This book is about social and environmental decay in African rural landscapes endowed with natural resources. The book presents case studies from Cameroon-Chad, Lesotho, Niger Delta, Nigeria, East Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Ghana. Many of the arguments focus on the political economy in which resources are extracted and impact on social environmentlandscape in rural Africa.

As a result, the social and ecological space in many African countries is experiencing rollbacks, where grabbing of land from rural populationhave given rise to congested urban ghettos of landless peasants. Ethiopians who made prosperous and fruitful back yards, and built a good life is now selling their land to foreingers; three million hectares of arable land were given to foreign investors for use as biofuel plantations. In Congo, 48 per cent of agricultural land is controlled by foreigners, and massive pieces of land have been set aside by multinational companies (West and East) for future mineral exploration. Chinese entrepreneurs are leasing African land and land dealers are turning agricultural spots and paddy fields into future FDI interventions. Families that have already sold their agricultural land to developers used the windfall to buy concrete block houses in crowded shanty towns in city suburbs. They have given up farming, hoping to take up jobs that are not available.

Renowned scholars such as Olukoshi, Rodrik, Krueger and Stiglitz have long being argued that the focus on macroeconomic fundamentals in Africa has increased poverty levels and inequality. However, despite the complexity of the relationship between poverty eradication and foreign direct investment, singularly on natural resource sector, so far have done harm than good to Africa, especially that western dirve had been adjustment of macroeconomic architectures to attract FDI. Even as Structural Adjustment Programmes and the IMF have been criticized during the early 90s as failures, these policies and their organizations have retained influence in the continent. Such policies are being appropriated even today by external actors when dealing with Africa.

Western policy makers increasingly applied the multilateral approach with their dealings with Africa. No doubt, there are certain things that can be better achieved through multilateral means, but multilateralism has simply become another space for universal maxims. Regardless of different political systems, histories and market development phases, universal solutions have prescribed. Foreign Direct Investment in Africa's locomotive (natural resources) in this sense has been seen as the sole criterion for a transformation of Africa and alleviation of poverty.

While holding a large share of natural resources and energy resources as payment for huge loans, the global organisations have for the last half century been lighting the torch for the West. They objectified African leaders and kept on promoting inconsistence policies and unsuitable interventions. Although the present system is more refined and subtle, inflammatory rhetoric and red carpets continue without challenge.

Recent strategic plans more specifically failed to include important elements that do connect FDI to poverty alleviation. These include well-thought-out mining codes that include social and environment costs; regulatory mechanisms that protect communities from market competition and myriad other policies that stimulate growth and sustainability of rural communities. But the leaders in respective countries did not stop to ask whether the natural resource sector needs more regulation, or whether those who imposed economic modalities are truly equipped for the job.

On the other hand, there has been continuous hammering on poor governance, accountability and transparency of African leaders. Buzzwords such as bad governance, fragile leaders, and lack of institutions have become a genetic code used to describe African states and that further paralyses Africa’s legitimacy. It is incorrect to say that African countries do not have any institutional structure, and therefore cannot govern their people, let alone their resources. People need to read the history. The truth is that Africa does have an institutional structure, and had been governed through traditional decentralised mechanisms in the past that actually had a superior element of democracy. In addition, Africa, like many colonised regions, managed to maintain informal institutions, with socially shared rules, usually unwritten, to govern people. Although such institutions are considered to be inadequate, but when it came to people’s needs, they managed quite well.

Moreover, the institutions created by former colonial powers – although having greater power imbalances – were retained by most African countries. This is to say that Africa has a hybrid of institutional structures. However, unlike European institutions that may be run by politically independent technocrats, in Africa, political meddling is a common problem. Oil and mineral wealth have prompted skewed public administration; and the central government fails to disseminate power to regional institutions and local bodies, thus restricting participatory democracy. This is to say the line between public and private is a thin one where political leaders hold the hammer when it comes to distribution of wealth collected from natural resource exports. Nonetheless, this argument disregards the need for restructuring the skewed global economic system which is fostering ill practices.

The culture of mineral and oil dependency typically affect corruption within or outside of institutions unless there is a political will to prosecute those who are abusing power. According to Max Weber, an institutionalised state is different from a neo-patrimonial state. An instituionalised state is governed by politicians together with meritocratic and service oriented actors. There is a clear demarcation between private and public spheres. Neo patrimonial or patrimonial states, is charachterised by nepotism, cronyism and corruption and there is a thin line between private and public sphere (Weber, 1984 Economic and Society).

Houngnikpo (2006) draws attention to lack of political will for combating corruption and improving public administration. According to him the present economic structure that is designed to perpetuate Western economic interests (and increasingly the interests of Asian dragons and tigers) leave room for corruption and rent-seeking behaviour by neo-patrimonial authoritarian regimes. These regimes not only selectively distribute wealth from resources but also assume control over a variety of resources.

The colonial legacy explains some of Africa's economic dependency, political disorder, and social decay, post colonial African leaders have also played a debilitating role in their continent’s plight. Authoritarian rule and weak states combined with the international political environment to create deep disincentives for Africa's development. African leaders sought ever greater power by manipulating parliaments, extorting state funds for their personal enrichment, and creating mass parties designed to serve and glorify them. Therefore, we must learn to digest the fact that these leaders seem to lack the capacity and willingness to develop an institutional environment conducive to good governance and entrenchment of democracy.

While talking about weak African governments, oil companies, the World Bank and the IMF have worked together, refining the neo-liberal order without addressing these fundamental problems in order to have an access to agricultural land for fuel crops, minerals and oil. Moreover, western leaders who talk about human rights violence taking place in rural areas did not scrutinise how their own governments offer political risk insurance and encourage companies to invest in poor countries with arguments that their political economic climate would improve. They maintain a reductionist view.

To make matters worst, natural resources are often situated within states that have contested national borders and constant problems between group, territorial and national identity. When these lands were taken over by oil and mineral tycoons, conflicts become unavoidable. At worst, governments have declared, with legal legitimation, people’s land as ‘unoccupied’ and therefore available for leasing to oil, mineral or gas businesses. The civil population, mostly women, have ended up in the rotten end of the bad economic system.

Added to this is unwillingness to confront corporate giants as well as emerging powerhouses like China, in the face of bad oil and mining contracts. There is no sustainable solution to ongoing problems related to human rights violence, and there is inadequate corporate support for mitigating social problems and breaching environmental standards. Leaders need to realize that they cannot continue governing natural resources sector by modeling their economies on blue prints.

Countries like Brazil, leaders have not only fined but also threatened access to new offshore exploration if oil giants failed to take responsibility for the environment costs of oil spills. African leaders failed to muster these policies, and take a sturdy stance, and the result has been a deteriorating political economy in the rural landscape characterized by massive refugee flows, conflicts, food scarcity and vicious hunger.

Some African governments were epitomised as weak and fragile, corrupt and incapable of managing their own resources, thus enabling others to govern the resources. Most African countries started liberalising the mining sector in the 1980s and 1990s. There were also fears that rogue states would use natural resources, particularly rare minerals such as uranium, as weapons, or would collaborate with countries that produce them.

The on-going level of state corruption was exploited, under the claim that the privatisation of the natural resources sector would reduce it. This resulted in the increasing application of a new institutionalism, which allows external involvement in governing the sector. Instead of strengthening the existing institutional system first to deal with corporate giants and free market forces, African countries were pushed to adopt global governance mechanisms and accept increasing intervention by the corporate world.

Effective institutions are a pre-requisite for not only management of the natural resources but also corporate activities. Scholars from Africa and elsewhere have attested to this. Olukoshi, Thandika, Burnell and Rodrik have suggested that functional institutions are a pre-condition for governance at the same time as they have drawn attention to policy inconsistencies, the minimalist role of government, and the premises under which Foreign Direct Investment operating in the Continent’s natural resources industry. In the same vein attention has been drawn by Stiglitz to the way in which Africa was introduced to the global economic order, while Rodrik observes that the bifurcated nature of the state effectively disfranchises a majority of population. Thandika for his part has suggested that institutional checks and balances are increasingly recognised and are improving in Africa, but it is necessary to better integrate traditional institutions into the governance system and enhance their capacity, accountability and performance. Olukoshi suggests that external interference has worsened that crisis of governance and thus increased the continent's economic and political cost. Common to all of these reflections is the interface between the state's nonchalant stance, the dominant neoliberal economic model, and external interventions packaged in different sizes and shapes.

Indeed, 21st-century Africa is full of technocrats and mediocrats and there are also plenty of vociferous critics doing well in strengthening Africa from within. However, these actors are limited by dependency on outside forces. They are invisible, they have to accede to suggested agendas, and they have to listen to what they are told is good for them and very few resist and outspoken. Debt, fixed budget support, aid, and other conditionalities and interference affect their integrity and hence subjectivity continuing.

Pushing macroeconomic reforms at the cost of microeconomic variables -- education, capacity building, improved life expectancy and manufacturing (processing plants) -- have seriously affected people in rural Africa. Even powerful technocrats could not reverse the trend toward such policies as the mortgaging of oil and mineral assets to support deficits; the reduction of rental tax; lower royalty rates to attract foreign investments; and other top-down policies included in the global financial institutions’ consensus for Africa.

Some of these macro economic policies are not bad per se. But using the wealth from natural resources to produce socioeconomic mobility depends on many factors: the size and composition of the population, absorbing capacity of macroeconomic and fiscal policies, administrative structure, level of dependency on such exports, the fine balance between inward and outward-looking policies, civil war and unrest, and of course participatory governance.

This is to emphasise that nobody denies the importance of good governance, economic reforms, a strong fiscal system, internal democracy in public management, and honesty. Africa like most countries needs to improve in these areas, and these facets work differently in different countries within the same continent. But these goals do not accord with turning over economies to accommodate FDI in enclave sectors, particularly as these sectors are especially susceptible to what is termed "Dutch disease."

The booming enclave sector attracts productive resources away from more sustainable trade sectors, thus impeding their development. Furthermore, the appreciation of the exchange rate due to the increased revenue makes non-tradable goods more expensive. For example, the Nigerian oil boom has affected the agricultural and other domestic industries and the country is still not recovered from this.

In addition to Dutch disease, countries with enclave sectors are considered to be subject to a "resource curse." The political leaders use large quantities of sudden wealth to maintain themselves in power, either through buying votes or by force. The irony is that nobody argues against using the sector as a means of achieving growth and sustainable development. Instead, FDI is linked to poverty alleviation, making the former seem nurturing, but what is taking place is mere exploitation, coated with nurturing discursive elements; typical of post colonial discourse.

Multinationals take advantage of behaviour of power hungry leaders, under fed institutions and poor monitoring capacity of government officers, lack of judicial resources to, power and unwillingness of states to implement law against corporations' social and environment sins.

Although some African countries have been pronounced traders, the development of industry needs more attention in Africa especially, considering the cheap raw materials leaving the continent. It is common that countries that have resource-based development promote the industrial sector to add value to raw material. They protect national industries and even some state-run industries profit on behalf of the people and add the profit to tax base. Private corporations and governments have a healthy marriage, but not without regulations; interventionist government action protects the welfare of the people.

The fact remains that most African countries are slow in developing mid-range industries, owing to its weak negotiation power or lack of funds, or its lack of a robust system to facilitate small and medium-size business and industrial policies. In the period of 2000 to 2009, investment in the economically viable industrial sector—construction, mining, and manufacturing—has only increased from USD 1.2 billion to USD 2.2 billion. The productive sector agriculture, forestry, fisheries has also remained stagnant (UNDP, 2010).

Government and business always must know that the environment and people had to be put first, if they were to continue business together. States were not just rent collectors and profit makers. They were also providers of social goods to citizens. The governments need to work with clear practical and obtainable goals together with technocrats and civil society. Independent media also play a decisive role, not only scrutinize playing fields but also work together with international colleagues to bring forth new information on multinational behaviour in their backyard. This is the background for a proper natural resources-based development.

The lack of technology, human resources, and infrastructure must not be seen as a hindrance to mineral extraction. In fact, long ago, for the sake of oil, America made a kingdom in the Persian Gulf desert and crowned Wahabians to be crude oil kings. While Chevron and other oil conglomerates extracted oil, America nourished them and made sure that oil income was spent on buying products made in the US. Presently Saudi Arabia is a leading investor as well as consumer of US products. In my recent visit to Phillippines, I happened to drive one of the finest highways in Asia to visit a volcanic mountain range. Subic Highway was used only by Americans in order to access to one of the biggest military base that was situated there. Today, there were hardly any cars on the Subic highway neither the military base, which was compelled to move after the erruption of Volcano but the ghostly Subic highway with no vehicles. We know that multinationals that operating in developing countried are not inclined by themselves to facilitate local growth and also it is not a necessary prerequisite of mining policy. Although, WTO endorsed capacity development in 2004, nobody seems following these leads. Leaders often comment on the brain drain, to which countries in the West must give attention. The arguments raised above are not to say that African actors should be the sole purveyors of the welfare of Africa's people, which includes the multinationals that had been scraping natural resources from Africa for generations; the more actors engaged in development and poverty alleviation the merrier. However, the outsiders’ role should not be to fine tune African institutional structures or policies, or to reinvent beleaguered agendas to achieve global goals. Let African regional actors, their leaders, civil society and people find the way to development. Meanwhile, the West can try to make sure that promoted ethical conditions are not jeopardised by economic agendas.

The book consists of teneight chapters including the present chapter. Each chapter covers a specific area where natural resource production is related to social and/or environmental decay in rural Africa. Authors examine this issue in both a vertical and horizontal manner analysing empirical data collected in Cameroon, Chad, Lesotho, Niger Delta, Rwanda, Ghana and East Congo. In doing so, each chapter attempts to enhance readers understanding of the topic at a deeper level.

They explore external interventions, states nonchalant stances, gaps in Corporate Social Responsibilities of multinational companies, and ignorance of social and environment malady over economic rationality. They discussed unfulfilled objectives, deep division of state and populace, state violence, societal cleavages, crisis of distribution of wealth, inequality and poverty and finally the rural decay. The book concludes by looking at ways in which stakeholders can collectively work by adapting a new economic, social and ecological paradigm.

Although, each chapter focus on mineral and oil extraction, the analyses can apply to all forms of trade. Authors explore the crucial question of failure to strike a balance between protecting planet and people’ rights when pursuing global economic interests. They unveil hidden agendas, politically motivated draconian measure that had been used to govern such exports from the continent.

In the introductory chapter Nilani L De Silva identifies one of the central problems underpinning the natural resource sector in Africa She problematizes the premises in which foreign direct investment is encouraged without leaving room for negotiation and loop holes that breed embezzlement of public funds. The influence of grand economic models, the role played by global organisations such as the World Bank and WTO, and the power given to multinational corporations.

In the second chapter, Nicholas A. Jackson examines the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Project. He analyzes the failure of this project to achieve social objectives. According to Jackson, the World Bank presented the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development Project as a model of neoliberal economic approaches emphasizing governance. When the project failed to achieve its objectives the World Bank argued that the design was satisfactory but government corruption doomed the project. Jackson provides answers to this trepidation. Why did the Chad Cameroon Petroleum Development Project fail so rapidly, while Petroleum continues to flow? The author lifts the veil of depoliticised spectacle to reveal the ‘clammy, sticky spaces’ of capitalist accumulation in the face of local resistance and consent.

The third chapter by Pius Tangawe examines the perception of community members and other stakeholders of the impact of diamond mining on communities around Liqhobong in Lesotho. He provides a chronological summary of negative as well as positive impacts on rural diamond mining communities in Lesotho. He concludes that mining companies neglect their social and environment responsibilities, and the government has failed to facilitate and to ensure the existing Mining Codes that was implemented in 2005.

The fourth chapter, by Ibaba Samuel Ibaba, examines the ongoing political conflict and generally excruciating environment of Niger Delta oil refinery areas. Of particular note is his concentration on the critical roles played by women in the local economies, and livelihood activities that have been hampered by environment disasters caused by multinational companies such as Shell and Chevron. This chapter dovetails Dauida S Garuba’s analysis in chapter five of inter-communal violence in the Niger Delta city of Warri. He deepens our understanding of how natural resources have altered the nature, character and intensity of intra state violence in Warri community in Niger Delta.

The sixth chapter, by Frances Girwa together with Nilani L de Silva, analyse two gold mining companies in Ghana. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research, the authors argue that Ghana with its robust legal and institutional framework still failed to get companies to fulfil social and environmental obligations. One of the reasons discussed was the lack of government involvement in enforcement of CSR promises made by big companies.

In the seventh chapter, authors examine the effects of open-cast coltan mining on the quality of soil in Gatumba Rwanda, a landlocked country lacking agricultural and grazing land. Gatumba was an industrial mining area abandoned by an international mining company after 1985. The findings confirm the environmental damage and poor soil condition for agricutlral usage.

In chapter eight, Nilani L De Silva uses a case study from East Congo to make a political economic assessment of structural problems associated with the challenges and opportunities presented by the artisanal mining sector in East Congo. Drawing from empirical research, she concludes that there is a lack of willpower and effort from the central government to support artisanal minors in supporting inbuilt poverty alleviation mechanisms that exist in communities owing to lack of participatory democracy in the governing system.

In the concluding chapter, Nicholas A. Jackson engages in a theoretical argument exploring major developments in corporate exploitation, CSR and corporate citizenship. In addition to summarizing main arguments in each chapter, Jackson gives particular attention to agenda setting, policy, litigation tools and judicial resources that could serve to better develop the continent’s natural resources. All chapters bring for the recommendations how to strike a balance between planet, people and profit when multinational companies embarking into African rural landscape.