The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis
The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis
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The Looting Machine
Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth

Author: Tom Burgis

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 11 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 05/01/2015


Synopsis

The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other “emerging markets” have transformed their economies, Africa’s resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world’s reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world’s population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent.

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. 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. 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 ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline.

This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa’s past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa’s resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, is being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different. In 2010, fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth $333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction. But who received the money? For every Frenchwoman who dies in childbirth, 100 die in Niger alone, the former French colony whose uranium fuels France’s nuclear reactors. In petro-states like Angola three-quarters of government revenue comes from oil. The government is not funded by the people, and as result it is not beholden to them. A score of African countries whose economies depend on resources are rentier states; their people are largely serfs. The resource curse is not merely some unfortunate economic phenomenon, the product of an intangible force. What is happening in Africa’s resource states is systematic looting.

About Tom Burgis

Tom Burgis is an investigations correspondent at the Financial Times. He has reported from more than forty countries, won major journalism awards in the US and Asia and been shortlisted for eight others, including twice at the British Press Awards. His critically acclaimed book The Looting Machine, about the modern plundering of Africa, won an Overseas Press Club of America award.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mal on April 06, 2017

Misconceptions abound in the public perception of corruption in Africa. Tom Burgis’ incisive new analysis of corruption on the continent, The Looting Machine, dispels these dangerous myths. For starters, corruption is mistakenly believed to reign supreme in every country on the African continent. (Th......more

Goodreads review by Shawn on September 26, 2022

This is an overview of the widespread corruption on the African continent that keeps it impoverished. This book is rather poorly written, concentrating too much upon the specifics of corrupt deals and too little on potential solutions, but it is remarkable in its disclosure of shocking improprieties......more

Goodreads review by Tariq on February 05, 2016

The legacy of Cecil Rhodes refuses to wither in the destitute yet mineral rich African continent. There is little chance for the ordinary people when their governments and ruling cliques are hell bent on enriching themselves. Opinions of people do not matter in resource states where their government......more

Goodreads review by Benjamin on April 29, 2020

I really wanted to like this book. I really respect what the author set out to do: describe the kleptocracy that is robbing many African countries, leaving their citizens struggling in grinding poverty that is difficult to even comprehend. The writer also aimed to show how we in the developed world......more

Goodreads review by Drew on January 23, 2021

This is the type of book that makes you so mad about what you didn't know that you do more research. Too often Africa is treated as an overarching simplistic concept when talked about in history and in modern potlitics but in reality it is complex and nuanced collection of countries, each with their......more