Africa is characterised by plenty of natural resources and
yet fails to address social issues which includes high rate of unemployment,
poverty, severe deprivation, food insecurity and so forth. Resources are in the
hands of the few capitalists, which makes them to be unbeneficial and
disastrous to the populace.
Many African countries that possess rich minerals they often
fall short of victim to resource curse such as Congo, Nigeria, Botswana to name
the few and have fared much worse than resource poor countries. Therefore,
White people began their colonial rule with an act of political expropriation
with the use of threat force to extract surplus from the country in the form of
direct labour and the product of labour which was commoditised. They opened Africa
to the effective capital penetration; they also opened the labour resource of
the country including the whole continent to re-direct their functionality,
socially and geographically in order to create surplus from which capital
accumulation benefited their interest while majority of Africans live in
deprivation.
If natural resources including land, gold, diamond,
platinum, coal, silver and so forth were managed in the interests of the
majority, the people in Africa would have been amongst the best fed,
well-educated with proper employment that does not undermine one’s ability and
capacity. However, the reality is the opposite. Instead of promoting sustainable well-being
the economy has degraded people and the physical environment. Africa has become
poorer and poorer while exploiter countries become significantly richer. The
wealth of Africa’s natural resources has mainly benefited colonialism. Many
people in Africa experienced hardship because of the actual presence of natural
resources. The discovery of natural resources has done little in the way of development
to improve welfare and alleviate poverty. Africa has been rooted in the
export-oriented surplus, extraction and accumulation of capital under neo-colonialism.
Even within the contemporary political system “democracy“, the resource curse is maintained and
strengthened, because extractive industries is seen as indispensable for
countries economic development. Moreover, in the current political system of
servile governments is associated with exploitation of labour and remain
subordinate to the colonial powers and their multi-nationals corporation.
Capitalism manipulated natural resources for the profit
motive which made being home to these resources rather than a bounty and a
blessing, a curse.
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