Stealing Africa

Just watched Stealing Africa on BBC 4.  Eye-opening corruption both in the USA (Clinton pardoning Marc Rich) and Zambia, where Glencore bought the copper mines from a corrupt Government who sold the mines clearly for much less than they were truly worth.

The new government has a number of options
a) Renationalise assets that were nationalised under a corrupt system;
b) apply a tariff based on LME, not tax based on locally accounted profits;
c) if it does re-nationalise then it can still have private companies compete either to pay a license fee or to operate and share equity with the government (as is the case with oil in some countries).  There is no reason why revenue for the government and fair profit for the private investors should not exist side by side.

This is not rocket science.  It just requires honest and hard working representatives of the nation.  And even paying honest  consultants for technical advice is no shame - the money at stake is huge.

And the IMF weighed in on the side of the commodity companies.  Surely sophisticates like the IMF instead of tying unskilled politicians in poor countries in knots would be looking after its investments better if it provided serious expertise to support these governments in their deals with the commodity hungry foreigners.