Summary Of The Looting Machine By Tom Burgis

In his book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis examines the extractive economic and political network of mechanisms that have continued to exploit and impede Africa since its colonization. The corrupt cycle that is the looting machine has roots in the globalization by European and western companies. The beginning stages of neo-imperialism transformed the continent into the corrupt opulent resource siphoned Africa we see today. Internal extractive institutions, that inevitably result from the Iron Law of Oligarchy, in countries like Congo, Angola, and Nigeria result in the exploitation of African citizens to fuel systems based on crony capitalism; whereas External extractive institutions working through multinational corporations, specifically
from China, take advantage of the continent’s widespread Resource Curse to fuel their own demands. As a result Africa is simultaneously very rich and very poor, with its people stuck in with an unequal distribution of wealth. Africa has three main natural resources that they are overly dependant on: oil, diamonds, and coltan. That overdependence has allowed extractive exclusive institutions to easily manipulate different parts of the continent. The Democratic Republic of Congo is an ideal place to examine the effects of the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The Berlin Conference allowed Belgium, and its ruler King Leopold 2, to create a colony in Congo. After Belgium lost control over its colony, power eventually came to be under Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu was a corrupt leader, engaging in crony capitalism: profits from the economy would mostly go to him and his officers. A revolutionary leader with differing ideas on what a leader should be named Laurent Kabila overthrew Mobutu. Forms of cryptocracies allow multinational corporations to keep benefitting from the resource wealth of Africa.