10
Dec
2006
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Is Investment Always Good?

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I’ve always considered myself an ardent capitalist and advocate of the free market and economic liberalization. However, reading about a $ 4 Billion development project in Khartoum (in the latest Economist) really caused me to question my beliefs.

The development is called Alsunut and is a collection of luxury office buildings and hotels financed and constructed by a consortium of Sudanese/CHinese/Southeast Asian/Arab investors, which is the same group of people financing several other multibillion dollar projects around Sudan, including a $350 million luxury hotel financed by Pakistani investors.

I totally recognize the value in such projects since they will increase Sudan’s global economic profile, create more jobs for poor Sudanese, and attract more foreign investment and tourism. However, are these moral?

I have a hard time justifying such an engregious display of wealth in one of the poorest countries in the world, where average per capita income hovers around $300 a year. I have a hard time justifying the use of oil money stolen from southern oil fields to finance northern Sudanese investment projects. I have a hard time justifying spending $4 billion dollars investing in a regime that uses its money to supply militiamen with arms to kill innocent civilians in Darfur- especially when 400,000 have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes.

This really makes me see the evil in unbridled pursuit of wealth. I hope some measures are put in place to ensure an equitable distribution of Sudan’s immense oil wealth so that it doesn’t stick to a few northern elites. The South that is home to the oil fields sh ould see its fair share of money, Sudanese workers should be brought in for jobs instead of outsourcing to Chinese, government revenues should be stipulated to be spent on education, infrastructure, and healthcare as opposed to weaponry, and elites should make sure that Sudanese employees are paid well and that somehow the wealth is distributed to the general population.