Race For Riches is Africa’s Torment

by Global Ministries | published on Oct 10, 2014

Somalia and Darfur are the latest unhappy corners of Africa to erupt in violence. The dead will join more than five million others who have perished in wars in the past bloody decade. Surely, if it was any other continent, the world’s efforts would be focused on ending the carnage. ‘But that’s how things are in Africa,’ many will shrug, ‘still the dark and savage continent.’

This epidemic of war is as destructive as those of Aids and malaria. But the chief fuel to this flame is not an innate aggression by Africans, as many commentators suggest. Tragically, in most cases, it is the blessings bestowed by nature on the continent and the strong desire of economically powerful outsiders to get them. Ethnic and religious rivalries are real, but too often serve as a smokescreen.

Take the demographic mosaic of Sudan, where there were tensions between groups seen as more Arab and more African. But what has most made Sudan a violent place has been the discovery of oil. The Khartoum government has already lost control of the south, where most of its reserves lie. The plains of Darfur have been only partly surveyed, but look promising.

The China National Petroleum Corporation bought the rights to Block 6, the largest oil and gas concession field still controlled by Khartoum, which lies mostly in Darfur. Production costs are believed to be a bargain 22 cents (less than 12p) a barrel, and with Rolls-Royce Marine reportedly supplying tens of millions of dollars worth of pumping equipment this summer Block 6 production is alleged to have risen from 10,000 to 40,000 barrels a day. Earlier this month China’s President Hu Jintao spoke forcefully in support of Sudan’s right to sort out Darfur as it saw fit, while his oil-thirsty country is now Sudan’s main military supplier. The signals from China’s recent summit with African leaders are that the Chinese will only push harder in future to gain their share of the spoils.

This echoes the first Sudanese civil war. ‘Oil has brought death,’ said Malony Kolang, a chief of the southern Nuer people in 2000. ‘When the pumping began, the war began. Antonov aircraft and helicopter gunships began attacking the villages… Everything around the oilfields has been destroyed.’

To the east lies Somalia, where the descent into war is portrayed as historical enmity between Somalis and their Ethiopian neighbours. Yet Ethiopia’s Christian regime runs a big risk in its border incursions, given that a large portion of its own people are Muslim and of Somali descent. The real reason is likely to be that the Ogaden region, which borders Somalia, sits on a not yet exploited gas field. The Malaysian oil giant Petronas has bought three concession blocks there. Addis Ababa fears a resurgent Somalia will seek to annex Ogaden. The likely coming war there is in part gas-powered.

The same story is repeated all over Africa. Congo’s diamonds and cobalt brought a civil conflict bringing in six neighbouring countries, though again linguistic and ethnic differences were painted as the war’s underlying cause. Angola’s oil and diamonds fuelled its own civil conflict, this time portrayed as an ideological dispute between left and right. In Sierra Leone and Liberia it was diamonds alone that played such a role. In Nigeria, again, oil. By contrast, Africa’s countries of quiet stability – such as Senegal, Tanzania, Mozambique or Ghana – are those with little to interest the prospectors.

Those preferring the explanation of African savagery point to the slaughter of Rwanda. But there, too, one of the most under-reported tensions behind the conflict was the shortage of valuable grasslands.

Africa faces a wide range of challenges. It is tragic that the scramble for its wealth is only adding to them.

[Written by Daniel Whitaker, an economist who has worked in Africa for five years] MORE at http://www.twf.org/News/Y2005/0603-Scramble.html