Will Human Rights Survive Africa’s Latest Oil Boom?

Mballe M. Alonge

Who says that Francophone Africa can’t thrive? The Central African Economic and Monetary Union (CEMAC), with six countries and an estimated 30 million people, is taking off. Equatorial Guinea and Chad, now the CEMAC’s leading lights, have risen out of oblivion into the top ranks of oil exporters. Add to them the two old regulars, Congo and Cameroon, and the CEMAC zone shapes up as an increasingly attractive market for foreign investors and local businesses alike. But will rapid development exact an excessively high toll on human rights?

The region’s economic stature was bolstered in 2003 with the advent of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, a $4.2 billion project brokered by the World Bank that is expected to boost exploration and output in Chad and at offshore sites in Equatorial Guinea, while spreading the benefits more widely. For example, with the pipeline crossing 890 kilometers of its territory, Cameroon will net $540 million annually in fees and royalties for the next 25 to 30 years.

All of this was made possible by what has been, by historical standards, an exceptional period of political stability. Oil was discovered in Chad’s southern Doba region in 1975, with 300 wells drilled so far. But none of the reserves could be exploited until 1988, when Chad’s protracted civil war finally ended.

With the subsequent oil boom, one would have expected the fortunes of Chadians and Cameroonians to improve at the individual, local, and national levels. But instead we see a landscape of widespread poverty set against a backdrop of endemic corruption and official mismanagement. So far, the governments in neither Chad nor Cameroon have been willing to publish any earnings records concerning the pipeline project.

This lack of transparency is not surprising. Indeed, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline – the biggest such project yet realized in sub-Saharan Africa, covering a 1,070-kilometer trajectory from Doba to Cameroon’s Atlantic port of Kribi – was launched amid considerable controversy regarding its benefits for ordinary citizens.

For this reason, the World Bank imposed stringent conditions on Chad and Cameroon. Both countries were required to deposit 10% of the expected oil income in a blocked foreign account intended for future generations. At least 80% was to be invested in schools, healthcare, roads, electricity, and provision of potable water, while 5% would be allocated to the oil-producing areas and to settlements along the pipeline’s route. Periodic audits of oil accounts also were to be carried out.

Moreover, Chad and Cameroon were each to contribute $140m to the project, although this sum was paid entirely by the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. During its 20-month construction period, the project promised business opportunities for subcontractors, compensation to communities and individuals for properties destroyed, 435 kilometers of road, and more than 7,000 jobs.

Oil started to flow through the pipeline in July 2003, 16 months ahead of schedule, with the flow peaking at 225,000 barrels per day by the end of that year. Now, 30 months later, interested groups and the larger public are angrily asking about the oil wealth that is yet to touch their lives. Much attention is being focused on the terms of the so-called “host government agreements” concluded by the ExxonMobil-led financing consortium and the governments of Chad and Cameroon to govern the construction and operation of the Doba oil fields and the pipeline.

According to a new report published in September by Amnesty International, Contracting Out of Human Rights: The Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project, the pipeline risks freezing human-rights protection for the multitude of Chadians and Cameroonians who live along its path. The report finds that the host government agreements place a price tag on protecting human rights by imposing large financial penalties if the operation of the oil fields or the pipeline is interrupted – even to enforce valid laws. This constitutes a powerful disincentive for Chad and Cameroon to act against company malfeasance or to defend individuals adversely affected by the project.

That conclusion is no mere abstraction. The project’s realization has already led to alleged human rights abuses against poor farmers in the region, who claim that they have been denied access to their land. Similarly, villages have reportedly been denied access to their sole supply of portable water, while the pipeline has seriously threatened the livelihoods of Kribi’s fishermen. The host government agreements open the door for further abuses, without effective redress, throughout the lifetime of the project – up to 70 years.

Moreover, the agreements lack transparency, as they were considered commercially confidential – and were thus shielded from public scrutiny – until they were passed into law. Amnesty International argues that human rights are more likely to be respected when the legal agreements behind major infrastructure projects are known in advance, and it apportions some of the responsibility for the dangers posed in Chad and Cameroon to the World Bank and its private-sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation.

The Chad-Cameroon pipeline project is one African project that wasn’t strangled in the cradle, and it cannot be allowed to fail. For example, Chad’s yearly oil earnings, at $2 billion, now account for 40-50% of its annual budget, and small-scale business, indirect investments, human-resources development, and other incidental benefits are likely to follow.

All of this is to be welcomed. But ignoring people’s fundamental rights might well lead the region back to a time when none of it was possible.