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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/05/new-report-shows-corporations-and-western-governments-continue-to-profit-from-looting-of-africa/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/05/new-report-shows-corporations-and-western-governments-continue-to-profit-from-looting-of-africa/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">New Report Shows Corporations and Western
Governments Continue to Profit from Looting of Africa</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/bresp5zexefetha/"
rel="nofollow">Ben Dangl - June 5, 2017<br>
</a></span></div>
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<p>A <a
href="http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2017/may/23/africa-subsidises-rest-world-over-40-billion-one-year-according-new-research">recent
report</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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<em> <a
href="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">How
the World Profits from Africa’s Wealth</a>.</em></p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>For example, over half of the population of Africa <a
href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/taking-challenges-health-care-africa">lacks
access to sufficient healthcare</a>, with an <a
href="http://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/2017/en/">average
of only 14 health professionals</a> for every 100,000
people.</p>
<p>However, Africa’s wealth underground is extensive. <a
href="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
2015</a>, 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.</p>
<p>Yet the poverty above ground persists, with 95% of the
population in the DRC living on <a
href="https://newint.org/blog/2017/05/24/how-the-world-keeps-looting-africa/">less
than US $2 dollars</a> per day.</p>
<p>The problem is that foreign companies profit the most
from this resource extraction.</p>
<p>“Money is leaving Africa partly because Africa’s wealth
of natural resources is simply owned and exploited by
foreign, private corporations,” the <a
href="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">report
explains</a>. “In only a minority of foreign
investments do African governments have a shareholding.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>The report shows how the current model of development
is futile while such plundering of the continent
persists.</p>
<p>“’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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>As the Guyanese scholar and activist Walter Rodney
wrote in his classic 1972 book <em>How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa</em>, the root of the problem is
global capitalism.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
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<p class="author_description"> <em><strong><a
href="https://twitter.com/bendangl" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://twitter.com/bendangl&source=gmail&ust=1496435258129000&usg=AFQjCNGm7UOr90c4tfOJElJEOLVu-Nu6xg">Benjamin
Dangl</a></strong> has a PhD in history from McGill
University and is the editor of <a
href="https://towardfreedom.com/" target="_blank"
rel="noopener noreferrer"
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://towardfreedom.com/&source=gmail&ust=1496435258129000&usg=AFQjCNEYAIZt26AxLg2iMOL130NBYu9ygw">TowardFreedom.com</a>,
a progressive perspective on world events.</em> </p>
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