Aid Money Received is a Fraction of Resources Stolen from Africa

Articles about new oil, gold, coal or other mineral discoveries in Tanzania and other developing countries are frequent enough. But few of the articles look too closely at what such discoveries mean to the country where the discovery is made, as opposed to the country or multinational that will exploit the discovery and will, ultimately, benefit.

If having massive natural resource potential made a country rich, quite a few African countries would be very rich indeed. Tanzania has more gold than most countries, more uranium, lots of nickel, coal and various other resources. But it's one of the poorest countries in the world. No amount of discovery will make it richer, and may make it poorer.

This is for the simple reason that their resources are systematically stolen by other countries and multinationals. The process is not called stealing, it is called 'partnership', 'investment', etc, even 'development'. But the vast majority of Tanzanian people, and the country as a whole, gain little or nothing from their resources and they lose almost everything that should belong to them.

This is not just because of corruption in the Tanzanian government or anything else like that, though corrupt governments are common in many countries and certainly do a lot of damage. It is because those who are in the best position to get their hands on natural resources are assisted in doing so by international laws and practices. National laws usually grant considerable benefits to the theives and fail to protect its own citizens.

Barrick Gold and AngloGold Ashanti currently get hold of most of Tanzania's gold (and most gold from other African countries) and they pay hardly any tax or royalties. They are perfectly entitled to cook their books under international law, which they do, with a lot of whinging about how much they have invested, how much gets stolen, how hard it is for them to make money and the like.

Several articles rant on about coal but only 12% of Tanzanians have access to electricity. The country is no more likely to see a rapid increase in access to affordable electricity as a result of coal mining that they were likely to see economic improvements when foreign companies came in to mine gold. Earnings from gold exports continue to rise, but it is not Tanzania that is earning much.

Meanwhile, a handful of Tanzanians may be getting rich (or richer), while tens of thousands of artisanal miners are put out of their jobs. Even indigenous companies who would like to mine gold, coal, uranium or anything else are unlikely to be able to compete with the benefits that foreign companies receive.

Research into these practices has been going on for a long time and there is some interesting research into gold mining, in particular. This research exposes the many social and economic problems that have been caused and exacerbated by big international mining operators, who have the 'rights' to much of Tanzania's wealth, that which hasn't already been stolen (entire 'Golden Opportunity' report).

This phenomenon is not confined to well known minerals and power sources such as coal and oil. Demand for some resources have only started to increase as a result of measures to reduce the effects of climate change. One example is biofuels, which require huge tracts of fertile land, massive quantities of water and the reduction of employment opportunities to a fraction of that arising from less exploitative ways of using land.

Lithium, used in batteries for electric cars, is needed in increasing quantities. Many of these attempts to reduce carbon emissions in rich countries will increase carbon emissions in poor countries, perhaps even resulting in a net increase, globally. And environments in countries that are rich in resources will also be seriously threatened.

Calling for Tanzanians, and the country as a whole, to be allowed to benefit from the exploitation of their natural resources is not a call for exploitation to cease. It is a call for large scale, internationally sanctioned theft to cease and for Tanzanians and other Africans to benefit from what is, after all, their property.

Discovering Poverty

Only a few months ago there was great excitement about the 'discovery' of oil in Isiolo, in Kenya's Eastern province. This is not the first time oil has been 'discovered' there. Tens of millions of dollars have been poured into exploration without any commercially viable discovery. A few hundred thousand dollars were put into making local people think that they will benefit from being an oil producing region and no money at all went into cleaning up the pollution and environmental damage caused over the years.

A local politician was predicting that "Kenya will join Uganda in celebrating the status of a new oil producer". So far, Kenya is not celebrating. But neither is Uganda, despite discovering huge quantities of oil. This is not a new story of developing countries having enormous mineral wealth while their own people make nothing and lose a lot. It's the same old story of Nigeria, Sudan, South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, Uganda and, indeed, Kenya. There's no reason why the story should change, as long as wealthy countries can get hold of all the oil and other resources they require.

As Uganda is finding out, deciding who gets to profit from the oil deposits is not up to them. It's up to their senior politicians, a handful of business people and a bunch of rich foreigners. If anyone who doesn't belong to one of those groups happens to have property or interests affected by work of extracting oil, that's their tough luck. Sure, some people will be employed for a while, but most of the top jobs will go to foreigners or to people who are already pretty well off. A hell of a lot more people will lose their livelihood, most of them being subsistence farmers and others who are just getting by.

Local consultation, democratic accountability, sustainability, environmental impact, social impact, these are all as relevant as condoms at a USAID sponsored HIV awareness programme. Tullow Oil and that bastion of corporate social responsibility Royal Bank of Scotland will be able to wallow together in their ethical vacuum without having to worry about petty matters like human rights, environmental contamination or mass evictions of people from their land. And no one need worry, the Ugandan government will compensate the oil company if anything threatens their profit margins.

Kenya should note what's happening in Uganda at the moment. Not that their politicians are likely to behave any differently if oil is discovered here. But maybe civil society groups here can start now, before the sort of secret negotiations seen in Uganda get going. It's hard to imagine what a developing country successfully extracting a natural resource would look like, where people in that country actually gained from the process rather than suffering greater poverty, disease and death.

Maybe oil will not be discovered in Kenya, or perhaps not yet. It's not that natural resources are a bad thing, but as long as developed countries and multinationals always have the upper hand when they are discovered, the resources might as well remain in the ground. Some Kenyans may not know how lucky they are, but many in Isiolo would still remember the fallout from the various explorations and 'discoveries' of the last few years.