as ASSOCIATION OF CONCERNED AFRICA SCHOLARS Bulletin Winter 2006/Spring 2007 No. 75176 Africa's Resources in the Global Economy Page Introduction: The Resources Issue Editor 1 ----------------------------------------~------~-------------- La Recolonizacion de Africa/The Recolonization of Mrica Jesus "Chucho" Garcia 4/5 Surface and Sub-Surface Resource Rights Among Indigenous Peoples in Southern Africa Bob Hitchcock 6 The Scramble for Mrican Oil Daniel Volman 11 Copper in the Congo: The Political Economy of Wasted Opportunities Jan-Frederik Abbeloos 16 Coltan and the Congo Conflict Julia Ogris 20 Blood Diamonds Are For Never: The Conflict Diamond Trade and US Popular Culture Sarah Drake and Jesse Benjamin 26 Guns, Bombs, Poverty and Death in Mrica: An Indictment on Modernity Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni 33 The Struggle for Resource Control in the Niger Delta: The Rise and Context ofM.E.N.D. Gift Omobolanle Amaike and Jesse Benjamin 39 What Color Green is the Green Revolution? Greenbacks or Biodiversity? Carol B. Thompson 44 Advertising Colonialism, or the Day I Cut Up My AMEX Card William G. Martin 47 Is Democracy Bad for Business in Kenya? Pamela Inoti and Jesse Benjamin 48 Rethinking Leadership as a Critical National Resource in Mrica Eric Masinde Aseka 52 ISSN 1051-08442 ACAS Executive Committee* Co-Chairs Sean Jacobs Kristin Peterson Communication Studies and CAASP Anthropology Department 4 700 Haven Hall 3151 Social Sciences Plaza A University of Michigan University of California 505 South State Street Irvine, CA 92697-5100 Ann Arbor, MI48109 Email: [email protected]. Email: [email protected] Research Committee ACAS Bulletin Editor Carol Thompson Jesse Benjamin Political Science Department Sociology and AADS Box 15036 Kennesaw State University Northern Arizona University 1000 Chastain Road Flagstaff, AZ 86011-5306 USA Kennesaw, GA 30144 E-mail: carol. [email protected] Email: [email protected] Political Action Committee Tony Roshan Samara Socwlogy and Anthropology George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www .concernedafricascholars.org/ ACAS Board of Directors* Ousseina Alidou (Rutgers University) William Martin (Binghamton University) Merle Bowen (University of illinois) Bill Minter (AfricaFocus) Horace Campbell (Syracuse University) James Mittelman (American University) Ann-Louise Colgan Prexy Nesbitt Carolyn Cooper Joel Sarnoff (Stanford University) Imani Countess Elizabeth Schmidt (Loyola University) Jennifer Davis Ann Seidman (Clark University) Asma Abdel Halim (U. Toledo) Meredeth Turshen Frank Holmquist (Hampshire College) Daniel Volman Gerald Horne (University of Houston) Immanuel Wallerstein (Yale University) AI Kagan David Wiley (Michigan State University) Sidney Lemelle (Pomona College) Noah Wiley *Affiliation for identification purposes only ACAS Bulletin, No. 75/76, Winter 2006/Spring 2007 Introduction: Africa's Resources in the Twenty First Century Editor After a transitional hiatus, the ACAS Bulletin is Our approach to critically examrnrng Africa's back. We are pleased to bring you this special resources is two-fold. On the one hand, we think double issue, long in the works, devoted to that people need to know more, and have access to resources in Africa and their connections to US and better information about, the primary resources and global economic policies. We apologize for the commodities that originate in Africa and go on to delay in getting this issue out. This is mainly a populate global commodity chains. Even after a consequence of a major reorganization at ACAS, brief mention in a 2006 VH1 Special with the band including a new and much improved website, now Sum 41, most people we speak with still do not available at: www.concernedafricascholars.org. know what coltan is, or that it is in their phones, Please visit the new website, join our efforts to laptops and playstations, or that the violence reinvigorate the organization, become a member of associated with its extraction in Congo and ACAS if you are not already one, encourage others elsewhere in Africa is generally akin to that we are to do so, and consider writing for us in the Bulletin, now beginning to connect with blood diamonds. for our action alerts, and our political research Most Western consumers do not associate the committee. convenience of electronic miniaturization with violence in Africa, or the profiteering of shadowy At the start of the new millennium, Africa's corporations and multinational subsidiaries. Yet, as position within the world economy remains much 'blood diamond' enters the US lexicon, a sustained as it has over the past 125 to 500 years -a land of focus on resources in Africa, and the rest of the resources unequally extracted and appropriated by world, could lead us to a new language of growing wealthy industrialized nations and their social responsibility, in which terms like fair trade corporations, perpetuating continued underdevelop­ produce, conflict-free coltan, equitable petroleum, ment at many levels. While African economic community development cotton, cooperative initiatives such as NEP AD, or more grassroots bananas, and so on, would proliferate and start to businesses, partnerships and social movements seek make sense. Every resource we consume in the to challenge this status quo, global capitalism under world has a history, a chain of links from US hegemony continues unabated. This issue of production to consumption, and the better these are the ACAS Bulletin joins in a growing conversation understood the better citizens of the privileged about Africa's resources, and the role they play in consuming north will be aware of and African and global realities. 1 It is an initial effort, able/compelled to alter how they negotiate their with the intention of continuing, so we encourage positions within the economic and social networks our readers to send us updates, additions, they inhabit. To this end, this issue contains essays perspectives and debates on these and related on oil, copper, coltan, diamonds and the global issues, both for further bulletins on this important weapons trade. topic, and for a growing web-presence we envision, that will include short fact sheets and resources for At the same time, this issue also seeks to expand teachers, students, activists and policy makers. our definition of resources, to include non-material, less tangible resources in our analysis. Africa 1 ACAS Bulletin, No. 75/76, Winter 2006/Spring 2007 contains and produces more than just the richest across the Atlantic. We chose to publish his short sources of mineral wealth in the world; it also essay in both Spanish and English to recognize his produces lrnowledge, technical capacity, and vast steadfast work as a colleague based in the South of human energies. Problems such as the much talked our hemisphere, and the importance of Spanish­ about "brain-drain" fall within this category. To speakers in current social movements. this end, this issue includes four pieces that explore more conceptual issues under the rubric of Bob Hitchcock continues this broad introductory Resources: biodiversity and the green revolution, note with an overview of recent legal benchmarks the question of democracy in US foreign policy, and scholarly debates about resources and questions advertising colonialism in the guise of charity, of indigenous identity in southern Africa, thereby social movements to restrict unethical resource setting parameters for the conversation that follows appropriation, and the socio-political resource of in this issue. From there, Hitchcock provides an leadership in the African context. We hope this update of latest developments in resource struggles broadening of parameters will encourage future occurring throughout southern Africa today. contributors to go even further in rethinking these Elsewhere in the continent, Congo is establishing central issues surrounding Africa and its place in new codes of conduct for resource exploitation that the world. We need to surpass the representation of bear some promise but will need to be closely Africa most of us in the West were mis-educated monitored in the immediate future. Whereas, upon, in which Africa was a territory demarcated several years ago, local communities on the only by the natural resources each region produced. southern coast of Kenya succeeded in blocking the Some of this work starts in the educational process, Canadian mining transnational Tiomin Resources and ACAS is promoting initiatives to incorporate Inc. from expropriating vast tracts of land for and include students in the research and activism titanium mining without compensation to local processes. To this end, this issue contains the peoples for their displacements, but the company collaborative work of the bulletin editor with soon gained a foothold elsewhere nearby.3 More undergraduate, masters and dissertation level recently, the renewal of bans on ivory trading in students in Minnesota, Atlanta and Nigeria. We Africa and the world are being resisted by several hope future contributors will expand this effort to Southern African nations that prefer limited and promote classroom-based research and involvement managed exports instead.4 And Trade Unions in in the issues confronting Africa and the world African and other South nations are banding today. together to resist tariff reductions pushed by wealthy nations, and cotton is proving to be a Jesus Chucho Garcia, a