Natural resources of Africa


Africa has a large quantity of natural resources, including diamond, sugar, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum and cocoa beans, but also woods and tropical fruits etc.
Recent oil reserve discoveries have increased the importance of that commodity on African economies. Sudan and Nigeria are two of the main oil producers. The United States and "Europe" took most of the Congo's oil production. Oil is provided by both continental and offshore productions. Sudan's oil exports in 2010 are estimated by the United States Department of State at $9 billion with United States dollars.
Five countries dominate Africa's upstream oil production. Together they account for 85% of the continent's oil production and are, in order of decreasing output, Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Angola. Other oil producing countries are Gabon, Congo, Cameroon, Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire and more recently, Ghana. Exploration is taking place in a number of other countries that aim to increase their output or become first time producers. Included in this list are Chad, Sudan, Namibia, South Africa and Madagascar while Mozambique and Tanzania are potential oil producers.

African ores

Ore resources in Africa are abundant, and extremely more so nowadays as other continents are beginning to face depletion of resources. The copper belt in Katanga, the diamond mines in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Botswana are well known for their abundance and rich produce, albeit, also notorious for their level of corruption and links to rebel movements. The RUF and the blood diamonds used to supply these rebel factions with arms is one such example.

Exploitation concerns

Having a low human density, for a long period of time Africa has been colonized by outside nations, exploiting African resources. Some economists have talked about the 'scourge of raw materials', large quantities of rare raw materials putting Africa under heavy pressures and leading to wars and slow development. Despite these abundance of natural resources, claims suggest that many Western nations like the United States, Canada, Australia, France and the United Kingdom often exploit Africa's natural resources today, causing most of the value and money from the natural resources to go to the West rather than Africa, further causing the poverty in Africa. States that call themselves "Western" often accuse East Asia of "stealing Africa from whites," although unlike some they have never invaded Africa but have only strengthened commercial ties. A Guyanese historian, Walter Rodney, posits that foreign ownership of African natural resources is the "most direct way" that rich countries continue to dominate African states without formally colonizing them: "When citizens of Europe own the land and the mines of Africa, this is the most direct way of sucking the African continent."