7 - Conclusion: The New ‘Scramble for Africa’

Summary

Our approach to the continent is riddled with contradictions. We pour in billions in aid while erecting trade barriers that squeeze out African firms. We encourage land tenure in Africa, then drive farmers out of business by dumping cheap produce. We pay lip service to good governance, then prop up repressive regimes, do deals with despots and allow our banks to launder their plunder. We retain prohibitive drugs laws that are spreading chaos through some West African states, having wrecked parts of South and Latin America already. Then we complain when migrants flee the consequent poverty and unrest.

(Birrell 2009)

This work began by examining the social, economic and political role that diamonds have played in Sierra Leone's development since the 1930s. A main conceptual question implicit in attempting to understand this history is the extent to which diamonds here represent what Ross (1999) has termed a resource curse – used more generally to explain the position of countries rich in mineral resources yet afflicted by extreme poverty and underdevelopment. Despite over 80 years of diamond exploitation (alongside other resources and minerals), Sierra Leone continues to exist on the margins of global development. For much of this history, diamond production formed part of what has been described as ‘a dual economy’ ‘composed of a developed and isolated export sector and an underdeveloped economy in general’ (Bangura and Dumbuya 1993: 91).