Mohamed Ameen Dabhelia – 2018/02/20

Although the African continent is blessed with gold, diamonds, oil, coltan, bauxite, uranium, iron ore and other valuable resources, its inhabitants have long been numbered among the world’s poorest.

While a few sub-Saharan African nations are doing relatively well, most are engulfed in poverty.

Radio Islam unpacked this issue with Global Justice Now’s Alex Scrivener, who says more wealth leaves Africa every year than actually enters it.

“I would say South Africa is stolen by Western Nations, but the wealth of Africa is stolen by multi-national corporations.”
Scrivener says people’s unfortunate view of Africa is a place ‘where nothing ever grows’.

“No rain or rivers flow, which is complete, lies. This is what the people in the Western believe, when the reality is that the African continent is incredibly rich,” says Scrivener.

It is understood that two-hundred-billion dollars leaves Africa through unjust debt payments and multinational companies hiding proceeds through tax avoidance and corruption.

Scrivener claims that, “Western governments talk a lot about aid money, they say we here to support African countries become developed… but actually when you look at the figures, 19-billion dollars of aid goes to Africa every year, but then about 18-billion dollars goes out in debt payments to the same governments.”

We can call THAT, ‘exploitation’, which ultimately led to an annual financial deficit of $41.3bn from the 47 African countries where many people remain trapped in poverty, according to the Honest Accounts 2017 report.

According to research that challenges “misleading” perceptions of foreign aid, South Africa’s potential mineral wealth is estimated to be around 2.5 trillion dollars, while the mineral reserves of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are thought to be worth 24 trillion dollars.

However, it is clear that the continent’s natural resources remains owned and exploited by foreign and private corporations.

Scrivener says that the real answer needs to be ‘systemic change’ on a world scale.

“Industrialized countries are going to have to get serious and if they say they really do care about the African continent and elsewhere, they need to show this.”

Scrivener adds that policy changes need to be made as the power still lies very much in the hands of the Western and industrialized world.