by John Ghazvinian
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| List Price: | $25.00 |
| Average Rating: |  |
| Lowest New Price: | $9.83 |
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Product Description
Although Africa has long been known to be rich in oil, extracting it hadn’t seemed worth the effort and risk until recently. But with the price of Middle Eastern crude oil skyrocketing and advancing technology making reserves easier to tap, the region has become the scene of a competition between major powers that recalls the nineteenth-century scramble for colonization there. Already the United States imports more of its oil from Africa than from Saudi Arabia, and China, too, looks to the continent for its energy security. What does this giddy new oil boom mean—for America, for the world, for Africans themselves? To find out, John Ghazvinian traveled through twelve African countries—from Sudan to Congo to Angola—talking to warlords, industry executives, bandits, activists, priests, missionaries, oil-rig workers, scientists, and ordinary people whose lives have been transformed—not necessarily for the better—by the riches beneath their feet. The result is a high-octane narrative that reveals the challenges, obstacles, reasons for despair, and reasons for hope emerging from the world’s newest energy hot spot.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 An underwhelming book, 2008-11-07
Having just finished The Prize, Daniel Yergin's excellent book about the history of oil, I looked forward to reading this book to find out more about what was happening on the African oil scene. However, I must say I was severely disappointed. While the first person tales of travel through many of these West African oil countries is fascinating stuff, I sometimes felt the author was losing track of his story. Surely there was no need to spend time with cocoa bean farmers in Sao Tome who appeared to have nothing to do with oil at all, except that they lived on Sao Tome.
Worse are the many assertions about events in Africa with no attempt to back them up with independent research. Surely many elections are rigged in Africa, but it wouldn't hurt to provide some independent evidence about this. We, as always it seems, are at the mercy of the author's opinions.
This is a poorly written book ("whoever smelt it dealt it" ... please, I don't mind an informal tone, but this is a bit too much), poorly researched, that left me feeling as if this important story had been treated far too lightly.
~alex kirtland
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 pimp economics + transition to democracy = disaster, 2008-09-07
It turns out Africa is full of oil. Among other great natural resources. Why isn't Africa becoming as wealthy as Norway? There are many reasons for this, which John Ghazvinian discovers through his research and exploration of African oil exporting nations. the most exciting thing about this book is that the price of oil nearly doubled after the book was published.
He starts in Nigeria. Nigeria has been exporting oil for over 40 years. They've managed to lower the prosperity of most of its citizens through this. A few kleptocrats end up as billionaires, while the livelihoods most Nigerians are obsoleted. The worst aspects of American culture are imported to Nigeria: televangelism, tv gameshows, soap operas, american hip hop celebrity, and free trade. "dutch disease" sets in.
What can any African nation that finds itself with new oil wealth do to achieve greater prosperity? It will have to pass greater tariffs on food imports, so that its agriculture doesn't collapse. It can use the oil revenue to import more machine tools, bicycles, wheel barrels, and hand tools. This will allow more africans to improve their quality of life. Just like the Amish: the amish are not poor, and they are not on welfare. Within a generation or two they will be prosperous and literate enough and business savy enough to embrace greater democracy and make better business deals.
John Ghazvinian describes how the Chinese make better deals in Africa: they simply have more to offer in exchange and respect the sovereignty of the nations they are dealing with.
Democracy consistently fails in Africa because the elected officials are as incompetent and corrupt as the autocrats they replace. The most the West can do is give advice to African nations on how to use their oil wealth more effectively: import tariffs, slow industrialization, small scale markets, growth of trailing edge mechanical industries. Get them to where they can fix their own bicycles and plumbing, then build their own bicycles and plumbing and textiles.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The Africa you never knew..., 2008-08-27
This book will answer and put into perspective a lot of the nagging questions you've ever had about Africa's colonial past, tribal struggles, economic booms and failures, and ideas on where she's headed in the not-too-distant future. Once read, you'll never see her (or the oil conglomerates) in news headlines the same again, for better or for worse.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Quick and good, 2008-08-08
This is a great book for anyone who wants to get a good overview of what is going on in The Central/ Western region on Africa and Oil. The reader meets people and actually travels and hence makes it a much easier and entertaining read. I had anticipated that there would be more talk on the Cameroon-Chad Pipeline project but it was just brushed over. Nevertheless, it provides a great insight of what is going on and how the growing Oil industry is affecting Africa.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
quite good, 2008-07-28
I enjoyed reading this book. It's not filled with tons of detail, but is more of a travelogue with a bit of history and economics thrown in. If you're really interested in Nigeria in particular, I'd recommend reading Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights and Oil which captures a lot more of the history, community-relations issues and details of production agreements with the state. It's not as fun of a read as this though. This is more a snapshot of the current state of affairs. Not preachy at all and not academic in style, I think almost anybody could get through it enjoyably. The one odd part I found was where he tried to draw a link between burning piles of trash by the side of the road and hellish living conditions. Not really the same thing.
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