Untapped reviews

Hi,

Just finished up Untapped, the Scramble for Africa's Oil by John Ghazvinian. As you might guess, it's all about the development of oil in sub-Saharan Africa.

My Ghazvinian wrote an excerpt of his book for Virginia Quarterly Review. It was a great article and the full book is extremely good. Aside from the problems that oil has brought to the continent, there's a series of great narratives describing the outrageous fortunes of a number of African states.

Basically, Africa is fucked. National and international companies are robbing the continent of it's mineral birthright and leaving nothing behind except poverty and misery. True, it's not completely the fault of the companies. There's the botched mis-management of European colonialism that counted on ethnic division to maintain law and order and now results in genocide and civil war. The leaders in Africa are either hopelessly naive in dealing with complex oil contracts or they're despots eager to live the high life and cement their rule with oil company cash. Simple human greed makes dealing with a sudden windfall of oil even harder than it might otherwise be.

Plus, everyone thinks that oil will be a magical cash cow. Governments stop collecting taxes and become wholly dependent on oil revenues. They don't care what happens to their people so long as the oil money keeps flowing. And when the oil reserves run out? Well...everyone just keeps looking the other way and hoping the Deluge will come tomorrow.

This is a fantastic book. I got it via interlibrary loan, but I thin I may wind up buying a copy. It's certainly feeding into my ideas for an African wargame.

Great stuff
Tom

Untapped reviews

Hi,

Just finished up Untapped, the Scramble for Africa's Oil by John Ghazvinian. As you might guess, it's all about the development of oil in sub-Saharan Africa.

My Ghazvinian wrote an excerpt of his book for Virginia Quarterly Review. It was a great article and the full book is extremely good. Aside from the problems that oil has brought to the continent, there's a series of great narratives describing the outrageous fortunes of a number of African states.

Basically, Africa is fucked. National and international companies are robbing the continent of it's mineral birthright and leaving nothing behind except poverty and misery. True, it's not completely the fault of the companies. There's the botched mis-management of European colonialism that counted on ethnic division to maintain law and order and now results in genocide and civil war. The leaders in Africa are either hopelessly naive in dealing with complex oil contracts or they're despots eager to live the high life and cement their rule with oil company cash. Simple human greed makes dealing with a sudden windfall of oil even harder than it might otherwise be.

Plus, everyone thinks that oil will be a magical cash cow. Governments stop collecting taxes and become wholly dependent on oil revenues. They don't care what happens to their people so long as the oil money keeps flowing. And when the oil reserves run out? Well...everyone just keeps looking the other way and hoping the Deluge will come tomorrow.

This is a fantastic book. I got it via interlibrary loan, but I thin I may wind up buying a copy. It's certainly feeding into my ideas for an African wargame.

Great stuff
Tom