Word: copperizing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...many of the eleven years that Mobutu Sese Seko, 46, has ruled Zaïre, that huge central African country (once known as the Belgian Congo) has dined out on its promise of wealth. The country's enormous, and still largely unexploited, deposits of copper served as a kind of collateral on which Zaïre managed to borrow extensively abroad. It now owes $2.9 billion, $800 million of which is due private lenders in the U.S., Europe and Japan. But instead of achieving steady growth, Zaïre became a textbook example of how a Third World nation...
...stick decorated with carved figures of birds and snakes, decreed an ambitious industrialization program. Instead of investing in agriculture-which would have increased food supplies and given many more Zaïrians jobs-Mobutu put $1 billion, much of it borrowed, into projects aimed at a vast expansion of copper exports. He gambled that increasing demand would keep copper prices rising-and he lost. During the world recession, copper prices plunged by 62%, and Zaïre's copper revenues shrank from $934 million in 1974 to less than $600 million...
...result, three major projects have languished. A $500 million hydroelectric power transmission line that is supposed to snake over 1,200 miles of forest and bush from the Zaïre River (once the Congo) to the copper belt in Shaba (formerly Katanga) is far behind schedule. Construction of a huge addition to the state-owned Gécamines copper mine, financed by the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Libyan government, is 18 months late. Work has stopped on the giant new Tenke-Fungurume copper mine, and international backers are handing over $750,000 a month just...
Although Mobutu should have realized that he was making Zaïre more vulnerable than ever to world market fluctuations by concentrating so heavily on copper, he was partly a victim of plain bad luck. He could hardly have foreseen the soaring oil prices that helped depress the economies of his copper-buying customers and multiplied Zaïre's import bills. But there is more to the Zaïre story than that. Mobutu, who styles himself le Guide (the guide), also sank borrowed money-to be repaid out of copper revenues he did not get-into showy...
...Minerals,'" Pogrund says, "that means copper. Kaunda [Kenneth D. Kaunda, the president of Zambia, which shares the same rail line] depends on copper for his survival. The railway through Angola was destroyed during the war; he has to send the copper through South Africa. He may be distressed that his black brothers are being discriminated against, but he'll strike a deal with Vorster...