Chinese, Russian and Indian investors are battling for African resources to fuel their growing empires.

Scrap metal exportation

If you are a bit vigilant you will come into contact with small scale scrap dealer on our street corners buying scrap metal from us. They are the agents of the Indian man who sits somewhere around kanifing cemetery. They are buying the scrap at no price as they are buying a kilogram of metal D3.00 and may sell at D28.00 at the most on the cheap on the world market stage.

Africa and the Gambia for that are now witnessing the re-exportation of scrap metal that will be very useful once this sleeping giant of AFRICA wakes up and then there will nothing. But look at what is happening the Indians and Chinese are coming to rob us again as we will sooner or later need these scrap metals but what can I do, what can you do?

It is a shame that we losing out once again as the price of metal is so dear that we have to compromise expert’s recommendation with cost of an iron rod in our domestic construction projects. Metal is so expensive above the reach of the ordinary Gambian and now here comes these people playing with our intelligence to ship away all traces of metal in our country. It is worrying and indeed alarming, so someone better stop them now before it is too late and we going to pay 2000% when we need it back. They will break our backs if we keep silent.

Gtti metal furnace

We have a furnace built by the Gambia-Turkey Friendship and that furnace is doing a great job in metal works needs of this country. However, what I want to know is what is preventing the same people and the same administration from asking the Turks to help us with a more advance furnace that could melt and remold all these scrap metal into rods for local consumption and cut down on the amount of millions spent a year in importing iron rods and metals of various names and sizes.

It is just a common sense judgment by the very people in those coveted position to see, feel and response to the needs of their countrymen and women. You do dot need a PHD to get such contact and lobbying done on behalf of the people of the Gambia. So get to work today and change things, try and change something where you work for a better Gambia or else we will as well one day be strangers in our own lands.

What is the Zimbabwe story? It started like this and now look at the madness they trying to blame Mugabe for. Please give me a break, give me some ATTAYA. Africa and Gambia, it is high time we trying taking charge of what is our own and it is high time to start thinking for the general good and forget about our individual egos and sentiments. The Indian man buying from us scrap paid an air ticket to come to our shores and now he is playing with our mentality.

Infant gambian metal indrustries

The farming community depends at a very large extend on the blacksmith and local metal workers for their farm inputs be it a hoe, rake and you name it. These inputs they are able to make because there is scrap metal on the street and in the neighborhoods but what happen to them if we sell all the scrap metal to the Indians to take to India for their industrial revolution and what do you do when Africa is industrializing? Get up and stop the madness and we can only do it with government’s help and I ask of government today to help stop the sale of scrap metal as we need these metals for infant metal industries.

Am I talking politics or talking xenophobia? No, I am just trying to point a finger to the exploitation of our shores by these so-called investors whose single goal is burying Africa- Land where they have Allah’sblessingsbut no brains.  Wake up and rise up and take back what is yours and I hope government is listening and by government it is the people and therefore I hope someone who commands power and influence help save our Infant Metal Industries before the Indians or Chinese take them all away and leave us with tears and had I known. Now is the time and I hoped someone is listening.  

Conclusion  

However, that will be the scenario as long as Africa and Africans are bent of damaging one another and leave the crusade at hand unattended to then we are doomed. Nkrumah is betrayed and it is gloomy future for our people. ‘RISE UP AND TAKE A STAND’ said by Bob Marley and that is what exactly what Africa needs in these trying times.

Russia (moscow)

Moscow begins to give both the West and Beijing a run for their money in the race for Africa's riches.

Today emerging-market giants are fighting for oil, gas and metal ore in Africa as energetically as 19th-century European colonialists grabbed land. The Chinese have been the most aggressive, with more than 700 companies active in 50 countries, according to Standard Bank of South Africa. China is now Africa's second largest aid donor and trading partner, behind the United States, with trade up fourfold to $40 billion since 2000.

But Russia, the second most-active emerging-market power, is gaining. While trade with Africa is only $3 billion a year (up threefold since 2000), Russian companies flush with cash have sunk more than $5 billion into buying up African assets since 2000—and that's not counting $3.5 billion of oil-exploration deals coming online by the end of the decade.

(Over the same period, China has put $6.7 billion into Africa, but much of that money has been sunk into infrastructure projects like telecom, electric power, water conservation, transportation and agriculture.)

Pushed by the profit motive, and by a Kremlin eager to build economic empires, Russian businessmen are heading south. Africa, like Russia in the early 1990s, is full of basket-case economies with great mineral wealth—and the Russians reckon they know how to deal with those conditions.

Russia has strongly encouraged its companies to buy assets around the world because it suits President Vladimir Putin's philosophy of restoring his country's international position. Recent energy deals in Algeria have gone hand in hand with $4 billion in arms sales from Moscow. Russian businesses interested in South Africa have gotten a boost from a deal Putin made with President Thabo Mbeki to expand nuclear cooperation. Last September Putin made a whistle-stop tour of Africa with several top Russian oligarchs in tow—including Viktor Vekselberg, who pledged to invest $2 billion in metal and mining projects in Africa.

While the Chinese are staking ground in Africa mainly to power their burgeoning cities and manufacturing sector, Russians see the deals differently. Russia is the world's largest energy exporter, and has plenty of its own metals and minerals. But rich Russian companies want to extend their global reach while they have the money, and with oil approaching $100 a barrel in recent weeks, the time is now. There's another motive, too, analysts say: moving empires beyond the reach of the Kremlin serves as insurance against future political changes in Russia.

Over the last three years, four top Russian metal companies have invested more than $5 billion in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Russian oil giants Lukoil, Rosneft and Stroytransgaz have signed exploration deals in Algeria, Nigeria, Angola and Egypt worth more than $3 billion. Earlier this year Lukoil snapped up 63 percent of a field off the Ivory Coast in a production-sharing agreement with the Nigerian owners.