The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth Hardcover – 26 Feb. 2015

stunning and eye opening book that rips open the belly of corruption in resource rich SSA countries. The Chinese are late comers to the game but have managed to catch up and in a lot of cases bypass the incumbent "old" colonial powers. Would have liked to seen a little more on the corruption taking place in the Francophone SSA countries as this really does (did?) go to Presidential level and would have balanced out some of the Anglo detail. End of the day it is thievery and the countries involved will all have hell to pay come the day of reckoning and that day hopefully is on the horizon for the poor who pay the cost. A fine and readable book .

With a personal interest and involvement in the oil industry in the Nigerian delta I found those parts of the book about Nigeria enlightening and informative. It is clearly a heavily researched book by a well informed journalist but the detail with which he investigates the corruption and the warring factions in the oil industry in Angola or Equatorial Guinea or the mineral industry in the Congo induced me to skip complete sections.His thesis is that the resource curse of oil, gas and mineral riches leads to corruption, ethnic violence and extreme poverty rates. The economies of any country with resource riches become distorted as their overvalued currencies emasculate other industries in the country. It is called the Dutch Disease, as experienced by Holland in 1977. As the value of local currency goes up, imports become cheaper undercutting homegrown enterprises. For example the strength of the Nigerian currency due to its oil wealth led to the undercutting and demise of the Nigerian textile industry by cheap imported Chinese garments.Tom Burgis argues that the resource industry is hardwired for corruption. Kleptocracy, or government by theft, thrives. The revenues from licensing oil and minerals are called economic rent and do not make for good management. Pots of money are at the disposal of those who control the state. The contract between rulers and ruled breaks down because the ruling class does not need to tax the people to fund the government so has no need for their consent.Tom Burgis is particularly enlightening about the approach and role of the Chinese. Good guanxi requires cultivation of personal ties that carry as much force as any written contract. Not to return a personal favour is a grave social transgression. When applied to politics and business guanxi can become indistinguishable from corruption or nepotism. Tom Burgis’s description of Sam Pa, a Chinese businessman, spy, arms trader who was instrumental in huge Chinese investment in China’s trade with Africa with cheap loans to fund infrastructure repaid in oil or minerals is an example of the grey area between investment and corruption.But Tom Burgis is fair about the dilemma of the African business men and politicians. There are obligations on successful people for their family and community and the lines between, nepotism, corruption and survival are close. Fall off the looting machine and the consequences can be dire – your house can burn and you and your family can be crushed.A thought provoking read. It does not make me stop supplying spill control equipment to the Nigerian delta even though I can be accused of complicity in the corruption. Isolation from the issues by European companies is not the solution.

Fantastic book that gives you a remarkably detailed look into the looting machine (literally the mechanisms, events and individuals that enable the systematic, kleptocratic theft of wealth).If you live in a rich, stable country thinking that this does not affect you, you are mistaken. Kleptocrats around the world are the reason why your western quality of life is decreasing. They are the reason that asset values are escaping the realms of what your own income can provide you with. The stolen money is spent in stable democracies is for example one of several reasons why London real estate is unaffordable for the masses. I wish Tom Burgis touched on that but there was already too much to explain about the looting machine itself. Fantastic book and I will probably read it again soon.I recently went to Nigeria and this helped me to understand the current and ongoing state of affairs much better.

Tom Burgis's book should be mandatory on the desk of every official in the international bodies who deals with Africa. It is eloquent, lyrical at times, and totally devestating. Here is real, front line reporting at its very best. Which is what marks the book out from others on the topic. Tom Burgis gets people to talk to him who have spoken to few, if any, outsiders at all. People in the Delta gangs in Nigeria; the General. People in the Futungo in Angola, the officially sanctioned kleptocracy. High officials in the Congo, Niger, Ghana. Humans are a pirate tribe, and no ones worse than the pirates in your own home port. They terrorise the sea and loot the land about them. Africa has finally escaped Imperial colonialism only to fall victim to Capitalist colonialism, some of it by people, the Chinese, only recently liberated from centuries of poverty themselves. Here is the intimite history of human rapacity retold for a new generation. Years ago, I remember working in a trade paper in a building opposite the Sunday Times in Gray's Inn Road. The building belonged, as did several other nearby, to a Nigerian 'entrepreneur'. That was 1983 and the looting of Nigeria, and the conversion of so many of its real entrepereneurs into crooks just to survive the local environment in Nigeria, was all too well established. No record of modern Africa is complete without Tom Burgis's book. Read it and weep, but dont despair. The way out of this new curse is visible and isd in the hands of the international bodies. Help Africa and Africa will help itself. .