African development was ostensibly the main focus of the recent Group of Eight (G-8) meeting in Canada. The real concern, however, is said to be Western access to African oil. Will Africa be subject to new round of imperialist plunder, packaged as a new "development" program?
By Eddie J. Girdner
When the G-8 held their annual summit in Kananaskis, an isolated mountain resort near Calgary, Canada, on June 26-27, there were three main items on the agenda: global economic recovery, terrorism, and African development. Other topics as the Middle East also came up.
The G-8 (the G-7 plus Russia) are the world's wealthiest advanced industrialized nations: the US, UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, France, Canada, and Russia. The G-8 controls about 68% of the world's economy in gross domestic product (GDP) while having some 14% of the world's population.
The US alone has almost one-third (31.5%) of world GDP, with only 4.7% of the world's population. The low- and middle-income countries control only 21% of world GDP while they have 85% of the world's population. In controlling the key international organizations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, the G-8 sets the global economic and development agenda.
African development was slated to be the main focus of the Kananaskis Summit. At center stage was the New Partnership for Africa's Developmet (NEPAD), initiated by South African President Thabo Mbeki in October 2001. Observer nations at the Summit included Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Egypt, and Algeria.
On tap was the unveiling of an African Plan for Development, addressing the issues of poverty, AIDS and other diseases, education, agriculture, water resources, and harnessing human and technological resources for development. In the first year, the developed countries would invest some $64 billion in Africa. As is well known, these meetings are largely cosmetic, all the issues having been decided ahead of the meeting.
The G-8 leaders also officially addressed the issues of good government, democracy, human rights, and sustainable growth. Africa has a population of 800 million, 12% of the world's population, but half of the people live on less that US$1 per day. By the 1990s, at lest 43% of the population lacked basis nutrition. With economic growth at 1% per year, per capita GDP actually declined by 0.8% per year form 1980 to 1993.
The nations of sub-Saharan Africa have a $230 billion debt burden to the West. Africa spends more on debt repayment to the West than on basic education and health care.
Some advocacy groups advocate cancellation of all or part of the debt, as spending a portion of the debt service on health and education would save millions of lives every year. Military spending is also large in Africa. If just 12% of the US$125 billion spent on the military in the Third World could be spent on health care, it would care for the population of every developing country.
US development aid to Africa during the Clinton administration was severely curtailed, as the US began to emphasize "trade not aid." the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act under President Clinton was meant to help open up markets in African countries and encourage African exports in such areas as textiles. But critics saw the law as mainly assisting US multinational corporations.
Western multinational corporations are clearly interested in Africa and are encouraging the US to establish a greater presence on the continent. One way of doing this is to establish a linkage between economic and social conditions in Africa and terrorism. It is said that Africa needs assistance to prevent breeding terrorists and generating an influx of migrants to Western societies.
On March 14, 2002, President George W. Bush announced his administration's new $5 billion Millennium Challenge Account. "We cannot leave 50% of the world's population in poverty," he said. "Grinding poverty and absence of hope and opportunity contribute to unrest and the increase in radical and related activities."
So Bush challenged the African leaders to "double in a decade their current rates of economic growth." They would get US assistance if they "moved to reform their societies economically, socially, and politically," and move to establish good governance and end corruption.
NEPAD, promoted by the presidents of South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, and Senegal, will become the economic policy of the African Union (AU) to be launched in July 2002 in South Africa. The AU will replace the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to spearhead African development. But beyond all the talk about development and the breeding of terrorists, on the agenda at Kananaskis, the G-8 have other fish to fry.
In fact, America and the other G-8 nations have their eyes on African oil. Walter Kansteiner, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, has called African oil "a priority for US National Security and African Development." African oil is seen to be in the US national strategic interest.
Today, the US gets 16% of its oil imports from Africa, almost as much as from Saudi Arabia. By 2015, fully 25% of US imports of oil will come from sub-Saharan Africa, primarily West Africa, but also Central Africa and Sudan. This will surpass the oil imports from the entire Persian Gulf. African has proven reserves of well over 30 billion barrels of oil. Crude oil production in sub-Saharan Africa surpassed four million barrels per day in 2000. By 2020, the US projects that it will import over 770 million barrels of African oil per year.
The United States is quickly moving to diversify its sources of imported oil away from the political high-risk areas of the Middle East. Moving into West Africa is part of the search for alternative sources of oil. The US believes that the likelihood of a joint oil embargo among the countries of West Africa is small due to the lack of historical links between the countries and the lack of a strong ideological perspective.
Also the oil is largely along the coastline of the Gulf of Guinea, from Nigeria to Angola, and tends to be isolated from domestic and political turbulence. Strategically, the oil is closer to the US than Middle Eastern oil and can be delivered via open seas, unobstructed by canals or narrow straits.
In May 2002, the African Oil Policy Initiative Group, an oil industry lobby in Washington, urged the US Congress and the Bush administration to declare the Gulf of Guinea an area of vital interest to the US and to encourage greater extraction of oil from Africa. Clearly, there is increasing pressure from the oil industry for a greater US presence in Africa.
Oil companies, including ExxonMobile, Chevron-Texaco, BP-Amoco, Amerada Hess, and Ocean energy, will invest some $10 billion per year in African oil. >From two-thirds to three-fourths of US foreign direct investment in Africa will be in the energy sectory.
Both Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill have made recent trips to Africa to promote African development and NEPAD. Countries engaged primarily in the extraction of oil, however, have a poor record of democracy, human rights and equitable development that creates jobs for local people. There is talk of "spreading the oil wealth" as a "good business" policy, but there are many constraints.
State looting of the oil wealth can be massive, such as in Angola where one-third to two-thirds of all state revenues ($1 billion-$3 billion) went missing in 2001. Good governance was on the agenda at Kananaskis, but it is harder to establish given the social and economic reality on the ground.
The Gulf Oil Sheikdoms are on the verge of collapse, politically. This is tied to the historical mistakes of the West of guaranteeing the political stability of feudal and regressive regimes. The same could happen in Africa, if the oil wealth is used to prop up undemocratic regimes. Oil has long been used to fuel civil wars in Sudan and Angola.
It is no secret that the George W. Bush administration is top-heavy with oil men. The interests of the oil corporations, which largely made policies in Texas when Bush Jr. was governor there, have a good deal of influence.
African Development was hyped in the press as the centerpiece of the G-8 meeting in Kananaskis, but spurring economic growth under recessionary structural adjustment programs and the enormous debt burden is extremely problematical, not only in Africa but elsewhere in the developing world. In fact such programs more often close off opportunities in the local economy, allowing multinational firms to come in and scoop up local companies for a song.
The bottom line, which, not surprisingly, was largely undisclosed in press reports of the G-8 meeting, is Western access to African oil. It seems that Africa is in for a new round of imperialist plunder, being packaged as a new "development" program. - Third World Network Features/IBON Features