de Silva / Jackson / Tanga Planet, People and Profit: Strike a Balance

Strike a balance
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-91-978436-3-8
Verlag: Nordic e-publisher
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 285 Seiten

This is a book about social and environmental decay in African rural landscapes endowed with natural resources. The authors present evidence based research from Cameroon-Chad, Lesotho, Niger Delta, Nigeria, East Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Ghana to illustrate how the planet, people and profit, so far, has failed to strike a balance and provide rec-ommendations based on findings the way forward. Many of the arguments focus on the local as well rnational political economy in which resources are extracted and exported and the impact on social and environment life and landscape in rural Africa. Automatic operation of the market and market actors' philanthropy to help communities' impoverished rural folk sounded old fashioned or resemble neo-colonialism was arbitrated.Term CSR, came into being whereby rural African people were theoretically able to get satisfaction as they drank toxic water as long as the companies were paying them back in kind under these companies' respective voluntary CSR interventions. The problem is that commercial soceities were created with multinational corporations in the lead. States found it hard to reverse or slow down the process at least until they could get a hang of it. Open market policies continue to remain resistent to such challenges despite mounting critique from many cor-ners. FDI is the buzzword and the saviour that alleviates Af-rica's poverty. Although a broader consensus has emerged within and outside of Africa and other developing countries about fundamental defects in the economic model and free market principles through which large multinationals conduct business, raw materials continue to flow from poor countries to rich countries with very little challenge. All this proves that the present way of doing business in Africa. Trade pacts need to be reopened in order to bring forth changes. This has become even more important now with the Red Capitalism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

de Silva, Nilani L

Jackson, Nicholas A.

Tanga, Pius Tangwe

Ibaba, Ibaba Samuel

Garuba, Dauda

Naramabuye, Francois

Francoi,

Gwira, Frances

Leseproben

Preface

Since the end of the cold war, the West has controlled a large portion of the world's economy. The USA in particular has asserted that its way of doing business should be universally applicable to the world. In fact, the American dream became a beacon for most, and global institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, WTO and other associate bodies were made to act as crusaders, holding the torch for the realisation of US goals. With the impetus of globalisation, the situation was aggravated, neoliberal free market principles were used to expand the economic playing field, and economic rationality became the ideal. When it comes to Africa, natural resources played a crucial part, simply rich world want to have a large piece of the natural resources pie.

The emergence of the EU did not change the status quo. Europeans have been working in collaboration with the US and European trade policies have worked against their own development policies. Aid failed to a point some, so called poor countries tacitly refused it and instead asked for more investments. Europe did not find Africa as their equal, aid drums continued, so do the governmentality of African policy landscape. The bilateral contacts European countries had with African countries have weakened with the impetus of multilateralism.

Furthermore, the EU simply failed to provide the balance of power that many expected in the international arena from trade to security issues. Perhaps the EU was tormented by the endless accumulating problems or, as stated by Henry Kissinger in his book analysing international diplomacy, the EU was not clear that it wanted to operate in a way to balance power. However, analysis of some EU polices regarding trade makes it evident that the EU wanted to avoid an ideological fight with the US and it mostly collaborated with the US and its sponsored institutions and their interests. In fact, the EU followed free market logic based on the neoliberal scheme that had been invented in the US to continue accumulation of capital. This means that the EU conformed to American visions of trade liberalisation.

The collapse of communism in some parts of the world infact strengthened the process. The EU slowly adopted protectionist methods of economic management. The international trading system consists of a free market philosophy promoting capitalism from Alaska to Cape Point continued. With economic globalisation in full swing, these actors took for granted that their way was the right way for all, no matter how much it hurt other economies.

African countries, and particularly countries with natural resources, were subject to neoliberal globalisation prescriptions. They had no option but to cave in to the free market system in order to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), to balance deficits and to service loans that African leaders keep accumulating. As they mismanaged the continent’s assets, the West approached with the usual medicine pouch: loans, aid and macro economic adjustments. African leaders generally rushed to liberate their national assets by practically handing them over to western multinational companies who have a single-minded interest in nothing but pursuit of profit. They knew what was under worth a fortune; that thinking excluded what is on the earth—people and environment. To make the matter worst, into this business of neoliberalism, another of African political elite was born. A telling example is the leader of Equatorial Guinea— a country that once had the world’s highest per capita GDP is among the lowest in income per capita. This leader, according to a recent article that appeared in the International Herald Tribune (20 August, 2012), owned 11 pricy cars and a five-story mansion equipped with spas having golden decors; cinemas; and nightclubs in one of the most luxurious quarters in Paris. Guests are served with Petrus, the world's most expensive wines worth in cartres, and they are driven around by Bugatti Veyribs, the most expensive and powerful cars in the world. To make the matter worst for already torn off rural population, one of his sons was recently made the forest minister. In fact, forest ministers in some of these countries are the best land dealers. They pass deeds on to multinational companies while cashing out the lump sum as commission. They are Africa’s biggest headaches and AU’s soft spot, too lenient to pinpoint.

Unfortunately, the culture of impunity looks set to stay as demands for African land and minerals increase while the impoverished populace hangs in a limbo between hope and uncertainity. Some of the former colonies speak in ‘slang’ of corrupt money contributing to poverty in Africa by not clearing toxic air in their back garden. They are deliberately failing to scrutinise multinationals who are the givers, and some leaders who are the...