Africa, the worlds second largest continent by land mass, and the second most populous continent with over a billion people is an immensely gifted continent. This continent which nature has conspired to embarrass not just with immense natural resources but also with the worlds youngest population is a continent that should be soaring. Instead, for many years, it has remained stuck in the mire with the particular circumstances conducing to its stagnation foreshadowing even more woes to come.
It is not just the preventable diseases that cut through communities like hot knife through butter, felling children in the process, there is grinding poverty, and to cap the cistern of calamities, there is a lot of despair – with that Dickensian little winged creature having flown the coop eons ago.
The mismanagement hanging over the necks of many African countries like a millstone has had the effect of dragging them into the mire where nature`s bountiful generosity inexplicably becomes a curse.
In many cases on the African continent, it has well been a case of the carcass attracting the vultures who then simply refuse to go away after they have fed voraciously. Instead, what they do after there is no more carcass left to devour is to actively participate in the production of more carcasses.
This is about what has become the ‘curse’ of natural resources and the terrible price generation after generation of people who should know extravagant prosperity but instead know plunder and privation are forced to pay at the hands of state and non-state actors alike.
By reason of nature`s generosity, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the second largest country in Africa after Algeria and the 11th largest in the world. It has a population of about 92 million people.
Staggering reserves of gold, cobalt, copper and coltan sit in the countrys soil. Considered one of the worlds richest countries in natural resources, its untapped deposits of raw minerals are estimated to be in excess of US$24 trillion. The Congo has 70% of the world`s coltan, a third of its cobalt, more than 30% of its diamond reserves and a tenth of its copper.
Apart from what the exquisite soil of the Congo holds, it is an ecological paradise. Its stunning wildlife which include the rare okapi and many other endangered species, and striking natural landscapes often leave a beholder breathless. But its exquisite, mineral-rich soil is damp with the blood of its own people and it is not for nothing that its people remain among the world`s poorest. The inherent irony in it all would have been too jarring were it not for the omnipresence of conflict in the lives its long-suffering people.
All over the Congo armed groups battle each other and the government. At the center of the unending conflict is control over Congo`s mineral resources. For what belongs to them, a people have known many slaughters, many rapes and the brutal evisceration of their national life as they knew it. The First and Second Congo wars began in 1996 and the smuggling of conflict minerals have helped fuel the war in the Eastern Congo.
The conflicts in the country have led to a disintegration of its security architecture, and it is not just children and their families that continue to be threatened as organized poaching and wildlife trafficking by armed units are severely threatening the survival of its iconic wildlife.
Like the DRC, like Nigeria, Africa`s most populous country and home to its largest oil reserves. The insecurity rippling through Nigeria today has not entirely resulted from battles for control over its staggering oil reserves. However, the discovery of oil in Oloibiri Bayelsa in 1956 undoubtedly led the country by the nose into becoming a mono product economy which has left it severely hamstrung.
Esy petrodollars streaming in from the countrys oil exports have also allowed a culture of complacency to seep into the national psyche. With other sectors of the economy conveniently abandoned for many years, a severe strain has been put on Nigerias oil resources and the Niger Delta environment. This has had the effect of ripping to shreds the fragile fabric of Nigeria`s unity.
There has also been a recent upsurge in criminal activities targeting Nigeria`s oil sector and the consequences have been cataclysmic. Only recently, over a hundred person burnt to their death when an explosion cut through an illegal oil refinery in Abaezi Imo State.
There is no doubt that mismanagement quickly reduces natures bountiful blessings to curses. Nigeria can learn from the Democratic Republic of Congo on how not to manage natures blessings.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
