‘Africa loses $300 billion to capital flight yearly’

THE African Union (AU) through its Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) has said that countries on the continent lose an aggregate of about $300 billion to European countries in the form of illegal resource and capital flight on a yearly basis.

Presiding Officer of ECOSOCC, Joseph Chelingi who addressed a press conference in Abuja at the weekend, stated that the capital and resource flights are made possible by civil society organisations from European countries which are an extention of their foreign policies.

“In the European Union, it is in black and white, it’s shameful, it’s embarrassing, but that is what it is, all civil society in the EU are an extension of EU foreign policy.

“It means Germany will provide resources to its NGO in Germany but they will not work in Germany, they have to work outside Germany, therefore they have to have partners in Africa or in South America or Asia in order to promote EU foreign policy in that regard.

“They are here to project and support their government’s agenda,to blind us in order to have our natural resources extorted from the continent, to blind us of our financial resources illegally airlifted from the continent.

“Currently we are losing $300 billion per year in the least financial flow from Africa, and thanks to former president Obasanjo who has been leading the high level panel of AU on alternative sources of funding for the continent.

“That $300 billion is 20 times or 100 times foreign direct investment that we receive for Africa on very silly and stupid conditionality. That is the kind of money Africa is loosing through companies like Shell under valuing their production in order to project lower income, in order to avoid tax,” Chelingi said.

He noted that in order to reverse this trend, the role of CSOs in Africa is critical, adding that his organisation will very soon launch a programme, #BringBackOurMoney to reserve the situation.

“That all resources that has been illegally trafficked from this continent, we want those resources back and this would be a civil society agenda that we need to pursue,” Chelingi stated.

He however emphasised the need to have a good framework for the prudent management of resources in Africa for the future, present, and for generations to come.

The presiding officer also berated the President of Head of Unions of EU for his response to the death of several African immigrants, stressing that what came out of that meeting was another failure of the European leadership.

“They brought us rhetorics, gave us no solution and instead requested for mechanism to perpetuate that. They want vote of UN security council to seek permission to destroy all the boats around that sea.

Those boats are on Africa territories. Thuat is called aggression and this kind of aggression is an international crime which is as good as genocide”, he said, adding that there are better ways by which migration issues can be handled.