Saturday, March 30, 2019

Mark Curtis - Britain's New African Empire

Africa is being looted.


We need to radically rethink the notion that Britain is helping Africa to develop. The UK's large aid programme is, among other things, being used to promote African policies from which British corporations will further profit. British policy in Africa, and indeed that of African elites, needs to be challenged and substantially changed if we are serious about promoting long term economic development on the continent.


Third, British policy has done nothing to challenge multinational companies using tax havens; indeed the global infrastructure of tax havens is largely a British creation. Fourth, British governments have constantly espoused only voluntary mechanisms for companies to monitor their human rights impacts; they are opposed to enhancing international legally binding mechanisms to curb abuses.
The result is that Africa, the world's poorest continent, is being further impoverished. Recent research calculated, for the first time, all the financial inflows and outflows to and from sub-Saharan Africa to gauge whether Africa is being helped or exploited by the rest of the world. It found that $134billion flows into the continent each year, mainly in the form of loans, foreign investment and aid. However, $192billion is taken out, mainly in profits made by foreign companies and tax dodging. The result is that Africa suffers a net loss of $58billion a year. British mining companies and their government backers are contributing to this drainage of wealth.

2 comments:

Konrad said...

On 26 March 2019 the European Parliament voted 535-88 in favor of a resolution addressing “structural racism” in Europe against African immigrants. The resolution calls for “reparations for crimes against humanity during European colonialism.” It demands that EU member states fight “Afrophobia.” It demands that African artifacts be removed from all museums and given to…someone. (Not specified.) The resolution calls on European Union member states to develop strategies to correct “racial imbalances” in education, health, housing, and politics. (That is, blacks must be given free stuff.)

It seems to me that the best thing Europe could do for Africans is to stop waging economic war on African nations, which causes endless migrants to come north.

But no, it is easier to attack average white Europeans as “privileged racists” while European corporations plunder African resources.

The elites make constant war on blacks in Africa, and on whites in Europe.

Ralph Musgrave said...

Curtis's article would have been better if it had compared British investment in Africa to other countries, particularly China. I thought British investment was small scale compared to China's nowadays, but I'm not sure about that.