Abstract
In the heated discussions on worldwide competition over resources, German and European policy-makers and industry representatives nervously point to the growing demand for resources by emerging economies such as China, Brazil, and India. China produces more than 97 % of the global supply of rare earth minerals, which are used to produce high-tech consumer products and advanced military equipment like guided missiles. Reports in late 2010 showed that China was withholding shipments of rare earths resulted in increased nervousness of importing countries (Hagelüken, Chap. 8; Schebek et al., Chap. 10; Zepf et al., Chap. 18). In these discussions, the role of Sub-Saharan Africa as an important producer of certain minerals is often overlooked. The Steenkamskraal mine in South Africa, operated by Canada’s Great Western minerals Group for instance, is projected to produce 2,700 t of rare earth concentrate by 2013. World demand for rare earth elements was estimated at 136.000 t per year in 2012, with global production around 134.000 t in 2010 (Humphries 2012).
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Notes
- 1.
Jones bases his calculations on production and reserves data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the US Geological Mineral Resources Survey (USGS).
- 2.
The six platinum group metals are ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum.
- 3.
In Zimbabwe, another neighbouring country that invaded the DRC and profited from its mineral wealth, personalities who had smuggled diamonds from the Congolese war economy, later became involved in shady diamond businesses in the Zimbabwean diamond fields of Marange (PAC 2010: 5; UN Panel of Experts on DRC 2002: 5–7).
- 4.
The case study is based on field research undertaken by one of the authors, Marie Müller, in Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria, in October 2009.
- 5.
The numbers listed by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (535 battle-related deaths in 2004) only account for fighting that involved the state military. As much of the violence in the Niger Delta is inter-communal, there is hardly any reliable data on annual fatalities and the numbers are contested (Mähler 2010: 11–13).
- 6.
Extract from an interview by the author with Bridget Osakwe, WANEP, Lagos, Nigeria, 4 November 2009. The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) supports local peacebuilding initiatives in the Niger Delta and monitored the humanitarian impact of the 2009 fighting in the Niger Delta.
- 7.
Interview by the author with Reverend Kevin O’Hara, founder of CSCR, Lagos, Nigeria, 3 November 2009.
- 8.
In practice (Fiscal Year 2007), the revenues are divided in the following way: Statutory allocations to states (20 %), local governments (15 %) based on the criteria of equality, population and land mass; share of federal government (39 %), and ‘derivation’ money allocated to the oil-producing states based on their oil production volumes (9 %) (Guichaoua 2009: 30).
- 9.
Founded in the late 1700s, it was one of the most powerful empires in Sub-Saharan Africa prior to European conquest and colonization. The Fulani rulers had conquered former Hausa states.
- 10.
Interview by the author with Dayo Olaide, Coordinator West Africa Resource Watch at the Open Society Institute for West Africa (OSIWA), Abuja, Nigeria, 28 October 2009.
- 11.
Equally, the violent clashes between Ijaw and Itsekiri in Warri, Delta State, in 1997 to 1999 followed the creation of new LGAs. Since then, there has not been a crisis of that magnitude (Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution 2008: 182–84).
- 12.
For example, in August 2007, the JTF intervened in a clash between two rival militia groups in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, using helicopters and machine guns and killing at least 32 gang members, members of the security forces and bystanders. The extent of the preceding gang violence is not to be neglected either (Amnesty International 2009a; Human Rights Watch 2008).
- 13.
As a consequence, the oil-bearing communities of the Niger Delta (today’s South-South region) were separated from the Igbo-dominated southeast (today’s South-East region).
- 14.
The term ‘bunkering’ is used in Nigeria to designate the theft of oil more generally, while as a nautical term, it is usually defined as the taking onboard of bunker fuel.
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Müller-Koné, M., Croll, P. (2015). Forging War or Peace? The Role of the State in Extractive Economies of Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Hartard, S., Liebert, W. (eds) Competition and Conflicts on Resource Use. Natural Resource Management and Policy, vol 46. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10954-1_4
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