African Nation - has natural resource and has no way to get it out of the ground.
Foreign company that does this all the time: Yo, we’ll literally pay you to let us dig up this stuff.
Regime: Yes, I was paid, perfect. Thanks. And we’ll charge you what seems like tons of money also.
10 years later
New Regime: Hm…that’s an awfully nice mine you have there. We’ve increased taxes on it 400 times and you are still not closing. It means there’s too much money to be had! So we will take it and do the mining ourselves! How hard could it be?!
New regime nationalizes mine
3 months later
New Regime: Sadly, we must now close the mine and send everyone with jobs home because my drunk cousin is not a good mine director, and all the things broke and we didn’t know you had to order more spare parts.
New Regime places FOR SALE sign on mine and waits for another foreign company to start the cycle over again.
Despotic Ibrahim Traoré, using the money from nationalised formerly French gold mines to checks notes give $180.000.000 to farmers in farm equipment to industrialise agriculture. So despotic and antidemocratic.
wow, tell me you know nothing about West Africa without telling me you know nothing about West Africa.
I’m all for the Sahellian states getting rid of the French, but the Burkinabe gold mining system is pure chaos, often costing informal miners their lives. Burkina, in particular, didn’t have anything other than use of the CFA really tying them to the French anyway. Sure, some gold mines, but that’s more like a final vestige.
Like, just overall, Bukina Faso is a weird place. Every time I’ve been there, the only bird I really see around is vultures. Like, no doves, no pigeons. Just vultures.
Checked some data. In 2024, 82% of exports of Burkina Faso were in the category “Pearls, Precious Stones, Metals, Coins”. In 2021, the main export partner was Switzerland with a 70% of the total exports going there. How the fuck is this not western colonialism?! I don’t care if It’s particularly France (CFA mentioned, good for you), it’s still the victim country of the exploitation of western companies.
Data is nice. I lived in West Africa for nearly a decade total, up until 18 months ago, working on economic devlopment. The data is notoriously bad, and you’re comparing apples and camels.
Look, we have in common that we want to see greater African agency and less European colonialism of any sort (or Chinese for that matter).
That being said, I have seen dozens of examples of greed and corruption being the driving force behind nationalization. Often with only the short-sighted goal of raiding capital investment accounts and giving friends jobs. And nearly every time leading to costly failure. Decades of exampes, from Idi Amin to Zambia to South Africa to Mali to DRC to Tanzania to Niger to Ghana, across every possible industry, show that the only only only result from nationalizing something is killing it, and killing it stupidly. Down to things like water desalination plants, power distribution companies, or telecom companies. Maybe you can find a few that are barely solvent across a continent of 54 counties and 1 billion people. The rule is that it’s always a play to line pockets and buy a flat on London or Paris and horde wealth for yourself.
And keep in mind that nationalizing something is eliminant domain of stuff. It’s theft with a sorry card. Not for some greater good, to make someone else rich, not the first guy.
The result is my daily experience anywhere other than SA, Morocco, and Kenya: the power goes out for hours at a time most days, water comes from a truck and maaaaybe on Mondays or Tuesdays from the city, and mobile phone and internet only works from private companies like MTN or Vodaphone. Often that buy out the old, failing government telco for the license and have to pay hundreds of ghost workers that were promised jobs by a president way back when.
You should note that one of the wealthiest counties per capita in SSA, is Botswana. Which is basically a podunk AF suburb of Pretoria/Joburg anyway. But they never nationalized their diamond mines, and their population is relatively better off. Riddle me this - why has Botswana been the success story with a PPP while all these places with nationalized everything struggle to literally keep the lights on?
Which is not to excuse the bad parts of the system. I once spent a couple years living in a rural village of about 400 people in Niger, and we had a brackish well. A few people wondered of it might be oil. Clearly, it’s not. But all I could was warn them they should hope is not oil, and the dangers of being near extractive industry. Mines are more often than not, a blight on the earth.
Nationalization is so communist thing to do.
Marxist are genuinely dumb enough to understand why this would be an issue.
Doesnt make it a bad idea tho :D
Yes it does.
Okay 👍
don’t threaten me with a good time!
Also every African despotic regime that has has ever existed.
Stopping exploitation by Shell, BP & Friends isn’t exactly what made those regimes despotic
Hardly. Usually the process goes like this:
African Nation - has natural resource and has no way to get it out of the ground.
Foreign company that does this all the time: Yo, we’ll literally pay you to let us dig up this stuff.
Regime: Yes, I was paid, perfect. Thanks. And we’ll charge you what seems like tons of money also.
10 years later
New Regime: Hm…that’s an awfully nice mine you have there. We’ve increased taxes on it 400 times and you are still not closing. It means there’s too much money to be had! So we will take it and do the mining ourselves! How hard could it be?!
New regime nationalizes mine
3 months later
New Regime: Sadly, we must now close the mine and send everyone with jobs home because my drunk cousin is not a good mine director, and all the things broke and we didn’t know you had to order more spare parts.
New Regime places FOR SALE sign on mine and waits for another foreign company to start the cycle over again.
Despotic Ibrahim Traoré, using the money from nationalised formerly French gold mines to checks notes give $180.000.000 to farmers in farm equipment to industrialise agriculture. So despotic and antidemocratic.
wow, tell me you know nothing about West Africa without telling me you know nothing about West Africa.
I’m all for the Sahellian states getting rid of the French, but the Burkinabe gold mining system is pure chaos, often costing informal miners their lives. Burkina, in particular, didn’t have anything other than use of the CFA really tying them to the French anyway. Sure, some gold mines, but that’s more like a final vestige.
Like, just overall, Bukina Faso is a weird place. Every time I’ve been there, the only bird I really see around is vultures. Like, no doves, no pigeons. Just vultures.
Checked some data. In 2024, 82% of exports of Burkina Faso were in the category “Pearls, Precious Stones, Metals, Coins”. In 2021, the main export partner was Switzerland with a 70% of the total exports going there. How the fuck is this not western colonialism?! I don’t care if It’s particularly France (CFA mentioned, good for you), it’s still the victim country of the exploitation of western companies.
Data is nice. I lived in West Africa for nearly a decade total, up until 18 months ago, working on economic devlopment. The data is notoriously bad, and you’re comparing apples and camels.
Look, we have in common that we want to see greater African agency and less European colonialism of any sort (or Chinese for that matter).
That being said, I have seen dozens of examples of greed and corruption being the driving force behind nationalization. Often with only the short-sighted goal of raiding capital investment accounts and giving friends jobs. And nearly every time leading to costly failure. Decades of exampes, from Idi Amin to Zambia to South Africa to Mali to DRC to Tanzania to Niger to Ghana, across every possible industry, show that the only only only result from nationalizing something is killing it, and killing it stupidly. Down to things like water desalination plants, power distribution companies, or telecom companies. Maybe you can find a few that are barely solvent across a continent of 54 counties and 1 billion people. The rule is that it’s always a play to line pockets and buy a flat on London or Paris and horde wealth for yourself.
And keep in mind that nationalizing something is eliminant domain of stuff. It’s theft with a sorry card. Not for some greater good, to make someone else rich, not the first guy.
The result is my daily experience anywhere other than SA, Morocco, and Kenya: the power goes out for hours at a time most days, water comes from a truck and maaaaybe on Mondays or Tuesdays from the city, and mobile phone and internet only works from private companies like MTN or Vodaphone. Often that buy out the old, failing government telco for the license and have to pay hundreds of ghost workers that were promised jobs by a president way back when.
You should note that one of the wealthiest counties per capita in SSA, is Botswana. Which is basically a podunk AF suburb of Pretoria/Joburg anyway. But they never nationalized their diamond mines, and their population is relatively better off. Riddle me this - why has Botswana been the success story with a PPP while all these places with nationalized everything struggle to literally keep the lights on?
Which is not to excuse the bad parts of the system. I once spent a couple years living in a rural village of about 400 people in Niger, and we had a brackish well. A few people wondered of it might be oil. Clearly, it’s not. But all I could was warn them they should hope is not oil, and the dangers of being near extractive industry. Mines are more often than not, a blight on the earth.