#92 Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo

In this blog, I have chosen to explore the examples of Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo to show why countries rich in mineral resources still maintain high levels of people in deep poverty. Nigeria is important as an example as she has been pumping oil for decades. Out of the payments received by the Nigerian State, a new ruling class has arisen that are hugely wealthy. While the Democratic Republic of Congo is the example of my argument. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a huge territory in terms of size. She is blessed with every imaginable commodity. Yet, the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the poorest countries on our planet. The Democratic Republic of Congo has been cruelly exploited first by the King of the Belgians for rubber 1884 to 1906, then by the Belgian government who took over after the 1906 scandal was publicised, and finally by her own ruling elites. The Democratic Republic of Congo ought to serve as the example of a country exploited for the benefit of Western leaders and owners.

Nigeria

Nigeria did not have white settlers and no civil war of independence, but she is rich in oil supplies, and she is the largest country in terms of population and GDP in the continent of Africa.

Nigeria’s population by 2020 was over 200 million people, the largest on the African continent. Its total output is also the largest in Africa. The country was fashioned by colonialism from several very large tribal groups, which were deeply affected by the slave trade. The military elite and the political leaders take their cut from the oil revenues owned by multinational oil companies.

There is a semblance of Western democracy, with elections and voting. In the Muslim northeast of Nigeria, there is a bitter battle against Islamic groups (Boko Haram) who seek to impose strict Islamic law. The two political parties have always been ethnically based one advocating for neo-liberal policies and austerity and the other opposed. Corruption among the elite is widespread as government revenues depend on oil as does the income of the elites. There is otherwise very limited taxation.

The entire country is stuck with unemployment, poverty, and deep inequality. The population is young and is projected according to the United Nations statistics to double by 2050 to 400 million people. More than 50% of the country is under 19 years of age and youth employment is said to be 38%. Oil dominates to such an extent that there is little investment anywhere else except in oil. The price of oil determines the GDP of the country.

The IMF, in reporting on the economy, notes that the average income per person is 'shockingly low', that 'inequality in terms of income and opportunities has been growing rapidly,' and the 'the north-south divide has widened rapidly in recent years due to the Boko Haram insurgency.’ Basic services are in short supply; job opportunities are severely lacking. And of course, corruption is rampant. The political choices available to the people are an oil tycoon and a leader involved in previous dictatorships.

Nigeria is in a bad place. This brief account could be replicated by all the largest African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo or South Africa. Each country, of course, has its own particular tale to tell.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Luwowo Coltan mine near Rubaya, North Kivu the 18th of March 2014. By MONUSCO/Sylvain Liechti via Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The DRC is perhaps the world's archetypical colonial and post-colonial economy. The DRC has perhaps a larger accumulation of minerals, including diamonds, than almost any other state across the world. In principle, the DRC offers its people growth, development, and industrialisation. But it is one of the poorest countries in the world. Since 1884, when the country was colonised by King Leopold of Belgium, western nations and companies have continuously exploited these minerals and exported the profit. The people were impoverished and enslaved by Leopold and have remained in deep poverty to this day.

The investigative work of Roger Casement and E D Morel, in the early 20th century highlighted possibly 500,000 dead and the creation of slavery. The DRC was taken away from the king, and colonial governance of the DRC was taken over in 1907 by the Belgium government. By the time of independence over 50 years later, hardly a soul had been educated even to secondary school level. The new leader, Patrick Lumumba, was assassinated with the support of the CIA, and a dictatorship followed, led by General Mobutu. By 2020, the Congolese people remains one of the poorest in the world. The country continues to supply western nations with a multitude of minerals essential for the rich industrialised societies. This huge country remains riven by war and poverty on a scale difficult to express in such a short account.

Underdevelopment: The Curse of a Single Mineral

The Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria are just two examples of the 'underdeveloped' peoples and economies of the world. There are many other examples throughout Latin America Asia and the African continents, where political independence has done very little for the development of the resources or the people.

The idea that nations with abundant minerals are "cursed" has found considerable leverage in the literature over the last 20 years. Minerals or any dominant industry or sector will act as a vortex, drawing resources towards the mineral centre of the society. It does not require a genius to understand how 'the market' works in any society where oil, diamonds, or any particular sector becomes dominant.

First capital - usually overseas capital - will be drawn to the industry. Overseas capital as recommended by the IMF will require free access to export its profits. It will use tax havens to ensure it pays limited local taxes. Labour too is drawn towards the sector. The industry will pay a small percentage of its income to the local government. The government will be dependent on both the income it receives and the export revenues. In many corrupt nations, the government officials will take a percentage of the revenue for themselves and again use tax havens. Finally, there will be little incentive to educate the population or to develop the economy further.

The above description can be seen to be accurate in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, and many other single natural resource countries. The poor will be poorer than in many other countries that have not been blessed or cursed (as you decide) where there is no dominant natural resource. Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea have managed to industrialise without any special natural resources.

A single abundant resource or a single industry or service will draw in a nation’s resources, leaving the bulk of the population to fend for themselves. The World Bank and the IMF are aware of the dangers of extreme dependency on a single commodity. Not just the two nations mentioned above, but South Africa, Indonesia, Algeria, Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia are all substantial societies population-wise, but have all failed to industrialise: often but not always leaving vast pools of poverty-stricken people.

The Maintenance of Global Poverty

Despite the inheritance of mineral resources, little attempt has been made by the northern nations to provide the supportive infrastructure of development banks, roads, education and so on, that would encourage a move towards an industrial society. As we saw in several earlier blogs, the move into industrialisation is no simple task; it requires an immense gathering of resources. Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo remain particularly extreme examples that reflect a wider world. The developed western world has not taken any major initiatives since 1945 to alter the trajectory of continuous poverty. 

It is almost as if the northern nations consciously wanted the ‘Third World’ nations, (renamed 'the South’) to remain as providers of raw materials, open markets and cheap labour as they had under the earlier colonial regimes. It might be very difficult to prove such an assertion. Nowhere would such a brazen purpose be written or argued. Yet wherever one examines poverty and where hunger has become the norm in the 21st century in large territories like these two nations, we can find examples where oil and minerals have become a burden, some say 'a curse' on the peoples, rather than a benefit.

One of the central arguments in several of these blogs has been that poverty and inequality are the elemental components that afflict large parts of our world. As one example, the growth of the various Islamic revolutionary movements from Al Qaeda to ISIS and Boko Haram can be understood as a reflection of enforced poverty. Of course, there is very much more going on in particular cases where peoples rise up in arms against a superior power. But underlying them all is the lack of hope and opportunity in societies mired in poverty and inequality.

Suggested Reading

Nigeria:

There is a shortage of books on Nigeria. The information in this blog for Nigeria was taken from the Michael Robert blog on the Nigerian economy (April 2019), see also:

Adam Mayer, Naija Marxisms: Revolutionary Thought in Nigeria, Pluto Press (2016)

The Democratic Republic of Congo:

The history of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been well written about in fiction and non-fiction.

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, Harper Collins (2002).

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Terror Greed, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2000).

Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo, Harper Collins (2009).

Margo Varges Llosa, The Dream of the Celt, Faber and Faber (2012).

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Penguin Classics (1994)

The Oil Curse:

This idea can be applied to countries rich or poor. The key components are the market as the criteria for the allocation of resources, and that one sector is dominant. The concept first was voiced by Richard Auty in 1993, followed up by Jeffrey Sachs & Andrew Warner and debated by:

Michael Ross, The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth shapes Development Nations, Princeton University Press (2012).

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