Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation

by Patrick Bond

Despite the rhetoric, the people of Sub-Saharan Africa are become poorer. From Tony Blair's Africa Commission and the Make Poverty History campaign to the Hong Kong WTO meeting, Africa's gains have been mainly limited to public relations. The central problems remain exploitative debt and financial relationships with the North, phantom aid, unfair trade, distorted investment and the continent's brain/skills drain. Moreover, capitalism in most African countries has witnessed the emergence of excessively powerful ruling elites with incomes derived from financial-parasitical accumulation. Without overstressing the 'mistakes' of such elites, this book contextualises Africa's wealth outflow within a stagnant but volatile world economy.

Genres: Africa, Economics, Politics

192 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2006

About the author

Patrick Bond is a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and director of its Centre for Civil Society since 2004. He received his PhD from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1993. In his work he focuses on political economy, NGO work and global justice movements in various countries.

Reviews

[Kribsoo]

In Looting Africa Patrick Bond basically updates Walter Rodney How Europe Underdeveloped Africa While Africa is often portrayed in global media as the hapless beneficiary of well intentioned aid and charitable campaigns Bond emphasizes the many ways wealth is pulled out of the continent through dividend and debt payments,unequal exchange, brain drains and such Aid is often a poisoned chalice that comes with demands that markets be opened to Western economic interests The same is true of much ballyhooed debt relief China recent involvement in Africa is portrayed no more sympathetically China cuts deals with exploitative rulers and uses Chinese workers on projects like oil refineries Bond also emphasizes the collaboration of African elites in the neoliberal plunder--South Africa economically exploits its neighbors while NEPAD locks Africa into neoliberalism Although he occasionally sympathetically quotes NGO reports for the most part he believes that grassroots social movements are the only real hope for change It is this final point that I think is the weakest in the book. Although there is certainly some truth to the notion that a politics that seeks to genuinely promote the social good is going to be grounded among the people with nothing to lose in the current system I think its a strategic mistake to flatten the politics of all other actors into a single exploitative neoliberalism at most talks left walks right (as he argues was the case with Mandela opposition to the Iraq war while the ANC allowed the US to use South Africa in some ways to support the war) This is basically a politics of failing to see anything short of a revolutionary rejection of the system as a fraud I think its short sighted and will lead to a confused strategy Bond sees South Africa along with Brazil and India as an example of sub-imperialism but an argument can be made that these sub-powers look both ways sometimes aligning themselves with the West (which is itself not as unified as Bond believes) sometimes aligning themselves with the interests of poorer countries They are in-between politically ambiguous. Bond takes his position to the logical extreme and even heaps a certain amount of opprobrium on the World Social Forum since it was started by a social democratic party in Brazil in alignment with intellectuals in Europe But the WSF has clearly opened space for the networking of the kind of movements he admires worldwide Notwithstanding his (I think positive)calls to listen to movements I think there is a certain vanguardist tone to his political stance Movements from South Africa to the US are often hesitant (far more hesitant than far-left intellectuals) to break completely with pusillanimous ruling liberals for precisely the reasons outlined above because they allow a little bit of space to advance their projects Bond might want to listen to this a little rather than demand the movements immediately achieve a level of militancy he has deemed necessary for their goals

[Steve]

Contrary to what many wish were not the case, Africa's development problems are still implicated with global capital's exploitative extraction of Africa's wealth.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good review of the politics of exploitation perpetrated by outside actors and their accomplices. I'm moderating my star level because I felt that the narrative flow was disrupted by too much emphasis on statements and proclamations by NGOs and other authors, whereas Bond's own view was most compelling.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Somehow the benevolent whites have left Africa to its people, and for Bond, the people of Africa aren't doing a good enough job so the whites have to send some armies there to put things in order.

[Joe Buttress · Rating 3 out of 5]

In order to preserve my integrity and maintain my status as a well respected and trusted book critic, it is important for me to disclaim that I used this book as a central source in a very long and boring essay.

As a result of this there are some chapters I have only skimmed, whilst others I have read so many times that they appear in my mind while sleeping, until I inevitably wake in a fit of sweat, with tears flowing down my cheeks and scratch marks covering my walls.

There is a very brief part in the middle of the book where Bond predicts the GFC in a way that is remarkably succinct and accurate, 9 years before ‘The Big Short’ was even released.

The book is pretty good and provides a well rounded account of the motivations and actions that have been taken to sabotage and exploit the resources and economies of African nations. It does this more effectively and fairly than some books and writers who have been widely praised for their work on the same subject.

A weakness to Bond's analysis is his assessment of what action should be taken to escape from these traps and I feel that this stems primarily from mistakes in how he understands the agents at work in this economic web. In particular Western institutions and actors whether they be governments with imperial motives, governments serving their obligations under international agreements, international financial institutions or NGO's are sort of lumped together into a homogenous group. Although it's true that they are all components of the one system, this perspective lends to the idea that these groups share a greater level of coordination and cohesion than is actually true. The mistake in this understanding has probably become more apparent in the early months of Trump's second term.

There is a pdf very easily accessible online which is cool.