Lagos Traffic

Is there anything more infuriating than being caught in Lagos traffic? Accounts of voyages which should not take more than ten minutes having taken many hours may seem laughable to those who have never experienced the wrath of the Lagos traffic jam. But having endured two in less than 24 hours, I can say this: these accounts are no exaggeration in the slightest. One of the most bizarre things about Lagos traffic, though, is how it creeps up with no explanation whatsoever. As a passenger in distress, frustrated about being in a logjam which prevents you from attending an event on time being hosted no further than a few blocks away, you suddenly become intrigued as to how it happened in the first place. Your taxi turns a corner, smooth sailing, and then all of a sudden you are swarmed by vehicles which are dodging pedestrians and being stopped by police for no logical reason whatsoever.

Lagos road congestion has become the topic of legend. Known locally as ‘go-slows’, Lagos traffic jams have become more frequent in recent years, as its road network, which has not been updated in decades, has been forced to cope with an ever-increasing number of passenger vehicles, trucks and automobiles. The reality is that Lagos, with a population now exceeding 21 million, is set to become Africa’s largest city by 2015. Fuel subsidies have made purchasing a car a relatively inexpensive undertaking, and the main reason why the number of registered vehicles on Lagos roads increased nearly 1000% between 1995 and 2010, from 27,000 to 230,000. Needless to say, the ‘go-slow’ is now a part of everyday life in Nigeria’s commercial capital.

What is perhaps most intriguing about Lagos traffic, however, is how ordinary residents respond to it. Numerous visitors and writers, including the famous Ryszard Kapuściński, have, over the years, marveled at how Nigerians have coped with the country’s lack of infrastructure and problems. But you can only appreciate how when you are caught in a ‘go-slow’ yourself: the small, mini-taxis, whizzing down backstreets which you thought never existed; vendors galvanizing en masse around the traffic, sandwiched within the contours of parked vehicles, selling every product imaginable; and drivers jockeying for the four car lengths of space afforded by the slightest vehicular movement every ten minutes or so during the perpetual traffic jam, unphased by the circumstances. Alongside this, of course, and beyond the traffic jam itself, each resident is forced to acquire and run his/her own generator because of the inconsistency in the supply of electricity.

There is certainly something admirable about the way in which Lagos residents cope with and adapt to perpetual traffic. It is a telling sign of their resilience. But it is also a sign that people have conceded defeat, no longer in possession of the zeal, passion and energy needed to facilitate change. For as long as people continue to tolerate ridiculousness such as the Lagos traffic jam, unchallenged, corrupt African governments will continue to neglect infrastructural needs. Has the African citizenry given up?

Are Ghana's Chiefs Coming or Going?

So the Okyenhene has called on the US Government to assist with mining reclamation (‘Okyenhene Lobbies US Government to Support Reclamation’ http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=291594). A self-proclaimed environmentalist, the Okyenhene, the paramount chief of the Akyem Abuakwa State in Ghana and one of the country’s most powerful traditional leaders, has long lobbied the government to double its efforts to eradicate illegal mining. He has drawn particular attention to the environmental impact of galamsey (unlicensed gold mining) activities in his jurisdiction, pleading for policymakers in attendance at meetings held at the regional and national levels to remove galamsey operators from ‘his’ land. These would be reasonable requests if there were not excavators and other mining equipment on the front lawn of the Okyenhene’s palace. But when the Okyenhene went international with the issue, making an appeal for assistance in a meeting held at the US State Department in Washington DC, everything changed. It more importantly begs the question: what do Ghana’s chiefs want?

Although it is sin to talk about Ghana’s traditional leaders negatively in public forums, is it really in the interest of Ghana’s citizens for the government to continue circumnavigate the chieftaincy institution in policymaking exercises, avoiding upsetting traditional leaders, and failing to hold them to account in cases where it is warranted? It has become public knowledge that chiefs are involved in some capacity with small-scale mining. This is not to say that the Okyenhene himself is bankrolling small-scale miners directly but for him to play ignorant when questioned about galamsey, implying that he has no knowledge of why illegal gold mining activity is increasing, and specifically how traditional leaders are fuelling this growth. The reality is that many of Ghana’s chiefs simply want more resource rents, and will do anything to deflect discussion and criticism away from their actions. Whilst the US State Department is unlikely to get involved with mine reclamation in Ghana, the fact that the Okyenhene feels he has the right to even initiate, on his own, dialogue with an international partner, and telling a story which barely captures the truth about a phenomenon – the proliferation of unlicensed artisanal mining – in an effort to mobilize assistance, is mind-boggling.

More significantly, it raises the question of why the Government of Ghana insists on continuing to involve chiefs in, and at times making them the centrepiece of, local economic development. Specifically, if Ghana’s traditional leaders have no intention of using resource revenues for the benefit of communities, as evidence pointing to the hoarding of timber and mine royalties suggests, and have openly declared that ‘their’ share of allocated revenue should not have to be filtered down to their jurisdictions (‘Chiefs should not lead development projects’ http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/blogs/blog.article.php?blog=1995&ID=1000006128), why are they increasingly being featured in revenue decentralization and community development exercises? The EITI has even called for chiefs to be held accountable (‘Ghana: Hold Chiefs Accountable’ http://allafrica.com/stories/201004160833.html), so why can government not act? It seems that many of Ghana’s chiefs have one foot in the modern era and the other in the sixteenth century, when perhaps they were considered de facto land owners, shuffling back and forth when it is convenient for them.

It is a bit ironic that the ‘problem’ which the Okyenhene has asked American government officials to help him resolve is largely his own doing. The view here is that the failure of paramount chiefs such as the Okyenhene and the Asantehene to properly decentralize royalties earned from large-scale mining activities has mobilized ‘lesser’ chiefs based at the grassroots. Desperate for money, these chiefs have turned to local galamsey operators, whom they have sponsored and from whom they now generate significant amounts of cash. It could very well be a case of the Okyenhene wanting a piece of the action as well but that his centralized paramount position inhibits effective infiltration of existing sponsorship/ore-sharing arrangements between ‘lesser’ chiefs and galamsey operators. He, much like his colleagues, is forced to rely on ‘palace gangs’, who, equally disconnected from the realities on the ground, have not really put the Okyenhene in a better position to benefit from the galamsey activity burgeoning in his jurisdiction right before his eyes.

There is an important ‘takeaway’ message here: When is the Government of Ghana going to realize that the country’s chiefs are not vanguards of development. Any responsibility assigned to chiefs in the context of development, in particular, revenue sharing, should, therefore, be reconsidered.

The Meaning of a Meeting in Rewind

It never ceases to amaze me how little people know about small-scale mining. How is it, after more than 40 years after surfacing in the international development lexicon, that we are still reviewing the most basic of questions? I am talking about questions such as: What is small-scale mining? Why is it such a problem? and How can we formalize the industry’s operators? I find myself shaking my head as these, and similar, questions are being asked in the middle of yet another workshop that is rapidly morphing into a discussion focused on the theme ‘What, exactly, are we dealing with?’.

At this particular event, there are some of the usual suspects – myself included – who eat and breathe small-scale mining, publishing papers on a range of the industry’s many interesting but poorly understood nuances in an attempt, in the short-term, to raise its profile, and in the long-term, to secure it the donor support it rightly deserves. But it seems that, every 2 years or so, a new crop of people from the donor, policymaking and NGO communities, each with a peripheral interest in the sector but who are intrigued nonetheless, emerge on to the scene. And so, we must again revisit the basic questions that were posed at the beginning of this exercise four decades ago: What is small-scale mining? Why is it such a problem? and How do we formalize its operators?

The only logical conclusion I can come up with as to why we constantly press the reboot button and start over again is that no one is interested, apart from the handful of people committed to doing research on the subject, in bringing ASM into core international development policies and programs. This is why, time and time again, we host workshops on ASM which take us back to the Stone Age. This is why, time and time again, we invite disinterested and disconnected African ministers to these workshops, where they proceed to deliver presentations, which always run over the allocated time, and talk about mundane points that they believe they have acquired a sound knowledge of from the confines of their air-conditioned officers. This is why, time and time again, we host workshops on ASM which yield the same unproductive conclusions which, if implemented, would not advance the agenda one iota. The same messages we have relayed over the past 20 years, such as ‘We need more transparency in this sector’ and ‘More miners need to be licensed’, were resonating at this particular event.

It is hard not to have a preconceived idea of what to expect at this events. What gets me through most, however, is the exuberance and naivety of the new crop of peripherals. In response to my criticisms, which I do a poor job of hiding, I am told things like ‘This is a new direction for development, so be patient’ and ‘The World Bank is here, so it must be serious’. One delegate told me, in what seemed like an effort to reassure me that things are improving, that ‘We are even lucky that small-scale mining got on the agenda…this is the 10th year of these meetings and it was only a last minute decision that led to its inclusion’. It was as if I was supposed to be grateful that we are having some dialogue about small-scale mining, despite being one of the most important development issues today. But if not for this enthusiasm, the energy and excitement expressed by people who seem to have discovered something new, I think I would be more cynical than I am which, at this point, seems impossible. One cannot help but get excited when others come on board, presenting new ideas about ‘directions we should go’, ‘what donors must do’ and ‘where we should carry out work’. One delegate even said to me, half-excitedly, that ‘we need to build on this, to do some work on small-scale mining so by the next meeting, we have some valuable experiences to share’.

I only hope that this materializes: that we will be reconnecting with this same seemingly-passionate group next time. Or will we be pressing the reset button yet again, welcoming another curious but intrigued support cast?

A Unique Resource Curse…Or Is It?

It seems quite strange to speak about a resource curse in Guyana. After all, the debates on this topic have focused almost exclusively on the performance and impact of large multinational mining and oil and gas companies, none of which are operating on or off of Guyana’s shores at present (the days of Omai seem like a distant memory). But as we have come to learn over the years, nothing is as straightforward as it seems in this vastly under-populated country: its identity crisis, specifically, how, despite being situated squarely in South America, its people appear as Caribbean in their mannerisms and attitudes as the ‘islanders’; how its Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), which was supposed to become a centrepiece of national development and a ‘quick-fix’ poverty-alleviation strategy, has quickly become a debacle; and its regressive democracy and politics, underpinned by racial tensions, themselves relicts of the colonial period. The dynamics of its resource curse ‘epidemic’ are no exception.

Guyana’s resource curse has been particularly distressing for me. Unlike most mineral economies in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and elsewhere in Latin America, the country’s gold mining industry is comprised entirely of indigenous and Brazilian small and medium-scale operators. I have dedicated my career to raising awareness of, and creating a ‘space’ for, these operators, the economic contributions of whom have been – rather strangely – neglected by donors and governments across the developing world for decades. In Guyana, however, successive governments have done just this: reserve land for their own small and medium operators, and not succumb to the pressures of international donors that have lobbied for the allocation of mineralized territories to foreign multinationals. As a result of these efforts, gold mining, backed almost exclusively by indigenous wealth, now generates over US$700 million in revenue annually in Guyana, making it by far the country’s largest industry.

The ‘results’ of this policy approach, however, appear little different to those of the developing countries that have fast become to focus of our lengthy tirades on the resource curse, few of which have much to show from the booming and sprawling large-scale mining industries that now populate vast sections of their landscapes. Although the anatomy of Guyana’s gold mining economy differs markedly to that of, say, Ghana or Tanzania, its salient developmental features do not, the most significant being what I often refer to as the ‘laziness’ of its institutions. The steady stream of revenues provided by gold miners seems to have made the government complacent. It appears to have shied away from supporting other sectors of its economy, the resulting Dutch Disease now most noticeable in the country’s sugar and rice trades, which have long been important sectors of the national economy. The former has suffered tremendously in recent years from a skills shortage and a change in global trade policies, which have resulted in a decline in exports to the European Union; the sustainability of the latter is precarious, at best, given how exports are determined heavily by an oil-for-rice agreement forged with neighbouring Venezuela, a country which experiencing a resource curse of its own.

There are a number of other disturbing similarities between Guyana’s own resource curse and the ‘epidemics’ of those which now engulf countries where foreign large-scale mining industries dominate the economy. The first is the inappropriate – or rather cavalier – attitude of its government officials toward economic diversification. Much like the policymakers I have encountered over the years in countries where foreign-controlled large-scale mining activities are now rooted, Guyana’s politicians seem to be in denial about the resource curse and therefore, unwilling to take proactive measures to avert it or prevent it from intensifying. This was quite evident during a conversation with the country’s Minister of Finance, in response to my comment about there being ‘no other industries apart from gold mining in Guyana’, responded, quite animatedly: ‘what are you talking about?...we [Guyana] have a burgeoning sugar industry and flourishing rice trade’, seemingly oblivious to the aforementioned problems plaguing both of those sectors. How can a problem be fixed if it is not acknowledged by senior-ranking officials?

A second similarity is the concentration of ownership and finance. Critics often draw attention to how, in the likes of Ghana, Tanzania and Peru, gold mining activities are controlled by a small group of multinational corporations which, as a result, wield a considerable amount of influence over the economy and local politics. But a similar dynamic persists in Guyana, the key difference, of course, being that the gold mining economy is controlled by a handful of indigenous elites, multimillionaires with lavish houses and cars, and who have made countless investments abroad. A final point relates to where revenues are going – or more specifically, where they are not going. The criticism of the large-scale mining multinationals operating in the developing world is that they repatriate most of their profits, and take advantage of lax regulations and policies to import equipment and supplies without having to pay duties and invest locally. The same problem, however, persists in Guyana, the difference being, of course, that it is the group of elite small-scale miners who are taking millions of dollars of gold out of villages such as Mahdia and reinvesting very little in the community. These miners certainly flaunt their wealth by erecting large houses and hotels but elect not to contribute to developing domestic value-added industries such as agriculture and manufacturing, which would certainly provide greater economic benefit to the country than the fancy cars they import from abroad; the capital flight is enormous.

Thus, whilst Guyana’s mining experience has the look of being more favourable for domestic growth, the outcomes are very much the same and challenges very real. It goes to show that it does not matter whose hands the extractive industry are in: if there is little policy recognition of the implications of being one-dimensional economically, the resource curse will quickly become a reality.