"The vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience" - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.

 
By the time the European powers had completed the great scramble for Africa early in the twentieth century, the wounds they inflicted had left the continent crippled. In the space of 20-30 years the territory had been almost completely carved up and subjugated. Its people were put to work, under the most brutal conditions, extracting the natural resources that were feeding the rapid industrialisation of Europe.

Today there's a new scramble on. On the one hand it's driven by geo-political concerns: After the break-up of the USSR in 1991, the political "certainties" that characterised the Cold War were brought into question and a space was opened up for the forming of new strategic political alliances.

On the other hand, it's just one more giant looting fest, with oil at its centre. The world's two biggest oil importers - the US and China - are rushing to seal up the continent and secure every last drop available. Fully one-third of new oil discoveries since the year 2000 have been in Africa, with oil investment now representing over 50 per cent of all foreign direct investment (FDI) in the continent.

China's oil imports from Africa account today for 30 per cent of total imports. Its oil companies are constructing pipelines and refineries, and securing exploration rights particularly in Angola, the Congo and Sudan.

The Wall Street Journal recently noted that "China has made Africa a front line in its pursuit of more global influence, tripling trade with the continent to some $37 billion over the last five years and locking up energy assets, closing trade deals and educating Africa's future elites at Chinese universities and military schools."

All of this makes the US uneasy, firstly because an aim of their global strategy since the break-up of the Soviet Union has been to prevent the rise of any country that might challenge their global domination. Secondly because US oil companies have invested more than $50 billion in the region since 1995 and US agencies are expecting oil imports from Africa to rise from 15 per cent today to 25 per cent of total imports by 2015.

The Council on Foreign Relations, a right-wing US think tank, depicts China as the leading threat to US interests in Africa: "China has altered the strategic context in Africa. All across Africa today, China is acquiring control of natural resource assets, outbidding Western contractors on major infrastructure projects, and providing soft loans and other incentives to bolster its competitive advantage."

You might think that all of this economic competition must be a godsend to the destitute masses of the African continent. After all, capitalist development is what the continent desperately needs, right? Unfortunately, the opposite is the case.

Nigeria, the continent's largest producer, struck oil nearly 50 years ago. Between 1960 and 1973 output increased 120-fold, with government oil-revenues increasing nearly 140-fold in the decade from 1970. Yet as US academic Michael Watts points out, "Between 1970 and 2000 in Nigeria, the number of people subsisting on less than one dollar a day grew from 36 per cent to more than 70 per cent, from 19 million to a staggering 90 million." The IMF could curiously write of this that oil "did not seem to add to the standard of living." Little wonder, when 85 per cent of the revenues accrue to 1 per cent of the population.

Added to this is the environmental devastation. Constant leaks and spills in the Niger Delta have seen the beaches run black. The water has a constant oily film over the top, fish stocks are depleted and acid rain diminishes local crop yields. A group of scientific researchers who visited three of the nine Niger Delta States in the late 1990s noted "most places we went, the extent of damage [was] sincerely beyond human description." One oil spill alone in 1998 released over 800,000 barrels of oil into the local region.

In most villages there are no schools, medical clinics, or social services, no clean drinking water and almost no paying jobs. People struggle to eke out a living, while all around them oil wells owned by foreign companies pump billions of dollars' worth of oil a year from under their feet.

A Human Rights Watch report on another major oil producer, Sudan, noted: "Oil development in southern Sudan should have been a cause of rejoicing for Sudan's people. Instead, it has brought them nothing but woe." It points out evidence of the complicity of oil companies in human rights abuses: "Oil companies operating in Sudan were aware of...killing, bombing, and looting...all in the name of opening up the oilfields. These facts were repeatedly brought to their attention in public and private meetings, but they continued to operate and make a profit as the devastation went on."

Economic competition becoming military competition

Despite being the largest economy in the world, the US is struggling to compete with China on an economic level in Africa - China just has too much cash to throw around.

The US has therefore concerned itself with combating China in a way the world to which has become accustomed - through the expansion of US military operations in the region. Although the US only has one permanent military base on the continent, journalist John Bellamy Foster points out that "a newly established base in Uganda gives the United States the potential of dominating southern Sudan, where most of that country's oil is to be found".

In West Africa, the US military has now established operations in Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Gabon and Namibia as well as developing a coastal security system in the Gulf of Guinea (80 per cent of African oil discoveries are here).

So Africa has now become a pivotal zone in war to secure a "New American Century" - the war to ensure the US remains top dog for decades to come.

Is there an alternative?

When we turn on the TV, the picture of Africa is almost always the same: A World Vision ad shows a malnourished child and the news shows us refugees and conflict. They don't tell us why the child has arms like sticks, they don't tell us why all these people are dying of famine. They don't tell us the root source of violence in conflict areas. The news just gives us vague and racist commentary about "complex" "tribal" or "ethnic" divisions, without ever exploring how tensions arose and assuring us there is little chance of any solution. The picture of Africa is that of an eternally backward primitive society that desperately needs charity and aid from the civilised world.

Yet the reality of Africa is that the problems are primarily external - imperialism, oil and other multinational corporations - and the real solutions lie within.

All across the continent, there are combative workers' movements - in Egypt, South Africa, Algeria, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. These movements have led the way - fighting for democratic rights, striking over privatisation, annulment of elections and for fuel subsidies for the poor, greater concessions from the oil giants, pay increases for state sector workers and so on.

This year alone there have been general strikes in both Nigeria and Algeria, two of the biggest oil producers on the continent, as well as South Africa.

The working class is the key to social transformation across the continent, firstly because of the enormous power it wields - especially in the oil-producing states, where just thousands or tens of thousands of workers have the ability to completely shut down the economy in an instant.

But secondly, because the working class is the only force which has an interest in genuine development. Generally the ruling class in oil states is embedded deeply in the State machine and survives almost exclusively on oil revenues. As far as they're concerned, there's no need for a healthy and educated working class. So precious little is spent on welfare, education and public health, let alone sanitation, water and electricity.

This is not simply a mistake, or bad policy. For the African ruling classes (not to mention the oil companies) there is no economic need for much civilian infrastructure - all that is required are the huge outlays on pipelines, ports and drilling machinery too keep the profits flowing.

Unless the populations themselves put them under pressure, why would they really care about the state of the mass of people? They don't. There's no money in that.

So given the ruling class won't provide, the workers are forced to fight for their needs. The reality, then, is that there is a real possibility of the working class in these countries pushing forward - for example, to nationalise a country's resources to ensure that the population, not the oil companies and the ruling elite, are the beneficiaries of the proceeds. We have already seen these sorts of movements in Bolivia and Venezuela in the past five years.

The biggest threat to the achievement of genuine development and decent living standards in Africa will not be a lack of compassionate donors from the Western world, but the military operations of the imperial powers, who want to see Africa remain crippled so that its resources can continue to be pillaged.

It is precisely because of this that impending military interventions into Africa have to be opposed. We will be sold a script about "humanitarian" concerns, but it is important to recognise that the imperial powers only care about humanitarian concerns to the extent that it enables them to sell another war for oil and empire - just like Iraq.