Land Grab in Madagascar

When a Chinese businessman first approached Malagasy farmer Jean Manantsoa, last year with an offer to lease his family rice fields, Manantsoa had no idea of the untapped pockets of potential natural wealth beneath.
"It was a surprise that there was gas beneath my land. Before we thought this was a wonderful thing," says Jean Manantsoa, remembering when he was first told of the riches beneath his rice.
But since I gave it to the Chinese it has been a disaster."

Feeling pressured by the representative of the company, Madagascar Southern Petroleum Company (MSPC), Jean signed an open-ended lease for five million Malagasy ariary a year (£1,420). He received the first year's payment but nothing this year even eight months after the 1 April deadline. Jean now claims his paddies are ruined; a metal drilling bore and concrete slab sits on his rice field and the surrounding brown earth is churned into dry clods.

An investigation by the Forum for African Investigative Reporting (FAIR) has found a Chinese company in Madagascar, with strong links to the government, is accused of unlawfully acquiring land, blighting the environment and leaving farmers destitute. In previously unpublished documents, Madagascar's National Environment Office, ONE (office national pour l'environnement), slams MSPC, owned by one of China and Madagascar's most powerful mining billionaires, Dr Hui Chi Ming. Hui is currently Madagascar's consul in Hong Kong and advises the prime minister and president on economic and Asian affairs. "He's the top of the top", says one Malagasy official who dined at Hui's Hong Kong residence close to when the philanthropist and billionaire appeared on Forbes's 2009 "400 Richest Chinese List" with an estimated wealth of $815 million.

Hui's MSPC is a subsidiary of Hoifu Energy Limited recently announced plans to increase profits through growing "the portion of oil and gas businesses". Neil Bush, the 58 year-old brother of former U.S. president George W. Bush, is one of eight directors.

Madagascar is a resource-rich country but the island's oil and gas wealth has been largely unexplored and extractive industries made up just 0.53% of GDP in 2011, the last assessed year by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

At the turn of the century, officials granted 20 onshore blocks on the country's west coast to a handful of Chinese, British, Australian, American, Indian and Malagasy companies.
Among them was MSPC, which scooped up a 9,260 square kilometer plot — larger than Devon and Cornwall combined — known as Block 3112. Eight years on, Block 3112 is promising and should start producing gas in 2017, according to Hery Zaka Razafindrakoto, the deputy head of petroleum at Madagascar's oil and gas regulator, OMNIS. But since July 2012, the ONE has visited MSPC's Mahaboboka site and questioned the company about what the government regulator identified as "grave failures committed by MSPC with regard to environmental legislation in force." One experienced government official says: "The worksite, from an environmental perspective, was a dump. It was in the worst condition that I had ever seen."


"The Chinese lied to the villagers," says Mahababoboka's Mayor Emile Rakotondravelo from his second-floor office, a concrete building where broken green lino covers the floor.
"The company said that I had already agreed to sign the contracts," something the mayor denies. Without the mayor's consent and signatures, the contracts are invalid under Malagasy law.
"I told them I wanted to legalise the contract before the Mayor," says Manantsoa. "But the company said they had already had discussions with the mayor and gotten his approval."
Accusations of land grabbing in Madagascar are not new. But ONE's response to MSPC is rare, according to insiders, reflecting the increased attention to foreign ownership of the country's natural resources.

"Land and resource grabbing in Madagascar is far from experiencing a downward trend," says Giulia Franchi, land campaigner with the Italian NGO Re:common. "Whether this happens through lease or sale contracts, the actual results for local communities is the same: their land is being grabbed and they lose any possibility to sustain themselves."

Despite MSPC submitting a document confirming it owns no land in the Mahaboboka area "The Chinese bought land through a female employee," claims another official with detailed knowledge of the case. Land registry documents show the purchaser of 74.48 acres and 2.1 hectares at Ankida is Ms Brigitte Monique Andrianifahanana, manager of Gold (Grand Investment Limited). Hui holds 21.98% of shares in a company that last year increased its stake in Gold Grand to 40%. Andrainifahanana is an employee of Hui's company Banque Industrielle et Comerciale de Madagascar and denies any link between Hui and her purchase.

From here 

A Tangled Web For Resource Control In Sudan

No apologies for posting the whole of this article from a Tanzanian freelance journalist and writer. Each section is inseparably linked and important for grasping the intricacies of the situation. JS

from Countercurrents.org

Sources say the peacekeepers are struggling with equipment problems, poor training of some contingents and the reluctance by some governments to send their soldiers into combat zones. When seven Tanzanian peacekeepers in Darfur, western Sudan, were killed and 17 seriously wounded in an ambush by gunmen, the incident sent shockwaves throughout the country. For the first time public was made aware that all was not well with their men and women deployed in the war-torn Sudan as part of the UN peacekeeping forces. The deadly attack on 13 July this year occurred when the soldiers were in a convoy searching for their vehicles that were reportedly stolen by a rebel group. The Tanzanian soldiers sustained heavy fire from machine guns and possibly rocket-propelled grenades. Among the wounded were two female police officers. No group immediately claimed responsibility. But a UN report in February said that some armed opposition groups are angry about the presence of peacekeepers and have called the force ‘a legitimate target.’

In the Tanzanian official circles scanty information was released, but some local journalists contacted the peace-keepers in Darfur. One of them said, on condition of anonymity, that a week ago unknown assailants attacked members of the army and disappeared with four vehicles. ‘It is really traumatising here; I can tell you the rebels are fully armed with sophisticated weapons,’ he lamented.

Immediately, questions were raised about the United Nations African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) whose task is to maintain peace and protect civilians from insurgents. Some asked if there was any peace to maintain in the first place.

The Tanzanian contingent of 875 military and police personnel has been stationed in Darfur for some five years as part of the UNAMID, which has strength of 16,500 troops and military observers plus 5,000 international police. Yet the latest casualty was not an isolated encounter by the solders on peace mission in Darfur.

Peacekeepers have been targeted at various times since the international force began its work in the region in 2008. In April this year gunmen shot and killed a Nigerian peacekeeper. Prior to the July attack, 150 people associated with the UN mission in Darfur had been killed while on duty in the region, according to the force's website. Following the latest attack, Tanzania is now seeking a stronger mandate for peacekeepers in the Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, so as to ‘deal with the current condition.’ The demand is to equip the peacekeepers with heavy weapons such as APC, artillery and helicopters. Army spokesman Colonel Mgawe said, ‘We want our troops to have more capacity to defend themselves against insurgents’. He said currently their rules of engagement, under Chapter 6, forbid the use of ‘excessive’ force. Now they are going to negotiate with UN for Chapter 7 so as to give the troops more fire-power to defend themselves. That means use of heavy weapons as is the case with Tanzanian forces in DRC. In fact some Tanzanians have questioned why give them heavy weapons in DRC and not in Darfur. Whether, with such armaments, they have succeeded in wiping out M23 is another question. 

The pertinent question for Darfur, however, is whether the peacekeepers there are now going to pursue the rebels and fight them on their turf or are they going to fight back when attacked. If it is the former then actually it means there is no peace to maintain and so stationing peace-keepers there is paradoxical

It has been suggested that the better solution for stopping the attack on peacekeepers would be to cut off the supply line of heavy weaponry to the rebels, especially if the supply comes from outside the Sudan.

Meanwhile, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete has asked President Omar al-Bashir to investigate the latest incident and ensure that the perpetrators are apprehended and brought to justice.The question is whether Bashir has the ability to take any action, since he himself has been under attack by the rebels. After having negotiated and signed peace treaty with them, not all have joined the cease-fire. And so his troops have been under attack from time to time. Hence he is hardly in control of the situation in Darfur, which has been described as a civil war. Darfur has over 35 tribes and ethnic groups. Half the people are small subsistence farmers, the other half being nomadic herders. For centuries the nomadic people have been grazing their cattle and camels over sprawling grass lands, sharing water sources. 

The crisis is reportedly rooted in intertribal feuds over increasingly scarce water and grazing grounds in the area hit hard by years of climate change, drought and growing famine, coupled with the encroaching Sahara Desert. The matter became worse when local tribes took up arms in 2003 against the government in Khartoum, which they accuse of marginalising them. Meanwhile, more insurgencies were launched from Darfur. Factions allied with or against neighbouring countries operated from bases inside Darfur, which became a regular landing ground for foreign military transport planes. Thus, Chad’s Idriss Deby launched a military bombardment from the neighbouring Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre. French and U.S. forces were then involved in funding, training and equipping Deby, a military ruler, who supported the rebel groups in Darfur. At the same time there were reports of Israelis providing military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, while strengthening ties with the regime in Chad, from where more weapons and troops penetrated Darfur. Refugee camps were thus militarized. 

 Darfur was further militarised when the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed in the Central African Republic and his soldiers fled to Darfur with their military hardware. The situation was not made better when, in August 1998, US President Bill Clinton ordered missile attack on the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. It was producing cheap medications for malaria and tuberculosis, supplying most of the medicine in Sudan. The plant was completely smashed by 19 cruise missiles, for no logical reason. And so Darfur became the hub of international geopolitical scramble for Africa’s resources. The region has the third largest copper and the fourth largest high quality uranium deposits in the world. It produces two-thirds of the world’s best quality gum Arabic, which is major ingredient in cold drinks, pharmaceuticals and candies. Sudan exports 80% of the world’s supply of this commodity.

The country, the largest in Africa in terms of area, is strategically located on the Red Sea, immediately south of Egypt, and borders on seven other African countries. It is situated opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, among the main suppliers of oil. Sudan also has abundance of natural gas and oil, much of it in Darfur. The problem for the West is that it is the Chinese who are pumping the oil. U.S. companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda are looking for the ways to displace China through the US military alliance with states such as Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia, which are not too friendly with Sudan. Darfur, a western region of Sudan, borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources. So it is a likely pipeline route. 

The West is thus pushing for ‘peacekeeping’ mission in Darfur in order to pursue its own agenda. That is why in the end the whole exercise may result into another Iraq or Afghanistan. This is because the United States and its allies look for conflicts, or even provoke conflicts, which they use as pretext to intervene in other countries, militarily or otherwise, directly or through proxies (including the UN). The aim is to exploit and control these countries economically and politically through puppet governments. This way they facilitate, promote and protect the investments of their corporations. This is how the United States and other western powers are working towards political domination in Africa and elsewhere, in order to exploit their resources. 

These are the sentiments that were possibly expressed by chairman of Tanzania’s National League for Democracy (NLD), Dr. Emmanuel Makaidi, when he called upon the government to withdraw Tanzanian peace-keeping troops from Sudan as their presence there is ‘not in the country’s national interest. It is not worth sacrificing our seven soldiers who lost their lives in an ambush laid by insurgents,’ he swiped, adding that Tanzania has an ill-advised foreign policy.

Nizar Visram is a Tanzanian freelance journalist and writer on political and socio-economic issues. He can be contacted at nizar1941@gmail.com

Environmental Racism ? Or Capitalism ?

We read that Shell's Opolo-Epie facility gives the lie to claims from oil multinationals and the Nigerian government that they are close to bringing an end to the destructive and wasteful practice of gas flaring.The Opolo-Epie plant is set to join at least 100 other flares burning across the swamps, creeks and forests of this oil-producing region, filling the atmosphere with toxins, seeding the clouds with acid rain and polluting the soil. The process of burning off unwanted "associated gas" brought up when oil is pumped out of the ground has been illegal in Nigeria since 1984. The government has set three separate deadlines for stopping the practice – the latest of which falls due at the end of this year – but still it continues. Medical studies have shown the gas burners contribute to an average life expectancy in the Delta region of 43 years. The area also has Nigeria's highest infant mortality rate – 12 per cent of newborns fail to see out their first year.
"This is environmental racism," said Alagoa Morris, an investigator with a local group, Environmental Rights Action. "What we are asking for is that oil companies should have to meet the same standards in Nigeria that they do operating in their own countries."

In a country where more than 60 per cent of the people have no reliable electricity supply the gas flares, some of which have been burning constantly since the 1960s ,is equivalent to more than one third of the natural gas produced in the UK's North Sea oil and gas fields and would meet the entire energy requirements of German industry.( Worldwide, the gas lost to flaring could meet one third of the EU's natural gas needs each year.) Making use of the gas being burned could produce 8,000 megawatts of power – three times Nigeria's current output. A single small- to medium-sized flare could power up to 5,000 homes, shops, schools and clinics as well as pumps and filters for drinking water.

The pollution generated from this flaring has been measured at up to 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, with unknown quantities of the far more damaging greenhouse gas: methane. According to Chris Cragg, an independent oil and gas expert. "It is one of the largest single pointless emissions of greenhouse gas on the planet, with obvious implications for climate change that will not only affect Nigeria, but also the rest of the world."

Nations vy for Nigerian gas

The EU is proposing to help the Nigerian government develop a trans-Saharan pipeline which would take gas from Nigeria through Niger and Algeria, direct to Europe.

But Russia also has realised Nigeria's importance too .A week before the EU offer, the Russian gas giant Gazprom signed a deal with the Nigerian government for gas exploration and transportation, and has clearly stated its interest in the proposed pipeline. Gazprom can offer huge investment in infrastructure as an inducement to do deals.

Europe is increasingly worried about its dependence on Russian gas, especially after Russia's action in Georgia increased its influence over European energy supply routes through the Caucasus.

Watch this space as Nigerian resources once more becomes the focal point for world capitalism competition .

Nigeria has the world's seventh largest gas reserves.