Interesting documentary on how an oil discovery changed a country or rather did bring no change at all.

This is a 85 minute DW documentary which spans a period of 10 years from 2007 when oil was discovered off the Ghana coast and it was felt that oil would bring in the riches and dramatically improve the lives of people living in a fishing village on the coast.

Oil did come, big companies did come in with their investments and their gigantic machines and did give some work to the locals for a couple of years, but then it all dried up. People were left in the lurch. A lot was promised by the government, but nothing happened, well almost nothing.

Well some change did take place, electricity did come in, some paved roads but fishing died completely because the algae from the oil slick that polluted the beaches and destroyed the fishing nets. The government was apparently making money from the oil but where was the money going.

Contracts were awarded to Chinese and they brought in their own labour. That’s probably symptomatic of Africa, big projects are awarded, but major chunk of the jobs go to foreign workers especially the skilled jobs. The locals are left with crumbs.

Its also a subtle dig at globalisation, is globalisation helping the local communities from which it takes it resources, who benefits in the end — the big companies with their shareholders who get massive dividends, or the governments which pocket the taxes or the local villages who are equal stakeholders in the project. Do project affected persons get the real advantage from big infrastructure projects. Verdict is still out.

Its a nice documentary, very languid pace, with some commentary, and lot of interviews with sub titles in English and the animations by Ebele Okoye was quite delightful.