Population statistics like this get me excited because they suggest a fundamental change in the world's workings. As China's population falls by 2050, and India's population growth slows to a trickle, the African continent will likely be booming.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
1 in 5
M & G has a pretty interesting article on 'the billionth African' to be born sometime this year (or maybe he/she has already been born). I guess this might seem like a daunting number--having economic and infrastructure growth match this population growth is a huge challenge. But I think it's something exciting. One in five people in the world will be African. With such enormous populations, the continent's potential for investment and overall importance in the World will be tough to ignore.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Links for Lack of Longer Thoughts
World Cup 2010 hosts, South Africa, fired their head football coach, Joel Santana this past Monday. This is big news for the Bafana. I'd think South Africans are more worried about their head coaching situation then on anything else (crime, capacity, etc) regarding the upcoming World Cup. Mail & Guardian predicts that the Bafana will replace one Brazilian head coach with another.
Robert Mugabe held a cabinet meeting this morning despite Tsvangirai's absence. Tsvangirai had boycotted the meeting because of frustration that major details of the power-sharing agreement had been unmet. Specifically, Mugabe's arrest and pending prosecution of MDC member, Roy Bennett, whom Tsvangirai nominated for the post of Deputy Minister of Agriculture have exacerbated tensions. In short, Mugabe continues to balk at actually implementing a unity government. His initial concessions to graciously share power in an election he fraudulently won seem to have been a way to buy time and international aid as he co-opts his rivals--much like he once did with Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU party.
This is just the start of a growing habit of linking and reading more news topics on the African continent...
Friday, October 9, 2009
Nobel Peace Prize Alternatives
In reading the announcement this morning that Barack Obama had been given the Nobel Prize for Peace, I (like many others) thought: Afghanistan.
Since receiving McChrystal's recommendation for more troops, Obama has been grappling with what to do in Afghanistan. He's had a couple weeks already, and will likely need a couple more. It's not an easy decision. And the timing of the Peace Prize announcement seems especially awkward considered the monumental decision to be made.
That said, I think there are many other more deserving (and less awkward) to give the award to. I'm no expert on the competitive field of Peace Prize candidates, but I would have given the award to....
Morgan Tsvangirai- formed a unity government with Mugabe--after an election was blatantly stolen from him. Was nearly beaten to death by Mugabe's police a few years ago. If that's not living by a turn-the-other-cheek, Peace-loving worldview, I don't know what is. He avoided falling in to the common pitfall of civl-war African states. What's more he's travelled around the world rallying for aid money, and he's liberalized Zimbabwe's dismal economy. In short, if I were a Zimbabwean, he'd be the only thing to make optimistic about my cholera filled, inflation scarred nation. And I know personal tragedy shouldn't factor in, but his wife died this past year. This guy's had a rough year of it. Plus giving him the award would bring some much needed attention to Zimbabwe and his coalition government at a time when Mugabe is showing he will never live up to the power sharing agreement.
There are countless other figures who I'm sure are much deserving, but I'd go with Tsvangirai.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Aligning goals and capabilities
I'm generally not much of a Frank Rich fan, but his article as well as recent quotes from Obama and Gates have me tacking back a bit on my post from the Friday before last.
According to a Defense Department official, Gates is unsure of McChrystal's suggestion to send additional troops to Afghanistan. This official reasoned, "Even 40,000 more troops don't give you enough boots on the ground to protect the Afghans if the north and west continue to deteriorate." Although the WSJ article that ran this story said that Gates remains equally skeptical about Biden's suggested course of action, it seems to suggest that he is weighing and exploring middle options--alternatives to drastic troop reduction or sending additional troops.
Similarly, Obama seems to be similarly exploring middle options. According to White House officials, he wants to "dispense with the straw man argument that this is about either doubling down or leaving Afghanistan" (NY Times).
So I think my initial agreement with Brooks may have been a bit hasty. I think middle options are absolutely necessary to explore--especially when the two extreme options seems so guarantee such uncertain and pessimistic results. I think the important thing is to ratchet down expectations to a level suitable to the prescribed course of action. Rumsfield tried to do nation-building on the cheap; as long as the US realistically ratchets down its goals and expectations the US can avoid making the same reckless mistake twice. The key is aligning goals and capabilities. In other words, if the expectations for "half measures" are realistic, I see no reason why they won't work. They're not destined to fail in and of themselves; they're just destined to fail when the simplified, polar goals of "failure" and "success" are the only options thought possible.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Is Coetzee's "Disgrace" racist?
...or is the ANC too sensitive?
I saw the movie last week with my mom. I've always enjoyed Coetzee, and as skeptical as I was before seeing it, the movie did justice to the book. The final scene was different, which bothered me a bit. It ends not with David Lurie sitting on his plastic chair plucking his banjo, composing his opera, but instead with him having tea with his daughter. A reconciliation, a recognition that change and compromise is necessary. Perhaps it's the same idea, but the message resonates more in the book's final scene rather than the movie's.
I read Disgrace for an African Lit course I took at the University of Cape Town. While I thought the book was powerful, what really made it resonate was when I heard about the ANC's reactions to the book. They congratulated Coetzee in 2003 upon winning the Nobel Prize; however, shortly afterwards, they tacked backwards, clumsily calling the book racist.
And I agree with this view. Disgrace is a racist book. But that doesn't mean it's not brilliant, nor doesn't mean that it's not important and enlightening. It's productively racist--as idiotic as that phrase may sound. It's a book that powerfully captures Afrikaaner angst and frustration, while at the same time it shows the remnants of a racist Apartheid power structure that still hurts South African blacks and coloureds (captured by Lurie's lustful gall).
It lays bare post-Apartheid society; it brings the feel-good unity that Mandela's presidency ushered in, crashing back to earth. Crime and acrimony remain. And the characters struggle to deal with this reality.
But these characters are nearly all white. Nadine Gordimer captures this well, point out that, "[in Disgrace,] there is not one black person who is a real human being" (NY Times, 12/16/07). Petrus is a malevolent character driven by entrepreneurial greed. He protects his rapist brother-in-law, and exploits the defenseless Lucy. The white angst towards this character is tangible. Petrus is powerful. He protects his own without any moral qualms, and he underhandedly gobbles up white-owned land. He seems to taunt Lurie, by simply stating a banal fact of contemporary South Africa: "Everything dangerous today." And the only other black characters Coetzee introduces are rapists.
But while Disgrace recreates racist stereotypes--black men raping white women--it is not that simple a book. It's goes well beyond these stereotypes. For me, this point resonated when Lucy talks about her rape. In response to David's frustration and vengeful grief, she points the finger back at him, saying, "Maybe hating a woman or a man can make sex
more exciting. It must be a bit like killing …you’re a man … you should know."
Although Disgrace recreates racist stereotypes, I believe it's mistake to dismiss it as racist. I believe the ANC shows its thin skin by failing to recognize the depth of this book.
Nonetheless, I can understand their frustration. If I were a black South African, I don't think I'd feel much affinity towards this book. Disgrace seems to speak to and for Whites alone. It captures white fear and frustration, and it captures the difficulty and the pain of dealing with a new social order--one that seems to victimize progressive Whites more than racist old Afrikaaners.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
A Travel Guide to The Paradox of Plenty
Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil by John Ghazvinian
John Ghazvinian’s Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil is about the resource curse in Africa. Although Ghazvinian ends on a somewhat optimistic note, his thesis can be distilled to the following: the resource curse exists in Africa. It has already shown its damage in Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and (to a lesser extent) Angola, and the future does not bode well for emerging Afro-petrostates.
Ghazvinian is a journalist, but he does a solid job explaining of the resource curse and describing the political history of the nations he visits. At times though, his writing seemed too journalistic—snarky and informal.
His writing is a travel book of land I want to visit, and a history of states I crave to learn more about. What’s more, it is a contemporary affairs piece dealing with issues (Equatorial Guinea’s history, deep water drilling, etc.) I have found nowhere else.
Summary
Ghazvinian spends the bulk of the book in the four African nations that are already established oil-states: Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and Angola.
All of these states have had similar post-oil-discovery histories (except perhaps Angola—which I believe does not deserve to be lumped into this group): ubiquitous corruption, government instability, insurrection in oil rich provinces, and—of course—stagnant or declining economies.
Nigeria, the grandfather of the oil states, has the most notorious oil history of the four. Nigeria is the leading oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, yet its oil reserves have brought mostly corruption and instability rather than economic development. Its oil-producing regions are seemingly in a state of perpetual violence. Successive military regimes (which finally ended in the late 1990s) squashed any nationalist, human rights, or environmental movements that emerged. And after the fall of this repressive regime, stability and development have remained fleeting goals.
One of the big cruxes of Nigeria’s instability is the issue of resource control. The many ethnic groups of Nigeria’s oil producing Niger Delta demand greater resource control. After all, it is their communities whose livelihoods have been most disrupted by drilling. They’ve suffered the brunt of oil spills and exploitative contracts; and perhaps worst of all they’ve seen incredible wealth pumped out of their soil and far from their pockets. They feel entitled to some of this wealth and they are frustrated that oil has destabilized, rather than enriched them. And in turn, they’ve become obsessed with “getting a piece of the pie” even if it’s to the detriment of their own community and environment. In Niger Delta communities, the position of traditional chief has often become a battleground between self-interested individuals. And some of the most frustrated have resorted to destroying pipelines to collect the rewards given for oil spills. The government and profiting oil companies have not built the infrastructure that these struggling communities need and demand, and this further radicalizes and corrupts all involved.
And parallel to the oil and natural gas extraction done by multinational oil companies, highly organized, illicit oil and natural gas cartels have emerged. “Illegal bunkering”—the stealing of crude oil by sawing and drilling into existing pipelines—has become an enormous operation run by well-connected elites with some shadowy government links. And even more absolutely insane is the practice of “local bunkering”—stealing natural gas by drilling holes in underwater gas pipelines. This, in contrast to “illegal bunkering,” is sort of the everyman’s corruption. It is smaller in scale, with higher risk and lower reward. The process itself is so incredible, I have to quote it:
Enterprising youth had discovered the Shell gas pipeline going through Oluasiri, laid deep at the bottom of the riverbed. They had hired teams of divers to drill holes at three different points along the gas pipeline and attach hoses to the boreholes. Where the hoses came up to the surface, valves had been attached to control the flow of gas coming from the pipeline. The product that comes out of those valves is a volatile substance that is not quite crude oil and not quite kerosene (which is what crude turns into when the gas has been distilled out of it), but something in between that still has a lot of gas in it. The bunkerers let it sit for two or three days until it turns into kerosene, which is then sold to villagers for use as a cooking fuel. This bootleg kerosene is not as pure as what is sold legally, and when people put it in their stoves, it can explode and kill them. But it costs a fraction of what it otherwise would, and provides a handsome income for the unemployed youths of the area. (Pp. 48-49)
So in sum, a nation with great resource wealth is likely to be as poor (if not poorer)—and far more unstable—than most other sub-Saharan African nations. This is the paradox of plenty, and Ghazvinian has this story on repeat throughout much of the rest of the book. He alters it to each local context put his analysis and conclusions remain the same.
The Resource Curse
Before continuing on to summarize some of the other nations along Ghazvinian’s Paradox-of-Plenty tour, I want to concisely explain why the resource curse is a curse. After all, it’s a pretty counter-intuitive; having resource wealth should be an engine for growth. Describing the resource curse seems like a rich kid lamenting a free car. But it ain’t. Here goes.
In developing countries (with small economies and weak governments), having an abundance of one commodity (copper, lithium, diamonds, and yes, oil) is a political and economic curse. It is economically ruinous because it engenders “Dutch Disease” whereby all efforts to diversify oil wealth and build other sectors of the economy hit almost insurmountable impediments. Pumping oil out of the ground, pumps large amounts of foreign currency in to the nation. A seemingly good thing. This infusion of foreign currency, however, strengthens the local currency. This may seem like a good thing, but a stronger currency makes it difficult to develop other sectors of the economy.
With a stronger currency, it becomes more expensive to grow crops or produce manufactured goods. Everything that goes into an economic sector costs more. Labor and all the parts that enable a plant to grow or a machine part to be built cost more. All of a sudden a poor developing nation cannot produce its crops and its goods as cheaply, and thus are unable to export their products and further grow. As Naim writes, it’s not that these leaders fail to recognize that its necessary to diversity their economies, it’s that “the exchange rate stunts” other sectors of the economy. Additionally, oil and other extractive industries create few jobs, and their roller-coaster prices make macro-economic planning difficult.
And the curse is political ruinous because it breeds corruption. It turns the nation into a rentier state whereby the government becomes a source of wealth—a gold mine that is to be raided—rather than an engine for growth. Constituents are taxed less, which essentially makes them care less about government corruption, and an unending tap of wealth allows governments to buy off or repress dissidence. According to Naim, oil rich nations spend between 2 and 10 times more on their military than non-oil producing nations. Thus oil militarizes the state and spread a culture of conflict.
The most frustrating part of the resource curse is that it only damns developing nations. “Countries that have institutional strength need not worry” (Naim). Thus, nations like the US and Norway can use their resource wealth to enhance their economic growth. Yet, nations without institutional strength—a diverse economy and a political organization that can ensure that oil does not go into the coffers of a few politicians—languish under the curse. Again this is the most frustrating part. The general consensus is that developing nations need strong institutions in order to fend off the curse, and yet the curse ensures that it will be very difficult to develop strong institutions.
(Note: Foreign Policy’s Editor Moises Naim does a good job of succinctly summarizing the curse.)
Summary Part II
Although the overall story remains pretty much the same for each of the nations that Ghazvinian travels to, I still found the content of the book interesting. It’s chalked full of historical facts and journalistic descriptions that give depth and uniqueness to the seemingly repetitive subject matter (poverty → oil → greed & violence → greater poverty).
Ghazvinian’s travels in each further support his argument that oil has been a curse. Visiting Gabon, he describes Libreville (its capital) as a city of extreme wealth with majestic government buildings—akin to the “French Riviera” (98). And in contrast to the exorbitant governmental wealth, he offers perhaps the best example of the “Dutch Disease” I’ve read; banana-rich Gabon has its ripened fruit fall off trees and rot uneaten. Despite the abundance of uncultivated bananas, an undeveloped agricultural sector means that Gabon is reliant on Cameroon for bananas and must import most of its food—a sad reality for a fertile nation. He describes Omar Bongo and the mismanagement and wastefulness that went on under his rule; the 400-mile Trans-Gabonais railway that cost far too much to build and the title for highest per capita champagne consumption that Gabon captured in 1984. Most interestingly, he asks the question, what will happen to Afro petrostates when the oil runs out, as Gabon’s oil output has been steadily declining since 1997.
He also travels to the Brazzaville, which from his description sounds like a ghost town, in a nation where oil is inescapable. 90 to 95 percent of the nation’s export revenue comes from oil, and fighting to control this source of wealth and power has contributed to civil wars that spanned the 1990s and early 2000s. What’s more, in the Republic of Congo he describes a defeated civil society—a church-led dissident movement that has met strong repression.
In contrast, his travels in Angola seem like an anomaly—an outlier to the group of states that seem irreparably damaged by the resource curse. I was amazed to read about Lusaka and its astounding growth as a result of oil: the ritzy glass hotel and office towers going up over night, and the “overpriced and overbooked” (129) flights from JFK, Houston, and London to the booming city.
Angola is one of the few nations in sub-Saharan Africa that has never been reliant on foreign aid, and over the past decade the lusophone nation has had up astounding economic growth. In 2006, Angola’s GDP grew nearly 20%, and in 2008, Angola had the fourth highest growth rate in the world (CIA World Factbook). The only states that enjoyed greater growth were Qatar, Bhutan, and Macau, which have a combined population that is less than one-seventh of Angola’s.
This is not to say that there is not substantial poverty and social problems in Angola. Ghazvinian describes the decades long war between the MLPA and UNITA, which was both a civil war between Angolans and a proxy war between East and West, Marxism and Capitalism. He also describes, with patience, the debates about governmental and corporate transparency in Angola; where the international community continues to pressure major oil companies (or the Angolan government) to disclose how much money is coming out of the oil, and where this money is going. These are significant obstacles that Angola must over come, and in her recent visit Hillary Clinton voiced some of the contemporary political problems that Angola faces. Yet in his descriptions of Angola, the resource curse seems like much less of a curse. The boom is still so great and optimism continues to swell.
As with much of Africa’s oil, Angola’s oil has come from the waters off its shores (129). I was amazed to read about the so-called “Deep Water Revolution” Ghazvinian describes; where in the past couple decades, oil companies have begun exploring and extracting more and more from the deep depths of the ocean. Oil companies are now capable of drilling at depths of 7 and 8,000 feet, and as deepwater drilling technology develops, depths of over 10,000 feet will become possible. That’s 2 miles! What’s more there’s a ton of oil at these depths. Ghazvinian quotes two renowned oil consultants that predict that deepwater reservoirs contain more than twice the amount of oil already discovered on earth (85). That’s astounding, and although Africa may not hold a monopoly of these reservoirs, the continent sure holds a lot of them. As the continents were forming, and South America separated from Africa, a great deal of sediment and fossils fell off the African coast and into the Gulf of Guinea. That is one reason why today, the Gulf of Guinea holds substantial oil reserves.
I find it incredible that a nation can gain extraordinary wealth from a resource that most people in the host nation will never even see. A government can commission a large oil company to drill for oil 100-miles from its coast, and then ship it to another nation to be refined—thus never having to touch the land of the host nation. I also find it bizarre that a nation can own parcels of ocean—especially deep sea areas far from the coast. (Perhaps this is why the ocean between Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe had to be negotiated before deep water drilling began.) I mean who feels a closeness or an affinity to a piece of ocean that you can’t even see from the coast? I’ve never stood on the beach of Robert Moses State Park, gazing longingly out to sea, thinking, “That’s America, that’s our land.” So I’m amazed that something so distant from a people can set them on a completely different macroeconomic course. It’s like hitting the lottery…a cursed lottery.
Wrapping all this up: Further Thoughts
Untapped is meant to serve as a warning and a lamentation for new oil states in Africa. Ghazvinian writes:
Nigeria, Angola, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville, along with, to a lesser extent, Cameroon, make up an old boys’ club of African oil exporters…[Beginning in the early 1990s] Four African countries—Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Sao Tome and Principe, and Mauritania—have joined (or are about to join) the ranks of the world’s oil-producing nations, and several more—including Mozambique, Madagascar, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia—seem likely to follow. Another dozen appear more doubtful, but their leaders are crossing their fingers (166).
But is there anything that these nations can do to avert the curse? Or at least to mitigate the political and economic regression it causes?
Promoting transparency, strong economic planning (to overcome “Dutch Disease), and building institutional strength can help.
Equatorial Guinea—a truly unique African nation—makes the reader skeptical. The nation was formed when the Portuguese gave the Spanish a small tract of land on the West African coast, and a small island in the Gulf of Guinea. As the only former Spanish colony in Africa, this nation has perhaps the most bizarre and depressing history of any of the new oil states. Its wealth has been squandered. It has one of the most restrictive police states, yet has resort-like compounds for oil company employees. And most strangely of all, the existing government almost feel at the hands of a group of mercenaries hired by shady international businessmen. The warped political events of the past two decades, do not offer much hope to overcoming the resource curse.
Additionally depressing is the fact that Jeffrey Sachs and the World Bank have tried their hand at defeating the resource curse.
In Chad, the World Bank essentially set the nation’s economic policy, forcing the government to put substantial amounts of its profits in foreign banks and requiring all spending to be approved by civil society organizations. This failed (largely because the plan was never fully implemented). And in Sao Tome, the government brought in Jeffrey Sachs and his team of graduate students to help them write Sao Tome’s “Oil Revenue Management Law” (241). Time will tell how this transparency-promoting legislation fares.
It’s depressing that Western experts and institutions have struggled to help oil-rich nations to solve the resource curse. But what’s even more depressing is that national governments have become exasperated to the point that they’ve turned to distant outsiders like American professors and their grad students.
Yet, I don’t think the resource curse is as damning as Ghazvinian’s doomsday tour makes it out to be. I disagree with his fatalistic conclusion upon leaving Gabon: “Stories about Gabon in the international press are virtually nonexistent and, sadly, in a continent of plagues and famines, wars and genocides, this splendid anonymity, this tacit acknowledgement that nothing much ever happens here, is probably as close as Africa gets to a real success story” (116-7).
I don’t know if developing nations that lack the political and economic strength to handle a mass infusion of oil wealth can overcome the resource curse. But I don’t think the future of Africa does not have to be defined by the resource curse.
Nonetheless, Untapped serves as an important and relevant warning for African nations.
John Ghazvinian’s Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil is about the resource curse in Africa. Although Ghazvinian ends on a somewhat optimistic note, his thesis can be distilled to the following: the resource curse exists in Africa. It has already shown its damage in Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and (to a lesser extent) Angola, and the future does not bode well for emerging Afro-petrostates.
Ghazvinian is a journalist, but he does a solid job explaining of the resource curse and describing the political history of the nations he visits. At times though, his writing seemed too journalistic—snarky and informal.
His writing is a travel book of land I want to visit, and a history of states I crave to learn more about. What’s more, it is a contemporary affairs piece dealing with issues (Equatorial Guinea’s history, deep water drilling, etc.) I have found nowhere else.
Summary
Ghazvinian spends the bulk of the book in the four African nations that are already established oil-states: Nigeria, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, and Angola.
All of these states have had similar post-oil-discovery histories (except perhaps Angola—which I believe does not deserve to be lumped into this group): ubiquitous corruption, government instability, insurrection in oil rich provinces, and—of course—stagnant or declining economies.
Nigeria, the grandfather of the oil states, has the most notorious oil history of the four. Nigeria is the leading oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa, yet its oil reserves have brought mostly corruption and instability rather than economic development. Its oil-producing regions are seemingly in a state of perpetual violence. Successive military regimes (which finally ended in the late 1990s) squashed any nationalist, human rights, or environmental movements that emerged. And after the fall of this repressive regime, stability and development have remained fleeting goals.
One of the big cruxes of Nigeria’s instability is the issue of resource control. The many ethnic groups of Nigeria’s oil producing Niger Delta demand greater resource control. After all, it is their communities whose livelihoods have been most disrupted by drilling. They’ve suffered the brunt of oil spills and exploitative contracts; and perhaps worst of all they’ve seen incredible wealth pumped out of their soil and far from their pockets. They feel entitled to some of this wealth and they are frustrated that oil has destabilized, rather than enriched them. And in turn, they’ve become obsessed with “getting a piece of the pie” even if it’s to the detriment of their own community and environment. In Niger Delta communities, the position of traditional chief has often become a battleground between self-interested individuals. And some of the most frustrated have resorted to destroying pipelines to collect the rewards given for oil spills. The government and profiting oil companies have not built the infrastructure that these struggling communities need and demand, and this further radicalizes and corrupts all involved.
And parallel to the oil and natural gas extraction done by multinational oil companies, highly organized, illicit oil and natural gas cartels have emerged. “Illegal bunkering”—the stealing of crude oil by sawing and drilling into existing pipelines—has become an enormous operation run by well-connected elites with some shadowy government links. And even more absolutely insane is the practice of “local bunkering”—stealing natural gas by drilling holes in underwater gas pipelines. This, in contrast to “illegal bunkering,” is sort of the everyman’s corruption. It is smaller in scale, with higher risk and lower reward. The process itself is so incredible, I have to quote it:
Enterprising youth had discovered the Shell gas pipeline going through Oluasiri, laid deep at the bottom of the riverbed. They had hired teams of divers to drill holes at three different points along the gas pipeline and attach hoses to the boreholes. Where the hoses came up to the surface, valves had been attached to control the flow of gas coming from the pipeline. The product that comes out of those valves is a volatile substance that is not quite crude oil and not quite kerosene (which is what crude turns into when the gas has been distilled out of it), but something in between that still has a lot of gas in it. The bunkerers let it sit for two or three days until it turns into kerosene, which is then sold to villagers for use as a cooking fuel. This bootleg kerosene is not as pure as what is sold legally, and when people put it in their stoves, it can explode and kill them. But it costs a fraction of what it otherwise would, and provides a handsome income for the unemployed youths of the area. (Pp. 48-49)
So in sum, a nation with great resource wealth is likely to be as poor (if not poorer)—and far more unstable—than most other sub-Saharan African nations. This is the paradox of plenty, and Ghazvinian has this story on repeat throughout much of the rest of the book. He alters it to each local context put his analysis and conclusions remain the same.
The Resource Curse
Before continuing on to summarize some of the other nations along Ghazvinian’s Paradox-of-Plenty tour, I want to concisely explain why the resource curse is a curse. After all, it’s a pretty counter-intuitive; having resource wealth should be an engine for growth. Describing the resource curse seems like a rich kid lamenting a free car. But it ain’t. Here goes.
In developing countries (with small economies and weak governments), having an abundance of one commodity (copper, lithium, diamonds, and yes, oil) is a political and economic curse. It is economically ruinous because it engenders “Dutch Disease” whereby all efforts to diversify oil wealth and build other sectors of the economy hit almost insurmountable impediments. Pumping oil out of the ground, pumps large amounts of foreign currency in to the nation. A seemingly good thing. This infusion of foreign currency, however, strengthens the local currency. This may seem like a good thing, but a stronger currency makes it difficult to develop other sectors of the economy.
With a stronger currency, it becomes more expensive to grow crops or produce manufactured goods. Everything that goes into an economic sector costs more. Labor and all the parts that enable a plant to grow or a machine part to be built cost more. All of a sudden a poor developing nation cannot produce its crops and its goods as cheaply, and thus are unable to export their products and further grow. As Naim writes, it’s not that these leaders fail to recognize that its necessary to diversity their economies, it’s that “the exchange rate stunts” other sectors of the economy. Additionally, oil and other extractive industries create few jobs, and their roller-coaster prices make macro-economic planning difficult.
And the curse is political ruinous because it breeds corruption. It turns the nation into a rentier state whereby the government becomes a source of wealth—a gold mine that is to be raided—rather than an engine for growth. Constituents are taxed less, which essentially makes them care less about government corruption, and an unending tap of wealth allows governments to buy off or repress dissidence. According to Naim, oil rich nations spend between 2 and 10 times more on their military than non-oil producing nations. Thus oil militarizes the state and spread a culture of conflict.
The most frustrating part of the resource curse is that it only damns developing nations. “Countries that have institutional strength need not worry” (Naim). Thus, nations like the US and Norway can use their resource wealth to enhance their economic growth. Yet, nations without institutional strength—a diverse economy and a political organization that can ensure that oil does not go into the coffers of a few politicians—languish under the curse. Again this is the most frustrating part. The general consensus is that developing nations need strong institutions in order to fend off the curse, and yet the curse ensures that it will be very difficult to develop strong institutions.
(Note: Foreign Policy’s Editor Moises Naim does a good job of succinctly summarizing the curse.)
Summary Part II
Although the overall story remains pretty much the same for each of the nations that Ghazvinian travels to, I still found the content of the book interesting. It’s chalked full of historical facts and journalistic descriptions that give depth and uniqueness to the seemingly repetitive subject matter (poverty → oil → greed & violence → greater poverty).
Ghazvinian’s travels in each further support his argument that oil has been a curse. Visiting Gabon, he describes Libreville (its capital) as a city of extreme wealth with majestic government buildings—akin to the “French Riviera” (98). And in contrast to the exorbitant governmental wealth, he offers perhaps the best example of the “Dutch Disease” I’ve read; banana-rich Gabon has its ripened fruit fall off trees and rot uneaten. Despite the abundance of uncultivated bananas, an undeveloped agricultural sector means that Gabon is reliant on Cameroon for bananas and must import most of its food—a sad reality for a fertile nation. He describes Omar Bongo and the mismanagement and wastefulness that went on under his rule; the 400-mile Trans-Gabonais railway that cost far too much to build and the title for highest per capita champagne consumption that Gabon captured in 1984. Most interestingly, he asks the question, what will happen to Afro petrostates when the oil runs out, as Gabon’s oil output has been steadily declining since 1997.
He also travels to the Brazzaville, which from his description sounds like a ghost town, in a nation where oil is inescapable. 90 to 95 percent of the nation’s export revenue comes from oil, and fighting to control this source of wealth and power has contributed to civil wars that spanned the 1990s and early 2000s. What’s more, in the Republic of Congo he describes a defeated civil society—a church-led dissident movement that has met strong repression.
In contrast, his travels in Angola seem like an anomaly—an outlier to the group of states that seem irreparably damaged by the resource curse. I was amazed to read about Lusaka and its astounding growth as a result of oil: the ritzy glass hotel and office towers going up over night, and the “overpriced and overbooked” (129) flights from JFK, Houston, and London to the booming city.
Angola is one of the few nations in sub-Saharan Africa that has never been reliant on foreign aid, and over the past decade the lusophone nation has had up astounding economic growth. In 2006, Angola’s GDP grew nearly 20%, and in 2008, Angola had the fourth highest growth rate in the world (CIA World Factbook). The only states that enjoyed greater growth were Qatar, Bhutan, and Macau, which have a combined population that is less than one-seventh of Angola’s.
This is not to say that there is not substantial poverty and social problems in Angola. Ghazvinian describes the decades long war between the MLPA and UNITA, which was both a civil war between Angolans and a proxy war between East and West, Marxism and Capitalism. He also describes, with patience, the debates about governmental and corporate transparency in Angola; where the international community continues to pressure major oil companies (or the Angolan government) to disclose how much money is coming out of the oil, and where this money is going. These are significant obstacles that Angola must over come, and in her recent visit Hillary Clinton voiced some of the contemporary political problems that Angola faces. Yet in his descriptions of Angola, the resource curse seems like much less of a curse. The boom is still so great and optimism continues to swell.
As with much of Africa’s oil, Angola’s oil has come from the waters off its shores (129). I was amazed to read about the so-called “Deep Water Revolution” Ghazvinian describes; where in the past couple decades, oil companies have begun exploring and extracting more and more from the deep depths of the ocean. Oil companies are now capable of drilling at depths of 7 and 8,000 feet, and as deepwater drilling technology develops, depths of over 10,000 feet will become possible. That’s 2 miles! What’s more there’s a ton of oil at these depths. Ghazvinian quotes two renowned oil consultants that predict that deepwater reservoirs contain more than twice the amount of oil already discovered on earth (85). That’s astounding, and although Africa may not hold a monopoly of these reservoirs, the continent sure holds a lot of them. As the continents were forming, and South America separated from Africa, a great deal of sediment and fossils fell off the African coast and into the Gulf of Guinea. That is one reason why today, the Gulf of Guinea holds substantial oil reserves.
I find it incredible that a nation can gain extraordinary wealth from a resource that most people in the host nation will never even see. A government can commission a large oil company to drill for oil 100-miles from its coast, and then ship it to another nation to be refined—thus never having to touch the land of the host nation. I also find it bizarre that a nation can own parcels of ocean—especially deep sea areas far from the coast. (Perhaps this is why the ocean between Nigeria and Sao Tome and Principe had to be negotiated before deep water drilling began.) I mean who feels a closeness or an affinity to a piece of ocean that you can’t even see from the coast? I’ve never stood on the beach of Robert Moses State Park, gazing longingly out to sea, thinking, “That’s America, that’s our land.” So I’m amazed that something so distant from a people can set them on a completely different macroeconomic course. It’s like hitting the lottery…a cursed lottery.
Wrapping all this up: Further Thoughts
Untapped is meant to serve as a warning and a lamentation for new oil states in Africa. Ghazvinian writes:
Nigeria, Angola, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville, along with, to a lesser extent, Cameroon, make up an old boys’ club of African oil exporters…[Beginning in the early 1990s] Four African countries—Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Sao Tome and Principe, and Mauritania—have joined (or are about to join) the ranks of the world’s oil-producing nations, and several more—including Mozambique, Madagascar, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia—seem likely to follow. Another dozen appear more doubtful, but their leaders are crossing their fingers (166).
But is there anything that these nations can do to avert the curse? Or at least to mitigate the political and economic regression it causes?
Promoting transparency, strong economic planning (to overcome “Dutch Disease), and building institutional strength can help.
Equatorial Guinea—a truly unique African nation—makes the reader skeptical. The nation was formed when the Portuguese gave the Spanish a small tract of land on the West African coast, and a small island in the Gulf of Guinea. As the only former Spanish colony in Africa, this nation has perhaps the most bizarre and depressing history of any of the new oil states. Its wealth has been squandered. It has one of the most restrictive police states, yet has resort-like compounds for oil company employees. And most strangely of all, the existing government almost feel at the hands of a group of mercenaries hired by shady international businessmen. The warped political events of the past two decades, do not offer much hope to overcoming the resource curse.
Additionally depressing is the fact that Jeffrey Sachs and the World Bank have tried their hand at defeating the resource curse.
In Chad, the World Bank essentially set the nation’s economic policy, forcing the government to put substantial amounts of its profits in foreign banks and requiring all spending to be approved by civil society organizations. This failed (largely because the plan was never fully implemented). And in Sao Tome, the government brought in Jeffrey Sachs and his team of graduate students to help them write Sao Tome’s “Oil Revenue Management Law” (241). Time will tell how this transparency-promoting legislation fares.
It’s depressing that Western experts and institutions have struggled to help oil-rich nations to solve the resource curse. But what’s even more depressing is that national governments have become exasperated to the point that they’ve turned to distant outsiders like American professors and their grad students.
Yet, I don’t think the resource curse is as damning as Ghazvinian’s doomsday tour makes it out to be. I disagree with his fatalistic conclusion upon leaving Gabon: “Stories about Gabon in the international press are virtually nonexistent and, sadly, in a continent of plagues and famines, wars and genocides, this splendid anonymity, this tacit acknowledgement that nothing much ever happens here, is probably as close as Africa gets to a real success story” (116-7).
I don’t know if developing nations that lack the political and economic strength to handle a mass infusion of oil wealth can overcome the resource curse. But I don’t think the future of Africa does not have to be defined by the resource curse.
Nonetheless, Untapped serves as an important and relevant warning for African nations.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Nation Building
David Brooks has a column in today's New York Times arguing for McChrrystal's recommendation to increase the amount of US troops in Afghanistan.
And David Brooks hits the nail on the head on at least one major point. "You [cannot] fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint." The US cannot make the same mistake that Rumsfeld made in Iraq. Either the US must hunker down and send more troops and prepare itself for a difficult, long, and maybe winnable road ahead. Or the US must pack up and leave. Brooks does not shy away from using even stronger language to describe the choices. He writes, the US must "surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building."
And this is something that almost all supporters of the War in Afghanistan have refused to say. No one wants to call it "nation building." The neoconservative ghosts of old are supposed to be dead and buried. But the truth seems to be that in a nation that is as complex as Afghanistan (diversity and drug cartels among other things), and that has as strong an insurgency as it does, the only real options are committing to a long haul which includes substantial infrastructure-building or packing up.
This, however, is the point where Brooks and I deviate. He goes on to argue that the war is a war of necessity (something even Richard Haas has questioned). He reasons that the US must fight in Afghanistan; if it does not then Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban (probably true), and if it falls to Taliban then al-Qaeda will have a safe haven (maybe) and nuclear-armed Pakistan will be in grave danger (I'm not so sure).
Of all the bold broad strokes that he paints, this is the one that I'm most intrigued by and most unsure of. In all that I've read about Afghanistan, I still don't fully understand how the conflict in Afghanistan affects Pakistan. I know that much of the fighting in Afghanistan is along its mountainous border with Pakistan. But the Taliban is not a monolith, as Brooks suggests when he writes that "the Taliban is a transnational Pashtun movement active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan." As Christia and Semple argue in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, the Taliban is more of a patchwork of self-interested and pragmatic tribal groups that first and foremost look out for their own political survival. They may fight in two nations, but they are not a movement as Brooks argues. And I don't understand the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda either. I know the two share similar visions of a shar'ia rule South Asia. But how much do they work together, and how willing would Taliban factions be to fight against al-Qaeda?
Figuring out these questions affects where I stand on whether this a war of choice or a war of necessity. These two questions seem integral to the debate over a US troop increase. Brooks makes a strong argument about how the war must be fought, it's arguing if the war must be fought (and if not, what viable alternatives exist) that is lacking.
And David Brooks hits the nail on the head on at least one major point. "You [cannot] fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint." The US cannot make the same mistake that Rumsfeld made in Iraq. Either the US must hunker down and send more troops and prepare itself for a difficult, long, and maybe winnable road ahead. Or the US must pack up and leave. Brooks does not shy away from using even stronger language to describe the choices. He writes, the US must "surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building."
And this is something that almost all supporters of the War in Afghanistan have refused to say. No one wants to call it "nation building." The neoconservative ghosts of old are supposed to be dead and buried. But the truth seems to be that in a nation that is as complex as Afghanistan (diversity and drug cartels among other things), and that has as strong an insurgency as it does, the only real options are committing to a long haul which includes substantial infrastructure-building or packing up.
This, however, is the point where Brooks and I deviate. He goes on to argue that the war is a war of necessity (something even Richard Haas has questioned). He reasons that the US must fight in Afghanistan; if it does not then Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban (probably true), and if it falls to Taliban then al-Qaeda will have a safe haven (maybe) and nuclear-armed Pakistan will be in grave danger (I'm not so sure).
Of all the bold broad strokes that he paints, this is the one that I'm most intrigued by and most unsure of. In all that I've read about Afghanistan, I still don't fully understand how the conflict in Afghanistan affects Pakistan. I know that much of the fighting in Afghanistan is along its mountainous border with Pakistan. But the Taliban is not a monolith, as Brooks suggests when he writes that "the Taliban is a transnational Pashtun movement active in both Afghanistan and Pakistan." As Christia and Semple argue in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, the Taliban is more of a patchwork of self-interested and pragmatic tribal groups that first and foremost look out for their own political survival. They may fight in two nations, but they are not a movement as Brooks argues. And I don't understand the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda either. I know the two share similar visions of a shar'ia rule South Asia. But how much do they work together, and how willing would Taliban factions be to fight against al-Qaeda?
Figuring out these questions affects where I stand on whether this a war of choice or a war of necessity. These two questions seem integral to the debate over a US troop increase. Brooks makes a strong argument about how the war must be fought, it's arguing if the war must be fought (and if not, what viable alternatives exist) that is lacking.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Qaddafi goes on a rant
There seems to be a bit of a media craze with Omar Qaddafi, so I thought I'd check out his speech at the UN.
Qaddafi is better known for his eccentric behavior, but (I think) there's a lot more to him then pitching bedouin tents and hiring female bodyguards. He's been in power for four decades--the longest of any African head of state--and inevitably a tenure that long is bound to be full of plenty of diplomatic ups and downs. One of the things that amazes me is he's gone from being one of the most loathed heads of state in the West (the CIA must've tried to assassinate him at some time or other) to being a huge trade partner with the US and a temporary member of the UN Security Council.
And despite his shadowy history with the Lockerbie bombing (a tragedy for the West) and the assassination of Musa al-Sadr (a tragedy for the Shi'a world), I had the impression that he had since moderated his actions and his outlook on the world. After all, he's the head of the African Union. He's received praise from some respected African politicians, and I've found some of his Pan-African ideas (United States of Africa?) striking although a bit absurd. And so I thought his speech at the 2009 UN General Assembly he would try to speak as a leader of Africa, building momentum and optimism for the century ahead.
But all I was able to find online was the first 10 minutes of his 90 minute speech. Mixed blessing. Watching those first 10 minutes was sort of painful. Qaddafi took his time, leisurely trudging from topic to topic. He jumped from a swine flu conspiracies to a close reading of the UN Charter's preamble. And to me, this slow, winding pace seemed to show an arrogance and contempt for the audience. As though his agenda is to hear his own voice rather than to speak for Libya or the AU which he heads or address global issues that require multilateralism.
Nonetheless, he raised a couple rational points (amidst the majority of totally insane ones). He argued that there should be no foreign intervention in intrastate conflicts (civil wars), but more UN intervention in interstate conflicts. He argued that the distribution of power in the UN (whereby a handful of the most powerful nations had veto power) was unfair and undemocratic. And he argued that the US and NATO forces should not be fighting the Taliban (...although he did take it a step too far, saying a Taliban-run Islamic emirate in Afghanistan would be fine...which I strongly disagree with).
All in all, from what I saw it was sort of a train wreck of a speech. Some of his points are interesting and worthy of further discussion, but he surrounds them with shock-jock inanities that make them lose their credibility.
Luckily 50 other African heads of state/foreign ministers will get to speak before the General Assembly is over.
Qaddafi is better known for his eccentric behavior, but (I think) there's a lot more to him then pitching bedouin tents and hiring female bodyguards. He's been in power for four decades--the longest of any African head of state--and inevitably a tenure that long is bound to be full of plenty of diplomatic ups and downs. One of the things that amazes me is he's gone from being one of the most loathed heads of state in the West (the CIA must've tried to assassinate him at some time or other) to being a huge trade partner with the US and a temporary member of the UN Security Council.
And despite his shadowy history with the Lockerbie bombing (a tragedy for the West) and the assassination of Musa al-Sadr (a tragedy for the Shi'a world), I had the impression that he had since moderated his actions and his outlook on the world. After all, he's the head of the African Union. He's received praise from some respected African politicians, and I've found some of his Pan-African ideas (United States of Africa?) striking although a bit absurd. And so I thought his speech at the 2009 UN General Assembly he would try to speak as a leader of Africa, building momentum and optimism for the century ahead.
But all I was able to find online was the first 10 minutes of his 90 minute speech. Mixed blessing. Watching those first 10 minutes was sort of painful. Qaddafi took his time, leisurely trudging from topic to topic. He jumped from a swine flu conspiracies to a close reading of the UN Charter's preamble. And to me, this slow, winding pace seemed to show an arrogance and contempt for the audience. As though his agenda is to hear his own voice rather than to speak for Libya or the AU which he heads or address global issues that require multilateralism.
Nonetheless, he raised a couple rational points (amidst the majority of totally insane ones). He argued that there should be no foreign intervention in intrastate conflicts (civil wars), but more UN intervention in interstate conflicts. He argued that the distribution of power in the UN (whereby a handful of the most powerful nations had veto power) was unfair and undemocratic. And he argued that the US and NATO forces should not be fighting the Taliban (...although he did take it a step too far, saying a Taliban-run Islamic emirate in Afghanistan would be fine...which I strongly disagree with).
All in all, from what I saw it was sort of a train wreck of a speech. Some of his points are interesting and worthy of further discussion, but he surrounds them with shock-jock inanities that make them lose their credibility.
Luckily 50 other African heads of state/foreign ministers will get to speak before the General Assembly is over.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
