cc As Africa surpasses the Middle East as an oil supplier to the US, Emira Woods argues that satisfying the US's addiction to fossil fuels remains the primary influence on the country's foreign policy. With global energy multinationals like Chevron and British Petroleum (BP) battling for a piece of sites like the Kosmos Energy-owned 'Jubilee Fields' off the Ghanaian coast, the US AFRICOM (AFRIcan COMmand) remains a symbol of US efforts to consolidate its access to oil resources. Will Obama's commitment to a greener economy translate into concrete policies, Woods asks, or will we continue to see increased military backing for an oil-based agenda?

The mythological bird, the “Sankofa” is used as a metaphor for Africa. While it is important for the continent to remember the past it is even more important to look to the future and build on the positive aspects of the past, writes Emira Woods.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the end of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which ripped an estimated 12 million Africans from their homelands and transported them to lives of unspeakable suffering and humiliation in Europe and the Americas. It is important to reflect on this tragic history, but also, like the Sankofa bird, to look towards ways of abolishing the forms of slavery that still ravage lives throughout much of the African world.

Modern-day slavery takes many shapes. In Liberia, the Bridgestone/Firestone Corporation continues to profit from slave-like conditions in their rubber plantation. Firestone's operations force children as young as 11 years old to work in the fields from before the sun rises to the late day. Used as beasts of burden, these kids typically carry two 75 pound buckets of rubber for up to two miles to storage or collection tanks. Should the children refuse to work, their parents risk losing the measly $3.19 daily wage, all while Bridgestone/Firestone announces record level profits for 2005 and the first half of 2006.

In the spirit of Sankofa, an alliance of human rights groups and labor unions is fighting to end this disgraceful abuse, and the International Labor Rights Fund has filed a case against the company.

Trafficking

Another, and perhaps most overt, form of modern day slavery is human trafficking. Throughout the African world women and children face a murderous and exploitative system of servitude. There are the parents in Egypt who reportedly sell kidneys and other body parts to feed their children. And there are the teenagers forced into prostitution working in the “AIDS corridor” running through oil-producing areas of Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad. The millions of impoverished women and children in Africa make easy targets for a growing number of traffickers who push them into unpaid or poorly compensated labor or sexual services. This takes place often through trickery and, at times, kidnapping. In response, the anti-trafficking movement has gained strength and visibility in recent years. This movement which includes survivors is making steady strides to break the chains for women and children around the world.

In the Americas, where wealth is being accumulated into fewer and fewer hands, modern-day forms of slavery are easily visible, from the flower pickers in Latin America to the garment factory workers in Haiti; from migrant workers in fields picking tomatoes in the southern United States to African-Americans locked into poor work conditions with inadequate compensation for their labor. Within the U.S., African girls and women are being enslaved in homes as maids and nannies for diplomats, foreign nationals, and Americans alike. Reports of individuals being held against their will, made to work around the clock for little or no money are becoming increasingly common. Advocates using new strategies and unusual bedfellows from law enforcement are working in the U.S. and around the world to tackle these and other issues of modern-day slavery.

Jubilee Movement

Religious and other groups around the world have united in a Jubilee movement to liberate the African world from another set of shackles – the extreme burden of foreign debt. According to the United Nations, $100 million a day is squeezed out of Africa in debt service payments to the rich world, siphoning off scarce resources needed to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other key concerns of the continent. In exchange, African governments are further enslaved by stringent loan conditions that control everything from inflation rates to wages for teachers and doctors.

Last year, the Bush Administration agreed to a plan to cancel the debts of 18 countries, most of them in Africa. The Jubilee movement is working to build on that precedent by pushing for the cancellation of the debts of 50 or so additional countries that are in desperate need.

The egg of hope in our Sankofa year lies in another commemoration. This year also represents the 50th anniversary of independence for many African states. The movement for change that brought an end to the slave trade culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation’s abolition of legal slavery. The abolitionist movement later inspired a pan-African drive for political independence. It was visionary leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Guinea’s Sekou Toure, Cape Verde’s Amilcar Cabral, and Zaire’s Patrice Lumumba who in turn led a movement to throw off the yoke of colonial slavery. Today we have new inspiring leaders like the many women civil society leaders, cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, and yes even Presidents, reshaping Africa’s political landscape.

This Sankofa year is a vehicle to build movements for peace and justice. There couldn’t be a better time to focus the world’s attention on ending the economic scourge that has drained the African world since the days of legal slavery. Justice for the African world can only come by restoring the dignity of her people, wherever they may live. Seize the Sankofa year. End all forms of modern day slavery and secure reparations for all debts incurred.

* Emira Woods is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. She was born in Liberia. See http://www.fps-dc.org

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

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