
Can Africa Trade Its Way to Peace? - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16cohen.html
======
bilbo0s
Uhh . . . Maybe this writer is unfamiliar with how Africa works.

Rwanda last year exported 250 million USD worth of coltan. Unfamiliar with
what coltan is? It's the African name for columbite-tantalite. Still not
ringing a bell? Well you can extract niobium and, most importantly, tantalum
from it. The same tantalum that facilitates the use of that nice shiny iPhone
you probably own. Don't own an iPhone? You still use tantalum, it's in every
other cell phone too! As well as your laptop, and DVD player but I digress.

I was talking about the 250 million USD worth of coltan that Rwanda sold on
the global market last year. Yeah, a curious thing though, Rwanda does not
have any natural deposits of coltan. The only deposits in the area are in DR
Congo. Where Rwanda is supporting Tutsi militias to 'protect the people from
discrimination'. Someone must have forgotten to tell the people though,
because every time the Tutsi militias approach a city, the people flee in
terror.

I recently spoke with a Swiss friend of mine who stayed with me for a while
after returning from the Congo and before she went back to Lausanne. She works
for the UN and had occasion to go meet Laurent NKunda before the rest of the
world woke up to what Rwanda was up to. Laurent Nkunda is the leader of these
Tutsi 'protectors'. At any rate, as she traveled up the road from the lines of
the government troops to Nkunda's, she noticed something at the roadblock he
had set up that told her all she needed to know about him. You see, his
roadblock was composed of the bodies of his victims, topped with heads.

Now the Americans sail in, and say Rwanda and Congo should negotiate with this
man. What?!?! And, if that was not bad enough, we now have people in the West
saying we should allow Rwanda to continue to export coltan. Only now we'll
make it legal under the guise of free-trade.

OK. Setting aside the crimes against humanity that this man has committed
against literally millions of Congolese civilians. How can we reward the
violation of another nation's sovereignty for the exploitation of their
mineral wealth? What's to stop Nigeria from pulling the same crap in Cameroon
for the oil riches? Or Angola from sweeping into Namibia for the diamonds?
There are a million potential situations like this on a continent as rich in
minerals as Africa. This idea would set a HORRIBLE precedent. I am shocked
that the NYTimes would even entertain printing it.

I suppose I'm making too much of it though. This would never happen, the
African Union would not support it for just the reasons I outlined above.
Still, irks me that someone would present that as a 'solution'.

~~~
pmjordan
Every time I see some supposed solution to "the Africa problem" proposed by a
European or North American, I have to think that this person has very clearly
never _been_ to Africa, or he or she would realise very quickly that armchair
economist's ideas are completely out of touch with reality.

I have tenuous family ties to southern Africa and have visited on numerous
occasions; now, I gather that the south, on the whole, is in much better shape
than central Africa, but even here, the problems seem clearly rooted in the
cultural clash: the west (globalisation, technology, free markets, powerful
invaders) collided with the old tribal system. Both survive to this day, and
in some areas this results in a particularly toxic mixture.

I don't claim to have a good understanding of the situation, but I know that
cultural change is _very_ slow, and I think that's the only thing that might
end this mess. But then I only need to look a couple hundred km from here,
where until recently Serbs and Albanians were slaughtering each other over
Kosovo. We haven't even outgrown the tribal culture in Europe, how can these
people seriously believe in macroeconomic solutions for Africa?

------
jonas_b
An interesting article which ends on positive note, with the OP giving a
scenario for how the countries in the vicinity of Congo could form a common
market, similar to the early EU/EEC that would be a way out of poverty and
conflict.

I'm afraid he's a bit too optimistic though about the ability of the US to
influence the region in a positive manner through diplomatic efforts, while
preserving quotas and tariffs on agricultural goods and minerals; the main
export products of Sub-saharan Africa.

To enable any country to lift themselves out of poverty, first give them the
ability to trade with the rich.

