For centuries, Africa has been dubbed a Dark Continent: underdeveloped, backward, and impoverished. The Western media footage of Africa is people stricken with hunger, malnourished children with extended bellies, and piles of corpses, all the result of famine or civil war, and destitute refugees. Our eyes are familiar with Africans who are suffering because of HIV or Ebola, without medical care and hospital beds lying on a dirt floor in their mud huts. Beyond this surface level of understanding, the majority of the world particularly the West has no clue about the wealth of Africa that made unparalleled contribution to Western capitalism. This course underscores the natural resources of Africa that caused colonialism and currently brought the huge presence of Chinese and the involvement of China in many affairs of the African nation.
For students who ask why is the continent of Africa politically and economically fragile, why social unrest, a huge number of African diaspora, lack or absence of democracy, etc., will get satisfactory answer through this course.
Africa’s natural resources and mineral wealth are widely claimed as vast and diversified. It has 40 percent of the world’s potential hydroelectric power supply, the bulk of the world’s diamonds and chromium, 30 percent of the uranium in noncommunist world, 50 percent of the world’s gold, 90 percent of it phosphates, 40 percent of platinum, 7.5 percent of its coal, 8 percent of its known petroleum reserves, 12 percent of its natural gas, 3 percent of its iron ore, and millions of acres of untilled land. In addition, Africa has 64 percent of the world’s manganese, 13 percent of its copper and vast bauxite, nickel, and lead resources. It also has strategic minerals as cobalt, critical in the manufacture of jet engines, rhodium, palladium, vanadium, and titanium. Without these essential minerals many industrial plants in the West would grind to a standstill. This course address why the paradox of economic life exists in the continent of Africa for centuries
The earth and its natural resources are created for the sake of human existence. Biblically speaking, God is the prime owner of all natural resources. He allowed human beings to have dominion over his creation not to use it as weapon to harm others but to use the natural resources for the wellbeing of all and with a sense of gratitude to the almighty.
Good stewardship of natural resources is as missional as multiplying a piece of bread and feed the hungry multitude. A lot of injustice: child labor, killing, overthrowing democratically elected African governments, and causing regional and national political upheaval, etc. has been going on in the continent of Africa because of natural resources. Fair negotiations, transparent trade agreements, proper wages and benefits for miners, peaceful coexistence and win-win deals are missional approaches in various mining places in Africa.
Transplanted ideas, funds, and personnel have not been able to solve the impact of external and internal exploitation in Africa. An unhealthy contextual situation, related to the natural resources, in the continent of Africa, requires a contextual and effective medicine. This course advocates for the involvement of people on the grassroots, middle-range and upper-class level to involve the decision making how to use the God given natural resources of their country for the ultimate benefit of their nation not the few.
If it the natural resources in Africa are properly managed with biblical principles and implemented with the values of the kingdom of God the natural resources of each African country can be generously shared across the border of neighboring countries and even beyond.
The impact of using natural resources properly or improperly is visible and tangible. Leaders who have the full control of natural resources and are not corrupt can minimize poverty if they cannot eradicate it. They can bring hope and stability; create job opportunities for the jobless. Leaders can provide quality education, health care, inspire innovation and renovation and make the citizens of their country proud and loyal.
In this course, we try to arrange with geologist and economist who are familiar with African resources and economy to share their views on the implications of misusing or mishandling natural resources in Africa.
