New Colonial Carve-Up Of Africa? British Firms Vying For £1trn Natural Resources

© Simon Akam / Reuters

British government-supported firms are engaged in a piratical contest for African natural resources as part of a new colonialist “scramble for Africa,” a major new report claims.

Development NGO War On Want published its latest cutting report, titled ‘The New Colonialism: Britain’s scramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources’, on Monday.

The study argues that a British relaunch of the 19th-century imperialist conquest of Africa is already well underway in an effort to profit from the natural wealth of the vast continent - to the detriment of those who live there.

The tactics also echo those of the original scramble for Africa, with the UK government backing profit-hunting firms to the hilt, War on Want claims.

Written by historian and development expert Mark Curtis, the report argues that “British companies now control Africa’s key mineral resources, notably gold, platinum, diamonds, copper, oil, gas and coal.”

War On Want suggests the potential profits are huge, with UK firms having collective control of “over £1 trillion [US$1.3 trillion] worth of Africa’s most valuable resources.”

Successive British governments – both Labour and Tory – have backed the firms’ African ambitions at the expense of human rights “through its trade and investment policies, to influence and control British companies’ access to raw materials and the way trade is conducted with Africa,” the study argues.

The collaboration is facilitated by a number of means, but critically through what the investigators call a “revolving door between Whitehall and British mining companies, with at least five British government officials taking up seats on the boards of mining companies operating in Africa.”

Alongside detailed breakdowns of the resources under British corporate control, the firms involved and the tax havens in which they are registered, the report lists a number of these so-called ‘revolving door’ figures.

Among them is Baroness Shriti Vadera, a Labour development Minister between 2007 and 2009 before becoming a director of energy firm BHP Billiton. Also mentioned is Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, a UK diplomat for 36 years before a stint as a non-executive director at resource giant Rio Tinto.

The report alleges that some of the firms have been involved in tax dodging, labor rights violation, forced relocations of local communities and, in some cases, killings.

The authors conclude the UK most stop looking at Africa as a low cost supplier of resources and instead help to develop the nations to become manufacturing states themselves.

“These companies should not be allowed to get away with the labour violations, human rights abuses and environmental degradation that is currently taking place,” they add.

Blood Money: How Britain’s Ex-Diplomats Are Profiting From Global Conflict Zones

On May 03, 2016, RT UK reported that former UK diplomats are cashing in on their contacts and experience and advising despots, venture capitalists and Gulf regimes, according to a new investigation.

Britain’s ex-ambassadors to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, as well as former MPs, are legally profiting from conflict zones and poor countries in the Global South, according to the Daily Mail.

It has led to concerns that former diplomats are using their years of exposure to state secrets and their enviable contact lists to win lucrative paydays with big corporations.

One of the most high-profile figures involved is a former ambassador to Afghanistan, and one-time critic of the war and occupation, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles.

Cowper-Coles took a job working for British arms firm BAE in 2010 after taking early retirement from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Critics have connected him with halting a major investigation into the UK/Saudi arms trade in 2006.

He left BAE in 2013 to take up a role with HSBC. Both appointments were approved by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), which examines if any conflicts of interest arise from such appointments.

Another former diplomat named in the investigation is Sir Dominic Asquith, who served as ambassador to Libya between 2011 and 2012 – the period immediately after the UK’s disastrous intervention to remove the Gaddafi regime.

Asquith now advises the Libya Holdings Group, which seeks out investment opportunities in the war-torn North African state.

Former ambassador to Nigeria Sir Andrew Lloyd later became a vice president of Statoil, under the proviso from ACOBA that he not deal with the firm’s Nigerian operations.

The highly experienced Sir William Patey – a former UK representative to Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia – later became an advisor for private security firm Global Risks.

Elected politicians have also been involved in similar venture capital schemes in the developing world.

Former Tory Africa minister Sir Henry Bellingham once sang the praises of UK mining firm Pathfinder Minerals to the government of Mozambique when the company was involved in a legal dispute. He now chairs the firm.

Blairite ex-Foreign Secretary David Miliband is reported to have earned up to £1 million from his advisory jobs within two years of leaving office. That includes £15,000 for one day of advising a Pakistan venture capitalist and £65,000 for sitting on a foreign ministerial forum in the United Arab Emirates.

Recently a number of retired British military generals have been seen to be involved in similar activities.

On April 27, ex-general Simon Mayall, former Ministry of Defence advisor to the Gulf, told a parliamentary committee on the arms trade that its inquiries were “unwelcome and self-defeating.”

After leaving the military in 2015, he took up a role at Greenhill & Co, a major investment bank with global reach and Middle East energy interests.

On April 18, former general and ex-head of mercenary firm Aegis James Ellery was interviewed by the Guardian over allegations the company was using former Sierra Leonean child soldiers as private guards in Iraq.

Ellery, who left Aegis in 2015, lamented the state of the mercenary market, saying: “I’m afraid all we can afford now is Africans.”

Ellery’s previous jobs include demobilizing Sierra Leone child soldiers as part of a UN programme.