The Perils of Oil Wealth
Time has a fascinating article about the promise and perils of oil wealth in west Africa. Some of the statistics about government corruption and income inequality are staggering, and it looks like Angola will go the way of Gabon, with impossible rich elites having no qualms about throwing away money on things from overpriced imported produce ($11 for eggs!!!!!) to helicopters and Swiss Bank Accounts. The money gets sent abroad, the rich spend with impunity, and the poor are left starving in the slums.
The Good News:
Angola’s is in its first explosive flush of production, with gdp expected to grow 27% this year.
Bad News:
In April, the $35 million Belas Shopping Center — the country’s first mall — opened in a new suburb called Nova Vida. There, in a store called Tapazio, they can shop for such baubles as silver-plated ashtrays and a $7,000 candelabra. Yet 70% of Angolans still live below the country’s poverty line. Cholera and malaria are rife, and child mortality rates are among the worst in the world. A kilometer away from Nova Vida, in the shanty town of Cambamba, children play in open sewers, and piles of burning garbage shroud shacks in foul-smelling clouds of smoke. As Valdemir puts it: “The rich use mineral water. For us there is no water. No electricity or sanitation either.”
I genuinely hope these African governments stamp out government corruption and try to diversify their economies (so that oil doesn’t drive out other industries, which often happens, creating a dependent economy) and try to distribute income equally (which has not happened in Gabon, where the capital, Libreville, is one of the 10 most expensive cities in the world to live in, while it ranks 124th on the Human Development Index), and encourage native employment (most lucrative jobs go to expats, creating expat oases of security while native unemployment often rises). Likewise, I hope foreign companies try to encourage transparency in their dealings, employ more native workers, and pay fair prices for oil and fair wages to their workers while trying to build up and stimulate the economy. I can hope, can’t I?
The Ridiculous:
Nigeria pumped its first barrel in the 1950s and has since set records for corruption. The government’s own anticorruption watchdog, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, estimates that between independence in 1960 and 1999, the country’s rulers stole $400 billion in oil revenues — equal to all the foreign aid to Africa during the same period.
The horror! The horror!
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True horror, i mean their own government is too corrupted to be fixed!
The same can be said of South Africa, where the government has literally ignored the growing crime-rate, which I think by now must be the highest in the world. Government officials pay themselves massive salaries and waste money on stupid name changes of cities, streets and airports, while hundreds are dying in this country from starvation, malnutrition and AIDS. Government hospitals are falling apart and unable to deliver service due to non-working machinery, there is currently a massive strike by most government workers in schools and hospitals as the government is refusing to pay them a 12% increase! The country is in shambles! And its only getting worse.
This seems to be a global trend among governments world-wide…. Rape your country, so long as you (the boys at the top) are sitting pretty, living in affluent burbs with good security and plenty to eat, let the rest of the world rot. Including the planet. It is utterly disgusting!!!!