Continuing Colonialism: World Bank Funds Mining in Africa http://countercurrents.org/mychalejko270311.htm

The private finance sector arm of the World Bank Group announced last month that it would invest $300 million to promote mining in Africa.“Mining is a critically important yet challenging sector and [the International Finance Corporation] IFC has a role to play in supporting responsible companies that will bring jobs, related infrastructure and government revenues to Africa,” said Andrew Gunther, IFC's Senior Manager of Infrastructure and Natural Resources in Africa and Latin America."Much has been written about China's voracious appetite for Africa's mineral resources as it attempts to become a global industrial power. I think the World Bank's investment is a precursor of larger investments on projects, as big and emerging powers engage in the new scramble for Africa," said Tesfaye.

While the IFC claims to promote poverty reduction through sustainable development in developing countries, it has been criticized because the mining projects it has funded have a track record of causing human rights abuses and massive environmental damage. "This is bad news for Africans, at least those who aren't members of the business and political elite," said Jamie Kneen, Communications Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada .

"The extractive industry is not only correlated with high rates of militarism and corruption, but it is also an industry that is inextricably linked to externalized environmental and social costs," said Saunders. "Additionally, these industries traditionally provide very little revenues in terms of royalties and taxes to their host countries."What all of this amounts to is the continuation of colonialism's brutal legacy through a corporate neocolonialism carried out by transnational mining companies with the aid of international financial institutions working at the behest of developed nations

[also read>Big Dams are to a nations development what nuclear bombs are to its military arsenal. Theyre both weapons of mass destruction. - Arundhati Roy http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/narmada.html Before the Ministry of the Environment even cleared the Narmada Valley Development Projects in 1987, the World Bank sanctioned a loan for $450 million for the largest dam, the Sardar Sarovar, in 1985.Questions arose concerning the promises about resettlement and rehabilitation programs set up by the government, so by 1986 each state had a peoples organization that addressed these concerns. Soon, these groups came together to form the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), or, the Save the Narmada Movement.

In 1988, the NBA formally called for all work on the Narmada Valley Development Projects to be stopped. In September 1989, more than 50,000 people gathered in the valley from all over India to pledge to fight destructive development.A year later thousands of villagers walked and boated to a small town in Madhya Pradesh to reiterate their pledge to drown rather than agree to move from their homes. Under intense pressure, the World Bank was forced to create an independent review committee, the Morse Commission, which published the Morse Report (a.k.a. Independent Review) in 1992.

In author Arundhati Roys opinion It is the most balanced, unbiased, yet damning indictment of the relationship between the Indian State and the World Bank. Two months later, the Bank sent out the Pamela Cox Committee.It suggested exactly what the Morse Report advised against:a sort of patchwork remedy to try and salvage the operation(Roy 45-46). Eventually, due to the international uproar created by the Report, the Bank withdrew from the Sardar Sarovar Project

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