The Scramble For African Oil

Africa is often seen as a place to be pitied or feared as an area of instability. This book challenges these complacent assumptions, showing how our demand for oil contributes to the chronic problems plaguing the continent. Douglas A. Yates shows how the "scramble" by the great powers for African oil has fed corruption and undermined democracy. Yates documents how Africans have refused to remain passive in the face of such developments, forming movements to challenge this new attempt at domination. This book is an urgent challenge to our understanding of Africa, raising questions about the consequences of our reliance on foreign resources. It will be vital reading for all those studying development and global political economy.

To find out how the new oil boom is affecting Africa, Ghazvinian traveled the country for a firsthand look. The result is a high-octane narrative that reveals the challenges, obstacles, reasons for despair, and reasons for hope emerging from the worlds newest energy hot spot.

Africa -- a region long known to be rich in oil -- is the scene of a competition between major powers that recalls the 19th-century scramble for colonization there. But what does this new oil boom mean -- for America, for the world, for Africans themselves? To find out, John Ghazvinian traveled through twelve African countries -- from Sudan to Congo to Angola -- talking to warlords, industry executives, bandits, activists, priests, missionaries, oil-rig workers, scientists, and ordinary people whose lives have been transformed by the riches beneath their feet. The result is a high-octane narrative that reveals the reasons for despair and reasons for hope emerging from the world¿s newest energy hot spot.

Once marginalized in the world economy, the past decade has seen Africa emerge as a major global supplier of crucial raw materials like oil, uranium and coltan. With its share of world trade and investment now rising and the availability of natural resources falling, the continent finds itself at the centre of a battle to gain access to and control of its valuable natural assets. China's role in Africa has loomed particularly large in recent years, but there is now a new scramble taking place involving a wider range of established and emerging economic powers from the EU and US to Japan, Brazil and Russia. This book explores the nature of resource and market competition in Africa and the strategies adopted by the different actors involved - be they world powers or small companies. Focusing on key commodities, the book examines the dynamics of the new scramble and the impact of current investment and competition on people, the environment, and political and economic development on the continent. New theories, particularly the idea of Chinese "flexigemony" are developed to explain how resources and markets are accessed. While resource access is often the primary motive for increased engagement, the continent also offers a growing market for low-priced goods from Asia and Asian-owned companies. Individual chapters explore old and new economic power interests in Africa; oil, minerals, timber, biofuels, food and fisheries; and the nature and impacts of Asian investment in manufacturing and other sectors. The New Scramble for Africa will be essential reading for students of African studies, international relations, and resource politics as well as anyone interested in current affairs.

Extracting profit explains why Africa, in the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, has undergone an economic boom. This period of “Africa rising” did not lead to the creation of jobs but has instead fueled the growth of the extraction of natural resources and an increasingly-wealthy African ruling class.

Raises significant general questions relating to the nature of global competition between the US and China; the centrality of the struggle for oil and minerals and resulting militarisation; the international battle to capture Africa's markets; and, the marginalisation of African capitalism.

Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of oil in the world and one of the major suppliers of oil to the US. Set against a backdrop of what has been called the scramble for African oil, this text documents the consequences of a half-century of oil exploitation and production in one of the world's foremost centres of biodiversity.