The impact of Israel's Sub-Saharan relations on African migrants in Israel

In the 1960s, sub-Saharan Africa experienced a major diplomatic offensive by Israel. Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana was the first country to establish diplomatic and economic relations. Others soon followed, so that by the mid-1960s some forty African countries were receiving agricultural and military aid from Israel and benefiting from scholarships for their students. Israel's involvement was facilitated by the CIA's activities in Africa at the time, which were conceived and funded by the United States and other Western powers as their "third force" in Africa. Since then, the situation has evolved due to Africans' growing solidarity with the Palestinians and their rejection of Israel's "apartheid" system of systematic discrimination against non-Israeli populations. Israel lost the support of most SSA countries in the early 1970s because of its collaboration with apartheid South Africa. As Nelson Mandela said, "South Africa will never be free until Palestine is free". At its 12th Ordinary Session in Kampala in 1975, the OAU for the first time identified Israel's founding ideology, Zionism, as a form of racism. Nevertheless, several African countries continued to maintain low-level contacts through thirteen foreign embassies, for example in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire, while educational and commercial exchanges continued, albeit on a much reduced scale and away from the public eye. But the scourge of Islamist terrorism necessitated a revival of relations. Military and security cooperation, including cyber security, is particularly intensive with Ethiopia, Zaire, Uganda, Ghana, Togo and South Africa, for example. It has also often served to prop up despotic African regimes. Today, sub-Saharan Africa is a lucrative market for the Israeli defence industry.