Europe, America still ripping off Africa – Don

ADVANCED countries of the world led by Europe and America are still exploiting the African continent, and that is why corruption may persist in Africa, says Professor Joseph McIntyre of the University of Hamburg, Germany.

He made this assertion in a chat in his office recently and said, that apart from these two that even the Chinese are joining gradually.

The professor of Afrikanistick and Athiopistic languages at the university, also said that interest of these advanced nations are not in the best interest of Africa.

According to him, a lot of African nations are rich in minerals among other natural resources, but are poor in the economic sense of it. He stressed that the economic interest of these advanced countries in Africa presently are different from what they have, for instance, in Japan.

"Africa, for instance, is rich - Nigeria is an oil-rich country,
good quality oil and Angola as well. In Zaire you have gold, Ghana is gold all
over and Liberia has diamonds and also in the republic of Congo, that is, Zaire
again, you have corper and they used to have good mineral that is only used in
mobile telephone," he declared.

Emphasising that the flow of money from Africa is quite important to Europe and the flow of goods, raw materials from Africa to Europe and America is quite important, but Africa is still considered poor.

Prof. McIntyre, who has been teaching Hausa language in the past 27 years at the university, noted that why the war on corruption globally seems not to be succeeding was because the advanced countries are harbouring corrupt wealth from poor nations in collaboration with small click of political elites.

"So when you talk about corruption being a massive problem in Africa, yes, it is, but not always an African problem because the other people who are helping to cause corruption are in Europe and America; the monies are coming to Europe and going to America," he decried.

Rich Nigerians, he said, who have lots of money do not invest these funds in their country, rather, "they buy houses outside Africa, send their children to school outside too. So, the money they have made corruptly does not circulate in Nigeria but circulates in Europe and the same with other African countries."

Some of these corrupt elites, the English man said, have Swiss bank accounts, German bank accounts, British and America bank accounts respectively.

"The money corrupt people have in Nigeria and Africa at large
circulates here in Europe and America. Now if all the corrupt people left their
monies in Nigeria, for instance, corruption would not be such a problem," he
said.

Maintaining, this has been a problem because every now and again "we hear about corruption here in German, in England, in France and we are talking about corrupt politicians, and corrupt bank managers".

For him, corruption is much more problem in Europe and America simply because the corrupt money stays here, and circulates here, "so we all benefit from corrupt money".