Sudan and South Sudan are in dispute again, as they have been for the last fifty or so years. This time, the dispute is about oil, and Khartoum claims that Juba is not paying its transit bills. South Sudan, with no pipeline infrastructure, uses its northern neighbor to transport its oil for export. The two countries are yet to agree on a transit fee that is fair to both sides, and the dispute is being mediated by the African Union, amid signs that the divorce of the two countries is far from smooth. Recently, a Kenyan delegation was in South Sudan to sign a deal so South Sudan can build a pipeline through Kenya to the port of Lamu.
Whereas there has been an explosion of mineral prospects throughout the continent, it is a paradox that countries with the most mineral resources are also the poorest. Take DR Congo for example. It has an abundance of minerals; such minerals as diamond, copper, cobalt and uranium amongst other rare earth metals can easily be found on the ground surface. It has however never known peace for much of its existence since independence.
The West African giant, Nigeria, perhaps exemplifies this situation the most. The Niger delta people, the Ogoni people, have been at war with most of the independence governments, and their most promising son, the famed writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was brutally executed by the Sani Abacha dictatorship for advocating for the rights of the Ogoni people, who have been marginalized for years on end despite the country’s most precious resource passing before their very eyes. It is no wonder then that secessionist movements seem to happen whenever a precious mineral resource is discovered in a region.
Perhaps, it is sometimes better for an African country to have no mineral resources at all, for this imbues resilience and dynamism in the citizenry. Kenyans are generally regarded as resilient people in many parts of the world and my hunch is that lack of minerals means that other economic activities have to be created to ensure survival.
