The Economic Hit Man in Congo

With relevance to our readings on Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Chad-Cameroon pipeline is another instance of private opportunism in the proposed Grand Inga Project in Congo. This booklet traces the project details, context and development of the world's largest dam in a rather persuasive and interesting format.

Conrad's Nightmare: The World's Biggest Dam and Development's Heart of Darkness

(I hope it loads, otherwise please google it)

Excerpts:

"PPPs have become notorious among activists in recent years for two reasons: they have a track record of massively inflating project costs, and they place the cost burden firmly on governments while retaining the profits, and very often the ownership of the project itself, for the private sector."

"Grand Inga is the perfect lens to bring many of the key elements of development capitalism into focus—the absurdity and inapplicability to local needs of the great white elephants the IFIs build; the unfulfilled promises to local people, and the social and environmental misery the projects inflict; the sinecure of subsidies, contracts and markets for Western multinationals, a scheme often described as ‘corporate welfare’; and the passing of the responsibilities and costs for the projects onto the hapless ‘developing’ country, while keeping the profits closer to home (what Chomsky describes as the essence of modern capitalism: the socialisation of risk combined with the privatisation of profit)."

Samyuktha