The World for Sale by Farchy Jack & Blas Javier

The World for Sale by Farchy Jack & Blas Javier

Author:Farchy, Jack & Blas, Javier [Farchy, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2021-02-24T16:00:00+00:00


TEN

DESTINATION AFRICA

By seven in the morning, the road out of Kolwezi is already gridlocked.

Everywhere along the way out of town can be found reminders that, on this dusty plateau in the heart of Africa, the mining industry is king. Rows of rudimentary hammers and picks are laid out for sale at the roadside, all to equip the men and boys in muddy clothes who trudge each day to the edge of town and start digging by hand.

The road passes by the stately buildings erected by the Belgian colonialists who first started mining in this region in 1906. And then it passes the fruits of the more modern mining industry: casinos and restaurants, all with signs in English, French and Chinese, to help the fortune-seekers who have been drawn to Kolwezi while away the long evenings and lighten the wads of dollars in their pockets.

No one here drives at night, when the roads are roamed by gangs on motorbikes. And as soon as dawn breaks, everyone has somewhere to be: the trucks loaded with metal and ore, the tankers carrying fuel or acid, the jeeps ferrying foreign executives and consultants.

Out of Kolwezi, the road crosses the Lualaba, the biggest tributary of the mighty Congo River. And then, finally, the destination becomes clear: a hill rising up in the distance, to which many of the trucks are headed.

This is Mutanda, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world’s richest mineral deposits. Inside the hill there are three enormous pits, each 150 metres deep, where trucks loaded with copper ore snake up and down like ants on an anthill.

The owner of this warren of activity in one of the world’s most remote and difficult mining frontiers is none other than Glencore.

Mutanda is a symbol of the scramble for Africa that took hold of the resources industry in the 2000s. As the supercycle gathered pace, miners, oil companies and traders alike could no longer ignore Africa’s riches. For decades, the bulk of the continent had been neglected by big Western companies as too remote, too underdeveloped and too corrupt. Now they were falling over one another to invest.

At the vanguard were commodity traders such as Glencore. They bought African commodities, they invested in mines like Mutanda, and they helped to finance African governments. In the process, they propped up many unpopular and authoritarian leaders. And they forged new connections between African commodities and Chinese factories, and between African kleptocrats and bank accounts in London and Switzerland.

For Glencore, emerging from the tussle for resources as the owner of Mutanda, the race for Africa was a blessing but also a curse. It would be the foundation of much of the trading house’s wealth, but also the source of the darkest cloud over its future.

Most African countries export commodities, and little else. 1 And that means Africa’s economic fortunes have risen and fallen with the commodity markets. The 1950s and 1960s, when many African nations won independence from European colonial powers, were a golden era for the continent.



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