Talk:Natural resources of Africa

Latest comment: 5 years ago by Tamsier in topic Possible POV statements

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got a F+ on college please remove before other people get a bad grade or at least wrong reports

I agree. Export of booty is overstated. I mean, they have some, but not significantly more than South America, for example. Personally, I prefer European booty, to to each his own.

Please expand article

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Can someone please expand this article in mentioning which countries have what natural resources and approximate reserves. Thanks.

I concur; this article really does need some serious attention

Possible POV statements

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I'm a bit concerned about possible POV in the lead, specifically these sentences:

"Some economists have talked about the 'scourge of raw materials', large quantities of rare raw materials putting Africa under heavy pressures and tensions, leading to wars and slow development. Despite these abundance of natural resources, claims suggest that many Western nations like the U.S., U.K., Canada, China, and France 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."

First off, which economists? (I have already added a [who?] template to the statement.) What concerns me most is the latter sentence, though; to break it down: 1) Each of those countries would need an inline citation for an assertion as controversial as this one. 2) 4 of the 5 nations called out are free-market economies; aside from China, they don't own the companies operating in Africa, and therefore it is difficult to say that the nations as a whole are exploiting Africa. 3) "Exploiting" is a word with pretty serious colonial connotations. If it's to be used (and in my opinion it probably should be, given what the sentence is discussing), it needs to be used in a very careful manner. 4) China is hardly a "Western" nation. 5) If the discussion is of the squandering and/or exploitation of Africa's natural resources, some reference to the corruption and mismanagement of various national governments should be mentioned as well. Various dictators have made millions off of their nation's resources, while little-to-none of the revenue gathered actually reaches the citizens. I recognize I should probably give examples and cite a source for that statement, and if challenged, I will, but I don't want to play the Google game right now. In any case, my point is, all aspects of the problem should be addressed.

So anyway, those are my concerns. I'm not approaching this from a political standpoint, but purely from a neutral one. Cheers, Zaldax (talk) 14:54, 15 August 2012 (UTC)Reply

I note that this comment was made several years ago, but would like to chip in here. First of all I never edited this article. Although some of the wording is ill advised, the general statement itself is not wrong and I would have no problem sourcing that just as you would have no problem sourcing corrupt leaders in Africa which most Africans in Africa knows (unless of course they are the corrupt leaders) just as there are corrupt governments and leaders in the western world.Tamsier (talk) 05:46, 8 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

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I have added a Talkheader to this page so other users know what to do when they want to add their comment to this page and sign their username. Adamdaley (talk) 17:52, 13 December 2016 (UTC)Reply

Smart to take a state which already was falling apart in 2010?

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and now there is Sudan, a oil shadow with around 1/3rd of the ressources, the pipelines, and the south, very poor, almost no - if any - infrastructure but ~2/3rd of the oil, especially the easy to produce blocks, the North is taking advantage of the pipeline in an almost criminal way, I would say ship out the ~250,000 (?) barrels daily by train and truck, but it seems there are no railways laid, it didnt happen ever, and roads are not build too... also oil per truck export at current prices and the distance to Kenya's coast or Ethiopian coast, the demand of the truck filled with maybe ~17,000 to ~20,000 liter crude (more is only possible with real paved roads, than there can be a road train with like 40 to 60 tons but at these prices and roads its even better to take the real heavy "50/50" sharing which the North wants, 50% of ALL revenues only for transit fees of a pipelines which was built strictly seen by South Sudan too as it was part for a long time of Sudan and during the complete time before, during the building and after and during the best days when the largest amounts of Sudanese oil did flow to the City of "Port Sudan", Port Sudan and its economy is suffering too, once there were many chinese and asian oil tankers of smaller size, crews stayed for 2-3 days, today almost no crude is leaving Sudan, the South is fighting rebels and militias supported by the North in a oil rich province, official its a South Sudanese province but the North has twice as much population, has at least a little bit of development, and the south got the oil.......

so really no good example, good examples for late founds is west-africa... ghana, I can't spell it but equitorial guinea joined OPEC in May 2017 with its ~200,000 to ~250,000 bpd like its (much larger, from territory) neighboor Gabun, which also recently joined OPEC. Opec is picking up in its desperate situation now even the smallest of the oil exporters and since we know AFrica and both countries have very limited population there is no risk that these oil exports will turn into self-demand like we saw in large oil exporting nation sometimes... Mozambique and Tanzania have oil reserves (proven now!) too, I mean it was clear all the time that in this giant area there has to be oil, Angola and South Africa did prove it already even for the very South, West-Africa is a area with many many many states, most of them have oil, for example Coze de Azure (dunno how exact english writing, however, their official data is a lie, since more oil tankers (coming in empty, leaving full) leave the ports of the country, but corruption leads oil exports only to a very very small income source in the officiall budget, well everyone can have his/her own opinion about the ways the petrodollars go, these "mystery" tankers go to Carribean States, Cuba, China... states which ask absolutely no questions... its estimated that its twice as much as the official number of production the black market exports.....

Its only an advise... Oil in Africa should start with a "Above Sahara" and "south of Sahara" or Eqatorial-Line (again spelling...), because the MAGREB-called states in North Africa are all large oil producers except Tunesia and Morroco, Egypt produces a lot (over 650,000 bpd... means someting like 100 million liters daily), but the population of over 95.5 million is using this fuel completely and even is letting Egypt with the demand of importing gasoline and high quality jet fuel, however the Sues Canal is quite expensive and with todays oil prices and weak demand many super tankers which were build to pass the Sues with very much navigating help, more and more are driving with a low economic speed or below through the Cape of Good Hope as we call it in Germany, you know the most southern point in South Africa... once someone found it like Columbus and the Americano-guy, looking for another route.. and thhy were almost dead but than had again land contact, don't know how they could miss west or east-africa before South Africa, but it happened^^

Article:

Sudan's oil exports in 2010 are estimated by the United States Department of State at $9 billion with United States dollars.

And I would say until 2013 it declined to... zero?! Almost everything of the oil production blocks left in the North for Khartoum are not used for domestic demand primary, in 2014 the CIA World Factbook had these data:

Sudan Production: 64,770 bbl/day (2014 est.) Exports: 2,060 bbl/day (2013 est.) Refined petroleum products - production: 88,180 bbl/day (2013 est.) Refined petroleum products - consumption: 108,000 bbl/day (2014 est.)

I think in 2014 for the first half of the year the average price was around ~100 Dollar, today WTI is 48 dollar, and in the 2nd half of 2014 it went down heavily, I think in January last year it reached a bit over 32 US-$ per Barrel. Which means for me... large production increases in Sudan are unrealistic ;)

I would write/help with the article but english to bad, I can't add sources correct etc..... Greetings Kilon22 (talk) 17:29, 28 August 2017 (UTC)Reply