The Looting Machine

The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers, and the Systematic Theft of Africa's Wealth (2015) by the British author and journalist Tom Burgis highlights a number of shady deals made over the past two decades between multinational corporations and African political leaders. These deals, Burgis asserts, perpetuate massive income inequality by allowing domestic and foreign elites to hoard the increasing wealth being created in resource-rich African nations during the era of modern globalization.

Burgis refutes some of the more optimistic narratives about the future of Africa in the globalized era. The term "Africa Rising," for example, has been used to describe the boom in economic development throughout sub-Saharan Africa since 2000. Indeed, there have been numerous positive developments in various African countries that have led to unprecedented economic growth that outpaces much of the rest of the world. Since the Cold War, for example, a large number of countries have embraced democratic systems, along with the putative increase in government accountability that comes with that. The explosion of mobile phone usage and Internet access has helped create a growing consumer class, as well as an increase in local entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, the economy in Africa grew at a rate of 50 percent between 2005 and 2015, while the rest of the world's economy grew at a rate of only 23 percent.

However, the hopes that these developments would lead to a robust African middle class have been dashed, Burgis asserts, by the efforts of multinational corporations and banks engaged in the systematic looting of Africa's vast stores of natural resources. These resources include oil in Nigeria and Angola, coltan and diamonds in the Democratic Republic of Congo, bauxite in Guinea, and uranium in Niger. Furthermore, Burgis argues that whatever hypothetical gains may have been made in terms of responsible government in the wake of the Cold War have been wiped out by the influx of foreign cash funneled to African political elites in return for these resources. Rather than prioritizing long-term accountability to the people of their respective nations, these elites—whose hold on power is often precarious—work to secure shortsighted cash infusions through resource-hungry corporate alliances from the West. In this way, the globalization of information and trade during the twenty-first century has hurt African nations at least as much as it's helped, Burgis writes.



Burgis's evidence for these claims takes two major forms: the first is a collection of extensive statistical citations culled from world economic development studies and private/public shareholder statements. The second is more anecdotal but just as powerful: on-the-ground interviews with fishermen, miners, and other working-class African citizens who have yet to see the benefits of the continent's economic boom.

One of the book's major villains is Dan Gertler. Gertler is an Israeli businessman who has become a billionaire by investing in natural resources, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo where he has major interests in diamonds and copper mining. After befriending Joseph Kabila, who took over as the Congolese president after the assassination of his father, Gertler gave Kabila's administration $20 million to fund its war chest. In return, Gertler received monopoly rights to purchase every diamond the Congolese unearthed. Aside from the human rights abuses perpetrated by the country's diamond industry, the deal resulted in the vast majority of Congolese mining profits leaving the country. Burgis writes that between 2007 and 2012, "just 2.5 percent of the $41 billion that the mining industry generated in Congo flowed into the country’s meager budget."

Elsewhere, Burgis indicts not just individual businesspeople but entire nations. For example, he writes at great length about a Hong Kong-based syndicate known as the Queensway Group. Founded by the Chinese businessman Sam Pa, the Queensway Group has brokered deals in Angola, the Republic of Congo, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe that loot these countries of their resource-driven profits and perpetuate unhealthy, often repressive regimes. And while the Chinese government's official position is that it has no direct ties to the Queensway Group, Burgis cites reports that suggest this isn't the case. Rather, Chinese government officials are among the chief beneficiaries of the shady, predatory dealings conducted by Sam Pa's controversial syndicate.



In fairness, Burgis writes, the paradoxical curse of being a resource-rich country is a truth that has existed throughout the twentieth century, and so the trends he highlights cannot be entirely attributed to the multinational malfeasance that has run amok since the Cold War ended. The inherent volatility of natural resource prices frequently results in massive fluctuations in a country's economy, making smart governmental planning and investment difficult. Meanwhile, high export rates can result in a massive decrease in import prices, which in turn hurts local businesses that aren't involved in the country's chief export. Nevertheless, these consequences can often be significantly mitigated by good governance tactics, such as currency pegs to stave off inflation or responsible increases in various social welfare programs. Unfortunately, the leaders of many African countries have little incentive to pursue such mitigating policies because they have become the beneficiaries of lucrative, yet predatory, deals with outside corporate and banking interests.

As the New York Times writes, The Looting Machine is a "brave, defiant book."