Huge, multi-billion-dollar dams are often seen as the only solution to Africa's critical shortage of power. In this week’s Pambazuka News Khadija Sharife asks whether this is really the case, given the environmental damage caused by dams and the suffering that the relocation of vast populations entails. In an article that looks at the reality behind the damming of Africa’s waterways, Sharife questions whether dams are the solution or the problem, arguing that they rarely benefit the poorest and often cause them greater hardship.

On 8 June, the oil giant Shell reached a settlement of US$15.5 million in a case brought against it in the US by 10 Ogoni plaintiffs, who accused the Anglo-Dutch company of complicity in the deaths of Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni activists in 1995. In this week’s Pambazuka News, Khadija Sharife reports on a case that, as Ken Saro-Wiwa Jnr has said, ‘very clearly sets a precedent that corporations have to be very careful when they operate in places like Africa’ and that ‘you can be brought to trial in America for violations in Africa.’

cc ‘Lone-ranger’ dictators Bongo (Gabon), Nguessor (Congo) and Obiang (Equatorial Guinea) have in fact been sustained by neocolonial relationships set up by France and the international financial system, writes Khadija Sharife. Françafrique, France's postcolonial Africa policy, was designed to create structural dependence and domination by reasserting geostrategic control over natural resources through the use of black 'governors', says Sharife. Illegitimate governments representing external interests have shaped and normalised the inherited legacy of colonialism, Sharife argues. These leaders, Sharife adds, have thus subsequently ‘internalised the economic, cultural, and political imperialism and cultivated an atmosphere of compliance concerning French interests in Africa.’ Unlike the United States, Sharife notes, ‘France treads lightly, attracts little or no attention, and leaves few footprints behind.’