As one of the continents with the least amount of raw materials in the world, Europe boasts a high level of raw material consumption (EEAS Strategic Planning, 2003).1 About three times as many resources are consumed per capita in the countries of the European Union as in Asia and four times as much as in Africa. Most of all, European industry is reliant on raw materials – and on secure and controlled access to them. During the colonial era, direct access was guaranteed, even if the colonial powers were sometimes in competition with each other. The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 managed these conflicts and legitimised the exploitation of the territories that were reduced to colonies (Buch, 2011:114). ‘Colonisation’, as the state secretary of the German Reich’s Imperial Colonial Office defined it in 1907, ‘means the cultivation of the earth, its treasures, the flora, the fauna and above all the people to the benefit of the economy of the colonising nation, and the latter is in exchange obliged to bestow in return its higher culture, its moral concepts, its better methods’ (cited in Melber, 1992:91). With the end of colonisation and the formal independence of African states, it became necessary for the industrialised nations to develop mechanisms which, after the loss of direct control of the political sphere, could guarantee continued access to the resources required.
This chapter analyses the continuities of the imperial access to resources and demonstrates that the new battles for access to raw materials reproduce previous colonial patterns. The construction of the ‘other’ continues till today: as an uncivilised subject reduced to its labour in the colonial era, as an inexperienced and malleable political subject on the way to supposed independence, as a dependent recipient of development aid and as a seemingly equal negotiating partner in international bodies. The narratives are changeable – but the power relationships, political structures and the economic dominance resulting from them have remained shockingly stable. Jointly articulated criticism by African states is slow to take shape. At the 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Buenos Aires in December 2017, the Africa Group acted as one in order to evade the divide-and-rule strategy of the imperial powers. Although the group managed cohesively to formulate their criticism of the architecture of trade, which favours the global North at the expense of the global South, the overcoming of the centuries-old power imbalance nonetheless seems a long way off.
World Bank and IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes
A whole host of African countries strove for economic reforms after gaining political independence; however, their efforts did not go far enough. This was to a certain extent due to the fact that the newly emerging states were not actually released into independence. The mines and plantations formerly owned by the colonial powers were often simply transferred over to private sector actors from the former colonisers. They in turn could not allow the collapse of the existing privileged relationships, because the colonial division of labour had ensured that the manufacturing industries for raw materials came into existence in Europe while the materials themselves could only be found in the colonies.
At the end of the 1970s, Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) were developed by the World Bank and the IMF. They were introduced as ‘debt relief programmes’ for the countries targeted. In order to be able to receive loans from the World Bank, individually tailored programmes to combat poverty and for economic growth were imposed on these countries, entailing significant interventions in the national budgets and further restrictions on their sovereign rights. In addition to a reduction in subsidies and budgetary discipline, this also included restrictions on foreign currency transactions and the privatisation of public sector companies. Representatives of the World Bank and IMF involved themselves directly in the budgetary reforms related to the SAPs and, through them, regulated not only industry and the financial sector, but also agriculture, health and education. These fiscal and economic political measures, which were effectively forced through by the IMF and World Bank,2 led to even greater controls over countries than were already exerted through the legacies of the colonial era. This all happened in the spirit of neoliberalism, according to which the creative strength of the market was to be freed from the clutches of state regulation and bureaucratisation. Transnational corporations now found themselves dealing with countries weakened in this way. As part of an unprecedented wave of privatisation in the 1990s, the TNCs were able to secure the most valuable concessions of the resource-rich African countries at absurdly low prices.
The triumphal procession of the neoliberal spirit continued during the first stage of South Africa’s political transformation after apartheid was formally overcome. The country considered itself to be under dual pressure: on the one hand, in order to end political apartheid without risking the privileges of the white minority, a compromise had to be negotiated with the National Party regime involving the participation of the most important Western countries. On the other hand, the international financial institutions exerted pressure for liberalisation, in order to once again strengthen their grasp on the South African economy, which had ground to a halt in the last decade of the apartheid regime’s self-isolation, and extend their hold from South Africa across the entire continent.
When the ‘raw materials boom’ started at the turn of the millennium (Rowden, 2016), most African governments were not able to profit all that much, especially as they were forced to compete with one another. The terms which most African governments had conceded to the transnational corporations were often so exceptionally generous that their own share of the profit was very small. Jörg Goldberg summed up their plight in 2007: ‘The African governments [were] shortly before the start of the raw materials boom at the turn of the century in an especially unfavourable negotiating position [...]. The privatisation requirements of the SAPs had brought about the dissipation of state ownership; favourable investment conditions, generous tax regulations and cheap concessions were supposed to attract foreign capital. Foreign investors were frequently conceded long-term tax holidays’ (Goldberg, 2007). Many countries accepted the diktat of the international financial institutions, as they expected economic growth and therefore a positive impact on the local employment market and the consolidation of government funding.
However, it became clear that the economic benefit of the structural adjustment programmes in most countries remained modest, while the social situation stagnated at best and the ecological impact was often abysmal. In addition to this, governments were bound to a long list of projects, known to be ‘white elephants’, in terms of development policy. This included prestigious major projects such as the Inga dam in Congo, which cost a great deal of money and consequently paved the way for worsening debt. The Inga dam was built in west Congo in order to supply the mining region in the south–west with electricity. This required the construction of a high-voltage power line of over 2,000 kilometres, which pushed the costs up even further. Today, Congolese people see the power lines running above their heads, but they themselves have no electricity. Cheaper decentralised solutions using small hydroelectric power plants, which would have been feasible in many places due to the Congo’s rich water landscape, were out of the question for the World Bank. The Inga project was a bad investment, at least for the local population. The company which was responsible for the construction of the plant, however, made hefty profits, as did the operating company. This is a recognisable outcome of the funding model of the World Bank and the IMF: the enrichment of private companies and industrialised nations at the expense of the countries in which prestige objects are built. Such dynamics can also be observed in the case of Lonmin in South Africa. Financial cooperation between Lonmin and the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank group3 was supposed to contribute to improving the living conditions of the Marikana community. To date, there is no visible evidence of this (see the chapter by Patrick Bond).
The rules of the World Trade Organization
From the turn of the millennium, the rapid rise of China and other emerging countries and their increasing demands for agricultural, energy and mineral raw materials increased competition with Western industrialised nations. From the mid-2000s, China not only introduced export restrictions on its own rare earth metals, but secured its own access to other strategically important raw materials, particularly in Africa, in an increasingly proactive way. ‘Western powers have for centuries viewed developing countries as suppliers of cheap raw materials. The new factor is, however, the emergence of competitors. During the past decade China, India and other emerging economies have entered traditional European and US preserves and are vying for control over these resources’ (Curtis, 2009). In so doing, China employed methods which had to date not been used by the Europeans, such as the exchange of raw materials for infrastructure. On the one hand, this guarantees a return to the raw materials-producing country, while, on the other, this infrastructure (roads, ports and supply of energy) facilitates the extraction and transportation of the raw materials. But the EU regarded these measures as a distortion of competition and as an encroachment on their economic interests. In reaction, the EU Commission developed – at least within the framework of bilateral agreements with individual developing countries – measures such as the Raw Materials Initiative and other tools, which are described below.
First, we should however take a look at the activities of the World Trade Organization, whose multilateral policies are interpreted by the EU in its own favour. Given the increasing scope of influence of ‘emerging countries’, the industrialised nations are themselves being confronted with growing resistance at WTO level. Consequently, the Doha Round, which began in 2001 in the capital of Qatar and which was due to be completed in 2005, ground to a halt because the industrial nations were not prepared to abolish protectionism and competition-distorting subsidies, in order to protect their own agricultural industries (Tangemann, 2006). At the same time, they demanded from emerging and developing countries the liberalisation of their industries and new trade sectors such as services, public procurement, regulation of investments, trading of data and protection of intellectual property. In the end, negotiations at the 11th Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires also failed: while the developing countries demanded a conclusion to the Doha Round, the industrialised nations insisted instead upon focusing on new issues such as e-commerce. In terms of protectionism, double standards are clearly applied: if Europe and the US protect the interests of their farmers, the WTO rules are not questioned; however, as soon as China took up similar trade and industrial policy measures after 2008 to promote its industrialisation and to participate in the global value chains, adverse reactions came from Europe and the US, which referred to precisely the same WTO rules which they constantly breach themselves to protect their own farmers.
The World Trade Organization’s awareness of the conflicts surrounding these different interpretations is reflected in the 2010 World Trade Report. The report deals with the raw materials trade and highlights the different mechanisms of the raw materials markets. The WTO’s general secretary at the time, Pascal Lamy, a long-standing advocate of neoliberalism, who wrote the preface, questioned the pure doctrine of international trade theory, according to which free trade always leads to the best result for all countries involved. In order to prevent overexploitation, he called for the strengthening of independent management of raw materials by the developing countries. To this end, according to Lamy, it would be necessary to amend and clarify the WTO’s rules for the trade in raw materials. He maintained that conflicts between producer and consumer countries are pre-programmed and, in order to defuse them, more precise rules are required. Lamy argued for a rapid conclusion of the Doha Round so that new challenges and trade conflicts could finally be dealt with under the umbrella of the WTO. But the disagreements within the Doha Round prevented a rapid conclusion – it was only declared a failure in 2016. It was primarily the leading industrialised nations who profited from this by using the existing imbalance of power relations to their advantage. For many of the emerging countries, most of the developing countries and in particular the African states, this meant that they were forced increasingly by the EU into bilateral agreements. Two instruments are particularly worth mentioning here: the EU’s Raw Materials Initiative and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).
The EU’s Raw Materials Initiative
The EU’s Raw Materials Initiative came into existence at the urging of European corporations and their lobby associations, among them the Federation of German Industries (BDI), which in view of the intensifying competition from emerging countries claimed that the governments of EU member states were not doing enough to secure the supply of raw materials for their own industries. They referred to the need to close this gap with the same commitment as the governments showed in creating outlet markets for European manufactured goods. As Dieter Ameling, president of the German Steel Federation, stated at the Federation of German Industries’ first raw materials congress in March 2005: ‘In the past, politics did not take sufficient account of the key significance of the supply of raw materials. [...] We in Germany can only remain export world champions if the companies receive free and fair access to the international raw materials markets’ (Ameling, 2005).
Whatever Ameling might have understood by ‘fair access’, it is a fact that the German federal government’s raw materials strategy, which was developed in 2010 under the overall control of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, stresses that ‘development aid’ also plays a vital role in Germany’s raw materials supply: ‘Development policy measures by the Federal Government can help to create the policy framework for a pro-investment climate in the partner countries via the establishment of a stable and efficient raw materials sector and competent state players, and German commerce can also benefit from this’ (BMWi, 2010:23).
Based on this raw materials strategy of the German government, consultations were held between several EU governments as well as with industrial and lobby associations which resulted in the idea of an EU-wide Raw Materials Initiative. This was introduced by the EU Commission in 2008. It essentially rests on three pillars: the procurement of raw materials from European sources, reducing European consumption of primary raw materials and, above all, securing access to raw materials on the global markets. The last pillar has gained significance because the EU Commission was or became increasingly convinced that neither the mining of raw materials from the limited European sources nor recourse to substitute raw materials nor recycling could guarantee the competitiveness of the EU’s industries. In view of the EU’s dependence on imports of strategically important raw materials such as the high-tech metals cobalt, platinum and titanium as well as other resources such as wood, chemicals, furs and skins, the focus on the two other thematic pillars of this initiative was somewhat of a red herring.
The EU Commission pointed out ‘that the extent of the EU’s import dependency on minerals lies between 48 per cent for copper ore, 64 per cent for bauxite and 100 per cent for metals such as cobalt, platinum, titanium and vanadium’ (cited in Curtis, 2009:9). The fact that access to strategic raw materials abroad is the core interest of the EU’s raw materials policy was once again confirmed in November 2013 by an ad hoc working group (EC, 2013:6). The working group identified 41 minerals and metals which are important to the EU, of which 14 were categorised as critical ‘since a high share of world production comes from a small number of countries, mainly China, Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Brazil’ (cited in Curtis, 2009:9). In view of this, the European Council explicitly called on the Commission and member states to use their aid programmes to secure access to raw materials. The May 2009 Council meeting, for example, concluded that, to promote the ‘raw materials diplomacy’, the EU should not only raise the issue in all appropriate fora but also ‘give adequate consideration to the opportunities provided by projects undertaken in the context of development cooperation’, adding that ‘the specific situation of poor developing countries has to be taken into consideration’ (cited in Curtis, 2009:9).
In addition to the influence exerted through development cooperation, bilateral trade agreements offer the EU the opportunity to nullify two additional significant trade policy instruments of the raw material-producing countries: export taxes and restrictive investment rules. In the view of the EU, the latter distort the international trade in raw materials and consequently are included in a regulated way in the economic partnership agreements (EPAs). The investment rules, like the regulation of competition, services, public sector procurement and protection from intellectual property, form part of the ‘rendezvous clause’ with individual countries, which lists topics whose negotiation had to be deferred because of the resistance from African countries. Export taxes are already part of the trade agreements which were negotiated as part of the EPAs with different African regions. The following section deals with the problems surrounding export taxes and their inclusion in the EPAs, with a particular focus on the agreement with the SADC region,4 which provisionally came into effect in October 2016.
Economic Partnership Agreements and export taxes
Even if its humanitarian rhetoric suggests something else, the EU proactively pursues an interest-based policy with the EPAs, which have been under negotiation since 2002. This is articulated in the document ‘Global Europe: Competing in the World’ (October 2006) by the trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson:
our prosperity is directly linked to the openness of the markets we try to sell to. [...] Alongside our commitment to the WTO we have, through bilateral negotiations, sought to remove trade barriers behind borders – barriers beyond the reach of WTO rules [...] Building on the WTO, our aim will be to go beyond what can be achieved at the global level by seeking deeper reductions in tariffs; by tackling non-tariff barriers to trade; and by covering issues which are not yet ready for multilateral discussion, such as rules for competition or investment (EC, 2006).
A document of 2015 entitled ‘Trade for All’ adds:
In view of the EU’s dependence on imported resources, access to energy and raw materials is critical for the EU’s competitiveness. Trade agreements can improve access by setting rules on non-discrimination and transit: by tackling local content requirements; by encouraging energy efficiency and trade in renewables; and by ensuring state owned enterprises compete with other companies on a level playing field according to market principles (EC, 2015).
According to Mandelson, the aim of the EU’s trade policy was therefore ‘an open global market completely free of all distortions on trade in energy and raw materials’ (cited in Curtis, 2009:21). In order to emphasise the interdependency between the multilateral (WTO) and bilateral levels (for instance, between the EU and the ACP countries – the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of states) intended by the EU as part of the EPAs, it should be noted that the existing WTO agreements in no way forbid export taxes for raw materials-producing countries:
Measures which control or limit the export of goods are effectively not at all regulated in the WTO and consequently are not part of the rules for regional trade agreements. Attempts by the EU and other industrialised countries to introduce this aspect into current WTO negotiations have been largely unsuccessful. However, it [the EU] is attempting this via other channels, for example, it made the limitation of export taxes a condition for the Ukraine’s entry into the WTO (Reichert et al., 2009).
On the contrary, export duties as instruments of economic policy have proved to be effective incentives for the further processing of raw materials at local level by contributing to the increase in export earnings and adding value through diversification of exports. In this way, the vulnerability of national economies could be reduced (KASA, 2014). Furthermore, export taxes generate government revenue, which can be used for investments in health and education.
At the start of the EPA negotiations, the EU made a radical demand: the ban on all export duties and restrictions immediately following the EPAs enforcement: ‘The basic EU position is that export restrictions and taxes must be eliminated. The Commission states that “our aims are generally to secure non-discriminatory access to key inputs for the EU economy” and that “one particular problem” is export duties. It argues that export taxes are counter-productive’ (DG Trade Priorities, cited in Curtis, 2009:21).
The EU was able to achieve its original aim of having export duties completely abolished in some cases only. Most agreements have been allowed to maintain existing export duties and the introduction of new ones is subject to conditions. For instance, export taxes are contained in the South African Development Community’s EPA agreement, with exceptions that limit their effectiveness to a large degree: they can only be introduced for a maximum of 12 years, are only valid for a maximum of eight products per SADC country and cannot exceed 10 per cent of the value of the raw materials. Furthermore, the SADC countries must exempt exports into the EU from export tax for the first six years; only after the seventh year may export taxes be levied on 50 per cent of the products exported to EU countries. In addition to this, the countries intending to raise export taxes still have to substantiate their effectiveness in increasing government revenues, the protection of new industries or the environment. For this reason, the implementation of even these limited export taxes felt like a victory for many governments of the SADC region, as it was the very export tax conditions negotiated by them that, among other things, served to justify the final signing of the EPAs (ICTSD, 2014).
Beyond pure material interests: Dialectics of the colonised mind
As far as Africa is concerned, an analysis of all EPAs demonstrates that the regions of the continent have to reckon with other negative effects in addition to the subversion of export taxes. These include the threat to spheres of political action, deindustrialisation, loss of government revenue through tariff dismantling, and in a few cases even the threat to food security. The question is why African ‘elites’ sign such Economic Partnership Agreements at all.
There are several reasons why a number of African governments have signed these agreements after many years of tough negotiations, despite all the disadvantages. One of them has to do with the EU’s ‘divide-and-rule’ negotiating strategy, which is expressed in its market access reforms. Discussed by the EU Commission for the first time in 2011, the Market Access Regulation (MAR) was meant to reform the preexisting regulation MAR 1528/2007. In this sense, a total of 18 ACP countries would lose their preferential access to the EU market on 1 October 2014, in the event that they had not initiated any steps towards ratification of an interim agreement. This deadline as part of the MAR reform was unilaterally decided by the EU without prior consultation with the African ‘negotiating partners’ and significantly increased the pressure on the countries concerned. These included the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Cameroon, as well as Botswana and Namibia from the Southern African Development Community (SADC). In particular, the governments of the latter two countries have experienced increasing pressure from certain economic sectors, particularly those involved in export, to sign the agreement. The interests of the export-oriented economic sectors are sharply opposed to those of the domestically oriented small producers. This is a new dynamic which the EU knew how to make skilful use of in the negotiations. In addition, the threat of export-oriented sectors had a direct effect on the self-interest of some African elites. Although European companies dominate the trade in and export of bananas, coffee, tea, cocoa, cut flowers, beans, beef and fish to Europe, African elites have stakes in a number of these companies. The decision to sign the agreements was therefore often made for personal material advantages and at the expense of the long-term interests of their countries.
A good example for this is Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) in South Africa. What has been praised as an instrument for the greater participation of the black majority in the economy, from which black people were excluded during the colonial era, has emerged as an instrument for the co-opting of black elites. From the moment when elites begin to enjoy the privileges of participating in an ‘imperial mode of living’, they forget their agenda of transformation, with which they formerly mobilised the masses as part of the freedom movement.
A second factor which has impacted on the EPA negotiations is the political change taking place in West Africa. The change of government in the Ivory Coast and Senegal had a direct influence on the negotiations: with Alassane Ouattara, the Ivory Coast gained a head of state who had a long career at the International Monetary Fund (1968–1990) and in his former role as prime minister of the Ivory Coast (1990–1993) expressed his allegiance to neoliberal ideology in a remarkable way. What is even more serious is that he owes his renewed accession to power to a controversial French military intervention in his country. Together with his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall, whose personal commercial ambitions and activities were as renowned as they were notorious, Ouattara campaigned for the EPAs. In Ghana, too, the approach to the EPAs changed after the sudden death of the President John Atta Mills in July 2012.
Both the MAR reforms and the changes in government in West Africa may also be viewed from a postcolonial perspective. Indeed, it cannot be otherwise explained why the black elites signed agreements such as the EPAs, despite the fact that studies (Kramml et al., 2017) clearly show that their countries have more to lose in the long term than they can gain through trade with the EU, including the trade-related development policies accompanying the EPAs: these measures have assumed the role of the very ‘colonial plunder machine’ which they aimed to replace after achieving their hard-fought political independence.
Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen describes this phenomenon as part of the ‘dialectics of the colonised mind’, which finds expression in a kind of ‘obsession with the West’. He says that this obsession can cover a wide spectrum: from ‘slavish imitation through to categorical enmity’ (Sen, 2007:100–112). Sen discusses the issue of the lasting effectiveness of former colonial patterns: these are not only revealed in the continuing dominance and paternalism of the former colonial powers. Rather, according to Sen, the experience of humiliation and its enforced feeling of inferiority have also imprinted themselves on the colonised populations with lasting effect. This is certainly one explanation for the corruptibility of the African elites.
The perception of corruption is, however, often selective. The corruption scandals which shook South Africa in 2017 involving global companies like McKinsey, KPMG and Bell Pottinger are often discussed in a different way from the corruption scandals surrounding Jacob Zuma. While it was generally insinuated that Zuma’s case had to do with a trait characteristic of all black people, the scandal-ridden companies and their managers were portrayed as exceptions who only acted as they did because of the (black) context. Sisonke Msimang was right when she stated: ‘Exposing corruption [...] will only yield results when the crimes of white South Africans and global corporations are as thoroughly investigated and debated by whites as those of their black compatriots’ (Msimang, 2017). This applies not only to South Africa but also in a global context. In Germany, one often meets people at public events who have not seen the documentary about the ‘Paradise Papers’ on TV and who get enraged about corrupt elites in Africa, without mentioning a single word about the role of the mainly white protagonists in the Paradise Papers scandal. Corruption is only used in connection with ‘others’ and not with ‘civilised Europe’.
Raw materials policy as a security policy
What would actually happen if African states were to develop resistance to trade agreements to such an extent that Europe’s supply would actually be at risk? In the EU and in the US, in the last 15 years the concept of security has been redefined in such a way that it is actually no longer about defending oneself against dangers from within and outside but rather about asserting and securing economic interests by military means wherever necessary, in particular when it comes to access to raw materials and energy. From this perspective, a raw materials policy forms part of the security policy, as the Bundeswehr’s 2006 White Paper reveals: ‘Like many other nations [Germany] is highly dependent on a secure supply of raw materials and safe transportation routes around the world. [...] A secure, sustained and competitive supply of energy is of strategic importance for the future of Germany and Europe. [...] Energy issues will play an ever more important role for global security in future’ (BMVg, 2006).
Many elites in the global South are aware of the risks of resistance to the interests of the Western industrialised nations, exercising anticipatory obedience and ingratiating themselves practically voluntarily. Ultimately, they know the fate of those who attempted to do things differently in the past, like Thomas Sankara and Patrice Lumumba. Speaking about her home country, Nadine Rosa-Rosso illustrates how France, known as the country of the Enlightenment, does not hesitate ‘to decree wars, torture and political murder if it has to do with defending her colonial empire and the interests of her multinational corporations such as Elf, Total, Areva, Bolloré, Eramet, Technip, Bouygues, Orange, Geocoton, Rougier, etc. And this is not about ancient history but about everyday life for millions of Africans’ (Rosa-Rosso, 2016).
In his day, Robert Cooper, chief civil servant of the European Union, openly declared that the EU did not fight shy of using any means in order to pursue its interests:
Postmodern imperialism takes two forms. First there is the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. This is usually operated by an international consortium through International Financial Institutions [...] The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception [...] Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle’ (Cooper, 2002).
In Germany, the federal president, Horst Köhler, resigned in May 2010 because his statement that the Bundeswehr could be used to protect access to raw materials provoked major criticism. Although there has since been no incident of such use,5 the discussion remains in the political arena. Defence experts increasingly stress the need to structure the training of soldiers in such a way that they can be deployed anywhere in the world. In view of the fact that European industry is dependent on mineral and energy resources which are not available in Europe or cannot be extracted due to the high environmental standards or lower economic profitability, the following question presents itself: what would happen if a country such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, which delivers 60 per cent of the EU’s required cobalt supply, were to put a stop to these deliveries for some reason or other? And if South Africa did the same with platinum and other countries followed suit? I suspect that what Robert Cooper calls ‘force, pre-emptive attack, deception’ would reach a new dimension. At this point it is perhaps helpful to remind ourselves of the fact that the Second Congo War, which began in August 1998, began because the government under Kabila had, from the perspective of Western countries, introduced a ‘false’ raw materials policy. In the interim, more than six million people have died as a result of this war and millions live as internally displaced persons or refugees in neighbouring countries, but the raw materials of the Congo continue to supply the global markets.
Closing remarks
In 1999 Ignacio Ramonet, director of Le Monde diplomatique, wrote, ‘the world’s real masters are no longer the politicians who hold the formal reins of power’. Based on the history of Africa, the following can be said with certainty: African countries never really became independent, as the rationale behind the organisation of national economies to cater to the advantage of foreign beneficiaries has remained intact. The actual holders of power are those who determine the rules. African elites have stakes in this power but often operate under conditions which they themselves do not determine.
From the independence of African countries to the most recent bilateral free trade agreements via the structural adjustment programmes of the international financial institutions and the terms of the World Trade Organization, Europe (along with other industrialised nations) has displayed great ingenuity in safeguarding its continued privileged access to the resources of Africa and other developing countries, which existed during the colonial occupation, and survives even after formal legal independence. Here, control of the global market prices remains a constant factor: because the countries that are rich in raw materials, particularly in Africa, control neither their resources nor the markets on which they are traded, they never receive a fair price for their contribution to the global economy. The ‘invisible hand’, which determines the fluctuations in price, is active when it comes to getting the resource-rich countries to mitigate the ‘burden’ of companies for each price drop in such a way that they can ‘survive’, i.e. remain profitable. If prices shoot up and corporations bring in large profits, the invisible hand remains inactive. The South African journalist Khadija Sharife accordingly appealed to African governments: ‘Where countries hold the monopoly on finite resources and pricing is opaque, governments in Africa must revisit the role in price setting in the global economy, both for resources and labour’ (Sharife, 2016).
In addition to the control of prices for imported raw materials, Western countries also have an additional tool which is at least as powerful: they claim for themselves the power of defining how the raw materials markets are organised and the instruments of its regulation. In a 2017 interview with the German magazine taz.FUTURZWEI, the film and theatre director Milo Rau explained how this definition of power works, using the example of the law on conflict minerals:
Let’s take the coltan or gold extracted in Congo. The EU Parliament passes a law which says: We don’t want any conflict minerals, we want clean production conditions. This sounds great at first but then you ask the EU raw materials experts the question: What does ‘conflict mineral’ actually mean? And they answer in quite a relaxed manner: this is a mineral which we don’t have but which we need in Europe. Therefore, we need this law on regulation in order to criminalise the Congolese producers and get the raw materials to Europe at the cheapest possible prices (Rau, 2017).
In response to the question of whether the law should police the link between conflicts, human rights violations and our consumption of everyday items, Rau (2017) replied: This is precisely the moral demand. However, in truth this is an imperial monopoly law: that’s because only the European multinationals get the label ‘clean’. The Congolese small producers have no lobby in the EU parliament. It’s as if the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party were to adopt ethical laws for the German automotive industry, close down Volkswagen (VW) and then import Chinese cars. This sounds completely absurd; for the Congolese people and large parts of the world, however, this is an everyday thing.
Notes
1 In its strategic concepts, the EU follows the US both in its claim to intervene globally and ‘preventively’, and in its emphasis on the question of energy. ‘Energy dependence is a special concern for Europe. Europe is the world’s largest importer of oil and gas. Imports account for about 50% of energy consumption today. This will rise to 70% in 2030.’
2 The measures implemented as part of the structural adjustment policy included the lowering of government spending and rates of tax, the creation of incentives to attract foreign investment, the liberalisation of trade by reducing customs duties and abolishing import restrictions, the privatisation of public sector companies and bodies and the strengthening of rights to property.
3 See IFC and World Bank Group, Lonmin plc, South Africa: Investing in Success and Sustainable Development, www.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/industry_ext_content/ifc_external_corporate_site/ogm+home/priorities/mining/mining_case_studies_lonmin_plc.
4 The SADC, which was founded in 1992, emerged from the SADCC or South African Development Coordination Conference, which was the amalgamation of the front-line countries of Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland and Namibia. After overcoming political apartheid, South Africa, Mauritius, the Seychelles and the Democratic Republic of Congo joined. The SADC is a heterogeneous group, whose membership criteria combine geographical, historical, ideological as well as economic motives. This heterogeneity is reflected in the implementation of the group’s joint projects. The defined economic aims, such as the creation of a joint economic area, a customs union and a common currency, are behind schedule. In particular, the political aims, which were to find expression in the consolidation of democracy, have suffered major setbacks in the last few years.
5 Even if the deployment of the French army in Mali is itself seen by many African civil society forces as a mission to defend the raw materials supply in relation to uranium in the neighbouring country and the development of new raw materials sources in Mali, the Bundeswehr is only in Mali to ‘relieve’ France, according to the words of the German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen.
References
Ameling, D. (2005) Speech held at the first Raw Materials Conference of the Federation of German Industries, cited in Entwicklungsforum Bangladesh e.V. (2013) Wie viele Menschen trägt die Erde? Im Fokus: Bangladesch, www.bit.ly/2tJsDJR
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