Perhaps the most precious “mineral” in the oil fields our governments
are concessioning to multinationals is water, not oil, and that its
value should be priced into the contracts. GRAPHIC | NMG
Oxfam and the African Media Initiative held a parley on the
extractives industry in East Africa in Nairobi on August 22 and 23, and
it was interesting being more than a fly on the wall.
There were plenty of stories illustrating how opaque governments and oil companies are about the contracts they enter into.
There
were revelations about what one could call “oil refugees” in Uganda,
with a case of 251 families kicked off their lands in the Albertine
Basin, and now living in camps as their resettlement and compensation is
mired in a barrel of crude oil somewhere.
Briefly,
someone dropped an idea so radical (but sensible from a green business
point of view) even in a room full of civil society activists, I didn’t
hear anyone pick it up.
She said perhaps the most
precious “mineral” in the oil fields our governments are concessioning
to multinationals is water, not oil, and that its value should be priced
into the contracts.
There was good news from an
unlikely corner of Africa: In the Democratic Republic of Congo, which
for decades has been a shining example of greed and corruption in the
extractives industry, civil society actually found an ally in President
Joseph Kabila, who backed their call to raise the taxes on the mining
companies from 2.5 per cent to 10 per cent.
And some
hilarious moments off the floor. The story was told of an African
working for an international financing firm, who some years ago was so
appalled at an oil deal being negotiated in an African country, he
snitched on his bosses and told the minister not to sign the deal,
pointing out the numerous pitfalls.
He left, feeling
proud he had done his duty as a patriotic pan-African. He woke up to a
surprise. The minister had thrown him under the bus! He had told the
chief of the firm that our man had gone and tried to persuade him not to
sign. The minister even demanded that he not be on the delegation. The
man wanted his brown envelope; he had his children’s fees to pay in some
international school, and damn his country’s interests.
Yet,
sitting back and listening, one couldn’t help but feel that
extractives, and oil in particular, are a resource from a dying era.
To
countries like Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, they are a kind of
second-generation resource. The first generation featured cotton, sisal,
copper, gold, bauxite.
In Nigeria, a shocking report
by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2014 said the Nigeria oil
industry accounted for just 0.01 per cent of new jobs that year – under
600. This despite accounting for about 70 per cent of Nigeria’s revenue.
Today,
Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry provides livelihoods to over one
million people directly and indirectly, making it the largest employer
after agriculture, and oil can’t come anywhere near enough to leave a
stain on it.
There is a future in energy – the sun.
Solar, or renewables, will be the next big thing, and 2025, when
countries like Cape Verde plan to get 100 per cent of their electricity
from renewables, could be the tipping point.
But that
is fourth generation. Right now we are busy exploiting a
third-generation resource anchored in platform technology. Safaricom’s
mobile money-transfer service, M-Pesa, was only the first step on this
road.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs. Twitter@cobbo3
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