Chad is a country in central-north Africa. It is also the butt of many jokes in the classes I teach: it has no port, it's poor, it's been invaded by Libya a few times, and it's filled with sand. In other words, if something in global politics actually affects Chad, it must be a big deal. It's a poor joke (people in Chad are, in fact, very poor, and relatively miserable).
Which is why, a few months back, there was mediocre news from Chad: they found oil. Why mediocre you ask? Well, the history of oil in Africa is not good: countries with oil revenues tend to use the money on military expendatures or to line the pockets of the government. Very little of the oil revenue money makes it to the people who need it.
In order to turn this mediocre news into good news, Chad tried something else. No country can afford the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to get the oil out of the ground and flowing (regularly) to a port. Thus, outside money is needed to get projects started. Chad publicly committed to using a large percentage of the oil revenue money for poverty eradication (ensuring that it would go to the citizens and not the military/government), and allowed an external committee oversite over the accounting (to reduce corruption). With this pledge/agreement, Chad got the money and a small ray of sunshine shown on a country that hadn't had much to cheer about.
That light has now gone out. The New York Times is reporting that Chad has reneged on the agreement, and is using the oil revenues for goverment expenditures, including military. As a result of this, the World Bank has suspended loans for the further development of the oil fields.
Chad claims that it is a sovereign country, that the oil is clearly Chad's, and that they have the right to spend the oil revenue as they see fit. The World Bank claims that Chad made the agreement in years past in good faith, and cannot renege at this point.
While the politicians (on both sides) argue, it's worth pointing out that (as the link notes) 8 of 10 people in Chad live on less than $1 a day.
Awfully dim there, this time of year.
Posted by baltar at January 6, 2006 11:40 PM | TrackBack | Posted to International Affairs