The Germans know how to build cars. When the organisation I used to work for was getting a new office car, our choice - from the make to the colour - was primarily dictated by concerns about carjacking. A year later I was involved in a head-on collision, following which the car rolled. The car, a new Volkswagen Jetta, was written-off. But I, amazingly, emerged unscathed thanks to its airbag and seatbelt.

Port Harcourt ELF Nigeria Limited has promised to end gas flaring in all its operations in the country from December this year when work on its Amenam Kpono project phase II would have been completed. The company said already the bridge, which would convey gas from the phase one of the Amenam Kpono project was about 99% completed. Giving details yesterday at Saipem yard in Port Harcourt after conducting newsmen round, Engineer Patrick Ngene said the phase one of the project came on stream since 1993.

The Freedom of Expression Institute is very concerned about the state of freedom of expression and academic freedom at the University of KwaZulu Natal. Free expression and academic freedom are in severe decline at the university. The latest incident causing concern is the matter of Fazel Khan, who is being hauled before a disciplinary committee.

Satellite photos of the Pacific reveal the return of a world-wide weather phenomenon, the so-called "El Niño". For Southern Africa, the phenomenon always has spelled severe drought and famine. Scientists expect the Niño to strike already in 2007. The 1991-92 El Niño brought the worst drought in southern Africa during the 20th century.

Good rainfall in recent months has boosted harvests in arid Niger and reduced the risk of more hunger for a population that has long been vulnerable to food shortages, local authorities said. Niger, a landlocked country in north-central Africa, topped international news headlines last year when failed rains and a locust invasion combined with high market prices for staple foods to create the country's worst food shortages in recent years.

Three European companies were found guilty of fraud in a major development project in southern Africa by a Lesotho judiciary. The companies were fined a total of $5.6 million (€4.4 million) on Wednesday. Investigations of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) contributed to the court’s decision which found a French, Italian and German company guilty of fraud and bribery.

The World Bank Board of Executive Directors has approved a US$23 million credit to assist the Government of Zambia to consolidate on-going reforms in the water sector, by improving access and sustainability of water and sanitation for consumers in Lusaka. The project also provides funding that will lead to a more coordinated approach for water and sanitation investments countrywide.

Emira Woods points out that “Yet as in many communities in Nigeria’s oil rich Delta region, most people of Yenagoa live in mud huts. Some reside only a few feet away from the oil wells. But they lack electricity and indoor toilets. They have no hospitals, no running water, no schools. And there is unemployment too. Oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil bring in foreign workers for even the most menial jobs. ... Like many Africans, I fear that oil companies look to Africa for its resource wealth without seeing the people. Resource-rich communities are dehumanized and the color-line is ever present as the greatest profits flow steadily to wealthy white men who already control enormous wealth and power.”

It is almost impossible to imagine, as we sit in a well lit, fully functioning gas station on Main Street, USA, that a community blessed with oil riches under its soil could look as impoverished as Yenagoa in the Nigerian state of Bayelsa.

Yenagoa is the site of one of Nigeria 's first oil wells, built in pre-independence 1956. Yet as in many communities in Nigeria’s oil rich Delta region, most people of Yenagoa live in mud huts. Some reside only a few feet away from the oil wells. But they lack electricity and indoor toilets. They have no hospitals, no running water, no schools. And there is unemployment too. Oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil bring in foreign workers for even the most menial jobs.

I recently took a trip to Yenagoa as part of a tour of three African countries--Nigeria, Chad, and Liberia-- that may well fuel future U.S. energy needs. Historically, the United States has gotten two-thirds of its oil from other countries. Most U.S. oil imports come from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada. Increasingly, as the United States, China, and other nations expand their thirst for oil, and instability deepens in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a more attractive source for crude. The U.S. National Intelligence Council estimates that Africa could supply 25% of U.S. oil by 2015.

The three countries I visited could well play a role in meeting that goal. Each is at different stages of oil production. In Nigeria, oil exploration dates back to 1956. In Chad, extraction started just three years ago. In Liberia, where I spent much of my childhood, the potential of oil off its expansive coastline holds hope for the future.

In each of these countries, a complex web of geo-political actors, from oil company executives and government officials to military agents, makes decisions that impact the lives in the communities that produce the oil that flows straight to consumers in the United States.

Nigerian Injustice

The residents of Yenagoa lack jobs and basic social services. What they do have in abundance is environmental damage from decades of oil spills, compounded by the constant burning of gas flares necessary to extract the crude. Farmland is rendered useless while rivers and waterways, once well populated with marine life, are now barren. One local chief explained that he received from Shell oil 150 Naira ($1.15) for each acre of land used by the company. I was astonished when he went on to say, “150 Naira, once every four years.” With oil prices at historic highs, how could the compensation to communities long suffering the health impacts of oil spills and gas flares be such a pittance?

Military and security personnel blanket the area around Yenagoa to protect oil interests. The communities are under siege.

In Odi, a community adjacent to a well built in1958, villagers are demanding basic services like clean running water, electricity, and schools. The response from security agents has been severe. Our delegation watched in horror as one young man after another came forward to show fresh wounds from 5 days earlier. They told us that uniformed military men had grabbed 15 youths as they walked home from an adjacent village in the middle of the afternoon. The young men were beaten, tortured, and imprisoned, as a warning to others in the village. For almost a week, the youths languished in a prison miles away. Their family members were forced to walk for a day and a half to see them or bring them food in that decrepit prison. Their crime? Clamoring for basic rights.

As oil companies celebrate record profits and the price of oil hovers close to $65 per barrel, African communities ostensibly blessed with the curse of oil languish in squalor. In fact, with no useable farmland or waterways, many in Nigeria say that they are worse off than their grandparents were before the discovery of oil.

Hope in Chad?

Recognizing the plight of their neighbors in Nigeria, communities in Chad’s oil producing areas worked hard, even before the onset of oil production in 2003, to minimize environmental damage and maximize the benefits to communities from which the oil flows.

The 650-mile Chad-Cameroon pipeline (Africa’s biggest investment project) links landlocked Chad to world export markets through Cameroon’s port city of Douala. It was funded through loans and other support from the World Bank. Heroic measures initiated by activist, civil society, human rights, and religious community leaders led to a forward-looking revenue management law to manage the flow of oil revenues in a transparent way, ensuring resources for future generations.

However, the Chadian government has subverted its own revenue management law. It has diverted spending away from the original priorities of agriculture, health, and education and toward “security.” As a result, money that only now is beginning to flow from oil production is spent on weapons and other military equipment, instead of poverty reduction and the interests of future generations.

The oil wells in Chad are newer, so its oil-producing areas haven’t yet experienced the damage caused by decades of oil spills. However, gas flaring, with its related health and environmental damage, is an integral part of the production cycle. When the wind blows, the smell of the burning gas blankets villages miles away.

In a community near Doba, with gas flares as a backdrop, villagers told us about increased death and dying in the past few years from respiratory ailments and contaminated water supplies.

Meanwhile, in Chad’s fertile agricultural zone, mangoes, cotton, gum Arabic and cattle are abundant. Yet there is not one factory transforming the raw produce into goods for domestic or international markets.

In spite of these challenges, Chadians maintain that their vigilance will minimize negative social and environmental impacts of oil and secure poverty reduction. Chad could easily feed itself and its neighbors if productive capacity were built in the agricultural sector. Oil revenue directed at building an education system, providing healthcare, as well as basic electricity, running water, and roads, could go a long way toward improving the condition of people’s lives.

Throughout the country, in spite of a recent coup attempt and the elections in April that the majority of people boycotted, Chadians remain hopeful. From the capital city to the Southern oil fields, everyone seemed confident that future generations will experience a better life.

Liberian Alternatives

Liberia, the third country I visited, has recently emerged from 25 years of war. People there are hopeful too, despite the 85% unemployment rate and the complete lack of functioning schools or healthcare.

Liberians hope that concessions now being granted for off-shore oil exploration will lead down the road to a new source of revenue. Liberia’s National Oil Company negotiated two contracts with the Nigeria-based Oranto Petroleum Limited and British-based Broadway Consolidated PLC. With exploration already underway, few in Liberia think that leaving the resource untouched is a viable option.

The key question is, whether and how Liberia can escape the oil curse that so clearly has hurt Nigeria, Angola, and other countries in Africa’s richly endowed Gulf of Guinea region.

One possibility is for countries like Liberia to consider alternative models for oil development. What, for example, can Liberia learn from Venezuela’s example of 61% national control of oil revenue and management? Or from Norway’s use of oil revenue to diversify the economy while advancing social services?

Like many Africans, I fear that oil companies look to Africa for its resource wealth without seeing the people. Resource-rich communities are dehumanized and the color-line is ever present as the greatest profits flow steadily to wealthy white men who already control enormous wealth and power.

The price of oil nearly tripled since President George W. Bush took office in 2001, yet the majority of the people who live in the countries from which the fuel flows still experience grinding poverty. Taken together, the $10 billion quarterly profits of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, or Shell and the $1.15 per acre compensation paid (every four years) to some farmers in oil producing zones, show just how unfair the global oil industry has become.

The next time you pull up to the pump, stop a moment and remember that the thick black crude is extracted from the earth’s crust at great social, political, and environmental cost. Then do whatever it is in your power to demand dignity and proper compensation for those whose land or sea may be cursed with the blessing of this natural resource.

* Emira Woods is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

In transferring land to black ownership as part of government efforts to right apartheid wrongs, South African officials have to balance the country's interests, IPS reports. In Zimbabwe, transfers away from thousands of white commercial farmers decimated the economy. South African officials hope to transfer 30% of land by 2014.

Namibia has announced new plans and set targets for the completion of another power project in the country's all-out drive to curb the regional power shortage. The country's power utility, NamPower, said in its latest announcement the 500MW Baynes hydropower project on the Kunene River, west of the scenic Epupa Falls, would go ahead. A new feasibility study would start this year.

Key stakeholders in the Niger Delta region are set to converge on November 16 and 17 in Port Harcourt , the Rivers State capital under the auspices of Niger Delta Environmental Roundtable. There is little doubt that it is the first independent effort initiated by the people of the Niger Delta to engage the oil exploring and gas firms on how to secure the environment of the region for the present and the future.

Two out of seven National Forestry Authority board members have resigned after refusing to respect the Cabinet 's directive that Bidco Palm Oil takes over Kalangala forests. The resignations have been followed by that of the forest conservation organisation's legal counsel, Ms Georgina Kugonza.

West Africa has the lowest coverage of drinking water and sanitation in the world, and the numbers are rising not falling, according to the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF). As populations have boomed throughout the region, the absolute number of people without drinking water increased from 124 million in 1990 to 157 million in 2004, and the number without sanitation from 173 million to 225 million, according to a UNICEF report released on Friday.

Our demand for water has turned us into vampires, draining the world of its lifeblood. What can we do to prevent mass global drought and starvation?" Released today: IRIN's new In-Depth, Running Dry? The humanitarian impact of the world water crisis, offers analysis and a wide range of articles and interviews on the critical water issues facing the world today.

Hundreds of people were homeless in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara state on Monday (October 2) after a dam collapsed at the weekend, washing away more than 500 houses, officials and residents said. The Barrage Dam located outside the state capital, Gusau, gave way on Saturday afternoon following more than 24 hours of heavy rain, Zamfara governor Sani Yerimah told reporters on Sunday. “The water came with excessive force and caused so much destruction,” he said.

“Water, gathered and stored since the beginning of time in layers of granite and rock, in the embrace of dams and the ribbons of rivers - will one day, unheralded, modestly, easily and simply flow out to every South African who turns a tap. That is my dream.” These were the words of poet Antjie Krog on the promulgation of South Africa’s post-apartheid national water policy in April 1997.

President, Consumer Rights Advocacy League (CRAL), Mrs Cordel Okafor, has described as life threatening, the general environmental conditions under which the Nigerian consumers carry on. Stating this yesterday at the organisation's 6th Annual Workshop/Awards in Lagos, Okafor said a recent inspection carried out by CRAL in Lagos, indicated poor environmental condition under which food are served to consumers.

In an effort to meet up with the 2008 zero flare target of the Federal Government, Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL) has stated its readiness to meet the set date even as it stated conditions to enable it achieve this aim.

"We talk of globalisation, of the global village, but here in Africa, we are under the impression of being that village's septic tank," says Senegalese ecologist Haidar al-Ali in an article appearing in South Africa's Mail and Guardian.

Environmentalists have opposed attempts to revive plans to build a controversial hydro power project on the Kunene River in northwest Namibia. Following an international outcry, the construction of the proposed Epupa Dam was halted eight years ago as the resultant flooding would have destroyed the livelihood of the semi-nomadic Ovahimba ethnic group.