Business and politics in a criminal state: the case of Equatorial Guinea

Abstract

This article assesses the changing nature of the contemporary political economy of Equatorial Guinea. It provides an overview of the complex and dynamic web of elite rent-generation and explores the extent to which the development of an oil industry has contributed to a monoculture of accumulation. It is concluded that, despite the oil windfall, other, 'illicit', modes of elite rent-generation persist and have even intensified. DUBBED THE KUWAIT OF WEST AFRICA, the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea has experienced extremely rapid growth as a result of the discovery and exploitation of major offshore oil reserves.1 Less enviably, the country has a well-deserved reputation for gross human rights abuses and corruption. Whilst accumulation centring on a tiny elite is widespread on the African continent, the concentration and nature of the activity have had particularly adverse consequences in Equatorial Guinea. Indeed, in his classic account, Small is notAlways Beautiful, Max Liniger-Goumaz suggests that the closest comparable examples can be found in the former clan dictatorships of Latin America, including the Duvaliers' Haiti, the Somozas' Nicaragua, Porfirio Diaz's Mexico and Batista's Cuba.2 Equatorial Guinea's 'family caudillismo' Nguemist regime matches or exceeds earlier Latin American manifestations both in rapacity and brutality; President Obiang Nguema Mbasago is regularly named as one of the worst despots in the world.3 This article analyses the political economy of Equatorial Guinea, which has been largely neglected in recent Africa-related research.4 It provides an Geoffrey Wood is Professor, Middlesex University Business School, Middlesex University, London. The fieldwork for this article was conducted with George Frynas, whose insights and depth of knowledge of the West African oil industry proved invaluable. The conclusions reached are, however, the author's own. 1. Max Liniger-Goumaz, Small is Not Always Beautiful: The story of Equatorial Guinea (Rowman and Littlefield, Savage, MD, 1989). 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid.; 'Afrol Country Report'. America Online News (Oslo, 2003). (www.afrol.com). 4. Liniger-Goumaz's classic account, Small is Not Always Beautiful, represents a standard albeit dated reference work on the subject. Other published studies include the similarly dated work by Randall Fegley, Equatorial Guinea: An African tragedy (P. Lang, New York, 1989). Robert Klitgaard's Tropical Gangsters: One man's experience with debt and decadence in