PROGRAMME TWO: GABON
CUE: After four decades of oil production, Gabon's population of one million people should be enjoying the highest standards of health and education in Africa. But critics say a tiny elite has siphoned off the oil wealth. In addition they say the economy has been ravaged by the "Dutch Disease" - an economic malaise which sees the non-oil sector shrink and die even as the oil dollars roll in. And now the oil itself is running out. The BBC's Maurice Walsh has been to Gabon to investigate.
BANDS 1 & 2: SFX TRAFFIC & MUSIC MIXED TOGETHER (fade and run under link)
REP: Libreville, the capital of Gabon.
BRING UP BANDS 1 & 2: SFX MUSIC & TRAFFIC MIXED TOGETHER (fade and run under link)
REP: This city once aspired to being Africa's most beautiful. And with the money made through exporting oil, President Omar Bongo, one of the longest-serving leaders on the continent, tried to transform the seafront here into an imitation of the French Riviera.
BRING UP BANDS 1 & 2: SFX MUSIC & TRAFFIC MIXED TOGETHER (fade and run under link)
REP: On one measure Gabon is a rich African country; it has a per capita income of 3500 dollars a year. Nearly half of its one million people live here in Libreville, by far the most expensive of the cities we've visited during the making of this BBC series. There are generous wages if you are lucky enough to get a good government job: then you can afford to stock your kitchen with luxury foods from abroad.
BAND 3: SFX SUPERMARKET (fade and run under link)
REP STANDUP: One place where you can see lots of imported food is in one of the French supermarkets on the seafront in Libreville. The car park is full of four wheel drive vehicles and when you step inside you see a vast cornucopia of imported goods: there's smoked salmon at $15 to $20 a shot, that might be from Chile or Scotland. There's cheeses from France, yoghurt from France, even lemons from Spain. In fact it feels like a supermarket in a rich French city. So while the majority of people in Libreville live in tin-roofed wooden shacks, these supermarkets are the symbol of a consumer elite created by the oil boom.
BAND 4: DOUGLAS YATES
When the revenues from oil come in, they come in the form of United States dollars, and so the first macro-economic effect is that this tiny country has to find something to do with a lot of foreign currency.
REP: Dr Douglas Yates is an American political scientist who teaches in Paris and is the author of a book on Gabon's oil economy. He describes how Gabon is a textbook example of a phenomenon first identified in Holland after the discovery of North Sea gas in the 1960s.
BAND 5: YATES
One of the things it results in is something called the Dutch Disease. The Dutch Disease is a distortion of an economy that occurs when you have a lot of oil revenue coming in. Local goods, goods that are produced in Gabon, they have to compete with imports. And because Gabon has lots of dollars, lots of foreign currency, it's going to buy a lot of imports.
BAND 6: SFX PORT ATMOS (faded under conversation)
BAND 7: MAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH
"La, vous avez marchandises qui sont arrive par bateaux et vous avez des marchandises qui sont... (etc)."
TRANSLATOR: These are goods which arrived from Europe by boat.
REP STANDUP: What have they got there on that lorry?
MAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH
TRANSLATOR: They have got chicken legs there, they also have fish in there.
REP STANDUP: And that's come from Europe?
MAN: "Oui, ca vien de l'Europe."
BAND 8: SFX GOODS BEING LOADED ON TO A WAGON (fade and run under link)
REP: At the port in Libreville we watched a fork-lift truck loading boxes of chicken just arrived from France. We've come here with a local businessman, Parfait Shurebum. If things were different, Parfait might be running his own fishing business. Gabon has 800 kilometres of coastline. But Gabon's economics means it makes more sense for Parfait to bring in consignments of fish from Senegal and sell them at a good price to well-to-do customers in Libreville.
SFX FORKLIFT PEAK (fade and run under link)
REP: The story of Parfait's family is the story of modern Gabon. His grandfather left a small village 300 km from Libreville to come to the capital to seek his fortune; his father got a job as a civil servant and prospered during the oil boom of the 1970's.
BAND 9: PARFAIT SHUREBUM (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: Our parents were able to send us to Europe. That was the result of this boom.
BRING UP SHUREBUM (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: So I went to France to study. It was not university though, it was primary school. But for two years actually I studied there.
REP STANDUP: So your father who was a civil servant, because of the oil boom, was able to afford to send his son to study in France?
BRING UP SHUREBUM (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: My father was not the only one, and I was not the only one to be sent to France for education.
REP: Gabon sent its first shipment of oil to France in the late 1950's. Twenty years later, the economy was almost entirely dependent on oil. In 1970, Gabon was producing five and a half million tonnes of oil, by 1976 that had shot up to over 11 million tonnes.
BAND 10: REP STANDUP
In this time in the 1970s and '80s what were people saying about the oil?
SHUREBUM SPEAKS (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: They used to say that this oil will never dry up. People used to say that Gabon was a blessed country.
BRING UP SHUREBUM (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: There was no unemployment, there was no money problem.
REP STANDUP: And you didn't think it was going to end?
SHUREBUM SPEAKS (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: We couldn't think about that because even our leaders were telling us that there was a lot of petrol, a lot of oil.
REP: Following the oil economy has been a roller-coaster ride: booms followed by recessions as the price of oil fluctuated wildly. In 1984, Gabon was ranked as the world's largest per capita importer of champagne. Two years later, the price of oil dropped by 50% and the economy collapsed. A big new find pushed up production in the '90s; but the IMF's man in Gabon, Richard Randrianmaholy, says the trend is towards inexorable decline.
BAND 11: RICHARD RANDRIANMAHOLY
Oil revenue declined by 18 million tonnes from 1996 up to around 13 million tonnes by the end of 2003. And this also represents about half of the government revenue which is still going to decrease over time. So one of the key features of the programme is for the authorities to start addressing public finance at the time that they have to increase non-oil revenue.
REP: This squeeze will affect everyone in Gabon but it's likely to affect the poor the most. Over the last few decades the oil wealth has reduced the numbers of people living in extreme poverty on a dollar a day; but well over half the population are still poor by any other standard, and the austerities to come will not improve their plight. Parfait says the good times are well and truly finished.
BAND 12: SHUREBUM SPEAKS (fade and run under translation)
TRASLATOR: There is a very pronounced unemployment…
BRING UP SHUREBUM (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: ... and we have inflation that we can all feel it, and we also have pronounced insecurity...
BRING UP SHUREBUM (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: ... and a phenomenon that we didn't witness in those boom years and we witness now, it's people begging on the street with a begging bowl.
BAND 13: SFX CROWD ON ROAD (fade and run under link)
REP: A couple of days after we met Parfait at the docks, we came across a vivid illustration of how tough can be away from the seafront in Libreville. On our way to an interview I noticed a dead body lying in at the side of the road and some men trying to block off the traffic. A police care behind us hooted furiously, but went on. Later, when we came back down the same road, it had been completely blocked in both directions, with wooden poles and rocks. The body I had seen earlier, its arms now lifted up and rigid, was placed in the centre of the road, and a crowd had gathered nearby. We got out to find out what had happened.
BAND 14: SFX CROWD ON ROAD
BAND 15: REP STANDUP
What is happening here?
SFX CROWD ON ROAD (fade and run under link)
REP: They told us the body had been lying there for hours.
BAND 16: MAN # 2
We were here this morning and OK when we came we saw this… this man is too sick, he has a sickness but we don't know where he came from… he just came here and he goes down to the gutter. After 10 o'clock when we saw him he was dead.
REP STANDUP: So nobody's come, no ambulance has come, the police haven't come?
MAN # 2: No, some police are passing… they said they are going to call these people, what do you you call them...? Fire department people?
REP STANDUP: So you are protesting that nobody has come to look after this man?
MAN # 2: There is nobody since… that's what we are waiting for because we cannot wait here around the night.
REP: Then somebody came up with a disturbing explanation for how the man had died.
BAND 17: MAN # 3 SPEAKS (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: It's the hospital which discharges these people when they find that the cases are hopeless they will just throw them out and they will die in the street.
REP: We went to the central hospital to find out if this might be true. And we were surprised by what we heard from the head, Professor Romain Chouard.
BAND 18: ROMAIN CHOUARD SPEAKS (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: It's virtually a daily occurrence now, although it's fairly new in Libreville. It amounts to the almost total abandonment of responsibility by certain families by the sick relatives. When people are dying and hospitals can find they can do no more for them as patients, the families find they can't cope with the situation. That means the patients find themselves stuck between home and hospital, and they often end up in the street, because the hospital has nothing further to offer them.
REP: There can hardly be a better illustration of the potentially perverse impact of oil than that in a country which has received billions of dollars in revenue a man's body could lie in a busy city thoroughfare for several hours because the rescue services don't work properly. Gabon is a classic example of the oil curse we are exploring in this BBC series. As Douglas Yates explains, its access to oil wealth should put it far ahead of its impoverished neighbours.
BAND 19: YATES
Gabon shouldn't just be slightly better than its neighbours, it should be significantly better because Gabon has a tiny population of around a million people, and huge resources. If you add up all of the oil that has ever been produced in Gabon since 1960, it's approximately 8.1 billion barrels. For a population of a million people you would imagine great hospitals, great schools, high income. But when you look at the figures and you compare Gabon's adult literacy rate, Gabon's adult literacy rate is 63%; world figures are 77%; if you look at its life expectancy at birth - a typical Gabonese is expected to live till 53 years old - slightly better than Africa where it's 49, but by world standards, it's 64. If you look at their immunisation, if you look at the rest of the kinds of figures that are covered by UNICEF you'll see that not only is Gabon not staggeringly better off than its neighbours, but in many cases it's worse.
REP: The huge inflows of cash to the government during the good years helped to underwrite Gabon's stable politics, distinguishing it from other African countries which were beset by wars and coups. For President Omar Bongo, who has ruled Gabon since 1967, the oil money is an instrument for keeping his ethnically diverse country together. Through patronage he can defuse threats from rivals. And like leaders of other oil rich states elsewhere in the world, he has indulged in extravagant projects, such as the Trans-Gabonnais Railway, which cost three billion dollars to build. Douglas Yates explains how the oil generated more money than Gabon could handle.
BAND 20: YATES
Billions were stolen, billions were invested in projects that lost the money, huge amounts were borrowed and therefore a lot of the oil money simply goes to pay interest - the debt service of the country occupies about half of government revenues. So a lot of the money just goes to pay the interest on their $3.3 billion debt, which is literally they are making profits for banks.
REP: In the space of just one year in the mid-'70s, as oil production soared, Gabon's foreign debt rose by 60%. The legacy of such profligate borrowing is an over-staffed and unproductive government sector. When asked in surveys, most Gabonese complain that their public services are grossly inefficient. At every turn when we visited government ministries, we came across 4 or 5 people sitting behind desks with nothing to do.
BAND 21: REP STANDUP
It's five minutes to nine on a Friday morning and we have come to do an interview with the Oil and Natural Resources Minister. We've come to the Oil Ministry building which was opened in 1987 by President Bongo and is a very elaborate building. From the outside it looks almost like a rocket. So we were came here because we were told it would be as early as possible, first interview of the day but we are just sitting in the lobby, there's just a cleaner around and we are waiting to see the Minister.
SFX CLEANER (fade and run under link)
REP: We waited over two hours before we were ushered into the oil minister's office.
BAND 22: OIL MINISTER SPEAKS IN FRENCH (fade and run under link)
BAND 23: REP STANDUP
Let's look at how the oil money was used. Given the billions of dollars that Gabon has received from selling the oil, one would expect that the country would be in better shape than it is.
OIL MINISTER LAUGHS, THEN SPEAKS IN FRENCH (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: You've got to recognise that, at the time of independence, Gabon was a totally undeveloped country with no roads, no airports, no airline, no hydro-electric dams. All of that basic infrastructure was constructed through the efforts of successive governments led by his Excellency Omar Bongo, using the oil revenues.
BAND 24: REP STANDUP
There are many people in Gabon who feel that the oil wealth has been wasted or stolen.
OIL MINISTER LAUGHS, THEN SPEAKS IN FRENCH (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: I have just given you the proof that that is not at all the case. Of course there are people who will say such things, there always are all over the world; people who accuse everyone.
REP STANDUP: But look at the evidence from the -
OIL MINISTER INTERRUPTS, SPEAKING IN FRENCH (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: I haven't finished yet. This point of view just doesn't correspond with reality. I explained to you just now all the infrastructure that was built, all the things that have been funded by the oil revenue. To talk about the theft of oil money is really excessive. All our oil revenues are transparent; utterly transparent.
REP: But the evidence suggests otherwise. In the last few years, the trial on corruption charges of top executives from the French oil company, Elf, which for years had dominated oil exploration in Gabon, revealed a network of secret money transfers. The Elf executives testified that they had made annual payments totalling over ten million dollars to President Bongo from a slush fund, partly to maintain French influence in its foreign colony and thus throughout Francophone Africa. Until two years ago there was no proper audit of how much oil payments were made to Gabon's Treasury; and - as even the Oil Minister admits - money which under a recent initiative was to have been put aside for the future, seems to have disappeared.
BAND 25: REP STANDUP
About six years ago you established a fund for future generations, money from the oil revenues was to have been put into that; how much money is in that fund now?
BAND 26: OIL MINISTER SPEAKS IN FRENCH (fade and run under translation)
TRANSLATOR: I really am not trying to evade the question, but I am not the Minister of Finance. I don't want to give out figures like that. What I will say is that such an account was created, it's to be found I believe in the Central Bank or the Treasury. It is quite possible that the intentions of the government which were genuine have been frustrated by our problems of debt because the majority of our oil revenue goes towards payment of the national debt, and there's really not that much left over to fulfil our budgetary obligations.