Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil . Nicholas ShaxsonAuthor(s): Kwame EssienSource: Africa Today, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Summer 2009), pp. 137-138Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/AFT.2009.55.4.137 .

Accessed: 21/06/2014 10:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Africa Today.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.134 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 10:56:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Bo

ok R

eview

s137

africato

day 55(4)

Shaxson, Nicholas. 2008. POISONED WELLS: THE DIRTY POLITICS OF AFRICAN OIL. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 280 pp. $26.95.

Nicholas Shaxson’s Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil exam-ines the role of oil and gas in the socioeconomic and political realities of Africa. In this book, Shaxson traces the roots of violence, corruption, pov-erty, disease, military rule, and dictatorship in parts of Africa by using the presence of such natural resources as oil and gas as the center of his analyses.

Shaxson’s thrust is that the oil wells in Africa are poisoned in varied ways—contaminated by avarice, exploitation, violence, and other social vices that are characteristic of oil-rich nations. To Shaxson, the natural resources, which could be generating wealth, have been shaped by neglect, nepotism, and abuses, largely supported by African politicians, local leaders, oil companies, and Western nations. He opines: “Politicians in oil-dependant countries lose interest in their fellow citizens, as they try to get access to the free cash [sic]” (p. 5).

Poisoned Wells is engaging and easy to read and appreciate because the author deliberately utilizes simplified expressions and examples that address the points that he seeks to highlight. He selects for illustrative purposes a number of individuals, politicians, and African leaders, thereby authenticat-ing his claims. Meanwhile, the causes and effects of oil and gas are his main concern. Therefore, he places a lot of weight on the detrimental effects of these sources of energy to show how their discovery and distribution have taken precedence over the basic needs of the masses.

Beginning with the origins of the Nigerian civil war of the 1960s and series of military coups d’état in Africa, Shaxson demonstrates how violence became entrenched in the politics of oil. He explains how oil and gas have been, and still remain, obstacles to peace, stability, and unity among African nations that are blessed with oil wealth. Part of Shaxson’s book explores the correlation between the rise in oil exploration and socioeconomic progress, indeed concluding that oil and gas are liabilities, not assets. He underscores the connection between the rise in oil sales and revenue, coupled with deepening crises in poor communities. According to Shaxson, the rise in oil and gas discovery and production has not guaranteed advancement from the bottom up in impoverished societies on the African continent; rather, the expansion of these wells runs parallel to the spread of poverty, diseases, and death.

Access to such natural resources has created a stark economic disparity among politicians, indigenous chiefs, military leaders, local and foreign oil agents, residents of small African towns and villages, and, indeed, Western nations. Shaxson therefore writes about a wide range of abuses orchestrated by African and Western oil companies, managers, and leaders. He maintains that oil and gas production is affecting the daily lives of the local people, and that they are interrupting their livelihood as people in these locales sacrifice their healthy environment for pollution that affects not only their health but their farmlands. Oil, as he has documented, has created other social

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.134 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 10:56:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Bo

ok R

eview

s138

africato

day 55(4)

problems, especially in economic development; it crippled the agriculture sector in Nigeria in the 1980s, as farmers and their families migrated to coastal areas and cities to seek financial benefits through oil labor.

Meanwhile, the inequality between the haves and the have-nots—a distinction that is largely created by oil and gas discovery—has not been resolved since the demise of colonialism. Shaxson reminds his readers that ordinary citizens in Africa have adopted their own solutions to the problem. In the context of societal problems, a segment of Poisoned Wells has been used by the author to chronicle the roots of social rebellions and justifica-tions for these reactions. These oppositions came from such musicians as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the late king of Afrobeat music, and Pedro Motu from Equatorial Guinea. Grassroots militancy and insurgencies by armed citizens against Exxon, Mobil, Shell, and other oil companies are components of the book.

Shaxson explains that Nigerians, for example, are not immune to violence, claiming that “oil’s destabilizing push-pull effect .  .  . pushes Nigerians apart as they fight each other for the cash; then, it pulls them together again as they seek to remain connected to the oil[-]gorged federal center” (p. 14). His other argument is that, though Western nations were able to determine, by force, the political future of African nations in the colonial days, they have not been able to maintain the same level of control economically; furthermore, unlike the colonial and early postcolonial era(s), when former Western imperialists and European oil companies held a grip on resources in Africa, these dynamics have shifted dramatically. Therefore, as he posits, Western nations are no longer the ones that decide the pace and conditions for enforcing supply and demand in the global market: “Africa’s rulers have more or less reversed the trend” (p. 2). He attributes this shift to recent developments in the United States after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, which political authorities in the United States exploited to focus attention on “national security,” rather than trade relations, as with oil nations in Africa. He shows how this distraction created room for China to gain greater access to African wells.

In the end, Shaxson offers constructive solutions to the dilemma con-fronting oil-rich nations on coastal waters of Africa. He calls this approach “radical surgery.” It includes a call for the West to seek alternate fuel to reduce its dependence on oil and gas from Africa, raising taxes on fuel, and implementing laws that prohibit the flow of “dirty money” into Western banks (pp. 224–225). In fact, Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil covers a wide range of issues about oil and gas that are not limited to one geographical region of Africa. The author brilliantly incorporates in-depth economic data and narratives that help in simplifying complex issues about the subject-matter. It is a publication that should be useful for both academic and nonacademic readers because of the scope and depth of Shaxson’s analyses.

Kwame EssienThe University of Texas at Austin

This content downloaded from 91.229.248.134 on Sat, 21 Jun 2014 10:56:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions