Book: The Looting Machine

THE LOOTING MACHINE - Warriors, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa's Wealth

By Tom Burgis, published by William Collins, London, £20

This fine book should matter to ICN readers in Europe because it explains why so many Africans are prepared to risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean. No matter how much aid we send to Africa, far greater sums are swindled from resource-rich African countries by unscrupulous international companies, working hand-in-hand with the bloated African elite. As Tom Burgis puts it: "The empires of colonial Europe and the Cold War superpowers have given way to a new form of dominion over the continent that serves as the mine of the world - new empires controlled not by nations but by alliances of unaccountable African rulers governing through shadow states, middlemen who connect them to the global resource economy, and the multinational companies from the West and the East that cloak their corruption in corporate secrecy."

If you believe you're not involved in this deadly trade, think again: the device on which you are reading ICN contains minerals from impoverished, violent parts of Africa where war lords and greedy officials control the resource business.

Burgis catalogues the grotesque self-enrichment of the callous rulers of Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria - countries that should be immensely wealthy, but which remain poor, even by African standards. In each case, this theft of national treasure would be impossible without non-African facilitators. The Chinese are the modern versions of Cecil Rhodes, amoral and adept at paying the ruling elite for unfettered access.

Burgis notes that African leaders rarely impose any conditions when they sign over their country's resources to outsiders. For instance, they don't ask for a proportion of the jobs created to go to local workers. Their interests are purely selfish, and because mineral rents mean they don't need to tax their people, they are not accountable to them. They know elections can always be stolen by brute force or stealth, and by mobilising ethnic differences with terrible consequences.

In addition, new infrastructure rarely benefits local people because the roads built by the Chinese run from the mine straight to the port. Nor do those in charge attempt to use the rents from minerals and oil to diversify their economies. There is no trickle down.

"Instead of calling their rulers to account, the citizens of resource states are reduced to angling for a share of the loot," Burgis explains. This miserable state of affairs is not helped by the naivety or indifference of the World Bank and IMF, who keep on giving loans to crooked rulers without imposing conditions.

In Nigeria the oil revenues spent on providing electricity are stolen at each level of government. Consequently factories cannot function properly. In the 1980s Nigeria had 175 textile mills: now there are only 25, and the market is saturated with fabric from China which arrives with "made in Nigeria" stamped on every bale. Under the conditions Burgis describes so vividly, it is easy to see why anyone aspirational would leave the continent, seeking opportunity on a more level playing field. Africa's economic growth rates are impressive, but few are benefitting from the resource bonanza.

In summary, Burgis's book is essential to understanding why poverty, ignorance and conflict persist in Africa.