[News] Corporations and Western Governments Continue to Profit from Looting of Africa

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/05/new-report-shows-corporations-and-western-governments-continue-to-profit-from-looting-of-africa/ 



  New Report Shows Corporations and Western Governments Continue to
  Profit from Looting of Africa

by Ben Dangl - June 5, 2017
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/bresp5zexefetha/>
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A recent report 
<http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2017/may/23/africa-subsidises-rest-world-over-40-billion-one-year-according-new-research> 
published by a coalition of African and British social justice 
organizations lays bare the truth that foreign corporations and wealthy 
governments continue to profit from the looting of the world’s most 
impoverished continent.

In 2015, the year the most recent data is available, African nations 
received $162 billion in aid, loans, and remittances. At the same time, 
$203 billion was taken from these nations through resource extraction, 
debt payments, and illegal logging and fishing.

“We find that the countries of Africa are collectively net creditors to 
the rest of the world, to the tune of $41.3 billion in 2015,” explain 
authors of the report, titled/How the World Profits from Africa’s Wealth 
<http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/honest_accounts_2017_web_final.pdf?utm_source=Global+Justice+Now+press+release+list&utm_campaign=17a92094cc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_05_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_166972fef5-17a92094cc-288067141&mc_cid=17a92094cc&mc_eid=6149d72169>./

“There’s such a powerful narrative in Western societies that Africa is 
poor and that it needs our help,” explained Aisha Dodwell, a campaigner 
with Global Justice Now, one of the organizations that authored the report.

“This research shows that what African countries really need is for the 
rest of the world to stop systematically looting them,” Dodwell 
said. “While the form of colonial plunder may have changed over time, 
its basic nature remains unchanged.”

For example, over half of the population of Africa lacks access to 
sufficient healthcare 
<https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/taking-challenges-health-care-africa>, 
with an average of only 14 health professionals 
<http://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/2017/en/> 
for every 100,000 people.

However, Africa’s wealth underground is extensive. In 2015 
<http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/honest_accounts_2017_web_final.pdf?utm_source=Global+Justice+Now+press+release+list&utm_campaign=17a92094cc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_05_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_166972fef5-17a92094cc-288067141&mc_cid=17a92094cc&mc_eid=6149d72169>, 
African nations exported some $232 billion worth of minerals and oil to 
the rest of the world, South Africa contains an estimated $2.5 trillion 
in mineral wealth, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) holds 
an estimated $24 trillion in untapped mineral reserves.

Yet the poverty above ground persists, with 95% of the population in the 
DRC living on less than US $2 dollars 
<https://newint.org/blog/2017/05/24/how-the-world-keeps-looting-africa/> 
per day.

The problem is that foreign companies profit the most from this resource 
extraction.

“Money is leaving Africa partly because Africa’s wealth of natural 
resources is simply owned and exploited by foreign, private 
corporations,” the report explains 
<http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/resources/honest_accounts_2017_web_final.pdf?utm_source=Global+Justice+Now+press+release+list&utm_campaign=17a92094cc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_05_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_166972fef5-17a92094cc-288067141&mc_cid=17a92094cc&mc_eid=6149d72169>. 
“In only a minority of foreign investments do African governments have a 
shareholding.”

Furthermore, when multinational companies do extract and export raw 
commodities, they typically pay very little taxes to the government, or 
they use tax havens to avoid paying taxes.

“Many African tax policies are the result of long standing policies of 
Western governments insisting on Africa lowering taxes to attract 
investment,” the report found.

The report shows how the current model of development is futile while 
such plundering of the continent persists.

“’Development’ is a lost cause in Africa while we are hemorrhaging 
billions every year to extractive industries, western tax havens and 
illegal logging and fishing,” said Bernard Adaba, a policy analyst with 
Integrated Social Development Center, a research and advocacy 
organization in Ghana.

“Some serious structural changes need to be made to promote economic 
policies that enable African countries to best serve the needs of their 
people rather than simply being cash cows for Western corporations and 
governments,” Adaba explained. “The bleeding of Africa must stop!”

As the Guyanese scholar and activist Walter Rodney wrote in his classic 
1972 book /How Europe Underdeveloped Africa/, the root of the problem is 
global capitalism.

“African development,” Rodney wrote, “is possible only on the basis of a 
radical break with the international capitalist system, which has been 
the principal agency of underdevelopment of Africa over the last five 
centuries.”

/*Benjamin Dangl <https://twitter.com/bendangl>* has a PhD in history 
from McGill University and is the editor of TowardFreedom.com 
<https://towardfreedom.com/>, a progressive perspective on world events./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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