Patrick Bond (1) (1961–)

The total misery and underdevelopment of Africa has, after a period of neglect, regained much attention in Western nations the past few years. Several conferences as well as aid appeals, organized by NGO bureaucracies and pop stars, have been much in the picture for their supposed charitable efforts for the African poor. But to what degree to they actually address what the matter is with Africa?

Patrick Bond, somewhat well-known in radical circles as a political economist, has written "Looting Africa" to summarize how global capital and its comprador elites within Africa have systematically plundered and ruined the continent before and after independence. Even now, the average income of Africans is lower than it was in the 1960s, and if one applies the necessary correctives to GDP tallies, many African nations have been losing per capita income as the result of foreign investment. Moreover, neoliberal programmes of privatization and monetarism have made the poor worse and worse off, without leading to any significant improvement in growth or development. Combine this with the massive theft of African production by local dictators and foreign multinationals, the extreme monoculture production of many African nations, and the unfair trade practices in agriculture on the part of Western nations (in particular the EU), and you have a recipe for disaster.

Bond's analysis is telling and summarizes the issues well, making the book serve as a useful primer for further research into African political economy. He is somewhat vacillating and vague about possible solutions though, fixing some hope on radical NGOs and World Social Forums, but without explaining anything much in detail. It is also a pity that immigration from Africa to elsewhere, in particular Europe, is not addressed in the book. Nevertheless, this is a good popular introduction to the plunder of Africa in the past decades.… (altro)