Pope Leo XIV takes on Africa’s wound: ‘Extractivism’ is the Pope’s word for a century of plunder
WHEN Pope Leo XIV stood before Angola’s government authorities and said the word “extractivism,” he was not offering a diplomatic pleasantry. He was indicting a system. "How much suffering, how many deaths, how many social and environmental disasters are brought about by this logic of extractivism?" the pontiff declared in Luanda, as he completed the third leg of a historic four-nation African voyage that has already taken him through Algeria and Cameroon. The word itself - extractivism - carries enormous analytical weight in African political economy. It describes the colonial and post-colonial logic by which Africa's vast natural endowments are…
