Tom Burgis’ The Looting Machine is a rollercoaster read. Filled with vignettes on spooks, smugglers and kleptocratic warlords with suitcases of cash, it reads like a crime thriller, while at the same time being a well-researched, accessible account of the extractives industry; the privatisation of power in Africa and its impact on the continent’s people.
This portrayal of the intersection of business and politics, and its potentially corrupting influence may also explain the paradox of rising GDP growth coupled with increasing inequality – a key problem in the era of ‘Africa Rising’.
Each chapter of The Looting Machine deals with a different country and a particular issue in its political economy, but some main unifying themes stick out. For example, the impact of the ‘resource curse’, hollowing out the economies of developing countries.
Burgis also tackles the much-debated role of China in Africa, as globalisation atomises power to new sites of influence and capital. Additionally, he is concerned with the impact of financial secrecy, and potentially inequitable tax practices on developing economies; and how this facilitates rent-seeking.
This is all tied together by Burgis’ argument for the pervasiveness of the so-called ‘Queensway Group’, incorporated in Hong Kong, which is depicted throughout the book as a sort of global corporate mafia with the shadowy middleman Sam Pa as its kingpin.
Crucial to Pa’s modus operandi on the continent, according to Burgis, is his leveraging of ‘guanxi’ (å