Amnesty International has released a stinging critique of the oil industry in Nigeria, concentrating on the woeful conditions for ordinary people in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The report, whose findings echo similar studies stretching back many years, calls for an end to abuses. But like other critics, Amnesty offers few practical solutions and underplays the role of poor governance.
The government of Nigeria receives most of the oil revenues from the operations of private companies, such as Shell and Chevron. The failures of these private oil companies, while undeniable, remain far less damaging than the government’s own misdeeds, ommissions and calluous disregard for its fellow Nigerians, many of whom would experience quality-of-life improvements through straight-forward government actions.
Amnesty and many otherEuropean activists would like to see Shell out of Nigeria for good. The news this week that Gazprom wishes to operate in Shell’s historic stronghold in Nigeria thus opens the potential for some healthy competition, which ought to lead to better outcomes, however small.
Ever since traveling for 10 days in the Niger Delta seven years ago, I’ve been haunted by the tragedy of Nigeria’s wasted natural gas. Gas is plentiful in the Delta but human failures have resulted in this precious gas being flared — burned above ground to the harm of the people living around it. The Western oil companies — Shell and Chevron mainly — who have rights to the gas have long claimed it is uneconomical to capture this gas and market it via pipelines. Instead, these companies have burned this gas above ground, causing fires the harm the environment — and keep burning all day and all night, giving parts of the Delta an otherworldly quality.
Enter Russia’s energy behemoth, Gazprom, which this week announced a significant deal with the government of Nigeria. The deal will create a new partnership that hopes to reduce gas flaring — and harvest the gas (in some form) for human use.
Russians have little history in West Africa. The Cold War gave the Russians a good deal of incentive to put stakes into Central and Southern Africa, but West Africa — the most densely populated part of the sub-Saharan — remained out of Russia’s orbit. Predictably, the announcement of the Russian-Nigerian deal ignited complaints from Europeans about another attempt by Russia to further dominate a gas market it already monopolizes. The thinking in Europe is that Gazprom will market the gas to Europe, perhaps in liquid form.
An interesting aspect of this deal is that Gazprom would replace Shell as the oil-and-gas exploiter in “Ogoniland,” the ancestral homeland of the Ogoni people and an area of the Delta made infamous by the execution of the great Ogoni writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. If Gasprom does indeed replace Shell on the ground, a sad chapter in the history of independent Nigeria will come to a welcome end.
Whether Russians provide a better deal for the Ogoni than the Anglo-Dutch have remains to be seen of course. But for Nigerians, the deal makes great sense and is a victory of the country’s beleagured national government. Now the hard work of making Gasprom’s plan a reality must begin.
I said goodbye last Sunday to the important Zambian writer and thinker, Chanda Chisala, who returned from California to Lusaka this week, visiting his home base for the first time in six months. Having just finished an academic year at Stanford University as a prestigious Knight journalism fellow, Chisala will return this fall to the Hoover Institution in order to write a book about his libertarian political ideas. I first met Chisala in Lusaka about a year ago. Not yet forty years old, he thinks deeply about the role of freedom and individual responsibility in Africa — a relationship very much neglected by many African intellectuals. Calling himself a “radical capitalist,” Chisala is drawn to the ideas and writings of Ayn Rand, the conservative avatar and idol of Alan Greenspan who is currently experiencing a vigorous revival. He has plenty to say of interest about Barrack Obama as well — and not always favorable. Chisala deserves wider recognition and, if he puts his time at Hoover to good use, he may get it.
I’ve had an extended period without posting, chiefly because of technical difficulties — my posting software collapsed — but also because I’ve been busy moving from one house to another. I’ve missed writing about so many developments in Africa — the elections in Malawi, notably, and the continued wrangling in Kenya over police killings. I’ve also missed commenting on visits from Africans to my patch of northern California. I’ll be posting again soon, having restored my capacity to do so through the help of a canny technician in Utah.
The victory by the African National Congress at South Africa’s polls this week has renewed controversies about the ANC’s leader, Jacob Zuma. In an article I wrote marking Zuma’s victory that appeared Friday in the London Guardian, many readers seemed confused between the term “populist” and “popular.” Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first president, was popular but not populist. As a political tendency, “populism” seeks to challenge the wealthy, redress gaps between rich and poor, and improve the self-esteem and pride of the have-nots. Populists also tend to attack elites for looking down at the ordinary ban, and for using their superior education to make policies more complicated than they ought to be. Zuma is clearly populist in the traditional sense. The trouble with populism, historically, has been the abuse of the movement by its leaders. In practice,, populism can quickly slide into dictatorship. In America, Huey Long, of Louisiana, used the slogan “every man a king” to rouse his supporters. In the Pan African movement, Marcus Garvey, elevated ordinary black people to the center of his political movement. Populists can even be unpopular, which may in the end be what happens to Zuma. Rather than acquire too much power, he may end up with too little — because of his own limitations.
The wise decision by Senegal’s court of appeals, to set aside convictions against eight gay men in the country, represents an important first step in West Africa towards a new legal framework for treating homosexuality. In Senegal, as in most West African countries (and East African countries as well), homosexuality remains a crime. In this case, the justices did not challenge the immorality of such a prohibition; rather they concluded that the ordinary evidence required to convict a homosexual — catching them in a sexual act — was not obtained in this case. Indeed, the ruling actually supports the legal ban. But the judges nevertheless deserve praise for their brave choice. In West Africa, even defending homosexuals when they are right — as they often are — invites abuse and even reprisals from the wider society. Let’s hope that Senegalese people of good will can withstand the inevitable backlash and aim even higher — full equal rights for people of all sexual orientations.
Mahmood Mamdani, the great Africanist, has stirred up fresh debate over the uses and abuses of the human tragedy in Sudan’s Darfur region with his new book, Saviors and Survivors. Since I have criticized humanitarian do-gooders over the years for their mistakes and mis-apprehensions in representing African affairs, I’ve predisposed to give Mamdani a fair hearing. But I do part ways with him, as I explained today on the valuable blog, Making Sense of Darfur.
BBC’s “World Tonight” (Radio Four) invited me to speak on a program devoted to the national elections in South Africa. My role was to discuss with the political economist, Moeletsi Mbeki, the wider economic currents in sub-Saharan Africa against the backdrop of the global financial crisis — against the backdrop of 15 years since the end of apartheid and the likelihood of another African National Congress government, this time under the leadership of Jacob Zuma.
In the April 13 broadcast emphasized some refreshing positives in my segment with Mbeki, whose thinking I admire. But the dour attitudes often shown by the British towards African futures were on immediate display. The opening interview, with an ordinary South African woman, quoted her as saying about her own country, “At the moment I’m feeling bitter.” Fair enough, given the severe crime and great wealth inequality in South Africa today. But then she added, “Nothing has ever happened since 1994.”
Nothing? The remarkable achievements of South Africa since 1994 cannot be dismissed so easily.
Mbeki gamely highlighted positives, fairly I felt (even though he is the brother of the more famous Thabo Mbeki). The narrator of the program, with whom we did not speak, pointed out that crime was a response to wealth inequality.
In a country which suffered 19,000 murders last year, violence takes on a pathological normality that mocks the power of rational analysis. The BBC is of course right to bemoan rampant crime in South Africa, but this particular broadcast failed to identify the roots of violence in the history of apartheid itself, and especially state-sponsored promotion of violence within African communities. The apartheid regime invested heavily in the promotion of violence between black Africans for more than a century. The “divide and conquer” tactic bequeathed to an independent South Africa habits of violence, however indefensible, that cannot simply be switched off. The legacy of apartheid is no excuse for continued violence, but no pro-peace program for civil society and community policing in South Africa can gain any traction without squarely facing history.
Kenya’s coalition government is facing an unrelenting barrage of criticism — and now predictions of “imminent” civil war, by security analysts in the East African country.
The main charge is that Kibaki and Odinga, the respective leaders of the country’s powerful Kikuyu and Luo ethnic groups, have failed to make good on promises made a year to forge new alliances, undercutting the appeals to “tribal” affiliations that marred the national elections in December 2007 and led to widespread post-election violence. The failure to create a trans-ethnic political culture in Kenya, bemoaned loudly by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is linked to a deeper pathology in the country’s ruling elite: endemic corruption.
The pillage of national revenues is the subject of an incendiary new book on Kenya by the British journalist Michela Wrong who essentially indicts the entire national political leadership in the theft of more than $500 million in public funds.
The coordinated attack on Kenya’s reputation — along with baroque and increasingly cries of impending doom — reflect a narrow-mindedness about the region. Kenya’s ills are indeed terrible but they are probably less terrible than those afflicting neighboring Sudan and Somalia. To be sure, Kenyans should move to reduce the violence that imperils civil society and the country’s poor and elite alike.But the best way to create conditions for peace may not be to exaggerate the threats to it, in Kenya or anywhere else in Africa.
Google has posted on YouTube a presentation I made on “Married to Africa” at the company’s campus last month. The video mainly consists of questions I took from employees curious about the region. I spoke about my affection for people and places. The high point of the film is seeing a stylish jacket designed by the most popular Congolese tailor in Kampala. The jacket, made of cotton and from fabric produced in Congo, has various flamboyant features that are hallmarks of the Congolese sartorial style. The jacket has an extra-long body, unusual lapels, and loud colors — all designed to draw attention to the wearer’s joyous sense of life. Congolese design is fast gaining ground in Kenya and Uganda, where Western dress is too popular. Many people from Congo have moved to the relative safety of Nairobi or Kampala after years of upheaval in their own country. Whether in clothing design or music, the influx of Congolese have made a welcome mark on cities not known for distinctive dressing or style. Of course, the challenge in dealing with a Congolese tailor is making yourself understood. In my case, I solve this problem by permitting my tailor to measure me — and then do whatever he wants! The results are invariably distinctive and pleasing.