African nations should nationalize oil: Venezuela

DAKAR (Reuters) – African nations should follow Venezuela’s lead and nationalize their energy and mining sectors to secure the resources to fight poverty, Venezuela’s deputy foreign minister for Africa said on Friday.

Reinaldo Bolivar, on a visit to Senegal, said his oil-rich South American nation would host a summit of African and South American nations in November to discuss cooperation ranging from energy to banking between the two regions.


African nations, which produce 15 percent of the world’s oil, could learn from aspects of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s nine-year-old leftist revolution, Bolivar said.

“Africa’s oil is plundered by multinationals: they sell it very expensively even here,” he told a news conference. “African countries produce 10 million barrels of oil a day and they could supply their own market if they only united.”

Reuters