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Uganda use oil to help reduce poverty in the country
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As oil exports from sub- Saharan Africa has increased, so too is the poverty in the oil exporting countries. This is largely because of corruption in those governments, and it has resulted in little investment of oil revenue in programmes that would improve the quality of life of their citizens.
For example, Nigeria and Angola are large oil exporters, and Nigeria has banked over US $3,000 billion in oil revenue in the past 25 years. Yet 70 percent of its citizens live on less than $1 a day. |
In Angola, the Human Development index puts life expectancy at 45 years and 68 percent of its citizens are living in poverty. In many of these countries, citizens have no mechanism to hold their governments accountable for using oil revenues to enrich themselves. As a result, corrupt leaders get richer while their citizens get poorer. President Bush's proposal to increase US aid to Africa by 17 percent can help to reverse this devastating trend.
In contrast to this, junior officers led by Muammar Gadaffi overthrew King Idris while he was on a visit to Turkey, and Under Gadaffi, the country was declared an Islamic republic. Gadaffi's Al Fattah revolution has brought about rapid social and economic development, offering its people a high standard of living. And before oil was discovered, Libya was a very poor country whose main economic activity was fishing.
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