| Review of: | Untapped: the scramble for Africa's oil by John Ghazvinian |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Arvind Ganesan |
| Reviewed in: | International Affairs |
| Date accepted online: | 10/04/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 83, Issue 06, Pages 1193-1234 |
Book Reviews: Sub-Saharan Africa
In
He starts in Nigeria and makes his way through Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Sudan. He highlights how Nigeria, the dean of sub-Saharan Africa's oil producers, has virtually fallen apart after decades of mismanagement. São Tomé is a study of the chicanery involving Nigerian interests in the country's nascent oil sector as well as efforts for the country to avoid the resource curse-although the country has yet to discover major quantities of oil.
Angola is an example of wretched excess in the face of extreme poverty. A country with a relatively small population and the resources to be a model of development is instead an example of cynical, power-hungry elites prospering while the bulk of the population sees no benefit from oil wealth. Some of the statistics are mind-boggling: as first disclosed by Human Rights Watch in 2004, about nine per cent of Angola's GDP disappeared annually from this opaque government's coffers between 1997 and 2002. Ghazvinian points out that this would be like 'an American president admitting halfway through his second term in office that
Other countries such as Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea are examples of disturbingly similar patterns of political entrenchment and excess by those in power, and have sometimes led to open conflict over oil wealth. None of them have sterling records when it comes to their countries' development.
This is perhaps the first book to examine the rise and fall of Chad's innovative oil revenue management programme that was designed in cooperation with the World Bank to ensure that the money from an ExxonMobil-led project would benefit Chadians. Almost immediately problems arose: the government used a lump-sum payment to buy arms, then used some of the money to placate key constituencies, and ultimately civil strife led to a virtual collapse of the agreement so that the government could have more discretionary use of income to fight its civil war. In effect, the warnings about oil development by many non-governmental organizations came to fruition.
Finally, the book examines the impact of Chinese investment on the continent. Ghazvinian does not conclude that this new investment is inherently worse than western investment but takes a more dispassionate, objective view that these relationships are symbiotic and in some ways, not much different from the West's efforts to secure African oil. Ghazvinian also has some interesting insights about how the Chinese investment model is affecting other countries' approach to African oil, such as India, Korea and South Africa.
It is not, unfortunately, a source for policy recommendations to combat these problems, other than some brief discussions on existing initiatives such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative or Publish What You Pay Campaign. But stronger steps such as calling on governments to forcefully press their oil-rich counterparts to improve human rights, aggressively enforce anti-corruption laws to go after stolen wealth, auditing key institutions such as state-owned oil companies or central banks, and ensuring that companies operate in the most transparent and ethical manner possible would have been helpful. It would also move the current debate on the resource curse beyond the call for just transparency in funds that governments