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Vol. 72/No. 35      September 8, 2008

 
Equatorial Guinea
Changing economic and social relations
highlight realities facing millions in Africa
(feature article / (First of two articles))
 
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL  
BATA, Equatorial Guinea—“Some in the international press say that oil is a curse” for a country like Equatorial Guinea, said the president of that Central African country, Teodoro Obiang Nguema. “The curse would be the misuse of that resource.” If used to develop the country’s economic infrastructure and lay the foundation for the expansion of agriculture and industry, he noted, it can be “a blessing.”

Obiang was responding to a question posed by Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, during an August 7 interview that was part of a two-week fact-finding trip across Equatorial Guinea.

Supporters of the New York-based publisher had returned to this country to follow up on an initial visit three years ago to take part in the country’s first-ever book fair, held in October 2005 at the National University of Equatorial Guinea in the capital city of Malabo. They welcomed the opportunity to return this year to learn more about the rapid economic and social changes under way in this nation long oppressed by the world’s dominant capitalist powers, and to help widen such knowledge among working people in the United States and other imperialist countries.  
 
Legacy of superexploitation
Equatorial Guinea, a former colony of Spain, is one of the smallest countries in Africa, both geographically and in population. Until a decade and a half ago, it was also what President Obiang called “the poorest of the poor”—one of the least economically developed regions on this continent. There were few paved roads, electrification was largely a dream, there was virtually no industry—even light manufacturing—and land cultivation was subsistence agriculture. There was no bourgeois class structure—no rising class of risk-taking merchants, factory owners, and landowners, no wage workers or peasantry. The legacy of centuries of colonial and imperialist domination maximized the hobbling and great unevenness of the country’s social relations and economic structure.

Then, in the mid-1990s, vast reserves of oil and natural gas were discovered deep beneath the country’s offshore waters in the Gulf of Guinea. This both increased the ability to substantially expand production and trade and at the same time deepened economic and social contradictions .

Flying into Malabo international airport today, you glimpse the oil platforms of ExxonMobil and other companies dotting the sea. Marathon’s liquid natural gas plant lights the sky at nearby Punta Europa, center of the U.S. oil companies’ operations in Equatorial Guinea.

Within a few years’ time, one of the world’s most capital-intensive, technologically complex, and highly monopolized industries has been superimposed on an economic foundation that is the product of millennia of hunting, fishing, and subsistence agriculture, distorted by centuries of slave trading and colonial exploitation (see accompanying article on Equatorial Guinea’s history).

At night the blazing lights of Punta Europa are visible across the bay to tens of thousands of Malabo residents who still lack drinkable water, modern sanitation, paved streets, or more than sporadically reliable electricity.

Returning to Equatorial Guinea after several years, four developments above all are striking: the changing class relations and international composition of the working class here; the resources going into development of the economic infrastructure; the expansion of the system of higher education; and the spread of these developments throughout all parts of the country.

These changes and the contradictions they engender underscore the reality for millions in large parts of Africa today.

They also help explain why Equatorial Guinea faces no dearth of enemies. The country most recently hit world headlines when British mercenary Simon Mann was sentenced here to 34 years in prison for his admitted role in organizing a failed coup, one in which Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is also implicated. The plotters, armed and funded by overseas interests seeking to control and profit from exploitation of Equatorial Guinea’s oil, aimed to install as government figurehead Severo Moto, a Guinean bourgeois oppositionist now living in Spain.  
 
Developing class structure
Equatorial Guinea remains a country with virtually no manufacturing. There is a brewery, a water bottling plant, and a cement factory crippled by shortages of imported primary goods. Furniture-making shops and sawmilling operations that produce lumber for construction have not developed beyond small-scale handicraft. With virtually no land cultivation beyond subsistence farming and more than half the population now living in urban centers, almost all food is imported from Cameroon, Spain, and other countries. Transportation costs magnify the impact of rising world food prices. The chicken we ate one day came from Brazil. Eggs were from Cameroon.

Those living in rural areas, largely still outside the market, get food from hunting small forest animals or fishing, and from plantains, yucca, cassava, and other plants that grow easily on small pieces of cleared land at the forest’s edge. Most of these foodstuffs are directly consumed, not bought or sold. Along rural roads and in sprawling town markets, many people sell small quantities of remaining food products as well as other goods to scrape by.

At the same time, in less than 15 years the exploitation of oil and natural gas reserves has turned Equatorial Guinea into the third-largest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria and Angola. “It is U.S. companies that are operating the offshore extraction operations, including ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Hess,” Obiang noted in the interview. Marathon also owns the liquid natural gas and methanol plants. In recent years, he added, “a number of other companies have signed agreements with [state-owned] Gepetrol, including Malaysian, South African, and Nigerian oil companies,” for joint exploration and development projects. China has become the largest purchaser of oil from Equatorial Guinea.

As a result of the exploitation of Equatorial Guinea’s oil resources, the development of a modern class structure here has accelerated in the urban areas. While tribal and clan ties continue to dominate social relations in the countryside, these preclass formations dissolve more and more with the increased penetration of the world market and capitalist relations of production.

As has happened in every other part of the world over the past three centuries, capital accumulation is today consolidating a capitalist class in Equatorial Guinea, with expanding holdings in land, hotels, construction companies, and other businesses. Through the purchase and exploitation of labor power, this rising class is generating surplus value and expanding its wealth.

There are growing numbers of small traders, merchants, lawyers, and other petty-bourgeois layers. Drawn by the oil boom, this includes increasing numbers from West Africa, the Middle East, China, and other parts of the world.

A class of wage workers is being born in Equatorial Guinea, too. As the Communist Manifesto noted about Europe and North America more than 150 years ago, “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.”

Capitalist expansion inexorably draws growing parts of the world into its orbit, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels noted. And today capital is exerting its pull on Equatorial Guinea. Increasing numbers of Guineans are becoming wage workers for the first time ever, as laborers on road and other construction projects especially. Nearly half the country’s population lives in Bata and Malabo, which are being swelled by stepped-up migration from the countryside of toilers seeking jobs.

The demand for labor has also led to a large influx of workers from abroad, especially from other parts of Central and West Africa—Cameroon, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, and other countries. Workers from Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, and other Latin American countries have come to work in hotels, restaurants, and other jobs. On all the construction sites we visited, most of the skilled workers and technicians were migrants from other French-speaking African countries or contract employees from China, North Africa, Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere.

As Obiang said in an August 5 speech to an audience that included many Guinean construction workers, “Equatorial Guinea used to be a country that was held in contempt.” Now, he said, “many are coming here in search of prosperity. We have more immigrants than other countries in Africa. It’s like bees who are coming to taste our honey.”

The growth of the working class and its increasingly international character—as workers bring their skills and experiences from other parts of the world—has increased the pride and confidence of working people here and is widening their scope.  
 
What a road system opens up
During our trip we heard many Guineans, from students to government officials, express their concern that the resources from today’s oil bonanza be used to lay the foundations for expanded production that can sustain the people of Equatorial Guinea in the future, whatever the gyrations of the world market.

The goal of investments in the country’s basic infrastructure is to benefit ordinary Guineans, Obiang noted, and to foster the development of corporate enterprises. “We want small Guinean companies to become large ones,” he said.

In the more than 10 cities, towns, and rural areas we visited across Equatorial Guinea—from Bata and Malabo, the largest cities, to Ebebiyin, Mongomo, Evinayong, Añisok, Niefang, Mbini, and Kogo on the continent, as well as Luba on the island of Bioko—there was evidence that substantial resources are going into building or upgrading roads, electric service, cellular phone towers, hospitals, modern deepwater port facilities, airports, schools, and other projects that are having an impact on the quality of life of an increasing number of Guineans. Their expectations are being raised.

The most visible change from three years ago is the extensive building and paving of roads. Major stretches connecting the main cities and towns, many miles of which were previously rough expanses of dirt rendered impassable in rainy months, have now been paved. Many more miles, often through rough mountainous terrain, are under various stages of construction. The work has been contracted out primarily to capitalist enterprises from Egypt, France, China, and other countries.

For hundreds of thousands, especially in the rural areas, the upgrading of the road system means increased mobility and easier access to health-care centers, schools, markets, and jobs.

“It used to take a whole day to travel the 200 kilometers [125 miles] from my hometown to Bata,” said Antonio Nsue Nsue Ada, editor of the university publication Horizontes, who is from Ebebiyin in the northeast. “Now it takes three hours.”

We traveled to the southwestern town of Kogo to visit a hospital where a Cuban volunteer medical brigade is working. Just a few years ago, according to Cuban doctors who accompanied us, visitors had to travel there by water, usually by canoe. Our 30-mile-long trip by van along the coast from Mbini, on what had previously been little more than a footpath, took more than two hours on a washboard dirt road currently under construction. And the trip will become shorter as the road is paved.

Travel to the remote island of Annobón—in colonial times, the place where slaves too old or sick to work were sent to die, and later a place of forced exile for independence fighters—used to be infrequent, unsafe, and time-consuming. “The only transportation was a ship that went every three months,” Obiang noted. “Now there is an airstrip on Annobón, with two flights a week.”

Airports in Malabo and Bata are also being upgraded, and a new international airport, with a runway capable of landing the largest passenger and freight planes, is under construction in Mongomeyen near the eastern city of Mongomo. In addition, the deepwater ports of Bata, Malabo, and Luba are being expanded to make possible further growth of the oil industry and developing international trade with Equatorial Guinea and the broader region. “The port of Malabo,” Obiang said, “will be the largest and deepest port in western Africa.” Electrification: a major challenge

In most of sub-Saharan Africa, less than 5 percent of the rural population has access to electricity, and Equatorial Guinea is no exception.

“Electrification is an elementary precondition if modern industry and cultural life are to develop,” notes Jack Barnes in “Our Politics Start with the World,” the lead article in issue 13 of New International magazine. Electrification means being “able to decide whether to stop a meeting because it’s getting dark. To have the possibility to study and work comfortably after sundown. For children to do their schoolwork or to read to each other in the evening. Simply to pump water to village after village, saving countless hours of back-breaking work for every family, and especially for women and girls.”

In Equatorial Guinea, the reality of this challenge and its importance becomes apparent when driving through the countryside at night, even along the main roads. In each cluster of homes many are dark, while in others a single light is shining or a kerosene lamp casts a shadow in a room.

There is no nationwide electric grid; each city and town relies on its own generators. In most of the country, electricity is available only five hours a day, from 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., and even then many homes are not connected to any power source.

Local residents gave us one example after another of what this means for everyday life. Many students cannot do their homework at night, or must travel to some other home or building where light is available. Food cannot be refrigerated. Surgery and many other medical procedures cannot be performed in hospitals during the day, unless they have a functioning diesel generator for emergency situations, which many don’t. Computers, where they are available, cannot be used in daylight hours, and for only a few hours in the evening.

In the town of Añisok in the north-central region, Dr. Amarilis Contreras, a Cuban physician who staffs the medical center there, told us that “when there is no power, we use kerosene lamps or flashlights to do our work. We sterilize our instruments with boiling water.”

Even the provincial capitals of Mongomo, Ebebiyin, and Evinayong have power for just 12 hours a day, from about 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Malabo and Bata now have electrical generators operating 24 hours a day, but they are hit by frequent blackouts because of generating power and distribution networks inadequate to meet growing demand. We directly experienced all these facts more than once.

Along rural roads, women can frequently be seen walking long distances with enormous baskets of firewood on their backs to provide fuel for cooking and other household needs—another reminder of how vital electrification and increased productivity of labor are to the emancipation of women, as well.

One of the highest-priority development projects under way is a hydroelectric dam at Djibloho, near the district capital of Añisok. Harnessing the power of the Wele River, it is expected to provide electricity for all of continental Equatorial Guinea as well as areas of Cameroon and Gabon. It will be the single biggest step so far toward establishing a nationwide electrical grid.

Pedro Mba Obiang Abang, the national assembly delegate for Añisok district, drove us to the site where the dam and hydroelectric plant are due to be completed in four or five years. The lead contractor is a Chinese enterprise.

“The Chinese government has lent us $2 billion to finance the development of the electrical system, including the hydroelectric plant,” President Obiang informed us.

A recently arrived 26-member Cuban volunteer brigade of electrical technicians is working with the state-run electrical company, SEGESA. In a July 31 meeting in Bata with several brigade members, José Luis García Chaviano, who heads the group working on the continent, told us that their job was to train Guinean technicians in upgrading the electrical infrastructure and administering the distribution system. As in many countries where working people lack electricity, there is no centralized control over its distribution, and jerry-rigged extensions and hook-ups run everywhere, with the safety problems, fire hazards, and accidental deaths by electrocution such practices entail.

“The system of underground electrical cables here in Bata is high-quality, but the foreign companies that built it left without leaving the plans and diagrams. Nor did they provide training in maintenance or safety,” said Ricardo García, one of the Cuban electricians. “We are training technicians in maintenance, without which the equipment will be damaged more and more.”

“Our priority is people’s safety and health,” insisted Wilfredo Arbelo. “We train everyone in safe methods, from the managers to the workers, including the most basic steps such as wearing helmets and gloves.”  
 
Expansion of university system
Expansion of the National University of Equatorial Guinea (UNGE) was another of the notable changes of the last three years. The university was founded in 1995, soon after the discovery of oil.

“You cannot have development without skilled cadres,” Obiang said. “That is why we had to create the national university.” Noting that many at the time thought it was an adventure for a small underdeveloped country like Equatorial Guinea to establish its own university, he continued, “We now have 3,000 trained graduates.”

On August 5, another 102 students graduated from the National University of Equatorial Guinea, receiving degrees in agronomy, teaching, humanities, engineering, environmental sciences, medicine, and other fields. María Jesús Nkara, director of academic affairs, reported that the university now has 2,275 students—double the number from three years ago. To increase the capacity, two new campus facilities are being built, one in Malabo and another in Bata.

Nkara drew attention to the fact that 42 percent of the university students are women. To applause from the audience, she added that it is gratifying that a small but growing number of graduates from the school of technical engineering are female and now work for the electric company, “doing the same work as the men, including climbing ladders and electric poles.”

Addressing the graduating class, President Obiang noted that when Equatorial Guinea gained independence 40 years ago, it had fewer than a dozen university graduates. Trinidad Morgades, today UNGE vice rector of the Malabo campus, was the only Guinean with a university degree in humanities at the time. Those seeking university education had to go to Spain or elsewhere abroad to study, and few returned to Equatorial Guinea.

Knowledge of that history, and of what their graduating class represented for the future of their country, filled the students and faculty with evident pride.

“We had to work very hard at the medical school,” said Tecla Mangue Mitogo, 26, as she waited for the graduation ceremony to begin. “We had to learn to study.”

“Now I’m glad I will be contributing to my country as a doctor,” she said. “I’m waiting to find out what city I will be asked to work in.”

Students graduating as teachers, engineers, agronomists, and in other fields expressed similar pride in what their training meant.

“Of the 20 students who began together in the oil engineering course, only four of us are graduating today,” Marcos Esono Ndong told us. “Seven or eight dropped out after the first year, and another six or so the second. The course was too hard, and overcoming all the material obstacles was too much. Several others learned enough of the basics to get hired by one of the big international oil companies and left. Four of us finished and will work for the development of our country.”

(A second article will deal with the development of health care in Equatorial Guinea.)

Mary-Alice Waters, Brian Taylor, and Omari Musa contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
Equatorial Guinea: Background on Central African nation  
 
 
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