Gasoline price hike hits West Africa

West Africa was sent reeling when gasoline prices suddenly shot up a few months ago. The area contains some of the poorest countries in the world, like Mali, Niger and Mauritania, where the gross domestic product per person per year is much less than $900. Even in Senegal, which is somewhat better off, the figure is just $1,800.

By comparison, the GDP per person in the United States is over $36,000. (“Encyclo pedia of Nations,” compiled by the UN)

Only one in three Africans has access to electricity. Some 40 percent of the continent’s energy needs are supplied by wood and other natural products. Nevertheless, gasoline and diesel fuel run its economy. When gas costs go up, farmers can’t afford to get their crops to market, workers can’t afford to get to their jobs, and companies are under pressure to close because the price of electricity follows the price of gas and oil.

In Burkina Faso, where the GDP per person is $1,178, the trade union movement called a two-day strike May 23 and 24 to protest the high cost of gasoline. Laurent Ouédraogo, president of the National Confederation of Burkinabe Workers, explained that “Our primary demand is for respect for workers and their trade union organizations.” The unions were negotiating for a 25 percent increase in pensions and pay and lowering the 42 percent tax Burkina Faso imposes on gasoline. But in early May the government pulled the rug out from under them and announced a sharp increase in fuel prices.

According to Sidaway, a daily paper from Burkina Faso, the unions gathered in front of the Trade Union Hall in Ougadougou on May 23 and marched in contingents behind banners to a traffic circle in front of the United Nations building, then marched back to the Trade Union Hall. The slogans of the march were “No to a petroleum price hike” “No to the high cost of living” and “Raise our salaries.”

Copies of the speeches at rallies at the beginning and end of the march were to be turned over to the government, headed by Blaise Compaoré, so it would be aware of the preoccupations of the workers.

Women and taxi drivers also strongly supported the protest. The unions announced that similar protests took place in the major cities of the country.

Niger, which the United Nations considers the poorest country in the world, is located between two major oil producers—Nigeria and Algeria. Most of the gasoline available in Niger is smuggled from Nigeria in old liquor bottles, a very dangerous procedure. But street hawkers sell gas for $0.68 a liter compared to $1.24 at official pumps.

When the cops in Birnin-Konni on the border between the two West African countries tried to stop the trade, protesters set up barricades of burning tires and clashed with police, who finally resorted to teargas. The cops arrested 20 people and seized stocks of gasoline from warehouses, which they claimed had been smuggled.

The way people in West Africa handle gasoline is indeed dangerous but it is hard to live without it. More than 50 people were killed and dozens more badly burned in Porga, Benin, on May 26 after they tried to siphon gasoline from a tanker that had gone into a ditch. Benin has recorded about 700 fires involving gasoline in the past three years.

Around 200 people were burned to death in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, on May 12 when a pipeline exploded on the outskirts of Lagos as people tried to tap it and draw off fuel.

Migrants risk all

Young men and a few women used to walk from all over West Africa through the Sahara to two Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast, Ceuta and Mellila, climb over the fences and find their way to Europe. Their trips could take a couple of years on foot walking through some of the most desolate and dangerous terrain in the world, but they risked it for a chance at a decent job and a better life.

But Spain and Morocco closed this route, so people started going by sea to the Canary Islands, an autonomous region of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Morocco. The Canaries can be reached by open boats from Senegal and Mauritania if the weather is good.

Hundreds of people a day have been landing on the main island of Tenerife, filling up the reception centers. It is a dangerous trip from Senegal and Mauritania, yet thousands make it successfully. No one knows how many don’t. The Associated Press carried a story from far-off Barbados in the Caribbean on June 1 describing how a drifting boat containing 11 bodies of people who had left Senegal Christmas Day 2005 was discovered by fishermen. Barbados was trying to discover their identities.

While the Canary Islands recorded 4,750 immigrants in all of 2005, so far in 2006 it has listed 6,000 immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. The local authorities have complained that Spain is more interested in defending its oil interests in Bolivia than in helping a small, isolated, autonomous region deal with a sudden influx of desperately poor people.

After this complaint surfaced, the head of the Spanish government announced that ships and planes from Austria, Fin land, Portugal, France, Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands would be patrolling off the coasts of Maur i tania, Senegal and Cape Verde to turn back open boats heading for the Canary Islands.

European authorities have been trying to blame greedy smugglers for this massive migration from Africa. But President Compaoré of Burkina Faso told the French press agency AFP on May 30 that “France can’t keep Africans from coming to its soil if Africa remains so poor. Only the development of Africa could discourage people from the South from going to the North.”

The Spanish authorities have hundreds of Senegalese whom they want to repatriate, but the first 84 sent home were treated so badly, according to Senegal, that it is refusing to accept any more.

Senegal has been especially hard hit by the recent rise in oil prices. According to its minister of mining and energy, 60 percent of its budget is devoted to paying for oil imports, consuming 40 percent of its earnings from exports. SAR, the national oil company, has refused to supply Senelec, the electricity company, with enough fuel to run its generating plants because Senelec hasn’t been paying its bills.

A left-wing group in Senegal, the Union of African Workers, put out a statement in March that explains the situation not only in Senegal but in much of West Africa:

“SAR is only national in name; the majority of its capital (91.4 percent) is held by foreign multinational corporations: Total [French] (54.6 percent), Shell [British-Dutch] (25 percent), Mobil [U.S.] (11.8 percent). The other 8.6 percent belongs to the state-owned ... Senegalese Oil Company. This has been the reality since 1963. SAR has held the strategic energy products in its hands and is holding Senegal by the throat. The multinational corporations that make it up are systematically looting the Senegalese people and destroying their economic efforts, while repatriating the bulk of their profits derived from this exploitation.

“But SAR does not stop here. The agreements with the state of Senegal provide that in case of loss from its commercial operations of importation and refining of oil products and of importation of butane gas, the state of Senegal will pay for those losses.”

While the poorest countries are hit and hurt first, the big oil companies also have their sights set on the workers of the developed world, where even bigger profits can be made.

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