Africa: Mining profits soar, but Africans are still poor

According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study, the top 40 mining firms enjoyed a 1,900 per cent cumulative increase in net profits in the six years between 2002 and 2007, says Yao Graham, the co-ordinator of Third World Network-Africa. 'But very little of this additional income and profits went to the mineral exporting African countries, thanks both to the lopsided fiscal terms enjoyed by mining firms, and to their use of tax avoidance schemes such as doing business with shell companies in tax havens.'