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In regards to any editing that I might have done to my research question since my last post I think i'm going to continue forward with my current question, that question being "How do western influences on Africa affect the utilization of African resources in the continent, and around the world." I think that this question suits my research for several reasons, but I think it is particularly useful because of the wide variety of sources I can find in regards to this question.
The purpose of my second article is quite different than my first article. While my first article simply identified the issue at hand whilst simultaneously giving a brief explanation of how this issue came into fruition, my second article is a more structured analysis of this issue which identifies a case in which this issue was present, whilst also providing a potential solution to the problem at hand. In short this article is a huge step up from the previous article.
This article was written by one author, James Tsabora. Mr. Tsabora is a law professor at the University of Zimbabwe and he has written at length about the relation of constitutional & international law in regards to the bettering of African economies and living conditions. Mr. Tsabora also participated in the writing of the 2013 constitution of Zimbabwe. Tsabora has had an immense impact on the research and analysis of the exploitation of natural resources in Africa, and this is demonstrated by his previously mentioned achievements.
The biggest difrentiation between this week's article and last weeks was that this article is far more, for lack of a better term, specific. It identifies how Africa actually gets exploited through maritime zones, and why it is so open to be exploited. For example Africa gets its resources exploited by multinational corporations situated in the west during times of great political instability (Ex. civil war) due to African powers being unable to secure their maritime zones. As you can imagine securing these zones is quite difficult during a civil war, but this also carries some insidious undertones. After learning this I have come to the realization that it is in the best interest of the west to keep Africa unstable through civil wars so that western corporations can exploit Africa for its resources with greater ease.
A data point that I found particularly striking was as follows "Africa lost US$63.4 billion from illegally earned, transferred, and unrecorded financial outflows more than it received from foreign investment and aid combined, US$62.2 billion" (https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/somalias-transitional-government). I found this so striking because it put into scope for me the sheer scale of the exploitation that is ongoing in Africa.
The main flaw I found with this article was that it only had one contributing author. Although the author that wrote this article is quite knowledgeable, and has the credentials to make the claims that he is making, I would have liked to seen a few other voices in this article particularly in the last section where the author proposes potential solutions. I think it could have been interesting to see other solutions in regards to the issue of exploitation from different authors.
A key term that was new to me in this article was "neo-colonialism." neo-colonialism was a term first coined by John Paul Sartre and, as defined by the Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy, is the practice of "the subtle propagation of socio-economic and political activity by former colonial rulers aimed at reinforcing capitalism, neoliberal globalization, and cultural subjugation of former colonies" (https://iep.utm.edu/neocolon/). I think that this term will define my coming months of research due to its heavy relation to exploitation, and the African continent.
The author went very depth into this solution and I will provide you with a brief summary of it, but I HIGHLY recommend you read this solution in its entirety due to it being very well crafted, and in all honesty I'm not sure I will able to do it justice. In short the author proposes that the act of exploitation of the maritime territories of African states by foreign & domestic corporations during times of war or great civil unrest should be classified as a war crime in order to hold these corporations to a higher level of accountability, to punish these corporations, and to deter these corporations from labeling themselves as war criminal. If this solution was adopted by the international community corporations such as Apple & Samsung could be charged with war crimes. This would most likely cause their popularity amongst the public to drop, and thus their stock prices would likely lower; this is just one of many deterrents that could stop multinational corporations from exploiting African resources by labeling them as war criminals if they do so.
The database I used to find this information was the Gale Power Search, and the keywords I used during my search were Africa, resources, and exploitation.
Source(s):
Tsabora, James. “Illicit Natural Resource Exploitation by Private Corporate Interests in Africa's Maritime Zones during Armed Conflict.” Gale Power Search , University of New Mexico School of Law, Oct. 2013, https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=T002&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&hitCount=229&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm¤tPosition=13&docId=GALE%7CA370887462&docType=Article&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZCUM&prodId=GPS&pageNum=1&contentSet=GALE%7CA370887462&searchId=R1&userGroupName=nysl_ca_guild&inPS=true.
“Somalia's Transitional Government.” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/somalias-transitional-government.
Afisi, Oseni Taiwo. “Neocolonialism.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/neocolon/.
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