Deep Fish has written about the push into Africa by transnationals from India and China, among others, driven by their desire to secure access to oil and raw materials for their fast growing economies. However, Africa is also home to more than half the 35-odd countries that have experienced humanitarian emergencies?man-made crises in which thousands have perished from wars and state-sponsored violence?during the 1990s.
According to Professor Wayne Nafziger of Kansas State University, Africa has been vulnerable to such crises as it has experienced negative or stagnant economic growth during the last two decades of the 20th century. Economic collapse has led to mass fatalities. A civil war tends to lower per capita GDP by 2.2 percentage points, and Africa?s per capita income was, in fact, lower in the late 1990s than at the end of the 1960s.
Nafziger, who recently delivered the Institute of Human Development?s distinguished lecture, admits that his analysis focuses only on internal factors such as the role of powerful countries that scramble for resources in Africa. Sudan is civil war-ridden, but that hasn?t stopped ONGC?s oil exploration thrust. So, too, is China?s CNPC that has invested $8 billion in that country?s oil sector and has stationed thousands of irregular military and construction personnel there.
According to him, the politics of African governing elites are largely responsible for humanitarian emergencies. Slow or negative per capita income growth puts ruling elites on the horns of a dilemma: they can expand rent-seeking opportunities, contributing to further economic stagnation that threatens the regime?s legitimacy. To forestall threats to the regime, elites may use repression or violence to suppress discontent and capture a greater share of the shrinking economic surplus.
Pervasive income inequality and deprivation, by fuelling social tensions, also increase socio-political instability. Negative per capita income growth interacts with political predation in a deathly downward spiral, as seen in many parts of Africa during the lost decade of the 1990s. What role will transnationals from emerging economies play in conflict-ridden parts?
