Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Curse of the Black Gold

3 comments:

Iddy said...

When i saw this clip yesterday i thought about the day when the last drop of oil will be extracted from Niger delta. When that time come will the people of Niger be better off than today? Or will the story be the same, that once upon the time this area had a lot of oil?

Natural resources are not in the ground forever and they're not here to stay. There is a day that nothing will come off from those grounds. The question remain will the people of those area be better off?

Once upon the time California was popular for GOLD, but what about today? California is not popular for gold anymore, but the people of that area are better off.

My point is there is a day that Tanzania people will say this "once upon a time Tanzania was land of gold, tanzanite and diamond". When this day come will the people of Tanzania be better off? Or it will be a pain story to tell?

History will judge this society either in good way or in bad way. The booming of Africa economy include Tanzania is due to high price of commodities. We can use this opportunity to reap the profit and transform our economy to more diversity one. Or we can continue the mentality of take it and spend it because it's here forever. Then there is a day when Tanzanite will be just like a stories of ABUNUWASI.

January, i hope this clip will motivates our leaders to prepare a long term strategy on how to diversify our economy into stable one.

Thuwein said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Thuwein said...

This is incredibly sad. Where does the money go? but we will be hypocrites for scorning Niger government while Mererani is no better than Niger Delta in terms of poverty. Are the contracts flawed? and for the best economics minds out there--how do we change this? Who will speak for these poor folks because at this time they have absolutely no advocate.

One would think that someday the light bulb will went on and they will say "fuck this, Umma go and get my piece of the pie". and then we will have a problem.