa's biggest ever IPO is ongoing, which is sort of highlighting maybe the attractions of these markets at the moment.

That's right, yeah.

And of course, they're right.

When these ships start travelling around the world, first they'll start going south... towards West Africa and then they'll head across the Atlantic Ocean and start to touch the shores of South America and the Caribbean and eventually North America as the ships become more and more advanced and as this cumulative knowledge starts to build these ships will start going further and further eventually they'll start landing in places like India and Australia and the Philippines and this is the age of extreme exploitation there is no moral or ethical barrier to what these people are willing to take if they can take it onto one of these ships and take it back to Europe they will they don't care who gets in their way they don't care who have to kill none of that matters because the amount of money being made here overrides every part of their ethical standards and beliefs and these explorers the Spanish of course respond to this threat straight away they've got a lot of money after all and still even with all the piracy a lot more money is making it into Spain than is being intercepted and the Spanish start using that money to start building an absolutely enormous navy, one that can patrol all of their ports, that can start patrolling the Mediterranean, that can even go up off the coast of France and just protect every part, is the birth of the very, very first seed, the very first moments where capitalism starts to begin.

This is the period known as primitive accumulation, where literally just stealing anything that's worth money and turning it into capital back in Europe.

And we're at the very tail end of this age right now because there's only one colonial empire left, which is the United States.

We're not going to go too deep into colonial exploitation in this episode, because that's what we talk about in most episodes.

So if you want to know what all of these developments look like, I suggest going and listening to the Cuba or Venezuela episodes, because we talk about it pretty extensively in those ones.

This period, the early European exploration of West Africa and the Americas, and its piracy specifically, that will really start to change the design of these ships, moves over to the Caribbean during the rush of all the colonialism, and quickly found his way into the privateer life operating around Jamaica, which will eventually become Florida and Louisiana.

England is starting to set up their settlements on the east coast of North America, what will eventually become New York.

Now, these guys, I love Gersha.

We talked about West African food the other week with Jollof Junction, Nigerian, and Sierra Leone.

This is Eastern African.

And the difference is, like, I'd say...

So I'm a French speaker.

I've always loved West African music.

And I went on this overland trip.

Got to Timbuktu.

I think there's only really two.

There's the Lord Derby, which you find in West Africa.

Yeah, Cameroon.

And then you find the Livingston Eland, which you find in this part of the world.