Angola: Anatomy of an Oil State.

BY TONY HODGES 12.95 [pounds sterling] African Issues ISBN 0-85255-874-0

This book was first published in 2001 as Angola from Afro-Stalinism to Petro Diamond Capitalism'. The original book derived from the author's study of Angola undertaken as part of a comparative programme of research on the nature of 'oil states'. Two Norwegian research institutions, the ECON Centre for Economic Analysis, and the Fridtjof Nansen Institute sponsored this study.

The purpose of the programme was to understand better how a large oil industry impacts on a developing or transitional country's system of governance, economy, social and political rights. Much of the material that went into the original book was gathered while Hodges lived and worked in Angola in 1996-1998 and during a special research visit in 1999. Shortly after the publication of the first book in 2001, the author returned to Angola as a senior policy advisor for the United Nations Development Programme. He remained in Angola until mid 2002, witnessing the events that led up to the death of the UNITA leader, Jonas Savimbi, and the new peace agreement.

For the second edition, Hodges has updated his analysis to take into account this turn of events that has ushered in a new period of hope for millions of Angolans after more than a quarter of a century of almost continuous war and misery.

A SHOCKING PARADOX

As Hodges points out in his introduction to the book, Angola presents a terrible, shocking paradox. A country endowed with some of the best natural resources in the world has been associated not with development and relative prosperity but with years of conflict, economic decline and human misery on a massive scale.

Quite apart from the huge reserves of oil which are being pumped out at a rate of over 900,000 barrels a day, or being the fourth most important source of diamonds in the world, Angola is blessed with plentiful fertile land, a generally favourable climate, and huge hydroelectric energy potential.

Helge Ole Bergesen of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute writes in the preface that the agenda facing the international oil industry operating in the developing world has changed significantly during the last decade. She pinpoints three aspects in particular. Firstly, the environmental impact of oil exploration had to be recognised; secondly, the challenge arising from the human-rights implications of petroleum-led development can no longer be brushed aside; and thirdly, questions relating to social-economic development have to be addressed by the multinational oil corporations.

"The days are gone when an oil company can simply state that it's their job to find and produce oil and get away with it," Bergessen states. "Whether the industry likes it or not, it will continue to be questioned on its track record on the environment, human rights and socio-economic development." She goes on to commend Hodges' analysis as an excellent illustration of the complexity and severity of the problems facing petro-states, some unique to Angola, others easily recognised in other oil-producing countries.