To Cook a Continent

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examines the social and environmental implications of accumulation by dispossession for
vulnerable communities. Crises in relation to Ghanaian gold, Zambian copper, Nigerian oil
and Zimbabwean diamonds, to name but a few commodities covered in this comprehensive
text, are all explored in terms of impacts upon the poor. Additionally, Bassey points to the
need for a normative shift away from African acceptance of western free market, consumerist
norms towards a (re)discovery of more democratic ideals of community sovereignty
over local resources.
In his convincing, and at times searing, analysis, Bassey places welcome emphasis on
explaining the mechanisms of 'ecological imperialism’ and its methods of control (p. 10).
In particular, he considers how structural adjustment programmes led to the ‘enthronement
of corruption’ amid privatization of parastatal industries and the deregulation of foreign
partner activity in raw material extraction (p. 25). Trade liberalization in African states,
more generally, appears, for Bassey, as a vehicle for exacerbating existing North–South
asymmetries, particularly with continuing imposition of non-tariff barriers upon African
agricultural exports. For instance, he pertinently notes the regressive implications of stringent
EU phytosanitary requirements for African producers (p. 52).
In a more contemporary setting, and again with analysis of imperial policies, the author
also relevantly examines the role of ‘corporate conflict entrepreneurs’ in the case of South
Sudan and a business calculus apparently focused on lubrication of ‘sovereignty changes’ in
war-torn regions. Bassey explains here that US corporation Jarch Capital ‘grabbed a 50 year
land lease on 400,000 hectares of farmland in Southern Sudan’s Mayo county from Matip
Nhial, the deputy commander-in-chief of the Sudan’s Peoples Liberation Army … [and]
holds a 70 per cent stake in another company with rights to grow crops and process them
into finished products for local as well as export markets’ (p. 76). With echoes of Teresa
Hayter, moreover, he considers how ‘aid-as-imperialism’ not only cements external power
over client regimes, but additionally provides an ethical veneer able to inoculate against
donor dissonance as to continued exploitation of poorer African communities (p. 54).
Following articulate dissection of neo-colonial penetration by western and Asian actors,
Bassey then usefully devotes the penultimate and final chapters to discussion of possible
solutions to ‘the new scramble’ for African resources. Rather than emphasizing top-down
changes necessitating reliance on governing elites, he argues for renewed civic activism
focusing on the strategic goals of regaining popular sovereignty over local resources and of
(re)asserting norms concerning resource guardianship. Most interestingly here, he argues
that the ‘simple answer to our climate crisis, one begging to be accepted, is that we must
simply leave the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole and the tar sands in the land’ (p. 117).
Accordingly, African communities must be prepared to forgo flawed models of development
focused on social and environmental exploitation. Such alternative strategies would
not only benefit the global environment but also serve to incentivize democratic development
and to reverse the tendency for resource-rich regimes to divorce themselves from the
daily concerns of their peoples.
Overall, Bassey provides a necessary rejoinder to orthodox ‘development’ and the false
promise of resource extraction (or more properly, resource depletion) centred on foreign
corporate partnerships, elite enrichment and mass poverty. While at times the rhetorical
nature of the writing can be distracting, the overall analysis and its findings are well expressed
and ultimately convincing. Perhaps more detail could have been given by the author on
neo-colonial theory in relation to Nkrumah as well as to the role of pan-Africanist projects
in supporting national projects of popular resource ownership. Nevertheless, To cook a continent
offers an engaging and comprehensive critique of Africa’s social and environmental
crisis in relation to neo-colonial accumulation strategies.

Mark Langan, Sheffield Hallam University, UK