Many thanks for your email. One hopes that the US will follow the example of Sweden and The Netherlands – and cut off aid to Rwanda to pressurize the regime there to stop assisting the DR Congo’s Tutsi rebels.
As a matter of fact, there are many Africans who believe that if the developed nations providing aid to African governments were to stop providing such financial assistance, it would help bring better leadership to Africa. Much of that aid simply finds its way into the offshore bank accounts of Africa’s ruling elites.
I will give you an example of how much more effective it would be if nations like yours were to provide aid presently given to governments in Africa, to NGO ‘s and other humanitarian organizations, working at the grassroots level in Africa.
Do look up the American NGO, Fearless Planet. It is helping to change the lives of everyday folk in rural Ghana in a very profound way. If even a fraction of the billions of dollars in US aid given to Ghana’s largely unimaginative political class over the years, were to have gone to the Fearless Planets of the world working at the grassroots level here, the quality of life of millions of Ghanaians would have improved dramatically by now.
The question most concerned and independent-thinkers in Africa constantly ask themselves is: why do these nations continue with the present madness – especially as your own Western nations are facing real economic difficulties presently: and will be in that predicament for some foreseeable time to come?
One of the greatest gifts that the new Obama administration could give Africa, would be to lead the other developed nations of the West to ban offshore tax havens worldwide – as part of the ongoing reforms the nations of the West are carrying out of their financial services sectors. Such a new policy would immediately block a major hiding place for stolen wealth from the continent of Africa.
May I also say that there are many Africans who are disappointed that the US AFRICOM has not deemed it fit to provide assistance for the DR Congo’s military. If the US wants to have any continued influence in Africa in the long-term, it must help the democratically elected government of the DR Congo to strengthen its hold over the whole of its territory.
As things currently stand, do not be surprised if China decides eventually that it is in its long-term strategic interest to help the government of the DR Congo – and starts developing a relationship between its military and that of the DR Congo. The US will rapidly lose its influence in much of Africa if China were to help stabilize the DR Congo – and goes on to help it develop its full economic potential.
Thanks once again for your email. Peace and blessings to the members of your mission – and the great American people whose interests you serve.
Best wishes,
Kofi.
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Mr. Kofi Thompson,
I think you have made several profoundly important points in your open letter. The money that is stolen and misappropriated from people, from government, follows the same paths as both criminal and legal money around the world. It disappears when it crosses borders. Nicholas Shaxson wrote about this in his book about the African oil businesss Poisoned Wells. You might be interested in this passage:
There are basically three forms of dirty money. One is criminal money: from drug dealing, say, or slave trading or terrorism. The next is corrupt money, like the fromer Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha’s looted oil billions. The third form, commercial money - what our finest companies and richest individuals hide from our tax collectors - is bigger. The point - and this is crucial - is that these three forms of dirty money use exactly the same mechanisms and subterfuges: tax havens, shell banks, shielded trusts, anonymous foundations, dummy corporations, mispricing schemes, and the like, all administered by a “pinstripe infrastructure” of mainstream banks, lawyers, and accountants. (p. 225)
. . .
In this parallel secret universe the world’s biggest and richest individuals and firms, News Corporation, Citigroup, and, yes, ExxonMobil - can quite legally cut themselves loose from pesky full taxation and grow explosively, leaving smaller competitors, who pay their full dues along with the rest of us, choking in their dust. This undermines the very notion of capitalism: the big companies’ advantage has nothing to do with the quality or price of what they produce. If you are worried about the power of big global corporations, don’t always attack them directly, but attack bank secrecy instead. This is the clever way to take on the big fish, using a net that would also snag the Sani Abachas, the Mobutus, the North Koreas, the terrorists, and the drug lords.
. . .
Africa’s Gulf of Guinea will produce 20 or so billion barrels of oil in the next decade, worth perhaps a trillion dollars . . . If half of global trade finance flows through offshore structures, and soon a quarter of America’s oil imports will be coming from Africa . . . we have a systemic and fast-growing problem on our hands.
The dirty world of tax havens is no grand conspiracy, but a decentralized global terrain tucked away in the interstices between states. It is a problem of fragmented global political and economic architecture. National politicians cannot solve this one: only a coordinated international response will do.
(Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil, by Nicholas Shaxson, p.225&227, ISBN 978-1403971944)
I have been hoping the current financial crisis, in the US and globally, and the changing US government, might encourage some requirements for transparency. So far I don't see any sign of it.
Your remarks on the DR Congo are right on target. You might be interested in this report from Refugees International: U.S. Civil Military Imbalance for Global Engagement: Lessons from the Operational Level in Africa 08/17/2008.
As to how AFRICOM works, I wrote this post which may interest you, on how it operates in Ghana: AFRICOM, US military bases, and Ghana.
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