David Model

From Slaves to Oil: United States Role in the Plunder of Africa David Model

Famine, drought, internecine wars, corrupt leaders and culture have all been postulated as the cause of African underdevelopment despite its enormous wealth of resources. These myths are a smokescreen for the major causes of poverty, malnutrition, lack of amenities and death in Africa which has been the rapacious looting of the African continent for centuries by Western Powers. In the early twentieth century, King Leopold of Belgium slaughtered ten million Congolese in order to purloin rubber for the nascent automobile industry. One century later, United States, Belgium and France were responsible for the deaths of five million Congolese to gain free access to the vast riches of its resources such as gold, diamonds and, in particular coltan, an essential ingredient in electronic devices. This book explodes many of the myths about the fate of Africa which hide the truth about American and European interference in the development of the continent such as the context of the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, responsibility for the Rwanda Genocide, the origins of Boko Haram in Nigeria and its kidnapping of young girls and the real cause of the "humanitarian intervention" in Libya. The greater European advancement in military prowess, political organization, strong naval capabilities, particularly during the colonial era, in conjunction with the greed permeating European economic zeitgeist empowered first Europe then America to exploit the continent for cheap or free labor, bases, allies, markets, investments and resources. As a result of this exploitation, African nations are among the poorest on the planet, suffer the horrors of war on a regular basis, face the plight of hunger and disease more than anywhere else and lose more children before the age of five.