Lee Wengraf - Extracting Profit: Imperialism, Neoliberalism and the New Scramble for Africa

Praise for Extracting Profit

Lee Wengrafs Extracting Profit is at once historical and contemporary. It unpacks ongoing resource crimes by analytically exposing their historical roots and pointing to ways by which the oppressed can cut off the bonds that lock in their subjugation.

Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation

In recent years countries in the African continent have experienced an economic boombut not all have benefited equally. Extracting Profit is a brilliant and timely analysis that explodes the myth of Africa Rising, showing how neoliberal reforms have made the rich richer while leaving tens of millions of poor and working-class people behind. Lee Wengraf tells this story within the context of an imperial rivalry between the United States and China, two global superpowers that have expanded their economic and military presence across the continent. Extracting Profit is incisive, powerful, and necessary: if you read one book about the modern scramble for Africa and what it means for all of us, make it this one.

Anand Gopal, author, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes

Extracting Profit provides a great arch of scrutiny, from the earliest carve-up of the African continent through colonialism, war, and imperialism to the recent neoliberal takeover. The book demonstrates the continued importance of Marxist analysis on the continent, asserting the centrality of class and a project of revolutionary change. Wengraf provides us with a major contribution, one that highlights contemporary developments, including the role of China on the African continent, that have perplexed and baffled scholars. An indispensable volume.

Leo Zeilig, author of Frantz Fanon: The Militant Philosopher of Third World Revolution

The history of resource frontiers everywhere is always one of lethal violence, militarism, and empire amidst the house of capital accumulation. Lee Wengraf in Extracting Profit powerfully reveals the contours of Africas twenty-first century version of this history. The scramble for resources, markets, and investments has congealed into a frightening militarization across the continent, creating and fueling the conditions for further political instability. Wengraf documents how expanded American, but also Chinese, presencecoupled with the War on Terrorpoint to both the enduring rivalry among global superpowers across the continent and a perfect storm of resource exploitation. Wengraf offers up a magisterial synopsis of the challenges confronting contemporary Africa.

Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley

One of the most well-known stylized facts of Africas recent growth experience is that it has been inequality-inducing in ways that previous growth spurts were not. Lee Wengraf, in her new book Extracting Profit, expertly utilizes the machinery of Marxian class analysis in making sense of this stylized fact. Along the way we learn much about Africas historical relationship with imperialism and its contemporary manifestations. This book should be required reading for all those who care about Africa and its future.

Grieve Chelwa, Contributing Editor, Africa Is A Country

Thorough and thoughtful, Wengrafs book has a radical depth that underscores its significance. Its definitely a must-read for anyone who cherishes an advanced knowledge of the exploitation of Africa as well as the politics that undermine Africas class freedom.

Kunle Wizeman Ajayi, Convener, Youths Against Austerity and General Secretary of United Action for Democracy, Nigeria

Extracting Profit is a very important book for understanding why the immense majority of the African population remains pauperized, despite impressive growth rates of mineral-rich countries on the continent. It continues the project of Walter Rodneys How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. And in several ways, it also goes beyond it, capturing the changing dynamics of global capitalism 45 years after Rodneys magnus opus.

In this book, Lee Wengraf debunks the myth of Africa Rising and the supposed expansion of an entrepreneurial middle class, revealing reforms imposed by international financial institutions as mechanisms for fostering imperialism in an era of sharpening contradictions of the global capitalist economy. The adverse social, economic, political, and environmental impacts of these are elaborated on as a systemic whole, through the books examination of the sinews of capitals expansion in the region: the extractive industries.

But Wengraf does not stop at interrogating the underdevelopment of Africa. Her book identifies a major reason for the failures of national liberation projects: while the working masses were mobilized to fight against colonial domination, the leadership of these movements lay in the hands of aspiring capitalists and intellectuals. The urgency of the need for a strategy for workers power internationally, she stresses correctly, cannot be overemphasized.

Reading Extracting Profit would be exceedingly beneficial for any change-seeking activist in the labor movement within and beyond Africa.

Baba Aye, editor, Socialist Worker (Nigeria)

Imperialism, Neoliberalism,
and the New Scramble for Africa

Lee Wengraf

2018 Lee Wengraf

Published in 2018 by

Haymarket Books

P.O. Box 180165

Chicago, IL 60618

773-583-7884

www.haymarketbooks.org

ISBN: 978-1-60846-876-8

Trade distribution:

In the US, Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com

In Canada, Publishers Group Canada, www.pgcbooks.ca

In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com

All other countries, Ingram Publisher Services International,

This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace Action Fund.

Cover photo 2004, Ed Kashi, shows an oil spill from an abandoned Shell Petroleum Development Company well in Oloibiri, Niger Delta. Wellhead 14 was closed in 1977 but had been leaking for years, and in June 2004 it finally released an oil spill of over 20,000 barrels of crude. Workers subcontracted by Shell Oil Company clean it up.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

This book is the product of a decades research and writing. Many people provided invaluable help during that time, for which I am very grateful. Paul DAmato and David Whitehouse worked with me from the very start to develop key ideas that became the framework for this book. Extracting Profit would not have been written without their input and collaboration.

Anthony Arnove at Haymarket welcomed this project from the start and offered resources and support at critical times, including nudging me across the finish line. I am very appreciative of all hes done. Nisha Bolsey gets huge thanks for shepherding the manuscript through all the necessary steps, with meticulous attention to detail and lots of encouragement throughout. Kristie Reilly did a wonderful job with copyeditingthe book benefited immensely from her input. Thanks also to the team at Haymarket: Rory Fanning, Julie Fain, and Jim Plank.

Lance Selfa was my amazing editor. He gave the manuscript multiple reads and offered suggestions and key insights that made all the difference for the end result. Many, many thanks. Leo Zeilig, Annie Zirin, Andy Wynne, and Geoff Bailey also provided invaluable advice on the book draft. Again, thanks so much.