AFRICA: How to Turn The Curse of Oil Into a Blessing

Africa’s abundance in natural resources, especially oil, has been called a curse because of the fierce global thirst that exists for these assets.

Millions of dollars are annually poured into Africa by international oil companies. Millions more are being spent in exploratory enterprises. It is a resource that is indispensable to the world economy. Therefore it should generate money to address the health and social issues of the oil-producing countries on the continent.
‘‘China is just one country extracting oil,” Sumayya Hassan Athmani, company secretary of the National Oil Company of Kenya told IPS. ‘‘It is unfair to blame China for problems if there are others in the oil industry whose hands are not clean. We all know what happened with Shell in Nigeria.

‘‘African countries have to look at internal structures in order to ensure that the oil wealth reaches the ordinary man and woman in the street. There have to be viable systems in place to monitor the industry,” according to Athmani.

‘‘The large oil companies are concerned about environmental, corruption and human rights issues in the Western world where there are structures in place guarding against abuse. In Africa and other developing countries where these structures are not in place, they have no scruples in forsaking these standards,” claimed Athmani.

Mary M’mukindia, an independent Kenyan analyst for the oil industry, said those in power ‘‘really like the free goods coming from the ground. It is a resource that belongs to nobody yet at the same time it belongs to everybody. Who really even knows how much oil there is?

‘‘Who is really in charge of measuring the amounts of oil coming out of the ground? In many countries there are no debit and credit controls. Governments get huge amounts of money from a resource that belongs to the people. But in Africa there is little sign of profit sharing,” said M’mukindia.

Like Athmani, M’mukindia argued that governments have to put in place structures which ensure that citizens benefit from oil wealth. She supports initiatives such as ‘‘Publish What you Pay” which forces international oil companies to publish the amounts of money they pay to governments.

IPS News