In country after country across the continent, the resource industry is tearing at the very fabric of society. What is happening in Africa’s resource states is systematic looting.
But in the shadows a network of traders, bankers and corporate raiders has sprung up to grease the palms of venal local political elites. Africa’s booming growth is driven by the voracious hunger for natural resources from rapidly emerging economics such as China. ‘The Looting Machine’ takes you on a gripping and shocking journey through anonymous boardrooms and glittering headquarters to expose a new form of financialized colonialism. But far from being a salvation, this buried treasure has been a curse. A third of the earth’s mineral deposits lie beneath its soil. While accounting for just 2 percent of global GDP, it is home to 15 per cent of the planet’s crude oil, 40 per cent of its gold and 80 per cent of its platinum. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline.A shocking investigative journey into the way the resource trade wreaks havoc on Africa, ‘The Looting Machine’ explores the dark underbelly of the global economy.Īfrica: the world’s poorest continent and, arguably, its richest.
And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa's new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it.
The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltan deposits attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value. In his first book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage.
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