Hickel is right about the technocrats

For sure profit, power and the modern version of law of the jungle albeit in the global political economy: ‘comparative advantage’ are regularly invoked as justification to finance wars to access and extract raw materials cheaply with little regard for the socio-economic rights and benefits that should ‘under normal’ conditions accrue to the ‘substrate communities’ and countries in Africa in particular.

Speaking from a South African experience there are three issues that stand out: Type, level and depth of poverty and unemployment, the greatest income gap internationally despite lessons from SAPs and the most recent financial crisis amidst some of the greatest natural resources and cash available. Yet a country such as South Africa lags far, in broader terms, behind in socio-economic development than a country the size of South Korea which has far fewer natural resources as economic base should one wish to only look at that variable.

The issue of agency and power is selectively glossed over or dumped onto the ‘losers’ substrate-communities/ countries laps in the global political-power-economic stakes. The proponents usually exonerate themselves from any form of culpability or complicity.