Blood diamonds, oil finds, and the same heartbreak

Whenever a new stash of oil or diamonds is found in Africa, it always feels like watching a horror movie where you know exactly what’s about to happen. As soon as the news breaks, it’s the president and his inner circle who start cashing in, while everyone else gets nothing and the rest of the world just rolls its eyes. The government’s usually corrupt, and then suddenly there are “freedom fighters” fighting for democracy – but really, they’re just the next group in line, often backed by some shadowy foreign sponsor looking to score a sweet deal on the oil. Lately, it’s not only the usual suspects but also Russian mercenary outfits, like the Wagner Group (which Russia recently rebranded as the Afrika Korps to scrub the old Nazi vibes), swooping in to grab gold or whatever’s on offer. The result? Civil wars that drag on for years, because when the prize is diamonds or oil, nobody’s fighting for hearts and minds – they’re fighting for control of the loot and whichever foreign muscle can help them grab it. Ordinary people end up as refugees, trying to escape the chaos only to get shut out by other countries that don’t want to deal with them. Meanwhile, look at Botswana, somehow managing to avoid all this drama and refusing to turn mineral wealth into a bloodbath. But for most places, new resource finds just mean more warlords, longer conflicts, and barely a hint of real prosperity for regular people.