Modern, healthy, and hopeful people do not engage in piracy. Where there is loose governmental control, economic deprivation, and an absence of security, it doesn’t take long for piracy to show itself.
Undefended merchants are tempting targets for either their cargo or hostages. For poor coastal communities whose near shore fish stocks have been strip mined in to oblivion by factory ships and with few other options, piracy looks like one of the only options left besides migration.
As we’ve touched on here and at my homeblog on a regular basis, though Central Asia, Middle East, and East Asia get much of the attention, all the leading indicators tell us one of the greatest challenge of the rest of the 21st Century will be Africa.
While the rest of the world approaches a demographic replacement rate – or in some nations – a pending demographic collapse due to a refusal to have children, Africa’s demographics are a clear outlier.
Her economic growth cannot pace her population growth. Her natural resources are already groaning under demands of a corrupt and inefficient extraction economy. All human history tells us that when these two things combine, the stresses are externalized through conflict and migration. With much of the continent hobbled already with simmering sectarian conflict both tribal and religious, and rule of law spotty at best – the below graph is the only logical outcome.
With the nations of West Africa, like the nations of East Africa, lacking the capacity to combat piracy, what is the role of the international maritime nations who do have the capacity to address piracy?
Great piracy catch up from the BBC;
It’s not just the huge tankers exporting oil and gas from Nigeria and Ghana that are targeted.
Commercial ships from smaller countries are also in the sights of the pirates.
At a recent event in London, President Faure Gnassingbé of Togo – a country sandwiched between these two regional giants – highlighted his own concerns at the rise in attacks on regional shipping.“Our region is distinguished by the resurgence of transnational criminality on the high seas in the Gulf of Guinea,” said Mr Gnassingbé.
Good news, there is a centuries-long track record of what works, all the international community and the nations of West Africa have to do is follow the formula;
The East African shipping routes along the Somali coastline have been notorious for hijackings and robberies.
But since peaking in 2011, rates of piracy there have fallen off dramatically in recent years.
This is in large measure as a result of a successful multi-national effort to patrol these waters and take firm action against acts of piracy.
Local efforts on land in Somalia to change attitudes towards permitting piracy and building legal capacity to prosecute criminals have also helped improve the situation.
