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

Very pleased

Very very very good book. Highly recommended!

Interesting and worth a read!

Quite a cherry picked rendition. To me, it read like an attempt to distract from some of the real reasons of Africa's problems. On reading the book, one will come up with these phrases repeated ad nauseum:1. China2. Corruption3. Resource curseOf course corruption exists, and it is a problem, but correlation is not causation. More so, when certain facts are omitted in the telling of the story.Africa's growth rate hovered around the 2% mark in the 1960s and 70s, and only started falling to negative levels after the IMF started championing structural readjustments. Most of the factors remained constant in the 60s and 70s - dependence on resource industries, corruption etc. But Africa still managed to show respectable growth. Somehow, in the course of researching an entire book, and telling the story of Africa, Tom Burgis forgets to mention this. He only gets to mentioning structural readjustment as a problem three quarters into the book, and doesn't explore it in depth.He even repeats debunked hackneyed claims of Chinese debt trap. Such claims have been debunked by mainstream western economists (refer Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth, The Atlantic, Feb 6 2021). But the author conveniently repeats the debt trap story without providing any counterarguments.He writes a lot about Zimbabwe, but has only one sentence about sanctions on it, in which he waives it off saying that sanctions were more targeted at Mugabe rather than the country of Zimbabwe. However, there have been a lot written about how the sanctions crippled Zimbabwe's economy, including the publications from the OHCHR. The author also never mentions the reasons leading up to the sanctions - land redistribution, which was an attempt at actually empowering the people - nor does he mention that the sanctions are illegal. This is not to say that Mugabe is not corrupt, but a cherry picked rendition does no good.He writes a lot about violence in Africa, but completely fails to mention how the violence has increased exponentially since the start of America's forever wars in West Asia, and the invasion of Libya, during which the USA and NATO armed dozens of shady groups, and those weapons found their way back to Africa. Nor does he mention how European governments arm very shady militias to "protect" national parks etc.In writing an entire book about Africa's looting machine, the author, somehow, fails to mention the role of the CFA. It cannot be an oversight, since the author was a journalist working for the Financial Times, and surely, he would have known about it.In writing about Western institutions, the general tone that is followed is that there was unfair exploitation during colonial times, but in modern times, the USA and UK governments are trying to root out corruption in Africa, and sometimes Western companies may be guilty of things, but not the Western governments. Yet he either completely ignores or glosses over the role of sanctions, destabilization of the continent by Western powers, arming of shady groups, assassinations of leaders etc.The "Resource curse" arguments have been criticised by economists. A reading of Ha Joon Chang is recommended for a summary for the layman.At other times, the author uses statements from his contacts at RUSI and Chatham House as sources. These are hardly unbiased institutions, with firm convictions in neoliberalism or neo-conservatism with deep ties to the British government and multinationals.But then, one must cut the author some slack here. After all, one doesn't expect unbiased reporting in the Financial Times, which often acts as the mouthpiece for the British government in it's most egregious interventionist foreign policy, and for multi-nationals in support for fewer regulations.

I ordered 2 copies and I only received one copy.

This is an excellent read on how the nation of Africa has been robbed and raped from to make the rest of the world wealthy at the expense of the impoverished African people.This author exposed this bravely in an atmosphere that was highly dangerous and full of bad actors on a world stage.

Scritto in modo confuso e caotico, con descrizioni e commenti poco giustificati.Troppe illazioni e pochi fatti.Deludente per chi ha vissuto veramente in Africa e la conosce nel bene e nel male.

It appears a lot of research went into the writing of this book and it gives us insight into why many Africans are mired in poverty while the continent has enormous mineral wealth.

Systematic looting, ethnic conflicts, corruption and patronage is the curse of the sub-Saharan continent.This excellent book tells the stories of how natural resource-rich sub-Saharan countries are being systematically looted by their kleptocrats, ruling classes, and beyond all foreign companies and some unscrupulous individuals. This book is the result of investigative journalism at its finest, and the product of a scrupulous analysis. I highly commend the author for being so courageous and having produced such a revealing book. A must-read book for anyone who wants to understand why, since the colonization by Western powers, the sub-Saharan continent has been watching the rest of the world marching on the path of progress and prosperity while it remains stuck conflicts and problems of all sorts.I highly recommend this must-read book, along with the other excellent book titled China's Second Continent by Howard W. french.After having read this book, one can only come to the conclusion that black Africa, with its states artificially created by Britain, France and Portugal, and rotten with ethnic conflicts and corruption, will continue to be poor for the foreseeable future despite its enormous reserve of valuable natural resources. The culture of patronage and corruption that characterizes these societies will ensure that the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of foreigners and the ruling classes will continue unabated. After you have read this book, you will feel a deep sense of hopelessness and immense pity for the populations of these states who are so miserable and powerless in the face of the systematic looting perpetrated by their own ruling classes, and in particular so unashamedly by Western and now Chinese corporations. To ad insult to injury, some of the looting is done with the help of the IMF, the World Bank and its IFC division. One has to wonder how a continent, let alone a state, can fight against such formidable forces? How can a country develop economically, let alone technologically, if its ruling class is solely preoccupied with its own enrichment and self preservation, in the absence of true democracy or any real and effective opposition.After a century of Western colonization that had done nothing for the development of these states, maybe the only hope left is that the recent massive Chinese immigration and influx of Chinese aid and investments will bring deep and permanent structural ethnic and cultural changes to these societies, and finally help to lift this content out of misery; like what successive waves of Chinese immigration have done for most Southeast Asian countries over the previous centuries, which has recently enabled a number of them to become economic tigers in their own rights. The effect will be a gradual phase out of foreign influence (Western, Israeli, Lebanese and Indian), to be replaced by Chinese capital and human resources. Thanks to the accelerated pace of change that we are experiencing nowadays, I predict that this mutation will materialize after only two or three generations of inter-racial marriages between the Chinese immigrants and the local populations, instead of a couple of centuries as it has taken before for Southeast Asia.Or, maybe the sub-Saharan continent will end up being the Mine of the World, when China and most of Asia will remain the Factory of the World, while the West consolidates its role of the Financier and Consumer of the World. We saw the Division of Labor in action in the 19th and 20th centuries, now in the Global Village of 21st century the division of labor is split between continents in a tightly-coupled Supply Chain

Great narrative n commentary! A must read for everyone interested in the subject.